Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for the vast majority of Canadians and people of the world, the debate about whether climate change is happening is over. We are moving into the more constructive discussion of what do we do in the short term to anticipate and adapt to the changes that are coming in the longer term, mitigating how we do business and how we live to cut back on our emissions.

Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories, the North in general, has been identified as a barometer for climate change. The canary in the mineshaft is another characterization. We know that 77 percent of our

emissions now come from business, industry and commercial interests. We have an obligation to make sure that we do our share as citizens of the North, of Canada and of the world, to mitigate the impact we are having on the rising temperatures as a result of the greenhouse gas emissions.

At some point, there will be an Energy Strategy that will be put before this House that has been in the works for the last almost six years now and there we have to hope that we can speak aggressively on how we are going to do that.

Mr. Speaker, this forum is a forum where we pass laws and make public policy. The discussion in this House of late has been that we need better tools and to do a better job of how we balance resource development, environmental change and protection. This motion helps give us some direction as we look to the future and the setting of the public policy as to how we are going to move forward so we can have a healthy environment, healthy people, a sustainable economy and a sustainable society.

I would encourage all the Members to support this. I would like to thank everybody for their interest and I look forward to this motion being passed. Thank you.

---Applause