A Real Plan to Protect our Environment – part 2
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Summary
In this episode, Conservative MP Bob Sopak and I discuss the long-awaited Environment Plan from the Conservative Party of Canada. We talk about how the plan addresses every environmental issue and factor in this country, from clean water, to clean air, to the role of hunters and anglers, to wetlands, to climate change. Nobody, no political party has ever put forth such a plan.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
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I'm your host, Jamie Schmail, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps of the Lakes, Brock.
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And this week, our topic is a real plan to protect our environment.
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You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
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The cost of living keeps going up, deficits keep going up,
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and he has to raise taxes to pay for his out-of-control spending.
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Talk is cheap, except when this finance minister does it. It's very expensive.
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It's the fact that he punished two strong women for doing the right thing
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while he moved hell and high water to protect his buddies at SNC-Lavalin from facing a day in court.
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Welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
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I'm your host, Jamie Schmail, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps of the Lakes, Brock.
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And with me today is Bob Sopak, the one and only Member of Parliament for Dauphin, Swan, River Nibawa, in Manitoba.
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Thank you so much for joining us, and it is an honour because you are a fisheries biologist by trade.
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So what better person to have with us to talk about the long-awaited environment plan?
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Now, this is something many people have been waiting for.
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I think many Canadians have been looking for the Conservative plan,
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and I think, in my opinion, I think it hits all the places we're supposed to hit.
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Well, if you look at the plan, and I have a copy in front of me here,
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I mean, there's 60 pages and 58 different sections in it.
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So this is the first comprehensive environment plan that any political party has ever written.
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What I like about this plan, Jamie, is that it takes an ecosystem approach.
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What I mean by that is this plan addresses every environmental issue and factor in this country,
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from clean water to clean air to migratory birds to the role of hunters and anglers to wetlands to conservation and climate change.
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Nobody, no political party has ever put forth such a plan.
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Now, we have a number of sections to that, and it could be, as you mentioned,
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it could be to help homeowners ensure that their own personal property is more energy efficient.
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We talk about conservation as another major portion of this,
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because that adds to the whole battle against climate change, the conservation part.
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When we were drafting the plan here, we looked in the literature and actually came across
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the carbon sequestration capabilities of certain conservation measures.
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What that means is, Jamie, is that certain landscapes that are designed a certain way,
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that are preserved, have the ability to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
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The other one is to put it back into the ground, whether it's in the soil or in the trees.
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But what's really captivating about that particular approach, let's say we look at wetland conservation
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and the carbon sequestration capabilities of wetlands.
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Because instead of the water rushing off the land fast and entering our rivers and streams
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in a capacity that the river and stream can handle, these wetlands act as little sponges,
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So this is actually a really conservative approach, Jamie, because the same dollar does five different
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things, addresses climate change, mitigates the effects of climate change, and does all these
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And that's why this conservative plan so reflects our conservative principles.
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It's an efficient use of private and public sector funds to deliver multiple on-the-ground
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So let's talk about carbon capture and storage.
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So that's a major piece of technology for our energy sector.
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And that also is featured in the environmental plan.
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Yeah, now the carbon capture and storage, as you know, when we were in government, we had
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this major project at Esteban, the boundary power plant, the coal power plant in Saskatchewan.
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And what was done there, I think some $700 million was invested.
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All the carbon from that coal-fired plant is basically sucked off the end of the smokestack
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Now, at that point, this was about, oh, seven, eight years ago, the technology was very expensive.
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In the research we did for the plan, there's a company in Europe that the cost is $600 a
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But the cost is going down very rapidly, and it's anticipated that the cost of carbon capture
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Now, what we're talking about now, that's quote-unquote artificial carbon capture and
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And going back to the conservation side, we can consider that as natural carbon capture
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And again, as you well know, coming from the beautiful constituency that you have, Canadians
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They're in love with our lakes, love with our water, our birds, our fish.
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Many people hunt and angle and trap and the commercial fish.
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So it's bred into us as Canadians to love our landscapes.
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And that's why I'm so proud of this particular plan, because that is addressed.
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And a lot of things conservatives hold dear is what you just mentioned, because protecting
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I mean, it's no accident that the word conservative and conservation, they come from the same root.
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And again, when one looks at the track record of conservative governments, Brian Mulroney,
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And when one looks at what conservatives have done in North America, for example, Teddy Roosevelt,
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He was president of the United States in the early 1900s.
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He was the one that became most concerned about deforestation.
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So again, right across North America, conservatives have nothing to be ashamed of when it comes
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And how we differ from the other guys, and it's very, very stark.
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They plan, they consult, they study, no result.
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The great Winston Churchill said, a strategy is of no use unless there are some results.
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So what we focus on as conservatives are environmental results.
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And when we were in government, the recreational fisheries program, for example, 1,700 kilometers
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And the National Areas Conservation Plan, 800,000 hectares of valuable land conserved.
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And so that is why when we come to question the liberals across the way on their environmental
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And they never do, because it's a truism in ecology that an environmental statement without
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And you'll notice that the liberals and NDP never, ever provide any evidence for what they're
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Even when you contrast both approaches, we're showing our plan to have concrete results where
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Stop dumping raw sewage in our lakes and rivers, right?
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That was a conservative approach that had federal dollars being implemented locally by a local
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Now, the liberals canceled that and didn't replace it with anything, but those are measures
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that we have previously and we will bring back and show people that, yes, you can actually
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have results without imposing a massive carbon tax with prices cascading throughout the marketplace.
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And again, one of the things that people also forget, and quite frankly, I'm a little skeptical
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when we talk about balancing the economy and the environment.
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And I know that's going to sound strange to the listeners here, but here's the reason
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The data are really, really clear that the richer a society is, the better its environment.
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Because wealthy societies, in fact, the measure is called the Environmental Benefit Index.
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The Environmental Benefit Index goes up with per capita income.
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So how can we as a country, for example, afford to, quote unquote, lock up all these beautiful
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We can do it because we don't need to cut those trees down.
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How do we, how do we, how is it that we don't have to farm every single hectare in this country
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and eliminate wildlife from our southern areas?
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It's because we don't have to farm every single hectare.
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So technologically advanced wealthy societies are, have clearly better environmental outcomes.
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And which party is the best to deliver on economic growth, economic development, and
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The Conservative Party, and the record is clear.
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Well, I think that's a good point that you raised, talking about technology.
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Whereas when left-leaning governments, they pick winners and losers, and usually their
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friends, the well-lawyered and lobbied, get the preferential treatment.
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And usually government uses policy and regulations to stamp down or defeat the competition or
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But whereas what we're doing, we're actually encouraging new startups, companies to take
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the next level by ensuring that the marketplace is solid for them.
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Low taxes, reasonable regulation, and red tape allowing them to do what they do best, which
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is develop the next piece of technology that will help us clean our environment.
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And again, we're the political party in the government.
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And the incentives aren't necessarily financial incentives, you know, direct payments, for
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So in the green, in our plan to protect the environment, we had the green home renovation
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And you recall that the Harper government a number of years ago had the home renovation
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That was, it was so wildly successful, it ran out of money long before we anticipated this.
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So this kind of green tax credit to make your home more energy efficient, for example, I'm
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And people, so people want to put in ground source heat pumps, solar panels, more efficient
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windows, more efficient furnaces, and so on and so on.
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They will have the ability, let's say they spend $10,000, they'll be getting $2,000 back
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So that kind of incentivizing and sound environmental behavior, without the direct use of taxpayers'
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money, having people put sweat equity into making it happen, that is the way to achieve
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Whereas the Liberal plan usually applied a big government program that bureaucrats look
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it over and may decide whether or not you get a government grant in return.
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And if you don't, you still have to go out, even though you paid into the system.
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But this actually allows people the freedom to do what they want without having to ask
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the state whether or not they can actually renovate their homes and put it in windows.
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Yeah, I mean, the left, the Liberal left, pardon me, they're in love with regulations because
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In our case, we actually can spend less money and incentivize the behavior to create environmental
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Yeah, I think when people look at how the plan is laid out, if they really, I know it's
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a fairly large document, but as you said, it's comprehensive for a reason.
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Because I think Canadians were looking for that.
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The amount of research that went into this, the amount of consultation that went into this
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And I'm talking from real scientific journals, universities, and all of that.
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And so there are, so this plan is scientifically sound, which makes it a real plan.
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Now let's talk about how we ensure that we encourage others around the globe to start investing
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in Canadian technology or bringing their ideas here to further develop and maybe patent.
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And I'm going to take a little bit of a different twist on it.
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Remember how we talked about how when a society gets richer, environmental improvement starts
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Well, that breaking point is about $5,000 per year per capita.
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And you look at countries like China and Vietnam or India, where pollution levels are extremely
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There is going to be a demand by those citizens, whether they're in dictatorships or not, because
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when people are basically falling dead in the streets because of air quality issues, the
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demand for Canadian technology to clean up the environment, I think, will be unlimited.
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And again, the technology that I'm talking about is not only dealing with carbon emissions,
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but I'm talking about noxious pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide.
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The Moroni government back in 89 required, and again, there is a place for regulations.
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They required every single pulp and paper company to put in a wastewater treatment plant.
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That bill was passed in 1989, and people had until 1995 to do it.
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I managed one of those wastewater plants when I was environmental director at a paper mill.
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So what was once toxic effluent coming out of all of our paper mills, and some of us are
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old enough to remember the smells and the foam in the water and all that kind of stuff.
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Now, every pulp and paper facility puts out effluent you can actually drink.
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So Canada has all of these technologies right now in place that I think the rest of the
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I think by using those market forces, you can actually, in a better way than some governments
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can, you can actually use those market forces to force the bad actors to up their game.
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And again, one of the things about environmental regulations that we all have to be cognizant
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of is that there is a role for the public sector because environmental resources are publicly
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Like nobody owns the air, nobody owns the water.
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So smart regulations, smart incentives, working hand in hand will create environmental outcomes
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And if I can make another point, something that always irritates me is that people are
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always implying that our industrial economy, that they're emitters, they're polluters, they're
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Well, as somebody who's worked in the paper industry, the oil and gas industry, I can tell
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you the environmental measures that they have put in place cost millions and have very, very
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And again, when one looks at the environmental quality in Canada, for example, by every measure,
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And when you talk about pipelines, for example, in a previous life, I was involved with pipeline
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This is back in the 1970s, believe it or not, but you know, we would fly the Mackenzie Valley
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pipeline route, we would helicopter down to these streams, do our scientific surveys
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Even then, the environmental factors that went into pipeline construction were at the top of
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So I can absolutely guarantee you that our industries are the cleanest in the world, even
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What's really interesting, and I look at our friends on the left, the liberal left, they
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think that modern society is the problem when it comes to the environment.
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We conservatives believe modern society is the answer.
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Bob Sopak, Member of Parliament for Dauphin, Swan River, Nipawa.
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I know you're not running again in the upcoming election, but it's been an absolute pleasure.
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You're only one term, but I've learned a lot from you.
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And again, to serve with you has been an honour as well.
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And as you go forward into majority government, I think you're going to make an incredible
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contribution, not only to your constituency, but to your country.
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This is the Blueprint Canada's Conservative Podcast.
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And remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom.
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Thank you for listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
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To find more episodes, interviews, and in-depth discussions of politics in Canada, search for
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The Blueprint on iTunes or visit podcast.conservative.ca.
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