Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Don Valley West.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the motion put forward by the New Democratic Party today. The opposition parties are united in their desire to see Bill C-30, the clean air and climate change act, re-emerge from the government's politically induced coma, the coma that started when the environment committee substantially rewrote its weak and original effort.
Where can one begin on the merits of Bill C-30? Bill C-30 gives us a consensus based realistic plan that aims at meeting our Kyoto targets, something the government has adamantly refused to do. In fact, as every day progresses we learn that the government is ripping us out of the Kyoto protocol by stealth, by subterfuge and by the death of a thousand cuts.
Bill C-288, the Kyoto implementation act, passed this week in the other place. Now we hear that the new president of France is considering taking to the European Union trade sanctions and potential carbon taxes on countries like Canada under the present government, which would presume to unilaterally change the terms and conditions of our Kyoto obligations.
In committee yesterday, we discovered that massive amounts of money have been spent by the government attacking Bill C-288, millions and millions of taxpayer dollars in a shock and awe communications campaign, mounted by the Minister of the Environment, not to bring any kind of light to the issue but to generate way too much heat.
When asked, government officials concluded and confirmed yesterday that there had been no analysis whatsoever of any kind, economic, environmental or social, on the government's own bill, Bill C-30.
Bill C-288 restates Canada's commitment to the Kyoto protocol process. The government signed the protocol, and Parliament ratified it. Now that Bill C-288 has passed through the House of Commons, the democratically elected members have shown twice that we are fully committed to this goal. The minister's comments were defeatist. His confused rhetoric talked about a more realistic way forward. What he meant was that he is not willing to show any leadership whatsoever. He could not get the job done and neither could his predecessor who was summarily dispatched for failure to do anything in the first year of this government's short life.
After saying that Canada needed a new clean air act, the Conservatives presented a plan that will allow emissions to continue to increase for the next 10 years. To do so, they decided to use the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, completely contradicting their claims that Bill C-30 was needed.
The irony is simply too rich: the Conservatives' bill, their legislative committee, their admission that Bill C-30 was fatally flawed, centre overhaul, without a single substantive amendment put forward by any member of the government's caucus.
Thankfully, a lot has changed over the past few months. On February 8, the minister said that “This is bill is essential to protecting the environment and the health of Canadians”, referring, of course, to Bill C-30. If he really meant that, I guess we would be debating it today, and not as an opposition day motion.
However, the government, as we have seen and learned today, is more interested in censorship around the national climate change response than it is about putting forward a reasonable and defensible plan.
The minister said instead that our targets will be the toughest, a subjective word that he plucked out of a hat, and he is ridiculed for it by the United Nations head of the climate change secretariat, to guffaws of laughter in the 168 partner nations that have signed with us into the Kyoto protocol.
The numbers he shows are weak, and even these targets have no credible plan through which we can reach them.
We learned just yesterday that the mandatory, cabinet decreed, environmental assessment of the government's own climate change plan has not been performed. It has not been performed by the PCO, by Finance Canada, by Environment Canada, by Natural Resources Canada nor by Health Canada. There is no environmental assessment on this plan. It is in breach of its own cabinet decree.
The minister's comments are nothing short of defeatist. His confused rhetoric talks about “a more realistic way forward”. What he really meant was that he was not willing or, more likely, he was not allowed to show leadership because the PMO staffers who pull his strings tell him that he should control the message that more closely.
He cannot get the job done. His history of working to obstruct, no, to undermine, Kyoto is well-written. In partnership with thePrime Minister, who is an isolationist, triangulating between Canberra, Washington and Ottawa, a Prime Minister who is viscerally opposed to a multilateral, the only single multilateral response we have to an international phenomena.
Bill C-30 is the way forward. The centrepiece of it is a functioning carbon budget for Canada. Every family understands the importance of a budget. Income and expenditures need to be balanced. If we save, we can invest in our future, it is time to adopt such a strategy in order to reduce carbon emissions.
A balanced carbon budget is an innovative and bold plan enabling large industrial emitters to reduce, in a tangible and significant way, their carbon emissions. Our plan provides a concrete and effective strategy for significant reductions in carbon emissions.
It would also serve to stimulate the development of green technologies here in Canada, second only, globally, to the emerging ecotourism trade as one of the fastest growing sectors of the international global marketplace.
We know our businesses will seize those opportunities to promote environmental technologies. We know that Canada will seize the opportunities to become a green superpower.
Our companies are aching to take advantage of a new green economy, but only if they have certainty and clarity. They need to know in which direction our country is moving, especially those that have moved so aggressively to reduce their emissions of those greenhouse gases since 1990.
I will leave it to my colleague to follow up with some of the details in Bill C-30, which is the culmination of the cooperation, negotiation and mediation of 65% of the members of the House of Commons. We speak for Canada. The government does not.
It is important for viewers and Canadians to know that the government was bluffing when it brought the clean air act to Parliament. Worse than that, it deceived the Canadian people, an art of deception mastered by the minister at the heels of his previous political mentor, the former premier of Ontario.
The government was not ready but we were. It counted on what it excels at, division. We were not divided. We are united.
The Conservatives are isolated. They have struck out twice with two different ministers and it is now time for the House to accept nothing less than Bill C-30.
We call on the government to bring Bill C-30 back to the House transparently and accountably so Canadians can see that if it refuses it will speak volumes for the party opposite to defy the will of Parliament and remain foolishly silent.
