Stephen Harper

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that I have to reconcile that. I think it is the hon. member who is going to have to reconcile a few things here. Just about every major business group in this country is opposed to this accord. I certainly hope he is not suggesting that all of these industries and businesses simply do not understand their own business.

Let me go a little further in pointing out that this member represents an area of Ontario that is highly tied to the automobile industry, that is highly tied to the expense of energy and the use of energy through that industry. If he is going to suggest we proceed with this accord, and not just proceed but proceed blindly as the government proposes, I hope he is prepared to go not to just the big fat cat oil executives who are donating to the Liberal leadership candidates but to the workers on the shop floors and explain to them the implications of this accord and these targets on their jobs and on their livelihoods.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

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.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it always amazes me that a number of Canadians on that side of the spectrum, particularly in the NDP, seem to think they are the only people who have any concerns about living in the environment. I do not know where they think the rest of us live.

We all have fairly serious concerns about the environment and about our health. In my personal case, we are talking about the contents of the atmosphere and I have been a lifelong sufferer from asthma. I am very concerned about my respiration and how this agreement will affect my respiration.

The hon. member suggested it is very important that we reduce sulfur and sulfur based gases in the atmosphere. That is an interesting argument but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Kyoto protocol.

As I have said before, if we are to look at what we think should be done in terms of dealing with environmental problems and atmospheric change, we would put a higher priority, quite frankly internationally and domestically, on dealing with emissions of that type.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would dispute the assertion in the hon. member's question that industrialized countries are responsible for the current problem that has been created. We do not know that there is a current problem. Quite frankly, the purpose of the Kyoto agreement as we all understand it is to deal with a problem that may occur in the future.

In that regard, we look at the developing countries that are exempt from the provisions, countries like Brazil, China and India and we see that they are already major producers. China is already the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. It is already there. It is going to be more so in the future and it is completely exempt from the provisions.

I should also point out something which should be a concern to the hon. member and to others who have a different philosophy than I do. We believe that the really critical problem is not carbon dioxide, or certainly not the primary problem, but it is pollution and the creation of smog in the Asian cloud. I would suggest that is the problem we should be dealing with first. That calls even more strongly for the inclusion of those countries in an international protocol than does this situation.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

moved:

That, before the Kyoto Protocol is ratified by the House, there should be an implementation plan that Canadians understand, that sets out the benefits, how the targets are to be reached and its costs.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak today to our supply day motion.

The purpose of the motion is to give instruction to the government in how to proceed with the ultimate passage that it plans of the Kyoto protocol.

The motion we are tabling today reflects the concerns of a large number of members of Parliament, not just in our party, which has taken a strong position in opposition to the Kyoto protocol, but other parties that have expressed reservations as well. I think the motion also reflects the reservations of many in Quebec who may support the protocol but who have grave reservations about the lack of an implementation plan.

Finally, I think the motion also reflects the views of a significant number of Liberal members of Parliament who have spoke out about some of the deficiencies in the way the government has been proceeding. I will just speak to that for a minute.

We have had a very strange evolution to this debate. We had documents signed 10 years ago that led 5 years ago to the development of the Kyoto protocol on which there seemed to be very little, if any, action whatsoever in Canada until a sudden declaration by the Prime Minister after his pre-emptive notice of resignation this summer. Since that time, we have been subjected to a bewildering array of briefings, trial balloons, statistics, plans and, frankly, if I can be blunt, enough hot air to go along with it to warm up the planet all on its own.

We had another briefing this morning. After giving notice of this motion last night, suddenly the government comes up this morning with a document which it tabled in the House only minutes ago. That particular document obviously has not been subjected to a debate or a thorough review in the Chamber but what is interesting is that apparently in the minds of some Liberal members that document would satisfy the criteria of this motion.

Let me be absolutely clear, as I go through the motion, that is not the case. We certainly will welcome the government agreeing to proceed in the manner we lay out in our motion, but the document tabled today, which is apparently called “Climate Change Draft Plan Overview”, is woefully incomplete, uncosted almost entirely and subject to considerable more work, negotiations and agreement with other parties, governments and non-governmental organizations.

The motion speaks about the necessity of an implementation plan before ratification of Kyoto and it speaks about four elements that are necessary for an implementation plan: a true understanding of the plan among Canadians at large; targets that are achievable; costs that are laid out in detail; and finally, benefits that are clear and understood.

I will quickly go through each of these elements to underscore what we are looking for and to underscore how inadequate what we have today is in terms of what we are seeking.

My first comments will be on the understanding. We are looking for a true implementation plan. As I said, that is not what we have today. An implementation plan is not the latest version of a bunch of drafts and technical briefings that are just thrown on the table prior to a debate; although I am happy to see we at least have the government moving. A genuine implementation plan is one that is not only complete but around which considerable consensus has been built, consensus not only in the Chamber but among provinces, other levels of government and industries that will be expected to implement it, and ultimately the consumers who also will be affected. We do not have anything like that.

I should also say that an implementation plan is not simply a poll number indicating there is some sudden support for this vague concept. It is a genuine, widespread consensus. We have already seen in the province of Alberta the danger of the government suggesting that a consensus is achieved by a poll. We have seen support for the Kyoto protocol drop 45 points in the space of the last six weeks, so there is certainly no consensus in this country.

Members of the government have been complaining that all they are asking is for us to make a leap of faith similar to what was talked about in the pivotal historic debate on free trade in 1988. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is an enormous difference. In 1988 we can all concede that we did not know the full effects of the free trade agreement. However there was an absolute detailed implementation plan and document ready, in fact the document that the Mulroney government had attempted to pass through this Parliament.

We did know the implementation plan. We knew it involved withdrawals of tariffs. We knew that those and other measures caused significant cost to the government which had been documented. We knew about the establishment of panels to administer the agreement and we knew about some of the transition mechanisms that were involved in putting that agreement in place. We must say that what the government is suggesting today is nowhere near the free trade example.

All we have heard the government say is that it has some kind of plan to achieve some targets, and I will get into that later, with some kind of a checklist of up to 40 items, chief among them taxes, fines, trading credits and other paperwork, but it has not said what if any of these it will choose to implement. It has been involved, if I can be blunt, in a whole bunch of communication exercises that are a little more than smoke and mirrors. It claims one day that it will pass Kyoto with great fanfare and claim to be pro-environment. Then it turns around and has nudge-nudge, wink-wink discussions with industry, assuring it that nothing will change.

On one day particularly in my home province we have Alberta positioned and categorized as some kind of offender and villain in this entire debate. Then we read in the Globe and Mail there are secret discussions initiated by the federal government to get Alberta to be one of the first to sign on.

Everyone in the Chamber may not agree with the position of the Canadian Alliance but at least people know what we mean when we state our position. The Liberals are saying different things. They say one thing to environmental groups in order to look like environmental angels and other things to industry in order to attract and hold corporate donations. They tell Europeans that we will meet target reductions negotiated in Kyoto and then they turn around and tell Canadians that they will have ways to get around the targets that they negotiate.

Until they make real choices there is no way to assess the potential cost of implementing Kyoto upon Canadian jobs, incomes or families. I know that document will go to the provinces on Monday. There is no way the provinces at this point will be able to decide whether this is a good or bad thing for them based on it. If I can paraphrase that famous commentator, Rex Murphy, of CBC, who the other night said that the provinces could not get onboard if they wanted to. They cannot find the ship, for God's sake. I think that describes the situation.

Let me talk specifically about the issue of targets. Today the government is doing what it has done from time to time, which is to assume what we have assumed in our critique in Kyoto that the government will somehow meet the full target. The full target is, according to Kyoto, a 6% reduction in CO

2

emissions below 1990 levels, which works out to a projected reduction of 240 megatonnes of emissions of CO

2

. The government has hedged back and forth on that target and has sent mixed signals.

I will point out that today that although the document released continues to mention 240 megatonnes, 60 megatonnes are unaccounted for. The government simply has not decided in any way, shape or form how that particular group of emissions targets will be met.

We know that for months the government was claiming that it would get a credit of 70 megatonnes of carbon dioxide emission because of Canada's clean energy natural gas exports to the United States. We now know that is not correct. It is very unlikely that will happen. The government is scrambling now to fill the difference.

However it is more than just hedging on the targets themselves. It is important that Canadians understand the difference between targets that we talk about and what we are concerned about on this side, which is actual reductions. We have a bit of bureaucratic bafflegab here. They are not the same things.

Targets can be met, not by reducing CO

2

emissions but by engaging in emissions trading credits that ultimately will be paid for internationally. The deal today talks about two sets of emissions trading credits but I will not get into that yet. The government has said it will make all of the reductions in Canada, but today's plan talks not about making reductions but about engaging in international trading.

Obviously when we do not really know the targets the government plans to make in terms of its actual reductions, it is impossible for us to suggest what the costs will be and how we will meet them. That is the third item the motion talks about.

The biggest deficiency in the document is so glaring it is embarrassing. There is simply no costing whatsoever in the document, virtually none. In particular, there is no costing of government expenditures themselves. Given all of the deficiencies I have laid out so far, obviously the exercise of costing at this stage would be so highly speculative that the wider impacts could not be predicted and nothing could be met.

If we proceed with this and pass this motion and the government acts this way, it will have to have a fully costed plan. We make no bones about it. It is our conviction on this side of the House that we cannot in a cost effective way, in an economically sustainable way, make the entire reductions that Canada is allotted in the Kyoto accord.

Canada is looking at a projected 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. No other country in the world that is participating in this agreement has agreed to anything like that. Countries that have agreed to significantly less are having difficulty meeting their targets. We do not believe the cost will be met in any plan and that is why we will continue to push until we get a costed plan.

Let me talk a bit about how costs are impacted by the plan. One would assume that the lower the targets are, the lower the costs are. That in itself is not quite true. I will summarize the costs, and these figures are very conservative by any standards out there. Industry and the business community in this country are predicting much higher costs, but the government has estimated that between 60,000 and 250,000 jobs will be lost and expenditures and impacts on the economy will be between $5 billion and $25 billion.

If we chose to ignore the targets and simply said they could not be met because we did not get the credits we thought we were going to get and we did not get the energy exports from other countries, if Canada could simply decide not to implement those portions of the agreement contrary to the government's commitment, there is no doubt that the costs would fall. However it is very different if we are replacing the reductions with simply buying emissions trading credits from other countries.

If we replace actual reductions with purchasing emissions trading credits, the cost of this deal to Canada could rise substantially and enormously. We have no idea at all what these international trading credits would cost. We do not even know at the moment if a market for them would exist, and frankly we do not know how such a market would function.

All of this comes down to the bottom line. Forget about global costs. We still do not know even based on today's document, who exactly will pay. We do not know which provinces will pay. Will it be Alberta? There are fears it will be Alberta. Now there are fears it will be Quebec.

The government should be clear on this. It wants to point at certain big energy industries in provinces like Alberta and Quebec and say they are going to pay, but we should be under no illusions. At least 75% of carbon dioxide emissions come from the consumption of energy, not from its production. These reductions are bound to hit hardest on Canadians of poorest and most modest means.

Now I will speak about the benefits. The government speaks as it always has in very general terms about the benefits. I will go through this very quickly because I think the benefits are going to be the most controversial aspect of this deal

It is important to have some kind of basic grasp of the science. Canadians have to understand that the Kyoto accord simply deals with levels of carbon dioxide. It is not smog. It is not the smog problem in Toronto. It is not acid rain. It is a natural occurring gas we all breathe. Carbon dioxide occurs naturally in the atmosphere. In fact, 95% of all carbon dioxide on the planet occurs naturally. Only 5% is man made.

The Kyoto accord calls for reductions of around 6% over 1990 levels. For all intents and purposes, this amounts at the end of the Kyoto process to a worldwide reduction, if achieved, of less than 1% decrease in man-made carbon dioxide and one-tenth of 1% of naturally occurring carbon dioxide.

The relationship of carbon dioxide to global warming also involves complicated and complex science that is far from settled. It is a matter of significant debate. If I can cite Dr. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who said:

But--and I cannot stress this enough--we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future.

We cannot predict the weather tomorrow with absolute accuracy. We certainly cannot predict the climate 100 years from now.

Models have been constructed that suggest there could well be a base line increase of about 2.5°C over 100 years. There is no particular knowledge at the moment whether that relationship has to do with natural or man-made carbon dioxide. Frankly, over the last few years we have failed to see the full rise in global temperatures that the models predict.

When the Prime Minister stands in the House and suggests that somehow Canadians will start dying from extreme heat in 30 years if this agreement is not passed, it is fearmongering. It is not a position that any credible scientist would endorse.

Let me go on with this aspect of the benefits. This is the most serious concern we should have. If we do not achieve even the reductions laid out and instead we go to trading schemes and in particular the international trading scheme, we are not achieving reductions. We are simply transferring wealth to other countries. In most countries this will be a wealth transfer to countries with far worse emissions records and far worse emissions goals than ours.

Sixty-five per cent of emissions in the world are occurring in countries that will not ratify Kyoto or are exempted from any kind of meaningful targets. It is very predictable that all this international trading scheme the government suggests it will cooperate in will do will be to shift jobs and activity and frankly, the production of CO

2

emissions outside Canada. It is predictable, if not certain, that global emissions will in fact end up rising because of the structure of the Kyoto accord.

I will summarize very quickly that as we said about the Charlottetown accord that was voted on about 10 years ago, it is important that Canadians know a lot more. Ten years ago we were told there was a consensus on the Charlottetown accord. We had dire warnings of what would happen if it was not passed. The consensus collapsed within a month. The deal was not passed. Of course ultimately, life has gone on and I think much better than if it had passed.

Ratification without implementation is a dangerous strategy. As long as this continues to be the government position, we are going to ensure that ratification is read by industry as assuming the worst, making assumptions the targets will be as high as they could possibly be, the costs as high as they could possibly be and the unknowns as high as they could possibly be. We will not move forward in the country on any kind of environmental package. We will simply see investment in key sectors such as the tar sands and related sectors dry up. We are already seeing that now.

The government must present us with a full implementation plan. It cannot continue to play communications and legacy games with both the environment and the economic future of Canadians.

[Petitions, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 it is my pleasure to rise today to present a petition signed by 28 electors in my constituency of Calgary Southwest.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to focus its legislative support on adult stem cell research to find cures and therapies necessary to treat the illnesses and diseases of suffering Canadians.

[Privilege, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, allow me to rise on a related matter, on a couple of things.

First, yesterday during debate the Chair will recall that the member for Burnaby--Douglas rose on a point of order and I replied to him on his point of order. He made it clear that he took my response to him as a personal insult and, in particular, as a comment about his sexual orientation. I just want to say that I intended no such insult and intended no such interpretation. I will also add that when the hon. member for Calgary Centre rose shortly after to ask me to clarify my remarks, at that point, quite frankly, that particular interpretation had not occurred to me.

I have talked to the hon. member and indicated to him that I am sorry that he took that meaning. I did not intend it, but I am sorry he took it that way. I would just say to the hon. member that I have known him for a long time and we have a lot to disagree on; I do not know if there are any two members in the House who probably disagree on more items. It is very possible for he and I to have a debate on issues of substance. There would be absolutely no need on my part to engage in the type of personal insult that he has alleged, nor if I were to do that would there be any justification in doing so. That said, I intended no insult and am very happy to withdraw my remark that he took that way.

I also am aware that one minister of the crown and some former ministers of the crown took exception to comments I made. I think I made it clear yesterday that I was not making an allegation that any member of the House of Commons was a criminal. I was simply making reference to the fact that a number of members have been forced to resign under a cloud. These situations vary from fairly clear breaches of ethics to much more serious instances where there are in fact investigations by authorities, and in some cases they involve, indirectly, investigations by the RCMP.

But as I say, I just want to make it clear that no member should take the implication that I was making a specific allegation of criminal wrongdoing. If that is the implication any individual member took, I withdraw that.

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, so that I can complete my comments without all this heckling, I have never accused a member of the House of being a criminal or a member of a criminal conspiracy. Let us be clear about that so that we can move on.

Let us talk about the serious concerns that this package raises. The recommendation here is not a truly independent ethics commissioner, appointed with the agreement of all parties as all four opposition leaders have recommended.

What is recommended is an ethics commissioner who is effectively appointed by the Prime Minister. That prime ministerial recommendation is only reviewed by a committee with no powers to refuse. Standing Order 111 would be used, which allows the committee to scrutinize the appointee, but does not allow a vote on the appointment itself.

Since this man or woman's recommendations impinge upon all members of the House, we will never accept to be subject to a prime ministerial appointment unless it is approved by this party. I believe all opposition parties should take the same position.

Let me point out the difference in the government's proposals between how it would treat cabinet ministers and how it would treat ordinary members of Parliament. In the case of cabinet ministers there are no statutory reporting deadlines on individual complaints. On top of that, disciplinary advice given to the Prime Minister on ethical violations by ministers would not be contained in any public report on a minister's conduct.

In the case of ordinary backbench members of Parliament the situation is different. The opinions in that case would be communicated to the House as a whole. The opinion itself would be binding and action would be left to the government majority in the House of Commons to decide on the appropriate discipline. The House could see why members of the opposition would be concerned about that.

This is a government that talks about reform, but what we have here is the possibility of an unprecedented attempt to bind backbenchers to the power of a government official appointed by the Prime Minister himself. It is another missed opportunity by the government to deal seriously with ethics. It is an opportunity missed not just because of its lack of ethical standards, but because of its desire to put pressure on the opposition to get itself out of the difficult ethical questions it face here everyday.

I am not here to offer the government any congratulations at all for this. In fact, I say to the government, thanks for nothing.

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, let me talk about the real serious reservations that these proposals should raise in the minds of any hon. member, particularly those in opposition. The selection--

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the picture of the hon. member of the NDP is posted in much more wonderful places than just police stations.