Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that question. It speaks to the concern that most opponents of Kyoto have: that rather than targeting caps what we should be targeting is ultimately the intensity of emissions. There has been great technological progress made on that over the years and it will continue.
Let me speak specifically to the issue he raised, the issue of population growth, because there are a number of ways in which Canada is particularly negatively impacted by the provisions of the Kyoto accord. One of them is the fact that unlike most developed industrialized countries that have committed to targets, Canada does have significant population growth. This is not true in the western European countries that by and large have ratified the accord, so in that context looking at a cap is a much less onerous and a much less long term serious issue than it is in regard to trying to implement a cap in this country.
I should point out that this accord and the government, when it negotiated this accord internationally, disregarded other major factors that should have been taken into account in looking at Canada's reasonable share. It did not look at the size of this country and, quite frankly, the transportation needs that this imposes on all Canadian economic activities. That growth of transportation, the use of energy by transportation, is another reason why we face such serious implementation problems. I also have to admit that, notwithstanding global warming, just the general coldness of the Canadian climate should have at least been considered by the government before it adopted our international targets.