Bill C-288 (Historical)

Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act

An Act to ensure Canada meets its global climate change obligations under the Kyoto Protocol

The purpose of this enactment is to ensure that Canada meets its global climate change obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. It requires the Minister of the Environment to establish an annual Climate Change Plan and to make regulations respecting climate change. It also requires the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy to advise the Minister — to the extent that it is within its purpose — on the effectiveness of the plans, and requires the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to submit to the Speaker of the House of Commons a report of the progress in the implementation of the plans.

The House resumed from June 16 consideration of the motion that Bill C-288, An Act to ensure Canada meets its global climate change obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I join in the debate around something as important as climate change and our international agreements, and the promise that Canada made to actually abide by the signature we put on paper.

Before getting into the merits or demerits of this particular bill, I think for Canadians watching it is important to set the context of what has happened to the climate change file and what has happened in this country with respect to pollution over the last number of years.

As the Liberals were leaving office there was report after report condemning the actions of Canada in black and white. While the promises had been made by the previous Liberal government to do something about climate change, the numbers were in stark contrast to that promise. While there was a commitment to go 6% below our 1990 levels of greenhouse gas pollution, we have in fact risen 10%, 20%, 25% above those numbers.

The reason this has happened is not for a lack of promises and not for a lack of fanfare. The previous Liberal government was excellent at making announcements. It often had very beautiful crafted posters as a backdrop. It spent inordinate amounts of money on brochures and glossy pamphlets that I am sure ended up in landfills across this country. However, what it could not deliver on and what it could not accomplish was the basic ability to start to change the way Canadians do business and the way that Canadians conduct their economy and their lives.

When we boil the issue of climate change down and the issue of Kyoto down to its bare elements, most often we are talking about the use of energy. We are talking about the production of energy, whether it comes from so-called greener sources, new technologies or we are talking about energies that come from carbon-based sources which this country relies on quite heavily.

It varies from province to province and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It is an important note to Canadians that those provinces that took up the call early on, that took strong and bold initiatives, and I would take British Columbia as an example where I reside, there was a strong and important investment in green energy many decades ago.

It is also important to note that these investments were made by both what we call Conservative and New Democrat governments throughout the province's history to ensure that the energy supply in British Columbia was consistent, stable and did not contribute to the planet's pollution.

Those investments allowed British Columbia to continue to grow and prosper while not contributing to the overall warming of the planet which finally we have established, from all parties in all corners of the House, a confirmed belief in what is known as anthropogenic climate change, that is climate change caused by human activity. This is a reality and it is a problem.

I hearken back to when many of my colleagues from the environment committee were at the committee the day that the forestry sector came before us during the Kyoto hearings and clearly made the connection between both the forest fires which had gone to unprecedented levels in British Columbia in particular and the pine beetle infestation which started in British Columbia and has now gone across the Rockies. These elements were directly linked to what was happening to our climate.

My riding is in northwestern British Columbia and it starts from the coast and moves into the interior. We are quite accustomed to cold winters, particularly in the interior portion of the riding. There are consistently cold winters and stretches of winter that go 30° below and 35° below. This is what would have offset the pine beetle infestation. It is a naturally occurring organism that would have died off if winters had been normal. However, we have been without one of these normal winters for so long that the pine beetle has been allowed to bloom, grow and start to cover areas of the forest that many people in the world would find hard to comprehend.

We have to look at the current government's initiatives and intentions when talking about climate change and importantly talking about the way that we produce and use our energy. I recall very clearly the member for Red Deer who last year, in a very similar debate to this one, talked about the Conservatives' climate change plan. I asked him directly when there was an opportunity: Does the Conservative Party of Canada have a climate change plan?

The New Democrats had taken an important stand more than a year and a half ago. It is two years now. We said that we were going to spend some time and our own money on developing a plan and we would cost it out. We were going to take it to the economists, the environmental groups, and work through what a plan would actually look like for Canada to implement and achieve our Kyoto targets. We laid that out for all to see, a challenge to the then Liberal government to react and actually do something rather than just continue to make those glossy brochures and lovely posters, and also a challenge to the other parties in the House to get serious about this.

I remember the member for Red Deer's answer. I know he is extremely committed to the environment and the issue of waste in particular. He said that yes in fact the Conservative Party of Canada had a plan for climate change.

Well, it has been a year and a half or more. We are waiting and we are still waiting. We know that there is a green plan coming. It is important to understand that every day, every week and every month is lost without a plan, and without things that Canadians can actually look to in the true sense of leadership.

Canadians, when polled across the country, are ready to do something about this issue. They are making the choices every day for a better environment, but there has been an absolute lack of leadership on this file at the federal government level in particular.

The provinces have started to react, Quebec in particular and Manitoba. They have said that if the feds are not going to show up, at least they will. This is very similar to what we have seen in the United States where the presidency of George Bush has decided to not follow into the Kyoto regime, or any regime really, when it comes to climate change. Some states that have seen this as a significant issue have gone out and taken the lead.

While this is sometimes necessary, it is a bit unfortunate because the amount of taxation, money collected by the federal government, and the amount of legislative powers that the government has clearly puts us in the driver's seat if we choose to take that leadership role and that has not happened.

We hear recent announcements of the federal government preparing to offer up more than a billion dollars of Canadian taxpayers' money for a pipeline across our north to feed natural gas. Before the Conservatives get too excited and frothing at the mouth about this concept, let us take it from an energy perspective for a moment.

The concept is to take liquefied natural gas from some other far region of the world, liquefy it, put it into tankers, ship it across, put in another pipeline, and then ship that down. Natural gas, for everyone watching and as people know it, is one of our cleanest burning carbon-based fuels. It would then be put into the tar sands where it takes a barrel and a half to three barrels depending on the use of energy to produce one single barrel of oil, which then gets put into another pipe and then sent down to the United States.

Somehow this equation is a good so-called investment of tax dollars. It is bizarre. At the same the companies are now making substantial profits. Even when oil is at $40 a barrel, $50 a barrel or $60 a barrel, they are doing quite well.

This government follows in the footsteps of the previous government insisting on handing over a cheque from Canadian taxpayers of $1.5 billion every year into some of the companies that are enjoying record profits. As one company executive in Calgary a few weeks ago noted, they were obscene.

I have seen those profits and that is all well and good, they are making their money, but I cannot understand for the life of me, and many Canadians get confused by this, why we would also support them with taxpayer dollars while they are doing okay, while they are doing not just okay, they are doing spectacularly well?

Why would we have a corporate welfare cheque cut year in, year out, for companies that are doing fine? We have lots of ideas for the government where true investment can happen, the type of investment Canadians are looking for when it comes to the energy file.

Companies that exist within the tar sands have talked about making them carbon neutral within 20 years. We know the technology is coming forward in this country and in other countries. Rather than be a laggard, rather than simply follow in the wake of other jurisdictions when they take a leadership role in this, there is a real opportunity for Canada to make bold initiatives and plans. We can actually enact those plans and not be handcuffed as the previous government was by being unable to square circles or show a vision and leadership for which Canadians are looking.

When we look to other jurisdictions that have been able to maintain their economies, the Scandinavian countries clearly stand out. Some of the strongest economies in the free world have been able to both achieve significant reductions in their greenhouse gas output while achieving some of the best performing economies anywhere on the planet.

The economy versus the environment debate is as dead as the dinosaurs. We simply cannot refer to it anymore in any serious way.

When Canadians are asked whether they would rather pick up a car at the lot that costs them $50 to fill up or one that costs them $10, clearly, particularly Canadians, who do not have a lot of money to throw around, are going to take the option, if it is presented to them in a reasonable way, to allow them to fill up with a little bit less and have money for other things in their lives.

Energy has become such an absolute essential for Canadians that home heating costs, and we have watched the spike in prices, particularly hurt those households that are in the most vulnerable of categories. We can create the economy. The bill goes a small way toward forcing the government to actually abide by international agreements.

I know Mr. Harper said in his speech on September 11 that we are a country that always accepted its responsibilities--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I would remind the hon. member that we do not refer to members of Parliament by name but by riding or title.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for that correction. I thank the member from Windsor for his diligence in listening.

On September 11, the Prime Minister said, “Because we are a country that has always accepted its responsibilities in the world...Canada has acted when the United Nations has asked”. The United Nations is the body in which our Kyoto signature actually stands. Clearly, if the Prime Minister is true to his word, then abiding by that signature on that document is what we need to do.

We are supportive of this bill and we will leave it to the Conservatives to answer the inherent ironies that exist within its action.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the member for Honoré-Mercier on his excellent bill.

It is very much a pleasure for me to stand and speak to this issue. In fact, I cannot think of a more pressing or important issue, not only for this nation but for this world.

The fact of the matter is that we are at a tipping point. It is evident not only in our own country, in places like the Arctic, where oral traditions are being rendered useless by a landscape that is dramatically changing, but we also see it in extreme weather, in rapidly receding glaciers and in so many other ways. Mountains that have been snow-capped for incredibly long periods of time, thousands of years, are no longer.

In fact, just yesterday, I believe, a study pointed out that the earth is at its warmest point in 12,000 years. The Conservatives do not want to acknowledge this, but the reality is that climate change is real, it is impacting us today, and action is absolutely a necessity.

When we talk about Canada's role, we know that Canada actually uses more energy than the entire continent of Africa. We know that North America as a whole uses more energy than Africa, Asia and South America combined. When we look at this, it could not be clearer that Kyoto is needed, needed not just in our own context but in the world.

There is only one path to answering the problem of climate change. That path, without a doubt, is international agreements. Kyoto was an opportunity for all countries to come together and try to hash out the first agreement on climate change. If anybody doubts the effectiveness of Kyoto, they need only ask where the issue of climate change was before Kyoto came into effect. It was in the wilderness. The naysayers were dismissing it. People were pretending it was not a reality. Kyoto forced it onto the international stage, and for those who refused to take action and be signatories, there was domestic pressure, as in the case of the United States with states coming forward and taking action.

The previous federal government signed on to Kyoto. We put forward a series of recommendations to reduce our emissions and meet our Kyoto objectives. In the wake of all of this, when Canada's new government, as it calls itself, came into being, what action did it take? The reality is that it stepped back. Instead of moving forward with Kyoto and the recommendations, the government began slashing money.

The Conservatives took programs like the EnerGuide program, which allowed families to get subsidies to retrofit their homes to reduce the amount of energy they needed, and they scrapped them. Across the board, they scrapped environmental and climate change programs.

Worse than that, they walked away from their responsibilities in COP 11. COP 11 was an opportunity and a chance for Canada to lead the successor agreements that would follow Kyoto, to make sure that those nations that did not join on would join on. It was an opportunity for Canada to take a leadership role and the minister was missing in action.

The minister, whenever she is asked a question in the House about the Conservatives' environmental plan, will talk about what? Mercury. This could not be more evidence of how they do not understand this issue. Mercury has nothing to do with climate change. Zero. The minister of mercury talks about mercury every single time they are asked about climate change, when it does nothing. If she does not talk about mercury, the minister talks about smog, which also has nothing to do with climate change. Both are important issues. Of course it is important to reduce mercury and of course it is important to deal with smog, but neither of them have anything to do with climate change.

If that were all, it would be bad enough. Just simply slashing funding and ignoring the issue would be bad enough, but I fear there is a far greater menace afoot. I will read a quote for members, if I may. This is from U.S. pollster Frank Luntz, who recently met with the Prime Minister and gave him advice on how he should proceed. Mr. Luntz said:

Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate....

This is who the Prime Minister decided to spend his time with and to take advice from, an individual who says to distort the facts. The reality is that the scientific evidence on climate change is irrefutable. We can see it in our day to day lives, but scientists have also proven it through their research. We know that no credible paper published in the last number of years has in any way disputed the fact that climate change is a reality.

The government set Mr. Luntz's words into action. The Conservatives made sure they took action. They started by removing the climate change website, a Government of Canada site that had been set up for information for teachers, students and Canadians about how they could reduce their emissions. The government killed this site. I received a call from a teacher who had been using this site in her class to talk to students about how they could reduce their emissions. She tried it one day and found out that it had been deleted.

The government went through the website and cleansed and erased any references to climate change. It tried to pretend climate change does not exist. The Conservative government listened to its Republican advisers and tried to hide the issue from reality.

What Harper had called previously a controversial--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I have to remind the hon. member that we do not use people's proper names but their titles or ridings.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

You are quite right, Mr. Speaker.

What the Prime Minister had called a controversial hypothesis and his former critic called a great socialist plot is in fact the greatest menace to this planet, something the government is turning its back on and systematically trying to pretend does not exist.

It gets worse.

Then we find out about the Friends of Science, a group much like the tobacco industry group formed to try to pretend that tobacco is not bad for us. When all the scientific evidence said that tobacco could kill us, Friends of Tobacco came forward and purported to have scientific evidence indicating that it was not bad for us.

In a similar fashion, this group, Friends of Science, was formed. Where did this group get its funding? The funding was set up by an individual by the name of Barry Cooper, a very close associate of the Prime Minister. The objective was to funnel oil money through a system of hiding where it came from to allow it to get to Friends of Science so they could try to create doubt among the population that climate change is real.

It does not end there.

This Friends of Science group has all kinds of connections to the Conservative Party of Canada, from Barry Cooper to Morten Paulsen, Tom Harris, and others. The Conservative Party and Friends of Science are one and the same. This group, which seeks to sell our planet down the river, which seeks to confuse and distort the facts, is closely tied to the Conservatives.

We have to look at what action we must take going forward. It struck me when David Suzuki made a statement saying that the planet does not care whether we continue to exist or we eradicate ourselves. The reality is that we are making our own decisions about whether or not we stay on this planet. It is up to us to find balance. It is up to us to lead the way and ensure that we strike a balance with our planet at a time when, within a generation, our oceans and our trees will be saturated with CO₂ emissions, at a time when permafrost is lifting at an unbelievable pace and releasing more and more CO₂ into the atmosphere, at a time when ice, which is 90% reflective of energy, is turning into water, which is 90% absorbent of energy, and at a time when Asia is booming and its CO₂ emissions are increasing day after day.

We do not have a lot of time. We certainly do not have time for a government that distorts the facts, tries to mislead Canadians and does not take action on the issue.

It is imperative that this motion pass. I would say it is imperative that we lead the way and ensure that we deal with the issue of climate change. Our very invitation to stay on this earth depends upon it.

[Bob Mills, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, having listened to that from a Liberal is really quite amazing considering the 13 years that I have been here listening to the promises.

Climate change was identified in 1992. Nothing was done.

In 1997, we signed on to Kyoto. Nothing was done.

In 2002, in Johannesburg, again we identified the problem. Nothing was done.

Here we are in 2006 and that member has the nerve to stand and lecture about what the Liberals have done, when in fact we are 35% above 1990 levels and Canada had agreed to be 6% below 1990 levels. What he cannot possibly imagine is how we could ever achieve that. If he looked at reality, he would see that this is 195 megatonnes of carbon that we would have to remove from the environment. It is not achievable. What does he not understand? We had to start in 1993 and we had to have an aggressive plan to deal with this climate change problem. The previous government did nothing.

Fortunately, at least there are countries that are trying to come up with solutions. I have attended the COP meetings, the meetings of the Conference of the Parties to Kyoto. Those meetings consist of 190 countries. Each of those countries has its own problems, its own social problems, climate problems, et cetera, and we are supposed to come to some sort of agreement on how to solve climate change. It is not happening. It is a dream. It is just a dream.

Fortunately, the G-8 plus five, consisting of the G-8 members plus India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, are coming up with solutions. Fortunately, the Asia-Pacific partnership is looking at solutions. At least, hopefully, someone is going to deal with climate change, but certainly 190 countries are not going to come up with consensus in time and they are not going to achieve their targets.

Why do we have to oppose this bill? We have a number of reasons.

Obviously, this bill would place a huge drain on the administrative part of the government without allowing the government to focus on the actual reductions that are necessary. This bill would oblige the Minister of the Environment to establish an annual climate change plan and to make regulations and would also oblige the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to review the plan and the proposed regulations and submit a report to Parliament.

Obviously the previous government did not do any of those things. There were no reports. There was no record. Nothing ever happened. There was just a lot of talk.

While this bill would be totally cumbersome and would obviously take a huge amount of resources of the government, we should spend the money on an actual plan, on actually doing things, not dreaming about buying credits from some foreign country and sending them off. No one has been able to explain to me how buying credits from a foreign country is in fact going to help the global environment.

What they do not seem to understand is that air is shared by everyone and that the 556 coal-fired power plants being built in China using soft coal are a huge environmental problem. Let us help them with the technology so they can change. That would make a difference. That would really have some impact. Let us develop that gasification technology here in Canada and then transfer that technology to the developing countries where we could really make a difference. That is positive. That is the sort of positive thing we can do.

We have a bill in front of us that wants us to have more regulations, more government reports and more government planning. I do not have that much faith in government. I have a lot more faith in working with the provinces, in working with industry and in looking to the future and having a long term vision for where we want to go and how we want to deal with the climate change problem. I think that is obviously what Canadians expect us to do.

We need to reduce by 195 megatonnes to get to our target. Most people do not understand what a megatonne is, but basically, as the minister has said in the House, it would mean shutting down transportation, shutting off the lights and stopping everything if we were to achieve that target. It is not possible. Canadians do not want that.

Canadians want a plan from us. They want a plan that will deal with pollution and climate change and with the soil, the water, the land and everything that we do. That is the direction in which we need to go.

We hear from the other side of the House that we need to go after the oil and gas industry but that is not true. We need to rely on the capture and sequestering of CO₂. We need to get into the gasification of everything from garbage to coal, and it is already happening. In some countries they have been doing that for a long time. Norway has been sequestering CO₂ in the caverns underneath the North Sea for 10 years. This is not new technology. It does not need to be developed further. We just need to do it.

The former government did not do it when it was in power. It did not listen to advisers. It finally got down to the desperation $10 billion, which probably could have been $80 billion, and said that it would buy foreign carbon credits. Maybe that made the previous government feel better but it is like talking to the city council which says that it recycles plastic, which is wonderful, but where does the plastic go? It gets bundled, sent by ships through the Panama Canal and ends up going to a landfill in China. How does that make everyone feel? That is not really recycling. That is phony and it is not telling Canadians the truth. Let us get on with telling Canadians truthfully how we can deal with this.

We should be pretty excited about the green plan that is coming and that we will be able to implement. In some of the research Mark Jaccard has done, he says that it could cost Canadians up to $80 billion to start right now to try to achieve those targets. That is not feasible. It cannot be done so let us get on with the green plan. We do not need to be lectured about what should have happened because, again, we have sat here and watched but nothing has happened.

I was embarrassed at COP 10 in Argentina when the former minister of the environment stood and reported for this country and said that we had the one tonne challenge and that we would hit our targets. The one tonne challenge was designed to take care of 20 megatonnes if it worked. That was all we had to brag about. It was embarrassing when we were listening to other countries say that they were developing wind technology, alternate energies of different kinds, looking at wave technology and so on. We are not leaders in those areas and we should be. The jobs that are related, what we can do for our environment and for the global environment, it is pretty phenomenal.

As a Canadian and a member of Parliament in 2006, the legacy I want to leave is that we took action and we did something about the air, the water and the land. We can do it. Whether it is sequestering or whatever we want to do, we can be leaders and that is what we should aim for.

What we will be getting in the House is a real plan and we will carry it out. It will happen and Canadians will understand that, rather than buying carbon credits from some foreign country, we will be doing things here in Canada that will make a difference and will be transferable to other parts of the world.

We cannot support the bill. We do not think that more regulation and more planning is necessary. We need to take action and that is what we plan to do.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the bill tabled on May 17 by the member for Honoré-Mercier would force the government to respect Canada's Kyoto protocol obligations.

It creates an obligation on the department to establish annually a climate change plan that respects shared jurisdictions and proposes regulations to fulfill the Kyoto protocol goals.

It also creates an obligation on the Commissioner of the Environment to review the annual climate change plan and submit a report to Parliament.

We support the principle underlying this bill. In fact, the essence of this bill resembles the motion the Bloc introduced on May 11, which was adopted by a majority of members of the House of Commons. We will present our suggestions for improving the bill during committee.

Clause 5 of the bill states that the federal government must table a climate change plan not later than May 31 of every year until 2013. The annual plan must respect provincial jurisdiction and include the following five elements: measures to be taken to reduce greenhouse gases; performance standards and market-based mechanisms; a description of spending or fiscal measures or incentives; bilateral agreements; and a report on overall results of the previous year's plan.

Why does the bill not require these climate change action plans to be tabled beyond 2013? Would it not be more appropriate to say that Canada will participate in phase II of the Kyoto protocol, and that the annual report will therefore be an important tool for following through with the fight against climate change?

Clearly, the bill will have to specify that bilateral agreements should be financial agreements that enable provinces wishing to implement the Kyoto protocol to accomplish these goals.

The fight against climate change will be one of the most important global issues in the coming decades. The Kyoto protocol is the product of many years’ work and collaboration within the international community, and is the most effective and most complete tool for fighting climate change.

With its recent opposition motion on May 11, the Bloc Québécois sent an unequivocal message to the Conservative government that the government must make a commitment to respect the Kyoto protocol, an international accord to which Canada is legally bound and to which 90% of Quebeckers lend their support. It if does not do so, it will cause Canada to lose any credibility it has internationally. Its reputation is at stake. This member’s bill bears the same message as the motion put forward by the Bloc in the hope that the Conservatives might understand.

The basic principles underlying the Bloc’s position, from the time study of the climate change file began, are based on respect for international commitments, on equity and on respect for Quebec’s areas of jurisdiction.

The Bloc Québécois is asking Ottawa for a plan to implement the Kyoto protocol, enabling the reduction of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions by 6% over 1990 levels and providing a series of measures within its areas of jurisdiction.

The Bloc is seeking concrete measures in five major areas.

First, we are asking for stricter standards in the manufacture of vehicles with a view to improving the energy efficiency of passenger vehicles and trucks, following the example set by California.

Second, we are asking for discounts on purchases of ecological vehicles, such as hybrid, electric and hydrogen vehicles. Incentives are key.

Third, we also want financial support for the development of renewable energy and we do not want cuts to the incentives for the windmill project.

Fourth, we want the abolition of the advantageous tax system for the oil companies.

Fifth, we are asking for grants to be given to agencies that are contributing to the effort to achieve the objectives of the Kyoto protocol and are helping to educate the public.

Furthermore, the Bloc Québécois wants the plan to include a system of emission objectives for large emitters, along with an exchange of emission rights, since by 2010 these industries, particularly the oil companies, will be responsible for more than 50% of greenhouse gas emissions. An equitable approach, as proposed by the Bloc Québécois, necessarily implies that large emitters be called to contribute according to their emissions.

An equitable approach for the provinces means that those that have made efforts in the past should be recognized accordingly. For example, there is the choice that Quebec made concerning hydro-electricity or the choice certain industries made to reduce their contributions to greenhouse gases, even before the Kyoto protocol.

At this point, it would be good to repeat the content of the Bloc Québécois motion passed in a majority vote—169 to 125—during our opposition day on May 11, 2006. The motion read as follows:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) take the necessary measures to ensure that Canada meets its objective for greenhouse gas reduction established under the Kyoto Protocol, in an equitable manner while respecting the constitutional jurisdictions and responsibilities of Quebec and the provinces; and (b) publish, by October 15, 2006, an effective and equitable plan for complying with the Kyoto Protocol that includes a system of emission objectives for large emitters along with an exchange of emission rights accompanied by a bilateral agreement with Quebec-—

The Conservative position regarding the Kyoto protocol is worrisome. So far, they have made it clear that they do not intend to try to reach the target of a 6% reduction compared to 1990. They say that this target is unrealistic and unachievable. I feel this is irresponsible. The Conservative government has been a vocal opponent of Kyoto on the international scene.

To not respect the targets of the Kyoto protocol is to renounce it. The position taken by the Conservatives not only weakens Canada's credibility internationally, but it also runs the risk of raising doubt about the viability and pertinence of negotiating and signing multilateral agreements.

Responsible government means moving beyond a political agenda that is only a few months old. It means creating the necessary conditions to ensure the safety, health and prosperity of citizens for years to come.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I thank the member for Honoré-Mercier for bringing this very important bill before the House. He has done an extraordinary job to bring the issue in clarity. He has argued in the House of the need for a royal recommendation. The member has amplified further on the ways in which we could meet our Kyoto commitments on the reduction of greenhouse gas levels, without the kind of spending the previous Conservative speaker seemed to indicate was absolutely necessary.

Let us have some background.

After millions of years of remaining constant, greenhouse gas levels, particularly CO₂, started to climb sharply at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Greenhouses gas levels are now almost certainly higher than they have been in 20 million years. This is not a natural fluctuation. It is a side effect of the greenhouse gases being trapped in the atmosphere, much like a giant greenhouse. The heating is called global warming, and we are talking about that.

Global warming has already reduced the depth of the winter polar ice caps since the 1970s by 40%. Polar bears will become extinct if the ice retreat continues, and 90% of all glaciers on the planet have retreated significantly in the last 50 years. As the white reflective snow melts, which is even more efficient at absorbing solar energy, this causes acceleration of the heat effect.

“So what”, some people would say. “Who likes snow and ice?” Let us consider some facts.

The computer models show that up to a metre sea level rise over the next 100 years. More heat means more energy in the atmosphere. That means more turbulent weather. Have we seen more turbulent weather? Already I think we can agree. Super hurricanes will cause millions if not billions of dollars in property damage. Witness what happened in New Orleans.

More heat means a redistribution of rain patterns. We are now seeing freakish storms all over the world, which may dump many feet of water in a single day. We have seen many examples of that already. Does this have something to do with global warming? Probably.

This also means drought in places that previously had abundant rainfall. Does anyone realize what happened in B.C.? The province went for something like almost a month without rain in the Vancouver area. I was there for about a week and everything was dry. Stanley Park was dry. It has never been like that. Something is happening. We may deny the science, but we cannot deny the reality.

Because of these freakish storms, we have droughts in certain places. At a prime time in our history, Canada had to actually import grain because of droughts. For the first time in our history, rainy Vancouver's drinking water reservoirs are almost empty.

Would it not be nice to live in a warmer climate? What is wrong with that? There are at least three drawbacks.

First, we may find that we have to run our air conditioners all year round. We will be using all the extra electricity to run air conditioners. By the law of supply and demand, electricity prices will go through the roof and we may find ourselves unable to afford or run an air conditioner.

With higher temperatures, water evaporates more quickly. Global warming disrupts rainfall patterns, bringing extra rain to some places and drought in others. For those in the drought, tap water will have to be brought in. That means higher water bills. It also means skyrocketing food costs, since farmers need huge amounts of water for irrigation. Every degree rise in temperature requires 10% more water.

If people live in Alberta or Saskatchewan or if they live in the Ganges River valley, their tap water comes from glacier melt water. Those regions will experience summer water shortages. It is absolutely a fact.

The trees cannot pack up and move either to a cooler climate. We lost many of our grand fir trees in the summer of 2002 due to heat and drought. We pretty well had to cut them down and replant a new heat tolerant species to deal with it. It will take at least a generation for the newly planted forest to mature.

The Kyoto protocol is an agreement under which industrialized countries will reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2% compared to what we had in 1990. Note that compared to the emission levels that would be expected by 2010 without the Kyoto Protocol, this target represents a 29% cut. The goal is lower overall emissions of six greenhouse gases. They include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphurhexafloride, HFCs and PFCs calculated as an average over the five year period 2008 and 2012.

National targets range from 8% reductions for the European Union to permit increases of 8% in places like Australia. Not everybody has the same problem. Other countries like India and China, which have ratified the protocol, are not required to reduce carbon emissions under the present agreement for certain particular reasons, which I will not go into. However, the objective of the overall protocol is the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with our climate system. It is all about that.

The treaty was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, opened for signature on March 16, 1998 and closed on March 15, 1999. The agreement came into force on February 16, 2005. As of April 2006, a total of 163 countries have ratified the agreement, representing over 61.6% of emissions.

On December 17, 2002, Canada ratified the treaty. While numerous polls have shown support for the Kyoto protocol, somewhere around 70%, there is still some opposition, and I know where it is. It is in the Conservative caucus.

If we think about it, there are some business groups and non-governmental clients with energy concerns using similar arguments to those being used in the United States, which has not signed on to the Kyoto protocol. I think it has something to do with its tremendous reliance on coal-fired plants, particularly in the Ohio Valley.

The United States is not prepared to make that commitment and it has not made any plans to deal with Kyoto. It seems to me that the American administration on the other side here feels it is better to go with George Bush than it is to deal with this matter in Canada.

In 2005 the result was limited to an ongoing war of words, primarily between the government and Alberta, which is Canada's primary oil and gas producer. I must admit that the Conservatives, in opposing Kyoto, talked about a made in Canada solution. However, we have to ask ourselves this. Can we find anywhere in the record any mention of how they will address the high emitters such as the petroleum gas industry and the oil sands? They have not mentioned it. This is where their key support is, and I understand it. That is politics.

However, we are the Parliament of Canada. This is the Government of Canada. It has to speak on behalf of the interests of all Canadians, not simply the supporters of the Conservatives, which is exactly what they did in terms of the funding cuts they just made.

We should look at it. When we look at it line by line, there is no question about it. It was who were unlikely to be Conservative supporters and they were zapped. It is all tied in with this whole meanspirited government that has no interest whatsoever in good policy. It is an ideological government that has absolutely no interest whatsoever in what makes good public policy on behalf of Canadians.

After the January election, the Conservative minority government expressed opposition to Kyoto and announced that Canada would have no chance of meeting its targets under it. However, when we signed this deal, we knew we were already behind. We signed it knowing that, because we still knew it was possible to meet our target under Kyoto.

I could go on in this matter, but the Kyoto protocol, which is supported by the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals, is there. It has nothing to do with partisanship. It has to do with our serious concerns and our understanding of the science, that climate change is a risk to humanity and we must take action. The Conservative government has refused to do that and is dismantling everything that has been done so far in dealing with greenhouse gases. Shame on it.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am a new member in the House and I represent the riding of Louis-Hébert.

Since my arrival, I have tried to remain objective in my work and to leave partisan politics aside. Today, we heard the Liberal presentation. They managed to increase greenhouse gas emissions by 35%. We were told of the extinction of polar bears. We were told about the problems out West and about insects that eat pine trees. We have been in power for six months. My colleague has given an account of the Liberal legacy.

To achieve the Kyoto targets, we have to reduce gases by 195 megatonnes. That means 195 million tonnes which, even at $10 per tonne, works out to about $19 billion sent abroad. What should be understood is that the Kyoto protocol does not reduce greenhouse gases, but allows us to purchase abroad the right to pollute. That changes nothing in my neighbourhood. It does not prevent individuals from developing emphysema, or seniors and youth from suffering from asthma. They continue to be affected by these gases and smog. That is the Liberals' legacy and we are trying to address the situation.

Earlier, we heard a statement that was almost scientific. This summer, I was in Chicoutimi, at the Monts-Valin interpretation centre. The staff of the centre explained to me that 10,000 years ago, 1,000 feet of ice covered the place where I was walking. That ice did not melt away in the past 100 years. It melted over the course of thousands of years; long before industrial activity could influence the melting of that ice. There are cycles of glaciation and cycles of melting. What stage are we at now? I met with some scientists and even their opinions are divided. Some think one way, others have a different opinion.

Our government is proposing today—or rather will be proposing over the next few days—a new green plan that will really seek to improve the situation. It will not be window dressing in the style of the Liberals. It will not be more posturing. It will be real action.

There is something that I would like my Liberal friends to explain. The former Liberal Minister of the Environment claims that it is impossible to meet the objectives of the Kyoto protocol. How is it that the Liberals continue to support a program whose objectives are impossible to meet, as the former minister says?

We hear it said that to be in favour of the Kyoto protocol means to be in favour of the environment. That is completely false. The Kyoto protocol is a protocol for the purchase and transfer of carbon credits. That is what we have to understand. It is unhealthy. It is soapbox oratory to try to make people believe that the Kyoto protocol is the solution to environmental problems in Quebec and across Canada. The purchase of carbon credits from Cameroon will make no difference to young people with respiratory problems or to older persons. To say otherwise is mere posturing.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Honoré-Mercier has a five minute right of reply.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we knew that the Conservatives did not like Kyoto, that they hated Kyoto. It has been proved that they have absolutely no understanding of Kyoto—not like you, of course, Mr. Speaker. I mean the people who spoke here today. They do not understand Kyoto.

My first words are to thank my hon. colleagues who spoke or expressed their support in one way or another for this important bill. I thank my hon. colleagues in the Liberal Party as well as in the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party.

The support from all the opposition parties shows in the clearest possible way that protecting the environment and fighting climate change cannot and must not become a partisan issue.

All the parties are forming a common front to face the major challenges posed by climate change—all the parties except the Conservative Party.

For ideological reasons, the Conservative government is doing everything in its power to derail Kyoto. That is why the government tried to kill this bill using procedural questions. It tried to say that the bill would need a royal recommendation, which is obviously false. You confirmed that today, Mr. Speaker.

Allow me to provide a brief reminder about this important bill. Its objective is simple, very simple: to ensure that Canada meets its obligations under the Kyoto protocol. Its purpose is therefore to ensure that Canada complies with international law in this area.

In short, the bill would require the Minister of the Environment to prepare a climate change plan every year containing in particular a description of the measures to be taken to ensure that Canada meets its obligations under clause 3(1) of the Kyoto protocol.

The bill would also require the government to make, amend or repeal the necessary regulations in order to meet its obligations. In so doing, it may take into account the implementation of other governmental measures, including spending and federal-provincial agreements.

All of this can be done, if there is political will to do so, of course. However, this very political will is so desperately lacking within this government.

In the short time left, I would like to stress that more than anything else, this bill is about the future. It calls on the government to act responsibly and to act now. It calls for concrete action to improve the lives of future generations.

The environment is certainly an area in which we can act immediately, in order to improve the living conditions for future generations.

Not only can we act, but we must act. We cannot follow the Conservative lead and say that it is impossible, that it is too complicated, too difficult.

In fact, the government decided to give up before it had even started trying and this is simply unacceptable.

Climate change is one of the most important challenges facing humanity, not only from an environmental perspective, but also in terms of public health, food security, quality of life and economic prosperity.

As I have already clearly stated, when a government does not respect international law or the will of its own citizens, when it fails to assume its responsibilities regarding one of the most important challenges facing our planet, Parliament has the ability and the obligation to force the government to do so.

I therefore encourage all of my colleagues to vote in favour of this important bill. We must do it for our future, but above all, for the future of our children.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

It being 7:07 p.m., the time for debate has expired.

Accordingly, the question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.