Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I really appreciate this opportunity. The Minister highlighted during his budget presentation that this is one of the greenest budgets ever and, indeed, I think it is. This makes me happy. We’re really getting down to it, finally. But it also makes me sad how little we have done in relation to the need.

I’d like to take this opportunity to read into the record some quotes that outline the gravest of concerns that we, the people of the North, and indeed the people of the world, now face. While I read these into the record I will have in mind the young McKinley Hawkins and other wonderful people of the North and throughout the world.

The quotes come from a book by Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian intellectual, called “Climate Wars”. It was just published. I’d like to proceed with reading from a series of quotes from our top scientists on the

issue of climate change. It starts with a quote from John Holdren, director of Woods Hole Research Centre, past-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is in February of 2008.

“We depend on the climate for the productivity of farms and forests and fisheries. We depend on the climate for the availability of water. We are at risk from the climate -- from heat waves, from floods, from droughts, from wildfires, from sea level rise -- and what we are seeing is all of these things happening faster. We are seeing not only a rise in the surface temperature of the planet, we are seeing changes in circulation patterns, changes in storm tracks, increases in flood intensity and frequency, increases in drought intensity and frequency, more and stronger heat waves, more powerful tropical storms right across the board. Everything that is expected to result from global climate change driven by greenhouse gasses is not only happening, but it’s happening faster than anybody expected.”

Mr. Dyer says, recognizing that we are now at 6.7 billion people on the globe and we’re marching forward to nine billion, that it is extremely unlikely that there will ever be nine billion human beings on this planet. It’s not just...