The finest air in the history of the Dominion!

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair:  Could the Conservatives tell us how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to monitor smokestack pollution at a Canadian coal-fired power plant?


Acting Prime Minister, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney: We will take no lessons from the NDP on this. If that member chooses to distrust the EPA or President Obama, that is his choice.


Mulcair: Usually countries try to take care of their own environment. They do not outsource it. The Conservatives claim that the cuts will not affect monitoring but they are already being contradicted by our own environment department. Environment Canada's website confirms the work done by the smokestack pollution team includes enforcement and compliance. Why do the Conservatives not realize what is going on in their own environment department? Are they so busy debunking the theories about environment and volcanoes?


Kenney: The only thing volcanic here is that member's temper. Through the Clean Air Act, through the restriction on toxins, through the increased enforcement of our environmental laws, . . .through all of these measures this government, objectively speaking, has made more progress on the quality of our environment and the air that we breathe than any government in the history of the Dominion.


Exchange in Parliament quoted in Rabble.ca about the fact that the Harper Conservative government is cutting an Environment Canada team that monitors smokestack pollution. The government has suggested that it could save much of the $700,000 it spends on this monitoring group by relying on other sources for the information such as the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.