Ms. Elizabeth May
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Vancouver Quadra, hon. the parliamentary secretary. I completely agree about the hazardous area of the Hecate Strait.
From the last time I rose, when talking to the parliamentary secretary for transport, I looked up the reference. Environment Canada’s marine weather hazards manual lists the Hecate Strait as one of the fourth-most dangerous bodies of water in the world.
However, I have to agree with my friend from Courtenay—Alberni. It is hard to understand. I applaud Bill C-48, but our Salish Sea needs protection. We have no known technology for cleaning up diluted bitumen. I know it is not a Bill C-48 issue, but could we not agree that no new pipeline should go through for Kinder Morgan until we know how to clean up dilbit?
Joyce Murray – Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board
Mr. Speaker, our government has a range of initiatives for the oceans protection plan that are focused on the Salish Sea areas, on the species in those areas, and on doing what has never been done, which is having steps to recover Chinook salmon, which is the food for the southern resident killer whales, and having initiatives like regulating to keep the boats, tourists, and other ship traffic further away from our southern resident killer whales.
The one thing that I want to mention about this is that it is very important that we achieve our Paris targets. We cannot do that without the kinds of measures that Alberta has put in place to reduce their planned expansion of the oil sands, putting a cap on it, increasing their tax, regulating methane, and shutting down coal-fired plants. That is in the national interest.
Having Alberta as part of the national plan is in the national interest. Alberta made one requirement for that, and that is access for their oil to Asia.