Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand this evening in adjournment proceedings to pursue a question I asked on March 27. I asked the Minister of the Environment to face the facts and do the math. I prefaced my question on March 27 by saying that I wanted to address the problem of math and red herrings.
The math is this. On the numbers that have come from Environment Canada's own database, published by the current government, there is not a chance in the world that on current plans Canada would come anywhere near the target selected by the Prime Minister after breaking faith with the world and abandoning the Kyoto protocol and choosing a much weaker target.
When the Prime Minister committed in 2009 to the so-called Copenhagen target, that represented the second time he had weakened Canada's targets. First, they were weakened in the spring of 2006 when the Prime Minister, after cancelling the plan in place that would have brought us quite close to Kyoto, announced that he did not feel that Canada was bound to pursue Kyoto and that Canada's target would be 20% below 2006 levels by 2020. Then in Copenhagen the target accepted by the Prime Minister for Canada was even weaker than the one he moved to in 2006. I know that percentages fly by and one's eyes can glaze over, but in accepting the target of 17% below a different base year this time—that is, 2005—the target was further weakened. It was an anomaly that in 2005 our emissions were higher than they were in 2006. That was the peak year for emissions for Canada.
We have seen a weakened target. Now we see the evidence. It is right in front of our face. The Environment Canada report from October 2013 makes it clear that by 2020 our emissions will have risen steadily from the low point that was achieved, but not through any effort on the government's part, but due to the recession in 2009 when greenhouse gases in Canada had gone down to 692 megatonnes. They are now climbing steadily up to where Environment Canada projects they will be 734 megatonnes by the due date of 2020.
I know that numbers are hard to discuss in the House of Commons, but here is the math. It is simple. We pledged a reduction of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. We will have perhaps achieved a 1%, not a 17% reduction.
My question was this. Would the government remain committed to the Copenhagen target given this record of failure? Would we adopt additional measures to try to get there?
Instead, we get a repetition of something, such as in question period earlier today, which I once again had to call nonsense. It is the idea repeated ad nauseam, so we know it by heart, that under this administration we have 130 megatonnes less than what we would have had under the Liberals.
If we go to page 4 of the report I have already mentioned in referencing Environment Canada's October 2013 numbers, we find this imaginary figure of 130 megatonnes above where we are now. It is hard to express this because it is such nonsense. It is called a “business as usual” number or, as it appears in the Environment Canada report, a “without measures” number. If nothing at all were done by anyone, our emissions would reach a level they have never reached of 862 megatonnes a year. Then this administration tries to take credit for doing nothing and staying at the same level we were supposed to reduce from by 17%, saying, “Look how great this is. We are 130 megatonnes below an imaginary figure that has never happened based on no measures at all”.
It is time to be honest with Canadians. There is no chance of reaching the Copenhagen target. Will this administration commit to meeting its weak Copenhagen target with new measures?