Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just briefly want to speak in support of the motion. Something that crossed my mind today when we talked about the words of the elders -- and Mr. Yakeleya and Mr. Lafferty made reference to it -- in the treaties it talked about the rights that were being conveyed being in effect as long as the sun shone and as long as the rivers flowed and I guess they had the foresight to understand that if the rivers didn't flow anymore there was no need to talk about it because we won't be here when the rivers stop flowing, we'll be gone, we won't have anything to sustain life if the rivers stop flowing. I think that's an interesting phrase and probably showed a lot of foresight on their part when they said that.
When we talk about water as a human right, I think we need to then take the next step and think about water and how we share, it may not be actually sharing our water as a resource, it may be sharing the technology, which is out there and very much modern technology about wells, about catching water, about water treatment and this can be done on a very small scale and can help communities and I think we need to think of Canadians and as northerners about sharing that kind of technology that can help people access clean water in different parts of the world. It's also been noted in our recent discussions that water is a resource for which there is no price tag. We don't assess the value. If you give someone a water permit, there's no economic value attached to the use of that water; a very strange phenomenon when you think about it. When we talk about water costs we talk about the costs of water treatment or water delivery, we talk about warming water to a certain temperature to go into our municipal distribution systems, but we don't ever think about there being an actual economic value to that water. We are so blessed with so much water in this country that we consider water to be free. In fact it's interesting that the folks that are working on the boreal initiative have assessed what our ecosystem around this part of the country is actually worth in terms of dollars. We don't think like that. We think that nature is out there, it's free for the taking and we don't value it in terms of economic
sense and I believe we should because it's a sobering thought.
Anyway, we're here on this planet. I think if we were all to walk softly and leave as minimal an imprint as possible and to protect the resources. I think this is a good motion and I've already spoken to the issue of how we need, as a government, to make other governments aware and join in, really, the chorus of people that are emerging with a message about clean air, clean water and a good environment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause