Bill C-311 (Historical)

Climate Change Accountability Act

An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

I'm going to come back to the question I asked you regarding Bill C-311. You said that it would be a start but that we would need a plan.

Do you think this could be an important step if the bill were able to help support the idea that we would need a plan? Do you think it could encourage the government to come up with a plan?

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll broach the same topic as Mr. Warawa, but in a different way.

I honestly and truly believe that we have to change our lifestyle and that looking at the past in other European countries—asking ourselves what they have done to this point or what they are doing now—won't provide the answer for the future. This is what disappoints me about the current government: it's always looking at the future in a rear-view mirror.

Mr. Drexhage, you said earlier, and rightly so, that Canada lives in a "non-sustainable" world. Do you think that Bill C-311 might help raise awareness that change is needed? And could Bill C-311 make a contribution? If so, how?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

You've said that our lifestyle is not sustainable. My question is going to focus on what lifestyles would look like if Canada were to adopt Bill C-311. What would the cost be?

Mr. Bramley, I'm not going to be asking you questions, because I feel that if I asked the cook to critique his own creation, the cook would have a bias. So with respect, I'm going to direct my questions to Ms. Donnelly and Mr. Drexhage.

The government is responsible for sustainable development. Each of us is. We passed, in the House, Bill S-216. Actually, it was in the last Parliament. It was sustainable development legislation to make sure we have good jobs in Canada but also a clean environment, and that's the government's responsibility, each of us. So how would lifestyles change if we adopted targets?

On the targets being proposed in Bill C-311, Pembina's position has been consistent that China and India, the big emitters in the developing world, would not have to have hard targets. They would not have to accept these targets in a new international agreement. You have the developing world buying international offsets. Bill C-311 also requires billions of dollars in mitigation and adaptation funds internationally, and the government's position is that there has to be substantial assistance in that. What would the world look like if we were accepting these very extreme targets?

I just came back from Copenhagen, where I saw gasoline at $2.50 a litre.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

We're not showing a new leaf, because we have a stubborn government that is being taken to court because it won't implement the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, a Liberal bill. It says that it doesn't want to achieve an agreement and has basically said--maybe not in so many words--that it will ignore Bill C-311. And we're saying that if it isn't passed by the House of Commons before December 8 or December 7, this will be a disaster for our position in Copenhagen.

The government has already spoken on this. It's better to take the time to hear from you and Mr. Bramley.

That's the only point I'd like to make.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Drexhage and Dr. Bramley, I notice you both pointed out that any delay means it will be more costly to move toward reduction because the price of carbon is going to rise. Monsieur Bigras also pointed out, if we're correct, Dr. Bramley, in the review you've done with the David Suzuki Foundation, that what you have not factored in is the cost of business as usual, what will happen with the climate change impacts.

I've also noticed in your report...and I had a briefing yesterday from the David Suzuki Foundation that was very helpful in my understanding of the background of your report and how you put it together. We were advised that the model does not appear to factor in the greenhouse gas reductions for job creation from energy retrofits and energy efficiency because there was difficulty in calculating them. Would it not perhaps be true that the scenario to tackle climate change in Bill C-311 could potentially provide even more jobs and greater greenhouse gas reduction than your report presents?

[Matthew Bramley]

Well, actually I do. It's the plan that the government was required to file under the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, which contains very similar accountability mechanisms to those that Bill C-311 would extend. So I think it's an illustration of the usefulness of having those kinds of accountability mechanisms to ensure that the government is required to table something that says what the contribution would be of each of its measures.

I should say, though, that this plan only goes to 2012. It doesn't tell us how the government would meet its 2020 target.

[Aldyen Donnelly, President, Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium]

First, thank you for having me here.

Like the rest of the panel members, I strongly believe that Canada has an important role to play and that we must move quickly to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. I do not, however, recommend the passage of Bill C-311. Bill C-311 is yet another target-setting exercise with no plan. I think that the editorial in The Globe and Mail got it correct this morning.

I'd like to remind you about Canada's traditional process for ratifying international treaties, to which the Kyoto Protocol stands as an exception. Typically, we develop our own domestic sense of priorities to address an environmental or economic issue. When we've identified our objectives and decided to pursue them in an international partnership, for competitiveness reasons, we tend to present our case in treaty language. We find some other parties. We negotiate a treaty that we sign. Then we come home and implement domestic legislation and regulations. Typically, we find that living with our first pass at the regulations isn't so comfortable and we amend them. Maybe we do it a third time. After we've lived with our legislation and regulations long enough to think we have it right, and our treaty partners have been through the same experience, we go back to the table, amend the original treaty language, and ratify it. That's what we did for the Law of the Sea, and that's why the elapsed time between signing the treaty and ratifying it was 11 years. That's normal history; that's not unusual history.

We in Canada signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol in a very short time without developing any implementation plan. Bill C-311 is enunciating yet another target. We're spending a lot of resources talking about targets, and we haven't even started to contemplate what an implementation plan would look like. If we were to stick with our historical successful experience, we would be asking a number of conventional questions: What regulations? Who is being affected? Who is changing behaviour and why? What are the implications of all this?

I'm going to tell you something quite different from what you will read in the Pembina report. I work largely for the private sector but also for NGO clients and three provincial governments. My job as a consultant is to develop policy and regulatory recommendations. I think I do my job well. I have been working on climate change for 15 years, and it's the biggest issue of the day for me. What's the reality? The reality is that 80% of the reported large industrial emitter emissions, 67% of all industry emissions including those that are not reported at a facility level, and 30% of all national emissions originate in plants that are located in 30 communities.

I have a presentation for you, nicely locked up in a hotel, and I'm going to e-mail it to the clerk right after this report.

We're talking 30 communities. That's your ghost town list. How do you stop that from being your ghost town list? It's not a whole country. It's not nicely spread all over the place. You can't go to Sydney—Victoria, to Mr. Blake Richards's riding and say that it's okay, his constituents can keep their jobs if they spend $40 a tonne building wind farms in China. In Blake's community, do you know what $40 a tonne is to keep their jobs? It's over $4,000 per man, woman, and child in the riding. There are 30 communities for which $40 a tonne to restructure the plants or buy offsets from China comes to over $400 a tonne per man, woman, and child in the community. I am not saying you shouldn't do this; I'm saying it's only in 30 communities.

The first recommendation is that this committee should have a subcommittee on which sit representatives of the 30 communities. Let's start talking about what their long-term sustainable core competencies are, sources of competitive advantage. What does that mean in terms of technology strategies? A lot of the technology strategies recommended in this report have no match whatsoever to the real sustainable sources of competitive advantage in those communities in a carbon-free future. There is no link. It doesn't work. And what do you get when it doesn't work? You get what Germany has.

From 1996 through 2007--so I'm not adding in the recessionary time--goods-producing jobs were down 18%; greenhouse gas emissions were down only 16%. You don't even have a one for one in terms of your job loss match. Jobs lost over that period were 6.4 million, so I don't really care about 250,000 jobs that might have been generated by the wind industry. Electricity prices for households in Germany--41¢ Canadian per kilowatt hour--that's not a special rate for wind, that's the rate that everyone in a household in Germany pays for electricity. Fifty per cent of the electricity in that country still comes from coal plants. Eight new coal plants have been constructed in the last eight months in Germany, and twenty more have been approved. The eight new coal plants themselves wipe out all of the zero emission reduction gains Germany achieved by being the largest developer of wind power nationally in the world.

If we don't sit down and look at the community list and the company list--it's only 30 communities--and build a strategic plan for each community, we will have 40¢ electricity, we will still be burning coal to make power, we will have significant industrial job loss, and we won't have greenhouse gas emissions even tracking with the job loss, because that's Germany, that's Denmark, that's Sweden, and that's not where we want to go.

I'll stop there.

[John Drexhage, Director, Climate Change and Energy, International Institute for Sustainable Development]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Allow me to thank you and the other members of this committee for the opportunity to speak with you regarding Bill C-311, An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change.

First of all, I would like to provide some specific comments on the bill itself and its implications for domestic implementation. I will then conclude with a brief foray into the current status of the international negotiations and the potential role a bill such as this could play in addressing Canada's current profile in the negotiations while also helping to provide a much-needed boost to the overall tone of the international talks.

Regarding the specifics of the bill itself, I would say that the long-term target of an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050 is an entirely reasonable one. It is in line with the long-term target espoused by President Obama, and it's consistent with virtually all projections as to what might be required to avoid anything more than a two-degree temperature change globally, which I need not remind you that the Prime Minister agreed to at this year's G8 summit.

I would also note that this is the current status of the scientific information on climate change. In the past few years we have seen the peer-reviewed science conclude that the temperature changes are actually occurring at a more rapid pace and that the related impacts of that temperature change are more pronounced, particularly for the Arctic, than previously assumed. Hence, we would also strongly support the review provisions in this bill starting in 2015 to ensure that Canada continues to do its fair share in addressing climate change.

On the shorter-term target of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, I would make the following observations. First of all, it is commonly assumed that this is the target recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to avoid a two-degree rise in temperatures. In fact, what the IPCC does is review the literature on the issue, and in that respect, there was a relatively limited amount written on this topic by the time of the IPCC report—only some five reports.

There is in fact a range of options available by which we would see the global community reach the overall target of 80% by 2050. You can't, for example, start at a more moderate target for 2020 and then ramp up reduction goals for 2030 and thereafter. This is what the U.S. appears to be calling for, and given that in North America we are only beginning to break the link between economic and greenhouse gas emissions growth, many here in Canada argue that it would be reasonable to start with a more moderate target. Fair enough, but—and we have to keep this in mind—that would only have credibility if we were also to lay out what reductions would be achieved for 2025 and thereafter. And keep this in mind also that the longer we take in reducing our emissions, the more disruptive and sudden the transition that will be required for all involved at a later date. So not only are we asking our children to face the impacts of climate change, we're also asking them to face increasing impacts in terms of the transition required to address climate change if we don't take on aggressive targets now.

With respect to the regulations, I would also support those elements promoting performance standards and greenhouse gas trading. With respect to the latter, the terms of reference need to be broadened to cover participation in the international carbon market as well. It is an absolutely critical mechanism for Canada to meet its targets and in positively engaging developing countries in mitigation activities. In a word, it is simply unrealistic to expect Canada to be able to achieve even the current government's own targets through domestic measures alone. The Canadian private sector must become an active player in the global carbon market, and the Government of Canada needs to provide much clearer signals and incentives for Canadian industry to do so.

I would also strongly support any efforts to link up with the U.S. cap and trade system as it's being developed, which would mean an absolute cap and trade with a broad sector of the economy covered by 2016 and an increasing percentage of auctioned permits playing in the marketplace.

I have one other note, this relating to the penalties for non-compliance provisions in the bill: we would favour a system by which those who exceed their reduction targets would face a prohibitive charge that would provide the government with the opportunity to use at least some of those funds to purchase credits to offset any surplus emissions and remaining revenues in order to provide support for the transition to a clean energy future.

To conclude, I believe Bill C-311, or some amended form that does not compromise the 2050 target, would be very timely.

I've had the privilege of following the climate change negotiations for the past few years, and I can bring in at least two clear observations on that process as we head to Copenhagen.

First, the negotiations are in deep trouble, and we may not find our way to an effective comprehensive agreement by December. I could get into the details, but it comes down to a serious lack of trust that exists between developed and developing countries.

Secondly, Canada's profile in the negotiations continues to be compromised by its status as a party to the Kyoto Protocol that has made it clear it will not take actions to meet its target under that agreement.

Bill C-311, particularly if it managed to receive universal assent of this Parliament, would send out a strong signal to the international community that Canada is ready to be a positive player in these negotiations. In addition, Canada needs to be ready to come up with a healthy and significant contribution towards helping developing countries adjust to the current and future threat of climate change.

I'd lastly note that doing so is particularly critical given Canada's role as host and leader of the next G8 and G20 summits to be held next year. If we are to have any credibility in those discussions, Canada must develop a strong domestic plan for reducing our emissions that also addresses all aspects of society, including targeting our incredibly wasteful consumption practices in North America. It also needs to reflect the strong messages we have heard from our Prime Minister in the last few years that we must develop strong, sustainable, and clean national energy systems. As a first step, I would recommend that we implement a clean, integrated national electricity grid as part of the government's stimulus and infrastructure packages.

I cannot stress the extent to which we suffer a credibility gap in the multilateral world as a result of 15 years, and counting, of inaction—and that includes both party persuasions.

In closing, I do not regard this as a right-left issue, and I believe that, with good intent, unanimous consent on a bill such as Bill C-311 should be possible. Effectively addressing climate change is simply too critical and complex an issue to hold hostage to political posturing. Ultimately, successfully addressing this real and present threat means an evolution in understanding what national interest truly signifies, acting responsibly for the sake of the global environment and our children.

I believe Canadians are ready and impatient to face this challenge. It is time for politicians of all stripes to demonstrate the same resolve.

[Robert Hornung, President, Canadian Wind Energy Association]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I apologize to all committee members for not being able to join you here at the meeting on Tuesday, but as the chair noted, a family matter intervened. I do very much appreciate the opportunity to speak with you here today.

The Canadian Wind Energy Association is the national association for companies with an interest in the wind energy industry in Canada. Our 450 members include Canadian, American, and European leaders in wind energy product development, wind turbine manufacture and component supply, as well as key service providers to the industry. The Canadian members of our association are a diverse group, active in wind energy, but many are also conventional energy companies whose primary interests are electricity generation, oil and gas production, or pipelining. We also have a number of companies that are focused exclusively in the renewable energy sector.

We believe that climate change is a serious issue and that the federal government must adopt legally binding targets and put in place supportive actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the establishment of such targets and supportive actions is critical to providing the policy certainty required to allow the wind energy industry to make well-informed and effective investment decisions that are consistent with the government's policy objectives. It's important that such targets and actions are transparent and that progress against them is measured on a regular basis. We note that many of these elements or themes are part of Bill C-311. Policy uncertainty reduces the incentive to invest.

We believe that wind energy will have an important role to play in meeting Canada's greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives, as well as the federal government's objective to have 90% of electricity produced from non-emitting sources by 2020. It's broadly accepted that significant progress on emissions reduction is required by 2020. In the electricity sector, the actions that have the most potential to reduce emissions in that timeframe are energy efficiency and conservation, increased deployment of renewable energy sources like wind, and fuel switching from coal to natural gas.

This is already being recognized in many parts of the world. In Europe wind energy has been the single biggest new source of electricity capacity for the last two years. It's been the second largest source of new generation in the United States over the last four years. In addition to providing these benefits, of course, wind energy also represents an important economic opportunity for rural communities across Canada and a manufacturing sector looking for ways to diversify production into products and technologies that are poised for significant growth in the 21st century.

For wind energy to fulfill its potential in meeting Canada's policy objectives and for any climate change strategy to be a success, it will be imperative to put a price on carbon. In this regard, CanWEA is supportive of the efforts currently under way at the federal level to put in place an emissions trading system that provides flexibility to emitters through the use of greenhouse gas offsets from non-emitting activities like wind energy production. It's critical for wind energy projects to have an opportunity to capture economic value for their environmental benefits.

It's also true, however, that it's likely to be some time yet until a carbon price is in place, and even longer until that price is not influenced by public policy safety valves that are designed to mitigate the economic impact of greenhouse gas emissions reduction but, at the same time, prevent the market from fully representing the real price of carbon. In this transitional period, it will be important for the federal government to continue to provide policy support and incentives that recognize and allow project developers to capture the full value of the environmental and carbon reduction benefits of clean renewable energy sources beyond that which will be initially provided by greenhouse gas offsets.

As the federal government's ecoENERGY for renewable power program will have fully allocated all of its funding this fall, such incentives will no longer be in place. A failure to expand or extend this mechanism or replace it with an alternative will result in delays and possible cancellations of several wind energy projects, and it will result in investors shifting funds for such projects from Canada to the United States. This is inconsistent with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. We remain committed to working with the government and all parliamentarians to obtain a renewed commitment to support the deployment of renewable energy projects during this transitional period.

While a carbon price is necessary, it will not on its own be sufficient to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives. Numerous barriers exist that prevent actors from responding to price signals in the marketplace. For that reason, many jurisdictions are putting in place both carbon pricing and long-term renewable energy strategies and policies in an effort to meet their climate change objectives.

While the European Union has a functioning carbon market in place, it has also established aggressive and legally binding renewable energy targets for the year 2020. And the United States Congress is currently considering the implementation of a legally binding national renewable electricity standard as part of its climate change package. We believe Canada also should consider, within its climate change strategy, the implementation of complementary initiatives that will remove barriers and stimulate investment in renewable energy technologies in addition to the establishment of a price on carbon.

When examining what policy support should be provided to renewable energy or other greenhouse gas emission reduction options as part of a climate change strategy, it's also important to remember that Canada is competing for investment in new renewable energy projects and new renewable energy technology supply chains, and that competition is on a global basis. Our policy choices must consider what other countries are doing to encourage investment in these sectors and must strive to ensure that our investment opportunities are competitive.

An effective federal climate change strategy will also need to improve the efficiency, without diminishing the effectiveness, of federal permitting and approval processes for clean energy projects like wind energy and the transmission infrastructure required to support its development. And it will also have to focus on building public support about the urgency and importance of the actions needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Finally, provincial governments also have an extremely important role to play in putting forward policies to support both renewable energy deployment and greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and federal policies should seek to complement and support major provincial initiatives like Ontario's new Green Energy and Green Economy Act and other leading initiatives across the country.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I'll take that under advisement. We'll deal with that when we come to it on the agenda.

Let's start with our presentations. This is meeting 35 as we continue our study of Bill C-311.

I want to welcome to the table today, from the Pembina Institute, Matthew Bramley, director of climate change. From the Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium, we have Aldyen Donnelly, president. From the International Institute for Sustainable Development, we have John Drexhage, director of climate change and energy. From the Canadian Wind Energy Association, we have Robert Hornung, president.

Mr. Hornung was supposed to be here on Tuesday, but unfortunately he wasn't able to attend due to a family matter. I'm going to allow him to go first on behalf of the Canadian Wind Energy Association.

If your opening comments could be less than 10 minutes, we'd appreciate that.

The Environment

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the environment minister has also announced his regulatory targets will now be delayed until after Copenhagen.

Will the government agree to bring Bill C-311, the climate change accountability act, back to the House before Copenhagen so that Canada does not show up in the negotiations completely empty-handed? What will it take for the government to finally realize that investing in the environment and renewable energy is actually good for the economy?

Business of Supply--Opposition Motion

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on this point of order because it does have to do with the NDP supply day tomorrow, on Bill C-311.

I would say, first, that I have listened to the government House leader's points about his belief that this would require unanimous consent, but I would point out that we are bringing this forward as a supply day motion, of course, and that within this motion there is still a vote to take place. So, on our supply day we are bringing forward the contents of this bill, because we do think it is an urgent matter, but that in no way negates the need to have a vote on our supply day motion, which of course will take place.

I would point out that we do believe this motion is in order because opposition parties have always been given quite a lot of latitude to propose whatever motion they want so long as it is written in a regular form and as a regular motion.

Page 724 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice by Marleau and Montpetit, first edition, because that is the one we are dealing with, states that:

The Standing Orders give Members a very wide scope in proposing opposition motions on Supply days and, unless the motion is clearly and undoubtedly irregular (e.g., where the procedural aspect is not open to a reasonable argument), the Chair does not intervene.

I would suggest that the motion is worded in a regular way and simply proposes to do things that have, in fact, been done in this place from time to time on previous occasions under closure or time allocation or by unanimous consent. I do believe that because this is part of our supply day, we do have greater latitude in terms of what we choose to bring forward. Certainly the basic tenet and principle of the House, taking a vote, will be very much a part of this process, and so, Mr. Speaker, I would urge you to see that this motion we propose to bring forward tomorrow is in order and that the House be allowed to debate the motion and to vote on the motion as we normally would do with any other supply day motion.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a different point of order.

I am rising in regard to a supply motion that is on notice in the name of the member for Thunder Bay—Superior North and it reads as follows:

That Bill C-311, An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change, be deemed reported from committee without amendment, deemed concurred in at report stage and deemed read a third time and passed.

I point out that what this motion is proposing can only be done by unanimous consent. Page 625 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice states that:

The practice of giving every bill three separate readings derives from an ancient parliamentary practice which originated in the United Kingdom.

This leads us to Standing Order 71 which states:

Every bill shall receive three...readings, on different days, previously to being passed.

It goes on and mentions the exception:

On urgent or extraordinary occasions, a bill may be read twice or thrice, or advanced two or more stages in one day.

That does not mean that a motion can cover several stages with limited debate.

As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, the common urgency when bills are advanced two or more stages in one day is when back-to-work legislation is required. You will also know that even under those circumstances the rules do not allow for the advancement proposed by this supply motion.

The best we can do to expedite legislation in an emergency situation and without the unanimous consent of the House is to offer a motion that considers each stage separately with a separate vote. The House can only move on to the next stage when it concludes the previous stage.

In the case of back-to-work legislation, the House sits beyond the ordinary hour of daily adjournment and does not adjourn until each stage is dealt with by adopting separate motions, one for each stage.

This supply motion is proposing that we deal with committee stage, report stage and then third reading stage all at once with one motion and only after a few hours of debate. While I recognize that this has been done many times before by way of unanimous consent, we cannot consider this to be a precedent.

On page 502 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice and in citation 14 of Beauchesne's, the case is made that, “Nothing done by unanimous consent constitutes a precedent”.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I submit that this motion is out of order.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Turk and Dr. Hyndman, you both have testified that there would be monumental cost implications for your respective fossil fuel sectors if we had to meet the targets in Bill C-311.

Those targets, by the way, are not invented by the NDP, they are the targets that the world climatologists have said we have to meet. The Canadian lead climatologists testified to us a week ago that these are the bare minimum targets that we have to meet. That's why they're chosen.

An independent assessment of coal-fired power in Alberta and also in Ontario has shown that coal could readily be replaced by 2020 by affordable proven renewable technologies.

When we talk about cost, the thing that troubles me when the fossil fuel industry and the government talk about the cost of reducing greenhouse gases, they talk about balancing with the environmental impact. But what they fail to talk about is the cost to health and environment of the NOx, the SOx, the particulate, and the heavy metals associated with the fossil fuel industry. The cost about to be imposed on the consumers of Alberta is 100% of the cost of a massive power line to send coal-fired power expansion to southern Alberta and for the expansion of power plants.

I would like your comment on that. It sounds more like it's about the sustainability of the fossil fuel industry as opposed to a sustainable supply of transportation and home heating and electricity for Canadians. It sounds to me that it's far more about a narrow analysis of what the implications might be for the fossil fuel industry if we don't continue to subsidize and downgrade our standards.

Perhaps you both could answer that.

Dr. Hyndman, you mentioned that it would be a great bar to the continued upgrading of fuel in Alberta. Yet the very reason why all the upgraders have been cancelled in Alberta is because the Government of Canada chose to fast-track the approval of pipelines so that the product can be processed in the United States. So I'm seeing that as a bit of a specious argument.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to have another Albertan at the table.

Mr. Hyndman and Mr. Turk, I appreciate your interventions, wisdom, and guidance here.

Through your associations and industries, when it comes to discussions, whether they're within the industry, with the government, or at an international level, you're constantly going through a series of negotiations. Whether it's negotiations for acquisitions, negotiations dealing with industry challenges, negotiations with landowners, or negotiations with government, there's constantly a set of negotiations.

As we prepare for Copenhagen and as we prepare our country for the discussions with our largest trading partner--a trading partner with whom we have integrated markets, as has been discussed already, whether it's our energy or consumer markets--does it make sense to any of you that we would play our negotiating hand out before those negotiations basically even start? That is what Bill C-311 would do. It would be the equivalent of playing Texas hold'em and showing everybody at the table our two cards.