Speech

Check against Delivery

Good afternoon.

Thank you Minister Miltenberger.

I am very glad to be here again, in the Canadian High Arctic. It is always a pleasure to return to Yellowknife—a city that I have visited many times—much warmer this time. And remains truly spectacular every time.

Our time together is invaluable to discuss our cross jurisdictional issuesfor Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Our discussion on air quality management, water, and packaging reduction has been useful. We are moving forward and we will continue these important discussions to ensure real results.

We need to continue to work together to address climate change, greening our economy, and protecting our ecosystems and communities.

Working together, we can balance environmental protection and regulation and use our resources as driver of our economy to help us balance our budget by 2014-15.

I want to thank my colleagues for being here and working so hard on these issues of mutual concern.  

I would also like to thank all of the staff of Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment and the officials from our governments who worked so hard to pull together this event.

Thank you.