Debates of October 19, 2007 (day 2)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to begin with a quote from the Earth Charter, issued in 2000:

“We stand at a critical moment in the earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”

Mr. Speaker, I’m very concerned about climate change and some of our environmental challenges. But as brought out in this Earth Charter statement, I am also very excited about the possibilities and the promise that’s offered in the solutions to some of these things. It’s going to take some new thinking. It’s going to take some new ways of doing things. I heard on the radio the other day where it looks like we’re a government with no change. I’m hoping that’s not true because I see a real need to do some things differently. We have now entered the point where there is an irreversible degree of climate change. Even if we stopped our greenhouse gas emissions today we couldn’t stop climate change. But we’re not at the point of dangerous climate change, as they call it, where our losses really soar. So we have a window of opportunity here and I’m really looking forward to bringing some ideas of how we can work on solutions to that. In particular, I’ve heard the word balance between development and the environment; we need to restore balance. This is clearly happening because we are out of balance, and I’m looking forward to some creative ideas of how we restore balance.

I know this has been raised throughout many discussions already that we’ve had, both informally and formally, and there’s will on both sides of the House to get to work on this. I think we can do this by drawing on local resources and local skills in new ways to meet many of our needs and address many of the things Mrs. Groenewegen was mentioning here, her list. It’s just how we do things and we can do that in ways that benefit all our residents and our northern environment and the global environment. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much.

---Applause