Thank you, Minister. Minister, I think you will be the first to acknowledge that your department and the compliance office can't be everywhere they would like to be. The big challenge we are facing is lack of awareness of who to approach when these things go wrong. I think the public is faced with this challenge where they spot dumping in the rivers or spot something like that and they often are not aware of who to contact and where to go. Obviously, that means that some marketing needs to be done. There is also some co-operation between departments. Therefore, I would like to ask you
Minister if there is an agreement between your department and the Department of Police - which most people would see as their first line of contact for some sort of compliance - to train and make police officers aware of environmental laws and let them know who they can speak to and ensure that they are equipped in opening and investigating cases where environmental laws have been violated. Thank you.
The MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES: As I was
explaining to the previous hon member who was speaking, I don't think that this enforcement function is primarily the responsibility of the police. Yes, there are instances where they are environmental crimes and where we would need either as the national, provincial or local government to report those crimes to the police. In this particular instance, such as the spill we were talking about, the police were on site. But I think the key is that there are enforcement officers at every level of government and those enforcement officers are not doing their work. Part of what we would need to think about and look into is to ask ourselves how the hotline system works because in each municipality there would be numbers that people would be phoning for a range of issues pertaining to municipalities but perhaps we need to look at whether there is an integrated environment hotline. Thank you very much.