Thanks so much, Kevin. It's good to have you back at the table.
Robin and Silvia, thank you for your contributions.
I did want to follow up on a question that Mr. Gerretsen asked. Again, it has to do with the tension between our national parks and our protected areas serving Canadians and yet being left for future generations unimpaired. I'm sure there are different ways of interpreting what “unimpaired” means.
We've certainly heard from Alan Latourelle that over the last 15 years we've made unprecedented efforts to set aside natural spaces parkland. He was focusing on the fact that Canada can be proud of its record in moving forward with protecting natural spaces.
On the other hand, CPAWS made it very clear that they feel that there's been a dramatic decline in our national parks. In fact, I want to quote something out of a press release that they and a number of other NGOs released recently. They say:
Yet, since 2012, Parks Canada's conservation capacity has been cut by almost one third, public consultations have been dramatically curtailed, and development proposals have been allowed to go ahead within parks, even though they contravene policies specifically designed to limit development....
They go on to say:
As leaders of Canada's environmental movement, we are deeply concerned that the Government of Canada's management of our national parks has shifted dramatically in the wrong direction, putting our most treasured protected places at risk.
Their assessment is not what I'm hearing from Parks Canada and from others who are actually lauding what the governments—past as well as present—are doing on the conservation front. Can you help me reconcile these different messages we're hearing?