Bill C-30 (Historical)

Canada's Clean Air Act

An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, the Energy Efficiency Act and the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act (Canada's Clean Air Act)

Part 1 of this enactment amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to promote the reduction of air pollution and the quality of outdoor and indoor air. It enables the Government of Canada to regulate air pollutants and greenhouse gases, including establishing emission-trading programs, and expands its authority to collect information about substances that contribute or are capable of contributing to air pollution. Part 1 also enacts requirements that the Ministers of the Environment and Health establish air quality objectives and publicly report on the attainment of those objectives and on the effectiveness of the measures taken to achieve them.
Part 2 of this enactment amends the Energy Efficiency Act to
(a) clarify that classes of energy-using products may be established based on their common energy-consuming characteristics, the intended use of the products or the conditions under which the products are normally used;
(b) require that all interprovincial shipments of energy-using products meet the requirements of that Act;
(c) require dealers to provide prescribed information respecting the shipment or importation of energy-using products to the Minister responsible for that Act;
(d) provide for the authority to prescribe as energy-using products manufactured products, or classes of manufactured products, that affect or control energy consumption; and
(e) broaden the scope of the labelling provisions.
Part 3 of this enactment amends the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act to clarify its regulation-making powers with respect to the establishment of standards for the fuel consumption of new motor vehicles sold in Canada and to modernize certain aspects of that Act.

The Environment

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government has officially announced that it will ignore the Kyoto targets, it will ignore the Kyoto timelines, it will ignore the science of Kyoto, it will ignore environmentalists like David Suzuki and it will ignore the recommendations of the parliamentary committee.

It is a sham that prevents Canadians from using most of Kyoto's tools and that delays action for more than a decade. It is pure political hyped theatre of the absurd.

Will the Conservatives stop the doublespeak and deceit and bring their own bill, Bill C-30, back to this House so Canadians can get a real plan for our environment?

Business of the House

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the leader of the government could advise the House of the agenda he intends to follow for the rest of this week and through next week. In particular, could he tell us when he will bring forward the bill on clean air, namely, Bill C-30, for final consideration in the House?

The Environment

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canada has a Minister of the Environment who takes responsibility for careless PR leaks, but not for setting responsible environmental policy. The minister blows hot and cold. He is a climate change induced spinning weather vane.

If Kyoto is a socialist flop as the Prime Minister claims, then why did the government vote to uphold the objectives of the Kyoto protocol, including the targets and absolute reductions of greenhouse gases just yesterday?

Will Chicken Little finally end the doublespeak and bring back the plan that addresses air pollution and climate change known as Bill C-30?

Opposition Motion—Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member from the NDP talked about Bill C-30 and about Bill C-288. We are technically debating what the Bloc has put in front of us.

My issue is this. I have heard a number of times today about fearmongering about the numbers. I guess my colleague does not like the numbers. Those members are certainly capable of talking about what is going to happen to the environment if we do not do anything. We agree that we need to do something about it, but we do not call that fearmongering. When they get the facts on the financial side on Bill C-288, they like to call it fearmongering, which just does not make any coherent sense to me.

It would take a cut of about 30% a year to 2012 because we have to catch up from where we were to get to where we have to be in order to meet those targets in 2012. Based on Bill C-288, which is in front of the Senate, and based on the fact that we are so far behind because of Liberal inaction, does my colleague think it is actually feasible to cut greenhouse gases with no cost to the economy at a rate of 30% a year between now and 2012?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I have had a lot of experience in small, remote community energy systems. There are many opportunities there. I look at the community I visited two weeks ago in my own riding, Wha Ti, which is a small Tlicho community. The community wanted to put in a mini hydro system, a one megawatt system that would not only light its homes, but heat them too.

Once we make the move with Bill C-30, once we agree what we are going to accomplish here, these projects will move forward quickly. Once Canada knows the direction it has to move in, right across this country, we will see a flourishing of projects like we cannot believe.

I spent time on the Federation of Canadian Municipalities green fund. I have seen the projects that are available across this whole country. We have a great future ahead if we simply make some decisions here in this Parliament and get going with the new economy.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the concept that we are going to have a tax of $195 a tonne on carbon emissions is just frankly ridiculous. Anyone who is in the energy business, the retrofit business or the renewable energy business, businesses that I am very familiar with, would be jumping up and down at the thought that we would somehow get these kinds of dollars as a tax on carbon emissions.

Within Bill C-30 there are provisions for the $30 a tonne for carbon going into a bank fund. It is not a tax but it fixes a dollar amount around a particular substance.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

It could be American corporations. It could be any other company that invests in this country, or it could be Canadians as well. All corporations have the opportunity to either move forward or not move forward. We will see who has the moxie in their company and who has the wherewithal to do it.

My territory has many multinationals. Some of them come from Australia, from England and from South Africa. They all deal in diamonds. We did not set any standards for them for energy production. They all rely on good old oil to generate their electricity to heat their mines.

We have alternatives in the Northwest Territories. We have demonstrated that. We can provide them all the clean hydroelectric power they want for their facilities. When they are under some pressure to do this, they will do it. If they want the diamonds and the economic activity, they will invest in the clean energy that will make their businesses fit under the Kyoto requirements.

Years ago I had the opportunity, as a mayor in my community, to stand up against the development of the Alberta-Pacific pulp mill in northeastern Alberta. It had proposed a particular setup where it would pollute the river systems, create a lot of damage and affect my community. We fought that and proved our point. The companies were rejected at the environmental assessment. Within two or three months, they came with a solution that reduced the pollution by over 70%.

When I talked to those same companies years later, they said the best thing that happened to them in that process was they were forced to clean up their act. They said that they now had a product with an environmental tag on it. They had a facility that was the best in the world, they were selling their pulp and making money at it.

Sometimes the lesson should be that the fear of progress should never stop one from making progress. Fear does not drive a healthy economy. Fear does not drive nation building. Fear does not create a world of which our children would be proud. The environment minister should not try to scare us. We are not here to be scared. We are here to accomplish something for Canadians.

I hope the environment minister will join with us, bring forward Bill C-30, allow it to debated in the House and show Canadians that when the four parties in this House of Commons work together, we can produce results for Canadians.

The time now is not for timid actions. It is not time to try to scare working Canadians away from what needs to be done. Imagine, in the 1940s, if the minister said that the cost to Canada of fighting the second world war was too much and that it was better to let those fascists have their way. We made a choice to invest in our future.

Like almost 70 years ago, Canada is once again facing a serious threat, a threat to our coastal cities, to our agricultural industry, to the thing that sustains our life, the planet Earth. To deal with this threat, we need cooperative action. We need global action. We cannot turn our backs on the first global treaty that has been signed to initiate a process that will reduce the level of greenhouse gases around the world. We cannot allow the threat of climate change by putting one set of interests ahead of another. We cannot say that because we need to expand the oil and gas industry, we need to use dirtier products to add to our ability to expand. Just like in the second world war, we have to work together on this.

As part of our fight against climate change, we need a national energy strategy as well, which is based on renewable energy and uses an east-west electricity grid to transfer clean energy from one part of Canada to another. At our last convention, the NDP adopted a policy for the creation of a national energy strategy.

Only through cooperative effort and effective planning, such as the development of a national energy strategy, will we be able to successfully meet the challenge of climate change. We cannot simply put into place targets without planning, without telling everyone how are we going to move forward. We have to let them know what are going to invest in to make our future right.

We talk about investing in liquefied natural gas terminals. Choosing to export money and the problem of climate change and bring in another source of fossil fuels for Canadians, is not a solution that should fit for Canadians. We can look at our valuable resources in the tar sands and say that one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from these tar sands is to export the raw bitumen, export jobs, export economic opportunities and export pollution. That does not make sense either in a world in which we live. We need to work with our people in the tar sands to ensure the product they provide is clean, it works and it has the desirable attributes that we want from an energy product.

It is time for the environment minister and others in the House, who are not ready to face the challenge, to put away their scare tactics, to work with the rest of us, to work with Canadians and to come together, bring Bill C-30 forward, let us debate it in the House of Commons and let us move forward in that regard.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Some jobs will be lost in transit to an environmentally sustainable economy but many more will be created. However, even more than Canadians losing their jobs, they will lose their future and their grandchildren's future if we lose the intrinsic nature of the stability of our climate and our environment by doing nothing.

The environment minister claims that the cost of electricity will rise by 50%. I guess the minister does not realize just how many other opportunities there are for electricity across the country. Generating electricity with fossil fuels and with oil and coal has, if properly computed, more expensive results than many other forms of energy.

Having hard targets for greenhouse gas reduction will force investments into much more clean, useful, sustainable and long term forms of energy generation. It will improve the use of fossil fuels in terms of cogeneration. It will make a difference to Canada in wind power, hydro, solar, biomass, all those things. It will move them ahead as they can be moved ahead and as they have the opportunity to move ahead.

We were in a natural resources committee meeting last week and we heard people from the wind power sector say that we had the ability of 100,000 megawatts within the existing transmission system in Canada. We have that resource available to us. Solar energy is available everywhere in the country. As we use it, as we increase the volume of it, the price will come down and the long term impact on our economy will be very positive. Then we can talk about conservation in the short term.

I heard the member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca, in the Bill C-30 committee, say that he had a geographically challenged area in the country for energy. He said that people had to travel long distances and that they had to use lots of energy to heat and light their homes. Interestingly enough, we did that before 1990 as well. Before 1990, we were a very large energy user. Therefore, in comparison, when we talk about Kyoto, we talk about the reduction of energy in our homes and about the reduction in our transportation system. It is relative to 1990 where we did much the same as we do now.

Canadians are large energy users. Energy was cheap for many years. We use a lot of it. We have great opportunities. The least costly electrical energy right now is the megawatt. The reduction in use of that source of energy will not cost 50% more; it will cost 50% less for the consumer.

The energy minister said that the price of gasoline would rise by more than 60%. Over the last five years, we have seen the price of gasoline go up and down like a yo-yo. That has not stopped our economy. That has not stopped people from getting to and from work. Again, he assumes that average Canadians will not move to cars which use less gasoline or other fuels or increase their use of public transit if the price of gasoline goes up.

The minister must believe that no one will use the measures announced in the recent budget and last year's budget. I am sure the minister is familiar with the law of supply and demand. When the demand goes down, the cost of the supply will go down as well. As Canadians use less and less gasoline, demand will drop, resulting in a levelling of prices or a drop.

The minister wants to scare us into believing that a doubling of natural gas prices will throw the economy into a tailspin. In the last decade the price of natural gas has gone from $2 a gigajoule up to $8. That is a quadrupling of the price of natural gas in Canada. Has the Canadian economy suffered? Has it fallen into chaos? No, it has not. Canadians are extremely adaptable. Our industries are adaptable. They make the moves that are necessary to accommodate increased energy costs, and they have done that.

If the Canadian economy can grow when natural gas prices continue to climb, doubling in price, according to this incredible assumption of $195 a tonne for carbon tax, which we have to take because the minister has given it to us, the economy will not stop. The economy will continue to grow. We will continue to heat our homes. We may move to other forms of energy, whether it is biomass pellets, or geothermal or solar energy, but we will move ahead. We will continue to move ahead, even in the situation where the minister wants us to go with $195 a tonne carbon tax.

In Bill C-30, the carbon tax is $30 and 50% will be returned to the companies if they make the effort to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and 50% will go into retrofits for people in homes and businesses across the country.

The Conservatives have put forward a retrofit program and over four years it will deliver for about 1% of Canadian homes. It is a good idea, but it is not enough money. If we want to put money into retrofit in Canada, which we need to do and which will help every Canadian that invests in that sort of activity, then we need more money in the programs. Bill C-30 can provide that money. We know we can do better than 1% of Canadian homes over four years.

Finally, the minister would have us believe that every one of us would have to shell out an extra $1,000 a year to take action on climate change. As I have run through the other three conclusions that he drew from his report, this is as erroneous as those. People will adjust to what has to be done. The result may be the other way around, where Canadians will conserve and save themselves $1,000 a year in energy costs.

Will there be winners in an economy based on the Kyoto reduction principles of greenhouse gas emissions? There will be many winners, as there always are in our economy. Some people will take advantage of the opportunities to do the right thing, to make the right investment, to come up with the right industrial process and to put forward the correct ideas that can drive their municipalities, their provinces, their homes. Winners are always part of an economy in our country.

Who will take a hit then? Who are the people who will be hurt by the Kyoto compliance? Polluters who do not live up to what they have to do. The large multinational corporations, all friends of the Conservatives, will have to finally clean up their mess.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this issue today. The need for action on climate change is now, which is why the New Democratic Party will support this motion that reads:

That the House call on the government to set fixed greenhouse gas reduction targets as soon as possible so as to meet the objectives of the Kyoto protocol, a prerequisite for the establishment, as expeditiously as possible, of a carbon exchange in Montreal.

This is a good motion and it does not preclude the free enterprise system in developing other carbon exchanges in this country. Interest has been expressed by other cities to have similar things. We may find, as time goes on, that these systems could be developed in a way that would be uniquely Canadian and may include other locations in the country. I know Winnipeg is interested. The motion does not tie our hands in this regard but does push forward with the need to set the targets for achieving Kyoto.

We have worked diligently in committee on Bill C-30 over the past six months in, what I have always considered, a nation-building exercise. We put the ideas from all the parties together and created Bill C-30, a bill that represents the majority view in the House of Commons. It represents a building of a consensus toward an issue that can only be solved through consensus, through the support of all parties, through the recognition that we are working for the betterment of Canada and the world, and that partisan political differences must be cast aside.

Last week the environment minister tried to scare Canadians from taking the needed action on climate change when he painted his doom and gloom scenario before members of the Senate. That, of course, raised everyone's hackles. Let us look at how realistic his nightmare on green street is.

He said that meeting Canada's greenhouse gas commitments would take a quarter of a million jobs out of the economy. This level of job loss in Canada, according to the minister, would result in economic chaos for Canada. How can he say this when the job loss from the North American Free Trade Agreement resulted in more than four times the number of Canadians who had lost jobs?

According to the Conservatives, NAFTA is good for Canada. Where was their concerns about job losses when the result was greater profit for their business pals? Where was the chaos in the Canadian economy? People worked, they recovered from the job losses and they moved ahead.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's dissertation. I have heard many of them from the Conservative Party.

It seems to me that some people are leaders in history, some people are led by history and others are dragged kicking and screaming by it, which seems to be the policy position of the Conservative Party right now.

When we saw the Conservative-Reform Party initially it said that there was no such thing as greenhouse gases. This was, in the words of the Prime Minister, a “socialist” plot to suck money out of Alberta.

Then we saw the Conservative-Reform Party became the home of every flat earth theory going on the environment. It was sunspots. It was El Niño It was the flatulence of the dinosaurs that changed the heat in the last millennium.

Then, in this new Parliament, we have a minister who has said that if we do anything we will shut down every plane, train and automobile and turn out all the lights, so we cannot do anything.

That did not work either.

Then the Conservatives had Bill C-30, although that has been shelved. Now they are telling us not to worry. They are telling us that they will actually do something but we have to give them more time.

I am wondering when they are actually going to get serious, just stop protecting the oil patch and get down to doing what Canadians are asking for, which is to take action on greenhouse gases now.

The Environment

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, last fall the Environment Commissioner reported that Canada can reach 21% of its Kyoto targets each year annually through a domestic offset and trading system, but the government's own Kyoto report last week announced that it would never allow such a system to be used.

Between Chicken Little's report and his refusal to be clear about Bill C-30, one thing has become clear. The government is doing everything it can to do nothing about global warming.

We all know now what the Conservatives will not do, so can the minister finally tell us what percentage of Kyoto he is willing to--

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of the Environment's apocalyptic report is deeply flawed. But how can we win the fight of our generation if our hands are tied? Bill C-30, as amended by the committee, enables Canadians to use all the tools available to them under the Kyoto protocol.

Why can the minister not decide whether he will bring the bill to a vote? When will he make up his mind?

Opposition Motion--Greenhouse Gas Reduction Target

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support the motion of the Bloc Québécois which really has two elements in it. It first talks about the importance of fixed targets, a regulated system for Canada's greenhouse gases; and second, that it has to be a precondition for the establishment of a carbon market in Montreal or indeed anywhere else in Canada.

I would like today to focus on the carbon market aspect of this and I think there are 13 important lessons when it comes to carbon markets.

Lesson number one is that a carbon market, in and of itself, does not lower emissions. To be real, somebody somewhere has to be undertaking activity, whether it is industrial or agricultural, that actually demonstrably lowers greenhouse gas emissions. This is why we keep asking the minister and his parliamentary secretary for the government to show its plan, so that we can get on with establishing a carbon market.

Lesson number two for the minister is that we cannot have a carbon market if carbon emissions are treated as free if the atmosphere is treated as a waste receptacle. If emissions are free, there is nothing to trade and that is why the Liberal Party put forward its carbon budget plan to put a value on CO₂ emissions. That was further demonstrated in Bill C-30, which was amended to reflect a true climate change plan and a true clean air act.

Lesson number three follows, therefore, that to have a carbon market carbon has to have a precise value or price. It has to be determined by the market and in order for that to happen emissions have to be capped by regulation and, hence, targets. That is why our carbon budget plan said that the price of carbon for those who exceeded their budget would be $20 in 2008, rising to $30 in 2012. That is what it means to put a value on carbon.

Lesson number four, which follows, is that caps on emissions have to be absolute, not intensity based. I am told that it is theoretically possible to have a market with intensity based targets, but it will likely be more complex and not fungible or compatible with systems like that which have been set up in the European Union.

This is why the Bloc motion is so important. This motion puts the emphasis on absolute greenhouse gas reduction targets so as to meet the Kyoto targets.

Targets have to be tough and get tougher to create a sufficient price signal to provide incentive for the formation of a market.

We will see how tough these targets really are next Thursday, if I understood correctly, when the government's intentions will be made known.

Lesson number five is that a carbon trading market needs to be simple, completely transparent and liquid. It cannot be complex. It cannot be an over the counter system where only big players can understand it and participate. It has to be accessible and fair to smaller companies and to individual investors.

Lesson number six deals with quality. Credit certification must be of top quality, of top environmental transparency and integrity.

Lesson number seven is additionality. We cannot give credit for carbon reducing activities that would have happened anyway.

Lesson number eight is that for maximum efficiency a domestic carbon trading market has to be compatible or interconvertible with the North American market, such as the Chicago exchange, and ultimately with Europe and with the United Nations clean development mechanism. That again is why we need absolute targets to establish an absolute price.

Lesson number nine is that, as with any market, we need to give this new derivative market time to work out the bugs, to establish investor confidence and to build credibility. Both the European system and the United Nations clean development mechanism have gone through a pilot period project where mistakes were made and the learning from those mistakes was used to improve the system. Perfection is not automatic or instantaneous.

The Chicago market is essentially a voluntary market for carbon where participation is not mandatory, as it is in the European Union. Chicago, too, is learning a great deal about how to build a successful carbon market. I would note that, because the Chicago market is voluntary, carbon prices in Chicago are lower than they are in Europe. We also need to learn from these types of experiences so that we can avoid their early mistakes, and there were mistakes.

Lesson number 10 is that it is a huge political challenge to explain to the public in simple language what a carbon market actually is and why it helps. As I have said before, an atmospheric tipping fee no longer treats the atmosphere as a free waste receptacle for what we call CO₂.

Lesson number 11 is that it is extremely important that we have a carbon trading market located in Canada. Otherwise, it will end up being located in Chicago or elsewhere, which is why we need a clear signal now from the government about the nature of the system it intends to create.

That leads to lesson number 12, which is that it is critical that we get a regulated system in place as soon as possible in Canada for greenhouse gases and the carbon market.

As for lesson number 13—and I see my friends from the Bloc—it is not for me to decide between Montreal or Toronto. It is as if I was asked to choose between the Senators, the Canadiens or the Toronto Maple Leafs. Personally, I always choose the Maple Leafs, because that is where I was elected. Nevertheless, we must let the market decide, as we must let the Stanley Cup decide among these three teams; it is not up to us. Ultimately, quality will win out.

In closing, I can certainly say that the Liberal Party supports the concept of creating a carbon trading market in Canada.

The Liberal Party also supports the development of an integrated climate change plan that deals with all the major sources of emissions in Canada, that is to say, industrial, electricity, upstream oil and gas, big industrial energy consumers, transportation, residential, commercial, agricultural and waste, but we have to be part of the only global system going, the United Nations framework convention on climate change and the Kyoto protocol, which flows from that.

We have to set ambitious fixed targets for ourselves and give it our best effort to reach them.

We have to honour our international obligations and Canada's promise to the world.

We have to save our country and our planet.

Most of all, we have to pass a better world on to our children and to their children.

A Canadian carbon trading market, wherever it is ultimately located, is a small but important part of that effort.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent question.

Bill C-30, which was originally introduced by the Conservatives, did not contain anything for the short term. There were no objectives, no mechanisms, no timetables, nothing. Having been amended by opposition parties, it is totally acceptable and is an excellent tool to fight climate changes today. This bill is also being totally obstructed by the government, which does not want to bring it back to the House. Let us bring it back to the House so we can pass it and move to action.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief.

As a matter of fact, speaking of courage and political will, I would just like to ask my colleague if he has any comments about Bill C-30 having been held up for a very long time. We could even say that the government is unduly holding up the process.