John Herron

[Firearms Registry, December 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, last week the Auditor General said that the government misled Parliament by hiding an unprecedented $700 million.

The Liberal government's accounting has been a prodigy of slyness and concealment. The safe handling of firearms is needed. All Canadians support this, but a cost overrun of $700 million is not a break in procedure but a break and enter on the Canadian taxpayers.

We all know the program got off to a rocky start by the founding father who originally guesstimated the cost to be $2 million. Seven years later the cost is over 400 times that figure.

Next up we have the Minister of Health, another player in the firearms fiasco. I think all members are curious over the fact that these numbers were kept secret during an election year. How was it that justice officials were saying that the program would cost $300 million, then simultaneously asked for half a billion dollars in supplemental estimates?

Then we have the revisionist finance minister. He now says that the firearms registry needs to fixed. He fixed it all right, by approving supplemental estimates of half a billion dollars.

Why does the government not cut its losses for the taxpayers and scrap this bureaucratic billion dollar blunder?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 9th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, it makes no sense to blindly ratify any accord without knowing the impacts. Moreover, it is disingenuous to ratify an accord when the government knows it cannot even do it, because it cannot implement an accord of this nature without the active participation of the provinces. That is what we did when we painstakingly earned bilateral agreements when we were able to build a provincial consensus on acid rain.

My question is for the environment minister. Before the government proceeds with any kind of an implementation strategy, given that it has sat on its hands for the last five years, will the government commit to developing a bilateral agreement with each and every province before it implements any kind of program?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, would the environment minister comment on the latest position of the former finance minister on climate change?

He spoke in the House during this debate on the need to have tax incentives for renewable sources of energy, energy efficiency initiatives and ethanol blended fuels. We all know that all these initiatives were directly under his purview when he was finance minister over the last five years. Therefore my question is quite simple. Who was the roadblock to implementing initiatives of that nature? Was it the Prime Minister, the finance minister or simply the environment minister who just did not have the courage to actually push the issue forward in cabinet?

[Terrorism, December 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, when the Solicitor General made his announcement on November 27 that the federal government was adding six groups to the list of suspected terrorist groups, he noted that he was considering adding others.

Yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs said, “The last statement of the leader of Hezbollah is clearly an indication his party is advocating a form of conduct that we do not approve of and that would be contributing to global terrorism”.

In that light, could the government confirm whether Hezbollah is one of those groups? Has the Minister of Foreign Affairs made such a request to the Solicitor General and if not, why not?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the leader of the government in the other place confirmed that the federal government will use federal environmental statutes to implement the Kyoto Protocol.

Could the government confirm precisely what statutes it will use and how it will use them? Specifically, is it considering the use of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to declare greenhouse gases toxic, or is this something else the government has not figured out yet, or is trying to keep secret from the provinces?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, under the latest Kyoto implementation plan, the government falls short of Kyoto targets by 60 megatonnes in the first reporting period of 2012. According to the compliance accord under the Kyoto protocol, Canada will have to make up for any shortfalls in the second reporting period plus a penalty of 30%.

Can the minister advise how much of a reduction of the 240 megatonnes will be deferred and what the cost of that deferral will be, or is this something else the government has not figured out yet?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address my comments to the member for Toronto--Danforth and to the member for Don Valley West.

Clearly, the consensus from the scientific respect is that climate change is real and that a progressive country like Canada needs to have a progressive climate change strategy, whether or not we are in Kyoto. Even if we did not ratify, Canada would still need a progressive climate change strategy.

What I am saying to both members is that we cannot implement an accord of this nature without the active participation of the provinces. We painstakingly earned their support on a bilateral basis when we implemented the acid rain protocol. Therefore, ratifying an accord without their support means we cannot implement the accord.

Does the hon. member agree, as we agree, that this vote is not about whether Parliament endorses the ratification of the accord, but that it is a guise. It is camouflage for the Prime Minister over of the fact that he does not have provincial consensus and, moreover, that he still does not have a plan.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 3rd, 2002]

What about acid rain?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the acting prime minister.

In 2005 Canada must provide demonstrative evidence that our climate change strategy is on track. Substantive tax incentives for renewable sources of energy, energy efficiency, ethanol blended fuels and loan guarantees for energy retrofits to buildings were needed five years ago. These incentives were in the direct purview of the former finance minister, who this weekend in a somersault to revisionism said, “We should invest in green technologies”.

Everyone knew these incentives were needed. Who is the roadblock, the Prime Minister or the former finance minister?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read a quote into Hansard from March 13, 1991 in terms of what the then environment critic, the member for LaSalle—Émard, stated with respect to making sure we knew what positions we were taking when we headed to the Rio earth summit. He said:

The true question is when will this government understand that Canadians do not want to faced with a fait accompli by a government that is hiding its true agenda under a mound of public relations flackery.

That is a litmus test as to why there are so many multiple positions coming from the former finance minister on Kyoto. All members of the House will want to know how he can proclaim himself to be the promoter of technological innovation when he alone had the capacity to initiate tax incentives in the very sectors he speaks about.

He is the person who is the most responsible for Canada's ill-preparedness with respect to our climate change strategy. He had the tax code under his purview. He could have brought in tax incentives for renewable sources of energy and for investments in energy efficiency.

We have always said that we needed to have similar tax base incentives for the growth of blended fuels and lowering the excise tax. It was under the former finance minister's purview to go down that track.

Now we are going to hear a completely revisionist speech with respect to why we should be investing in innovation and conservation, as if he just walked into the House for the first time today. I have no idea where he was over those eight years as finance minister, from one year after Rio. I do not know where he has been for the last five years since Kyoto. I very much look forward to the immense revisionism we are going to hear in his speech. He is going to be another born again environmentalist, just as he is going to be another born again defender of the democratic deficit.

I might add that I still have a bit of a sore spot in that my private member's motion to allow students to deduct student debt from their income tax upon graduation was lost in a vote, 109 to 103. It was the then finance minister who sent a note out to caucus asking Liberal members not to support the motion, even though 13 principled Liberals did. He is a revisionist with respect to the environment and democratic deficit. I look forward to his speech which will have an immense amount of revisionism.