Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to speak today to contribute to the debate on government Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, to provide for the efficient regulation of fuels.
According to the government's own technical briefings on March 14, 2008, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions have grown steadily since 1990. At Kyoto, Canada committed to a target of 6% below 1990 levels; however, Canadian emissions have grown steadily since 1990. Canada's annual greenhouse gas emissions are currently more than 25% higher than they were in 1990 and 32% higher than Canada's Kyoto protocol target. This growth is due in part to the continued expansion of Canada's production and export of oil and gas. Without immediate action, our emissions from all sectors could increase by another 24% to reach 940 megatons in 2020. This is terrible news.
As my colleague, the MP for Ottawa South, has said, for Canadians all of this has to be seen in the context of climate change policy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, told the government, all parliamentarians and all Canadians that we need to contain temperature increases to between 2° and 2.4° if possible. We will only be able to do that, it says, if we stabilize emissions within 15 years and cut them in half by 2050. The IPCC report also says that there are already many low cost options available to developed countries like Canada to reduce greenhouse gases, such as financial incentives, the excise fuel tax, deploying existing technologies, tradeable permits and voluntary programs.
The Conservative government since it came to power has cut the carbon credits and the renewable power investment programs which were the former Liberal government's initiatives.
Professor Mark Jaccard of the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University said in an interview with The Hill Times last year that the Conservative government believed it could deliver a successful environmental plan based on improving air quality.
A number of the former Liberal government's climate change programs were cut. Then, public opinion polls finally made the Conservative government realize that this was not a fleeting movement, but that the public was truly concerned about climate change.
Professor Jaccard added that a number of public officials advised the Conservatives to reinstate the Liberals' regulations and reintroduce them with different names, which was a waste of time. He also pointed out that the Conservatives wanted to delay the release of the new programs because of their similarity to the Liberal programs.
My colleague from Ottawa South also reported that the failure of the government's plan has been well documented by the C.D. Howe Institute, the Deutsche Bank, the Pembina Institute and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the Conservatives' own board, has told the government its plan is baseless and will not achieve the targets in any way. In fact, it appears not a single third party observer has put forward a shred of evidence to substantiate that the government's plan would work.
The developed countries are responsible for the pollution rate we have now in the world. By moving their industries to developing countries such as China and India, to name only two, they have damaged their environment and their agriculture and have helped increase global warming.
Today, studies show that the expansion of the production of ethanol is doing very little for the environment. On the contrary, ethanol use could add to greenhouse gas emissions, not reduce them.
My constituents in Laval—Les Îles, many of whom are from India, Pakistan, the Middle East and other countries, are very concerned about what is currently going on in their home countries.
The problem of global warming is the most urgent ecological problem of our generation, as the leader of the official opposition pointed out. That is why, together with my colleagues from the Liberal Party of Canada, I think the government's bill does not go far enough. It does not provide any real solution to the greenhouse gases problem.
According to a study by the OECD, Canada is behind other developed countries and is among the lowest-ranking OECD countries in terms of emissions per person for smog-causing gases, at 2%. Although Canada contributes just 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the quantity of those emissions per person is among the highest in the world, and that percentage keeps going up.
A number of studies show today that corn ethanol and other biofuels, such as soy or sugar cane, contribute to increasing greenhouse gases and therefore to global warming.
A study published in Science magazine concluded that the current use of prime farm land to expand biofuel crops will probably only exacerbate global warming because of deforestation and increased cash crops to the detriment of food crops. That is to say nothing of the economic pressure being put on farmers to produce more biofuels including wheat, soy, barley and sugar cane, which has a negative effect on the price of corn and wheat, and therefore on the living conditions of those involved.
We are already beginning to feel the negative effects. All we hear about in the media these days is the food crisis, which is a direct result of the massive cultivation of cereal crops and other food products for uses other than feeding populations. And this is only the beginning of a vicious circle.
According to recent studies, there are other solutions, particularly the use of renewable or green energy sources that do not use carbon.
As for transportation, we could follow the example of Europe, and particularly France, which is currently developing electric car prototypes.
As for household energy consumption, we can now use alternative energy sources, including wind, solar or photovoltaic energy, that is, converting solar radiation directly into electricity, as some countries in northern and western Europe are doing, as well as hydroelectric energy.
We can also use new, environmentally friendly materials in the construction of houses, which is already being done in Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and even in certain developing countries. Some African countries, for instance, are using solar and wind energy. These environmentally friendly materials are designed to conserve energy in houses, thereby reducing the waste and over-consumption of energy.
My colleagues and I firmly believe that the most effective solution combines two attitudes: first, consuming less energy; and second, developing and producing more renewable energy.