Bill S-3 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act

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 the Minister of Natural Resources with prescribed information respecting the shipment or importation of energy-using products;
(d) provide for the authority to prescribe as energy-using products manufactured products, or classes of manufactured products, that affect or control energy consumption;
(e) broaden the scope of the labelling provisions; and
(f) broaden the scope of the Minister’s report.

Energy Efficiency Act

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

moved that Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure rise today to speak to a bill that will help Canadian families from coast to coast reduce their energy consumption, and in the long run, reduce their energy bills.

The introduction of Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act, is just one more way our Conservative government is helping Canadian families get through these challenging economic times.

Not only would the bill affect the pocketbooks of Canadian families, it would also be good for the environment. We all know that a global recession has gripped the world at a time when people are already struggling with the challenges of climate change. The bill today took shape before the global economic downturn began. Our focus then, which was saving energy, using energy more efficiently and developing clean energy, was driven primarily by environmental concerns and the desire to reduce energy consumption and the cost of that.

Today circumstances have changed, but I believe Bill S-3 is relevant because of its potential economic benefits.

The legislation can help Canadians save money as they contribute to a better environment. For that reason, we in the House have a responsibility to give it our approval. I hope opposition members will join with our government as we help Canadian families reduce their energy consumption and energy costs.

As I pointed out, this is a time of extraordinary global economic uncertainty. In Canada, to this point, we have been comparatively lucky. We have fared far better than most other countries, but times are still very difficult for many Canadian businesses and for many people who have lost their jobs.

I am proud that our Conservative government is taking immediate action by taking the right steps to help revitalize local economies and to preserve and create jobs across the country. Canada's economic action plan will deliver roughly $40 billion in economic stimulus across Canada over the next two years, supporting both job creation and economic activity.

All Canadians support these swift actions and this swift reaction by our government. These actions will stimulate our economy now and will also strengthen our nation's already strong economic fundamentals. They will ensure that Canada is positioned for even greater prosperity in the future.

I ask members of the House to complete the second reading of Bill S-3 expeditiously so Canadians can quickly receive and apply the benefits of this important legislation.

The bill is called An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act, and it deals with that. Energy efficiency is probably the easiest, most affordable and most effective way for families and businesses across the country alike to reduce energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Whether it is installing a programmable thermostat to turn the heat down when we are not at home, or replacing an inefficient motor at a plant, we start saving right away. We start saving energy and money and we contribute toward saving the environment. These benefits would start right away and they would continue to grow month after month and year after year.

Energy efficiency also helps create and secure jobs for Canadians, and that is a vital consideration at this time of economic uncertainty. As soon as we decide to improve the insulation of our homes or to install new energy efficient windows or doors, we create and protect the jobs of thousands of Canadians who do that work and who manufacture those products.

Canadians understand energy efficiency. That can be seen from the remarkable public response to our Conservative government's eco-energy home retrofit program. That is why this morning, the minister announced an additional $300 million to extend this popular and successful program for another two years.

I think we will see there will be universal acceptance and enthusiasm over the extension of that program. This continued support will allow an additional 200,000 homeowners to participate in the program and to reduce their energy costs. By doing that, it will also generate about $2.4 billion in economic activity.

I will take a bit of time to talk about the act itself, first in general terms and then a bit more specifically.

The first Energy Efficiency Act was introduced in 1992. At that time, major appliances such as fridges, stoves, freezers and those kinds of things were a prime focus of the new legislation. The intent at that time was to ensure they were developed to be energy efficient.

Between 1990 and 2005, the use of major appliances in Canada went up by 38%. That seems like a big change, but during that same period, the total energy consumed by those same appliances went down by almost 20%. This is a simple illustration of how well the right legislation at the right time can work.

Much has changed since the original Energy Efficiency Act was introduced 17 years ago. A lot of new technologies have been developed. Consumer electronics and other common uses of energy increasingly dominate our lives. As a result, we still need some guidance and careful regulation on the responsible use and conservation of energy.

Bill S-3 would give the Government of Canada the means to ensure the Energy Efficiency Act continues to meet its objectives, with standards, regulations and labelling requirements that are in tune with today's marketplace and technological realities.

In fact, these amendments would make the Energy Efficiency Act itself more efficient. For example, and I will go through this a little later, it will be made clear hat standards can be prescribed and applied to classes of products rather than individual products.

This new, efficient and comprehensive approach will greatly reduce the time and effort that now must be spent on updating regulations for individual products as they enter the market one by one. This new approach will also be important with respect to Canada's efforts to reduce the amount of standby power consumption; that is the energy that is consumed by everyday products like televisions, microwaves, CD players, battery chargers, coffee makers and so many other appliances, even when they are not turned on.

These amendments would also provide the authority to regulate products that would affect or control energy consumption, including windows, doors and thermostats. Therefore, it not only to deal with the products that consume energy themselves, but also the products that affect or control energy consumption.

Bill S-3 would also enable improvements to the energy rating labels that would appear on products to ensure Canadians would have easy and comprehensible access to the information they need to make smart choices when shopping for products that consume energy.

I will quickly go through the bill. It is a short bill that comes from the Senate. It will do those things I mentioned before, such as clarifying the classes of energy using products that may be established based on their common characteristics. We see that In clause 1. Those kinds of common characteristics would be things like the intended use of the product, or the conditions under which the products are normally used. There is an attempt to try to put classes together rather than having to deal with each individual product and then having to regulate every individual product that comes into the country.

Another section of the bill will deal with dealers and their responsibilities. It will restrict them in being able to ship an energy-using product from one province to another unless the product itself complies with the energy efficiency standards and the product or packages labelled are in accordance with the regulations. There will be some control on where these products are sent and a certainty that they fit into the regulatory structure in place.

Dealers are required, and we would expect they would be obligated, to provide information. This bill lays out in one or two of its sections the information dealers would be required to provide on the products. It talks about the manner and the form of the information that needs to be provided. It talks also about the fact that dealers will have to retain these documents for a period of time and that those documents would be available to allow the minister and the government to verify the accuracy and completeness of the information provided through it.

The biggest change probably is in clause 5 where it says that the governor in council can prescribe as an energy-using product any manufactured product or class of manufactured products that is designed to operate using electricity, oil, natural gas, or any other form or source of energy, or that affects or controls energy consumption. This is fairly broad-reaching in its application.

There are sections that deal with prescribing standards and labelling and what types of labels are going to be required on these products. It broadens the ability of the government to direct labelling, to make the labels very specific.

Also at the end of the legislation are two sections that deal with the requirements to report. The minister will have two areas that he or she will be required to report.

First, once every three years a report will compare the standards we have established to the standards in the provinces, in Mexico, the United States or individual states throughout the United States so people can see exactly the level of the requirements.

Second, within four years after the day on which this section comes into force, the minister will be required to demonstrate the extent to which energy efficiency standards have been prescribed under this act for all energy-using products in our country.

It is a fairly broad bill but, again, it will reach across a number of areas.

When the Energy Efficiency Act was introduced in 1992, it broke new ground. It allowed Canada, at that time, to set some of the highest energy efficiency standards in the world.

Bill S-3 would ensure that our regulatory regime would continue to meet those high standards and it would help Canada lead the way for the world, all the while saving Canadians money.

Our efforts to make our homes and businesses more energy efficient will also make substantial contributions to our long-term energy security and to the environment.

I have no reason to doubt that hon.. members will join with me in agreeing that these reasons, both individually and together, are more than sufficient for all of us to support the bill.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, the hon. member is quite right. Nothing in the bill should cause us to question the principles contained therein. Energy efficiency should be a fundamental issue not only in environmental terms but in economic terms as well. This, unfortunately, the government has failed to understand. It is fine to pass laws and support principles, such as those in S-3. However, a look at the latest budget presented a few months ago by the Conservative government reveals that it completely misses the point on energy efficiency. We must remember the Obama plan invests six times more per capita in energy efficiency than does the federal government's recent budget.

Does the member not agree with the members on this side of the House? It is not simply a matter of passing laws and regulations. Tax measures must be put in place to support the proposed regulations. What does he think of the Obama plan proposed to the south, which invests six times more in energy efficiency per capita than this government's economic stimulus plan?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, we are trying to bring a reform to an act that was tabled almost 20 years ago. The member is talking about some things outside the act. It is important to understand that the objective in the bill is to eliminate the least efficient energy-using products from our marketplace and replace them with products that are more energy efficient, that will save Canadians money and that will improve the environment. That is the intent of the bill.

It begins a process and continues the process that the government has had in place in its commitment to the environment and energy efficiency.

We could talk about the $1 billion clean energy fund that has been put in place by the government. This government does not have to apologize to anybody for its commitment to these issues.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join the debate. I will ask the parliamentary secretary a few questions.

Why does he keep repeating that this is a series of modifications to over 20 years of statutory law when, in fact, these amendments were proposed under the government's own clean air act some short 8 to 12 months ago? Why is he not repeating that the modifications to the Energy Efficiency Act were censored? Why is he not telling Canadians that when these measures were incorporated in the government's clean air act under the previous minister, the government, not liking the end result of the complete reconfiguration of the clean air act, which was a climate change response for Canada, prorogued Parliament and killed the clean air act to avoid bringing these changes to bear? Why did it take a Liberal senator to reintroduce these measures in the Senate to strengthen Canada's Energy Efficiency Act?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Actually, Mr. Speaker, the member is right that these amendments were first proposed 18 months ago. Obviously, since then we have had an election and that means new legislation must be brought back. When it was brought in, there were very few objections to it. The government has taken a look at it, decided it is an important part of our mandate, so we have moved ahead with it as a bill, as something that we should support.

In the speech I gave a few minutes ago, we are encouraging the opposition members to join with us, in a spirit of collaboration, to get the bill passed as quickly as possible, to bring in these amendments, so that Canadians can benefit from energy efficiency. The environment could also benefit from the changes that would be made through the amendments in the act.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for introducing this exciting addition to our environmental initiative. Our former Minister of the Environment is in the House with us and we have had great success with our present environment minister, leading the way to practical results.

As we have indicated, one of the most efficient ways to reduce our energy consumption is by the small, incremental, cost-saving measures that we saw on Saturday across the world, with everybody shutting down their lights for an hour. People understand that everybody has a role to play.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague, how can Canadians take advantage of this offer that is being extended through the Energy Efficiency Act amendments?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, maybe I should talk a little bit about how we got to this point.

There has been a strong effort by Natural Resources Canada to give priority through the legislation to products that are currently covered by similar legislation of other major trading partners, so we have strong coherence among the different partners involved in this activity, the provinces, the federal government, the United States, which of course is an important trading partner.

The changes being made are really good for Canadians. A study has shown that there will be no net cost to the producers in this country. They will be able, through the changes being made in the bill, to recover any costs that might be accrued because of the changes in regulation. That is a positive thing for Canadians. They can go ahead with it. They can support the legislation, and in the end, they are the ones who will save money.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill S-3 broadens the regulatory parameters of the Energy Efficiency Act. It remains to be seen how much they will be implemented. The amendments could, for example, make it possible to set high standards for vehicle emissions in order to improve their energy efficiency or establish eco-energy labelling for vehicles, as the Bloc has been requesting for years.

Apart from the updating of certain regulations, how much does the government want to do under this bill in order to really improve energy efficiency in Canada and Quebec?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the bill is far reaching in its effect and its impact across our country for Canadians. I will just go over it quickly.

The amendments to the act would clarify that a standard can be established for classes of products, not just individual products. That would improve the administration of the act. It would expand the scope of products that would be covered by authorizing the development of standards for those products, and that covers everything that affects energy use, not just those who use energy or produce it. It would more closely control interprovincial shipments once standards are enacted and it would certainly lay out energy efficiency labelling in a new way that has not been laid out in the past.

The bill is far-reaching. We think it would do the job in terms of bringing energy efficiency even more strongly to Canada than the original act did. I should maybe mentioned that the objective of the original Energy Efficiency Act was to try to eliminate the least efficient energy using products on the market, and it seems to have worked very well. It has had a direct impact on the reduction of atmospheric emissions and certainly we continue to move forward in that direction.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to know specifically whether the government is giving itself the regulatory means. Specifically, what programs does it intend to implement in order to have a real energy efficiency policy that looks promising when it comes to climate change and would generally help Canadians save energy? We need something concrete. If he wants to provide tools to do this, what specifically are the government’s intentions today?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Clearly, Mr. Speaker, we are asking the opposition to join with us to pass this legislation so we can begin to put that framework in place. I think the best thing the member could do is to take a look back at what happened with the original Energy Efficiency Act. It was put in place in order to regulate the energy use in a number of areas. It particularly dealt with those appliances and those products that were not energy efficient.

Therefore, I would think that everyone here would probably agree that the act has worked very well in removing a lot of those products from the market, allowing new products to be developed and come to the market. However, the argument that I made earlier is that technology has changed, so we need to move ahead and that is what the bill does.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Nipissing—Timiskaming, Industry; the hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, Foreign Affairs; and the hon. member for Etobicoke Centre, Ukraine.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to this bill to amend the Energy Efficiency Act.

It is interesting to follow the parliamentary secretary after his remarks and his responses to questions with a couple of fundamental facts for Canadians to understand. First, this bill is actually being sponsored by the leader of the government in the Senate, but of course the critic there is hon. Grant Mitchell, a Liberal senator who has been driving this through the Senate for some time now.

It is a bill that will make, as the parliamentary secretary has said, a number of changes to the existing Energy Efficiency Act here in Canada. It will, in effect, broaden the scope of the government's ability to regulate consumer products that use energy, which in and of itself is a good thing.

The fundamental challenge, the theme I am going to come back to, about this bill and the amendments to the Energy Efficiency Act is that they are now being presented completely and utterly in isolation. They are presented in isolation of a climate change plan for the country. They are presented in isolation from fiscal structures in the country that may or may not be driving energy efficiency because we all know that energy efficiency and a carbon constrained future, with the reduction of greenhouse gases, is a major and massive competitive factor that Canada is now pursuing.

We are in a globally highly sought after race which many jurisdictions want to win, and that is the race to better and higher energy efficiency standards for our production processes, for the services we render, and for the way in which the government procures its goods and services.

There is yet another missing link in this package. How do these energy efficiency measures connect with a comprehensive innovative strategy for the future of Canada? How do they connect to the existing fiscal measures that are in place? How do they connect to the government's overall program expenditures? How do they connect to the government's own procurement system, having watched the green procurement regime of the previous government disappear under this government?

How is it connected to the government's own energy efficient audit system for Canadian homeowners which has been seriously undermined and weakened? How does it connect to the government's new short-term funding for the building of decks and patios to try to stimulate the economy? How does it connect to the standards by which stimulus money is being invested in Canadian society? What is the matrix here that the government is bringing to bear on billions of dollars of necessary stimulus spending? How do these connect?

It is all so passing strange that the government has been mounting for months, now a campaign, the publicity and communications campaign, to tell Canadians that it is a red tape buster or, in the case of energy efficiency and climate change, a green tape buster. The Minister of Transport, for example, regularly talks about being the accountability guy, the efficiency guy.

Why is it, surreptitiously, that just last Friday afternoon the Government of Canada, the Conservatives, tabled an outrageous document which lists hundreds of exceptions for environmental assessment provisions in this country claiming that these have to be removed, these standards for environmental assessment have to be removed because, of course, they will impede, the government suggests, stimulus investment in the Canadian economy.

How do we square this? On the one hand, we have one document that says we have to do away with environmental assessment, and yet now we have a new series of amendments to the Energy Efficiency Act which say that businesses are going to have to abide by a whole new suite of energy efficiency standards.

Is not this suite of energy efficiency amendments yet more red tape being tabled by the Conservative Party, or really is the Conservative Party being disingenuous, being deliberately misleading with the Canadian people about whether environmental assessment is in fact an impediment to getting important stimulus investment out the door?

However, it is worse than that. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities told us there already exists over $13 billion of so-called shovel-ready projects that have been environmentally assessed. So why is it that the government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth? Which story are Canadians supposed to believe?

I think what we are seeing here is the end result of three and a half years of non-stop lurching by the Conservative Party when it comes to energy efficiency and the climate change crisis. It is jumping literally from ice floe to ice floe as the Arctic thaws at breakneck speed.

There is no climate change plan in this country. There is no more Turning the Corner plan. Everything has evaporated into thin air. Instead of actually stopping the nonsense, stopping the lurching from one communications campaign to another over the past three and a half years on the climate change crisis, the government is introducing these minor but important changes to the Energy Efficiency Act and expecting Canadians to believe these amendments constitute a climate change plan. They do not.

There is absolutely no doubt now; it is conclusive. Canada has abandoned the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, although the government does not have the guts to stand up and say it.

It is the only international treaty in existence on the planet today to deal with atmospheric carrying capacity and the climate change crisis. There is no other. For any government that unilaterally changes the baseline year, for example, from 1990 to 2006, which is also part of the government's communications campaign, the universe only started in 2006. In terms of everything that came before, such as Prime Minister Mulroney's work, Mr. Stanfield's work, Mr. Trudeau's work, the work of successive governments, in the communications campaign none of that existed before.

Therefore, in 2006, the government came and unilaterally changed the terms of conditions of our climate change obligations, and instead of coming clean and telling the world, the international community and Canadians, that it was abandoning the only international agreement there is, it bobbed, weaved, lurched and did what it did best. It communicated with shock and awe. It tried to stop the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act by sending a minister into a committee of the other place, making a fool of himself by actually putting up fictitious numbers and then getting caught. Like the schoolchild who gets caught cheating on the exam, the minister was really reminiscent of a child who has an answer for everything except for the fact that he got cheating on the exam.

Therefore, we have a situation now where this is completely incoherent. It attaches to nothing. Eleven independent groups have examined the government's previous Turning the Corner environmental climate change plan. Each and every single group that has examined the government's plan has said it is not real. It cannot possibly achieve the targets that the government says it will achieve.

Is that why, for example, we have heard no talk of this Turning the Corner plan in months since the last election campaign?

Is that why the only thing the Government of Canada can put in the window on climate change is a so-called dialogue with the United States, a dialogue I described as a dialogue of the deaf?

Canada is now apparently entering dialogue and negotiation with the United States on an appropriate so-called continental climate change response, but we have no plan.

Who in their right mind, in any organization—and I defy the Conservatives to name one organization in any sector of Canadian society, business, non-governmental, civil society, government, anywhere—would purport to be entering into negotiations with a sovereign state like the United States that excels at negotiations, and have no plan?

I think the only group that is purporting to foist this on the Canadian people is the Conservative Party of Canada. How can one enter into negotiations without a plan? One cannot.

We now have a situation where these amendments to the Energy Efficiency Act are being put in the window as window dressing, just like the government's environmental enforcement provisions in another act, in order to masquerade or to cover the fact that there is no climate change plan for this country, over and over again. I do not know what it is going to take.

Even the government cloaking itself in the flag of Obama is not working, because Canadians know they should not be taking their climate change strategy and their plan out of Washington. We should not be taking the design for a cap and trade system out of Washington. We should not be taking the price of a tonne of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in carbon dioxide equivalent measurement out of Washington.

We should not be abandoning the more than 174 countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and wait for Washington. We should not be waiting for 535 congressmen and congresswomen in Washington who have the extremely difficult task of delivering up a cap and trade system and a renewable energy system to President Obama.

This bill to amend the Energy Efficiency Act does not a climate change plan make. It is a simple series of obvious amendments to deal with the fact that the government has no plan.

One of the important provisions of the bill, I will say, is this: It will require that the minister compare Canada's energy efficiency standards to those of the United States and Mexico and report to Parliament here every three years. That is important because of the preponderance of white goods that are now being manufactured in a continental perspective in Mexico.

That is important. It does increase the scope and flexibility of the authority the government can bring for more effective regulation to govern energy consumption. That is a good thing.

We have had this debate. It was at the Canada's Clean Air Act hearings, the hearings of the special legislative committee. We spent hours, for months, sitting until midnight, working and working harder yet again to achieve a proper outcome for the country.

What was the end result? The Prime Minister took his soccer ball and went home with it. He prorogued Parliament. He did not like the outcome of the work of parliamentarians. He was not prepared to abide by the majority wishes of this House and took his ball and went home with it.

We have now been set back at least three and a half years, probably five years, in dealing with the climate change crisis. Once again, Energy Efficiency Act amendments do not a climate change plan make.

Why is the government unable to tell us how the knee bone connects to the thigh bone, or the hip bone connects to the thigh bone? It is incapable of telling us because it has not done its homework.

When it came into power in 2006, it set loose a series of ministers who were two- and three-men wrecking crews. They disassembled the climate change programming that was in place. They cut over $5 billion from climate change programming.

Here are some of the ironic aspects of those changes.

Just a month ago, the Prime Minister's own National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy said that we need a commercial energy efficiency investment program. In 2006, the government killed a program called the commercial building retrofit program because it was brought in by a former government. How could it possibly be good if it was not aligned to the speak-think of the Conservative Party?

The wind power production incentive, the WPPI, as it was called, brought in and providing good fiscal stimulus for our transition to a carbon-constrained future, is gone. The government did not like it. It did not belong to the Conservatives. It could not be Conservative speak-think. The Conservatives could not sell it as theirs. Everything that came before was bad.

The renewable power production incentive, important for solar panels, wave technology, tidal energy sources, biomass and other potentials, is effectively gone. It does not exist anymore.

There is yet another one. All Canadians can see the government's silly ads on television right now about tax credits and picking which one applies to oneself, as if that makes a climate change policy. Forewarned by the official opposition and its own officials at Environment Canada and Finance Canada, the government of tax credits brought in a tax-deductible transit pass.

Just a month ago, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development chided the government, or worse than chided, I think, took the government to serious task about the fact that it claimed it would reduce tens of thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. It cost $637 million, and in the words of the commissioner, had no effect on reducing greenhouse gases. Worse, it had no effect on driving up ridership in our public transit systems. Instead of taking the $637 million and investing it as it should have in the capital needs, the infrastructure needs of public transit systems across this country, it chose to use yet another tax credit to try to convince Canadians it was the right thing to do.

It is no wonder that our allies and countries with whom we have been doing business for 50 years on energy and environmental issues are scratching their heads and wondering in disbelief what has happened to the country of Canada when it comes to environment, energy and economic opportunities.

The government brought in a $1.5 billion ecotrust. Canadians remember that one. It was during the last Parliament.

We had the Minister of the Environment at the committee and we asked him to tell us why the government put $1.5 billion into a trust fund. He said provinces were drawing it down and it was being used for greenhouse gas emission reductions. We asked him if he could illustrate just one project where the money was spent. The minister could not. We then asked him how many tonnes of greenhouse gases have been reduced as a result of that fund, or what metrics were forced on the provinces, what standards he told the provinces they ought to abide by in spending the money. It turns out that there are no metrics or standards.

It is no surprise that this bill on amending the Energy Efficiency Act cannot be seen in isolation. It is being presented in isolation, but it cannot be seen in isolation. It is no surprise that it does not connect to programmatic spending or fiscal stimuli. It does not connect at all to our climate change plan because we do not have one.

Now we are drifting and waiting for Washington. I think it is a shameful thing for Canada to abandon its sovereignty in preparing a climate change strategy for this country such that we can be good international citizens and come to the negotiating table in Copenhagen with clean hands, something that will be very important as we seek the cooperation of the world to achieve an implementable climate change agreement for 2012 and beyond.

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

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague mentioned homework, the question that came to mind was: What has the government been doing for the last three years? All of the government's environmental efforts appear to boil down to a Senate bill on energy efficiency products.

If the government were a student, it would go to its teacher and say that the dog ate its homework. What has the government been doing for the last three years?

I remember that when the Liberals were in government and we spoke about regulation to help the environment, members of the Canadian Alliance and now the Conservative Party would say that regulation was a tax. How can the government say, on the one hand, that other parties want to raise taxes when they want to regulate and improve the environment and yet it brings in a bill that is aimed at regulating. Will it call that a tax?

What if a company were to say that this will hurt its bottom line and it will need to shut down a plant or two? What will the government say then? Will it reverse itself? It seems to lack direction on the environment. It says one thing on one issue and something completely opposite on another environment issue. Where is the government going?

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is very difficult to know where the government is going. My colleague is absolutely right. As I said earlier, it is lurching from ice floe to ice floe.

It portrays that the government does not understand, the Conservative Party does not understand, its Reform roots do not understand, its common sense revolutionaries do not understand that we can and must today integrate the environment, the economy and energy, and that we can give rise to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are available to us. They are there for the taking.

Different jurisdictions and different provinces have stopped waiting for leadership from the federal government and have simply gone it alone. Quebec, Ontario, B.C. and Manitoba did what many states had to do in the United States under the government's sister republican party government in Washington for eight years.

I cannot figure it out. I have no divining rod but I think it is because fundamentally the Conservatives just do not get it. I am not surprised, given the Prime Minister's 20 years on record as denying the existence of climate change.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Minister of State (Science and Technology)]

Mr. Speaker, I listened the entire time while he did his very best to mislead Canadians, if I may say that, or attempt to, by forgetting some of the key issues that this government has brought forward. I do not have time to mention them all. The member asked for just one.

I would like to remind the member that we brought back the eco-energy program because the one under the Liberals the vast majority of the money was going to administration. This Conservative government prefers to spend money on action.

We did tell the Liberals before that the $12 billion in their plan to purchase clean air credits from foreign countries was not actually a plan that would help green up the Canadian environment.

I have already mentioned to the member before about the first tidal turbine put in the water off the coast of B.C. by the Conservative government. I guess the Liberals in 13 years could not get that done.

He asked for one example, so I will give him just one example of the hundreds of millions of dollars this government has given out to researchers in this country. It gave $9.1 million, and the member is not listening but I guess that is typical, to a green chemistry commercialization and research program whereby chemists can actually begin the process of removing solvents, for instance, in our pharmaceutical industry, which will decrease the waste coming out of that industry tremendously. The plan of this government is to support basic research, which is, of course, ignored by the Liberals who are more interested in talk.

I wonder if the member would simply acknowledge at least that one project that he asked for.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, of course I acknowledge the project. The problem is, however, that I asked whether the Conservative Party could name one project funded out of the $1.3 billion ecotrust moneys, which the Commissioner for the Environment and Sustainable Development said just a month ago was untraceable and which the Auditor General said was untraceable.

No one is talking about some of the other investments that are going on. We are asking for accountability and transparency.

When it comes to the question of clean air credits, once again, the ideology trumps evidence. Is that member telling us today that when President Obama goes to Copenhagen and negotiates an international trading system with the European Union and brick economies that Canada will not participate? That is what two ministers said before in committee. The problem with that is that he does not understand what he is saying. It means that if a Canada has a purely domestic cap and trade system, a very small economy, a very small trading system, it will be liquid, which dries up the cost of carbon dioxide per tonne, which means that our Canadian companies will be penalized, it will be more expensive and we will be less competitive, not only vis-à-vis the United States and Mexico, in a NAFTA context, but internationally as well.

Here is the problem. There is no climate change plan, no carbon pricing, no cap and trade system and no regulatory system. We have been waiting for three and a half years and there is nothing but shock on all communications, and Canadians know it. The government has been dancing and lurching from one to another trying to make something look real but it is not.

I encourage the member to use his influence, go to the cabinet and to his colleagues and ask for a time out. We need a climate change plan for this country and we need to know what it looks like. There is nothing here. We definitely need it and we need it as soon as possible.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member took part in the study in a previous Parliament of Bill C-30 which included some of the measures that are proposed in this bill on energy efficiency. However, what I would like to ask him about are the things that we do not see in this bill.

I know he worked with other opposition parties and members on the committee to make considerable improvements to what the Conservatives called the so-called clean air act, which it clearly was not when it started but by the time it had been amended and revised considerably by the committee, it was actually beginning to look not so bad.

I wonder if the member would like to comment on what has been left out here, what we do not see here.

He talked a bit about ecoENERGY which was gutted in the recent budget. Perhaps he would like to comment again on what is missing in the budget in relation to energy efficiency.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the biggest and most glaring omission linked to these series of amendments is that the government, in throwing out the clean air act, which was rewritten and strengthened, actually threw out a very sophisticated cap and trade designed system for the country, which met with the approval of different provinces. It would have adjusted the reinvestment of resources, royalties and revenues coming from a cap and trade system in the appropriate provinces. It dealt with the question of allocation. It dealt with the question of carbon pricing. It dealt with all those things we know we will need to deal with. Why did the government do that? Why did it set us back five years at least and maybe a decade?

There is nothing here on cap and trade and yet the Conservatives keep talking about a dialogue with Washington. As I say, it is a dialogue of the deaf.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill S-3 is relatively simple. It is an act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act.

The bill's purpose is basically to update the Energy Efficiency Act by improving the effectiveness of the regulations. The nuance here is that I did not say by improving energy efficiency but rather the effectiveness of the regulations by allowing classes of products to be established instead of simple products The bill's purpose is also to strengthen the labelling requirements and broaden the scope of the minister’s report to the House of Commons.

In view of all this, the Bloc Québécois supports Bill S-3 in principle. However, we must still criticize the Conservatives’ inaction on this file. It seems at first glance that the proposed changes are an improvement because they target unregulated products and toughen the standards for other products.

It is impossible to know, though, whether this is real progress or just the updating of standards already regularly done by the Agence de l'efficacité énergétique. In other words, does this bill imply a certain amount of political leadership or is it just one update among many to standards already covered by the mission of the Agence de l'efficacité énergétique.

Whatever the case may be, even if there is progress that goes beyond business as usual, the proposed changes are still pretty minor ultimately and hardly suffice to lend any credibility to the sum total of measures taken by the Conservative government, which still fails to realize how urgent it is to fight climate change.

Several changes are proposed in the bill. If we quickly go through the clauses one by one, there is the definition of a few terms: interprovincial trade and importation; information to be provided by dealers; retention of documents. Then we arrive at a point, though, that is a little more interesting, that is to say, the extension of the regulatory power.

One of the main changes that Bill S-3 makes to the Energy Efficiency Act is in this clause—clause 5—which changes the regulatory power of the Governor in Council. Thanks to these regulations, the Governor in Council will henceforth be able to target a certain class of products: products that affect or control energy consumption.

The labelling part might also be of interest depending on how far the minister wants to take it. In addition, there are reports to Parliament, reports on the establishment of standards, and the clauses on when it comes into force.

On the whole, there is not much in the bill in the way of measures to promote energy efficiency in everyday living. The bill focuses more on regulatory improvements that can give the government more power. But will this government use that power to make energy use more efficient?

Even though Bill S-3 broadens the regulatory parameters of the Energy Efficiency Act, it is not yet known to what extent that increased regulatory authority will be used. For example, the amendments could lead to the establishment of strict vehicle emissions standards to improve energy efficiency or the introduction of mandatory energy efficiency labelling on vehicles, something the Bloc Québécois has been calling for for a number of years.

In addition, if it is done properly, the standardization of labelling and energy efficiency criteria could make it easier in the long run to establish carbon markets. Unfortunately, given what the Conservative government has done since it came to power, we doubt its goodwill when it comes to the environment. However, even though in keeping with its exclusive authority over trade, the federal government is authorized to set energy efficiency standards, the Bloc Québécois will see to it that Quebec is not unfairly penalized.

One day, the government decided to turn the corner, but where was it headed? We still wonder. The Conservative government said in a press release that the proposed amendments to the Energy Efficiency Act were based on the Government of Canada's action plan to fight climate change. That strategy was introduced in October 2006, when the government released a notice of intent to regulate air emissions. The notice of intent was followed in April 20007 by the regulatory framework for air emissions, which indicated that work had started on a series of amendments to the energy efficiency regulations. Of course, the government has taken action on a number of products I could list, but they have fallen far short of expectations.

In fact, there were reactions to Bill S-3. The bill has not attracted a lot of media attention, and reactions reported tend to be low key. The industry welcomed the proposed regulations with a shrug. A spokesperson for Sony Canada stated that it would have little effect on the firm's electronic equipment for the general public. According to comments by Candace Haymen in an email, all Sony TVs consume less than one watt of energy in standby mode, and Sony is constantly developing new technologies to improve its products' energy efficiency. Reaction by environmental groups was equally reserved. According to Julia Langer of the World Wildlife Fund, Canada lags in matters of energy efficiency well behind most of the OECD countries. She said that the government must impose tighter restrictions rather than administrative measures on industry if it is determined to save energy. She said it was not bad, but that they were impatient to have real regulations banning products that were not energy efficient.

The global nature of the regulatory authority provided for in the bill also attracted our attention. The bill would amend the Energy Efficiency Act to allow for the regulation of products that affect or control energy consumption. That could, one day, lead to the establishment of regulations limiting the consumption of water by household appliances and plumbing fixtures such as dishwashers, shower heads and toilets by making reduced flow equipment mandatory, as its use affects energy consumption

Up to now, however, in its famous green plan, the Conservative government has shown that, even in the establishment of greenhouse gas reduction targets, it still prefers the oil companies to the environment, advocating an intensity reduction approach over absolute reduction targets, thus encouraging the industry, whose greenhouse gas emissions have grown by nearly 50% since 1990, to continue its polluting development.

Although strengthening energy efficiency legislation is a positive thing in itself, strong and integrated measures are needed to produce tangible results. Only real political will can achieve this, something sorely lacking among the Prime Minister's troops.

It must also be said that the government's plan is ineffective. The government released its greenhouse gas regulatory framework on April 26, 2007. The plan is based on reductions in emission intensity, in other words, emission reduction for each unit of goods produced regardless of the number of goods produced. The reductions planned in this regulatory framework are 6% of the intensity based on the 2006 level for the first three years of its application, that is, from 2008 to 2010. For the years following, the subsequent annual reduction would be 2% of the intensity.

According to Conservative government projections, which, in the opinion of the national round table on the environment and the economy, are probably exaggerated, this intensity reduction in connection with other measures, that is environmental programs, should make it possible to stabilize Canadian emissions between 2010 and 2012 and result in an absolute 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2006 levels by 2020. As I said, it was probably exaggerated.

Although Canada has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions over the 2008-12 period by an average of 6% in comparison with 1990, it plans to limit the growth of its emissions and start reducing them only at the end of this period. In 2012, therefore, Canada will probably emit more than 180 metric tonnes over the target it set for itself in the Kyoto protocol. In plain English, even if the optimistic forecasts turn out to be right, the Conservative plan will not achieve the levels required under the Kyoto protocol until more than 10 years after its deadline.

I should say as well that this plan is very unfair to Quebec. Quebec has tried very hard. For example, a Quebec aluminum plant that has already reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 15% in comparison with 1990 will still have to accept the same intensity reductions as a tar sands plant in Alberta whose emissions have doubled since 1990. In addition, plans like this based on intensity targets will not utilize the full potential of a carbon exchange in Montreal. Companies will be allowed to reduce the intensity of their emissions without regard for their total emissions, and that reduces the attraction of the carbon credit market. This means that Quebec’s manufacturing industry will be doubly penalized because it will not benefit as much from its efforts as it would have under a system with absolute targets.

We know now that the dinosaurs and the Conservatives co-existed—a certain secretary told us so last week—and knowing that oil is a fossil fuel, we might expect that there would be a bit of the Conservatives in oil. Sure enough, their program to reduce greenhouse gases still favours the oil companies. Climate change is one of the most important challenges facing humanity. The scientific evidence is mounting and the consequences are stunning. We must act without delay in a way that is both effective and fair.

The Bloc Québécois has long proposed a credible greenhouse gas reduction plan that is based on the polluter pays principle and that fully recognizes the efforts made since 1990. For years we have been demanding a plan to implement the Kyoto protocol, that is to say, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during the 2008-12 period by an average of 6% below the 1990 level. Unfortunately, the result of the Liberals’ inaction and the ideologically driven stubbornness of the Conservatives is that there is no chance now of fully achieving our targets under the Kyoto protocol. Far from being an excuse to give up, though, this should motivate us now to roll up our sleeves and do all we can to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible.

In addition to the measures that will reduce Quebec's dependency on oil, the Bloc Québécois is proposing a plan based on certain fundamental principles: respect for international commitments, application of the polluter-pay principle, fairness in effort required and full respect for Quebec's jurisdiction. The Bloc Québécois is therefore proposing a plan that will enable Canada to get back on track and to move as close as possible to the targets set by the Kyoto protocol by 2012. Furthermore, the plan will attempt to meet the reduction target recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to prevent climate change with irreversible consequences, that is a reduction of 25% to 40% in greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 1990 levels, by 2020.

The plan is based on: establishing reduction targets in the short and medium term, that is between 2012 and 2020, with 1990 as the reference year; the use of a territorial approach; establishing a carbon exchange in Montreal; and federal measures that the government can implement in its own areas of jurisdiction.

The territorial approach assigns, by province, targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases in Canada. Thus, every province must meet certain conditions, including agreeing to a reduction of emissions equivalent to or greater than the targets set by the government. In other words, we are talking about reduction targets based on a territorial approach and a carbon market with tradeable permits, which would benefit those who have already met their objectives.

We must have measures to reduce greenhouse gases such as stricter vehicle emission standards to improve their energy efficiency, manufacturing standards for vehicles and programs to encourage the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles. It is also important to have mandatory fuel efficiency labelling to increase awareness and to help citizens make informed choices when they must purchase appliances, vehicles or any energy consuming item. We must also improve programs for developing and converting to renewable energy.

I will close by stating that, in principle, we support this bill. However, we demand and continue to expect from this Conservative government energy measures that will decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, there was a meeting of scientists in Europe recently. They have found that the oceans are rising at twice the rate of what had been expected just two short years ago.

The ice caps in Greenland and in the Antarctic are disappearing far quicker than anybody had ever anticipated. This will have a profound impact on communities in low-lying areas as well as the temperatures of our oceans and our planet.

The government must work with other countries and attend the meeting in Copenhagen at the end of the year. In terms of moving toward Kyoto two, we must develop a system of trading where carbon has a price. We need to develop a carbon-based system where there is a price on carbon and we can use the market to bring down the emission of greenhouse gases. Could my colleague comment on that?

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, although the member did not say so, I would nevertheless like to emphasize that I believe that time is of the essence. Many scientists have been speaking out on this for the past few months and have even gone as far as saying that it is irreversible at this time. However, I would like to be more optimistic and believe that every person of goodwill and every country of goodwill must immediately make an effort.

There have been some unwarranted deliberate delays when it comes to action that could be taken to fight greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, Canada is one of the countries guilty of this and we must now take real, rigorous action to reduce greenhouse gases as much as possible.

It is clear that if we do not take action immediately, the repercussions will be catastrophic, as we have already seen. The member mentioned rapidly melting polar ice. For all practical purposes, that ice was a source of water, but it was melting at a normal pace. Now it is melting much faster. We must act quickly and stop wasting time. The fight against greenhouse gases has become an economy in itself and is encouraging people to fight together.

A carbon exchange would really allow those who are incapable of reducing their emissions quickly to enable others to install systems to save the planet as quickly as possible.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, as always, I listened closely to the member from Sherbrooke's speech. Unfortunately, we often disagree on free trade issues, as we will this evening when we vote on the shipbuilding issue. It is unfortunate that the Bloc Québécois does not support what Quebec workers want.

However, when it comes to this particular environmental issue, we are in complete agreement. I listened closely to my colleague's speech, in which he said that the Conservative government's approach leaves much to be desired. They are doing so little, but we need so much more to really address the environmental challenges of climate change.

Given that Barack Obama's administration has done so much—it has addressed the issue of household appliances with a much broader program 10 times bigger than what this bill calls for—does the member for Sherbrooke think that both the Conservative government and this bill are basically a huge failure in light of everything we have to do, as he so rightly said, to address climate change?

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, as you know, the Prime Minister is in the United States today, giving interviews to American newspapers. We know that the Conservatives are only just starting to believe that environmental problems and greenhouse gases are harmful to life on this earth. They are only just starting to believe that this might be true, since, as I said earlier, the Conservatives have said that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. The more things change, the more they stay the same. There is a huge lack of will on the Conservatives' part.

All the Prime Minister sees in what Mr. Obama is saying is the publicity it can get for him. He may be thinking he can win a majority in the next election. I am here to say he can forget about that. At present, the Prime Minister is not yet sure he can do anything, not because he does not have the capacity or the means. We can see this from what the NDP member said. Canada's investment is minimal compared to what the United States is investing. It shows that the government has an astounding lack of will to act on energy efficiency and, by the same token, greenhouse gases and climate change.

When we talked about how the Northwest Passage is opening up, we even wondered whether it did not suit the Conservatives to have a faster passage through the north, since they want to develop the natural resources there. In the final analysis, I wonder whether the Conservative government is letting things slide on greenhouse gases and energy efficiency for purely financial and economic reasons.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The member for Terrebonne—Blainville for a quick question.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the member for Sherbrooke's speech. He has a special ability to give excellent examples that help us understand what can happen. I would like to focus on what he said about the Conservatives keeping company with dinosaurs. We all know what happened to the dinosaurs: they were trapped in the ice and one day, they disappeared.

With that in mind, I have a question for my colleague. This bill is simple enough in and of itself, but to really understand it, one has to have a good grasp of the history of environmental policy. The provinces want a territorial approach. In this case, does the bill call for a territorial approach?

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Sherbrooke has one minute to answer.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, the government's regulatory framework is based on reductions in intensity that have nothing to do with territorial reductions. In this case, that is not good for Quebec.

Over a period of time, Quebec made significant reductions, especially in some industries. During that same period, Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions increased by nearly 50%. That is bad for several provinces, particularly for Quebec, which has been making a sustained effort over several years to reduce greenhouse gases significantly. It is not good for Quebec and it is not fair. Intensity targets also do not get us any closer to setting up a carbon exchange. That is not good for Quebec either. We are still waiting for the Conservative government to change its ideology and come up with measures that are better for the situation as a whole.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill S-3. It is a very important concept, but as hon. members will see from my remarks today, the bill does not go anywhere near far enough. A number of my colleagues in the House have said it is nice that we are taking some measures, but if we are to get serious about addressing pollution control and climate change, there is far more that needs to be done.

Why is energy efficiency important? Why would we even bother to bring forward amendments like this? We need to reduce our energy use. Why do we need to reduce energy use? Because most of our energy generation in Canada at this point in time, except for hydroelectricity, is fossil fuel based. Fossil fuel based power is the largest source of greenhouse gases that are emitted in Canada, and also the largest source of a number of pollutants.

Coal-fired power, which happens to be the largest source of greenhouse gases being emitted in Canada right now, is also the largest source of industrial mercury in Canada. It has been designated by the Government of Canada as being the priority substance for reduction. By getting more effective with energy use, we can reduce pollution and neurotoxins.

It provides cost savings. By reducing energy use, we save a lot of money not only to individual homeowners and business owners, but also to the Government of Canada. In this time of economic crisis when programs that should be supported are being cut left, right and centre, we could make a lot more revenue available to good programs if we cut energy use.

We can also save a lot of money, if people cut down their energy use, by building new generation facilities and transmission lines. The costs that individual homeowners, businesses and the government pay for electricity are based on the development of new generation and transmission lines, some of those transmission lines being built for export.

There is also the environmental impacts associated with the generation of electricity: the coal mines, the cooling ponds and so forth. Overall, it is a laudatory objective. The preamble of Bill S-3 states:

Whereas the Government of Canada is committed to ensuring sustained improvement in the efficient use of energy in all sectors of the Canadian economy;

I will speak to that in a minute and talk about the inadequacies of the bill in dealing with what the preamble states.

Now more than ever the federal government needs to assert its powers to trigger energy efficient measures. We can do that through environmental protection measures. By having strict environmental controls, we encourage industry to be more efficient in how it generates power and to look for ways where it can actually encourage people to retrofit their homes.

One concrete example of that is in California where Pacific Gas and Electric Company determined it made more sense rather than build a new, big, expensive generation facility, to pay people to retrofit their homes and businesses. It has been a very successful program. The end result was that they got a higher rate, but people used less power.

The Government of Canada could also use its fiscal powers. It could impose fees, a higher cost on non-energy-efficient appliances and so forth. There is a lot of market measures we could use that we are simply not using. We could use our spending power. We could put conditions on the transfer of money.

For example, we are sending billions of dollars to provincial governments and to the private sector to test carbon sequestration. We could be putting conditions on that money by saying to industry that if it agreed to phase out some of its coal-fired power plants, we would help pay for its testing of technology.

This bill, as the Conservatives' plan to tackle climate change, is a pretty small baby step in the right direction, but it falls short. The amendments mirror the amendments to the Energy Efficiency Act in Bill C-30, the clean air and climate change bill, which was approved by the environment committee in the 39th Parliament but has not been acted upon. That bill would have added a preamble to the Energy Efficiency Act to support setting continuous economy-wide improvement targets in energy efficiency in Canada, with two sections added to the Energy Efficiency Act.

The first change that would have been made would require the governor in council to prescribe energy efficient standards for all energy-using products, not just a handful, this list of five, but all energy-using products that are responsible for significant or growing energy consumption in Canada.

Second, the cabinet would be required to review all energy efficient standards within three years after they were introduced or amended in after third year thereafter. Through this review, every energy efficiency standard would have had to meet or exceed the most stringent levels found in North America.

Regrettably the bill is not that far-reaching. It is extremely limited.

The bill would delete that second requirement. There is no guarantee that the standards made would be as good as any other North American jurisdiction. This could mean that, once again, Canada could be outstripped by the United States on energy efficiency and ultimately on climate change, including setting standards for the manufacture of equipment. If we do not set higher energy standards, there is a possibility that we could not even ship our goods or sell them to the United States if it has higher standards, which President Obama is moving toward.

President Obama has directed higher efficiency standards for everyday household appliances such as dishwashers, lamps and so forth. He has directed quick, clear progress on energy efficiency. The final rules are to be in place by this August, requiring energy efficiency standards for a very lengthy list of products, three times the list offered up in Bill S-3. I will not go through the entire review, but is a very comprehensive list.

His directive also asks for his department of energy to meet all deadlines in setting energy standards and evaluate them in priority order and finish some ahead of schedule if possible.

Bill S-3 will subject a limited list of products to new energy efficiency regulations for only commercial clothes washers, dishwashers, incandescent fluorescent lamps, battery chargers and satellite set top boxes. There is no indication whether the standards released will be as stringent as those in the United States and whether there will be any mechanism to ensure Canada is a leader in energy efficiency rather than a follower.

Instead of this minimalist approach, why are we not allowing Canadians to buy the best possible energy efficient appliances? Why are we continuing to allow the sale and the manufacturing in Canada of products that are not serving Canadians? Canadians will be best served by the most efficient possible appliance. Why do we not then only enable the sale of the most efficient energy appliances or ban the sale of outdated ones that burn energy and put up costs for all Canadians?

Why not pursue innovative approaches such as what the Pembina Institute has talked about and that some American states have adopted, for example, the innovative electricity conservation option called “virtual power”. If any kind of mechanism, building or part of a building or appliance is not in use, the computer automatically shuts off that equipment. It is an incredibly innovative approach and it is time for our country to move ahead into these more innovative approaches.

Bill S-3 professes to ensure the sustained improvement in the efficient use of energy in all sectors. If we are serious about addressing energy efficiency and energy conservation in Canada, we need to tackle the single largest source of greenhouse gases. Incidentally it is also the single largest remaining source of industrial mercury emissions in Canada and across North America. That is coal-fired power plants.

Canada is criticizing the United States and China for their proposals for the expansion of the coal-fired power plants. The federal government is doing nothing in the exercise of its available powers and mandate to foster the closure of these plants at the end of their operating life. The federal government should take this action if we are really serious about energy efficiency in Canada.

The majority of coal-fired power plants have a 30% energy efficiency. Even the most efficient operate a 40% efficiency. That is a super critical plant. As far as I am aware, there is only one such plant in Canada, and that is in Alberta.

To run pollution control equipment, which we hope these plants will clean up their act and add on more pollution control equipment, they need to burn more coal. We get into this perverse cycle where in order to have energy efficiency and cost savings for the coal-fired generators, we burn more coal.

I want to offer up to the House as well some information that has come to my attention. I sought information from the government on the energy efficiency of public buildings. That is a sector where President Obama is leading. In his new stimulus package he has directed a massive energy efficiency program for all public buildings across the United States of America. We do not have that kind of stimulus package in our budget.

The information provided to me is most invaluable to the House. I have discovered that of the more than 26,000 buildings held by the Government of Canada, only 10 buildings are in the process of doing any energy efficient work whatsoever toward a LEED standard. That is reprehensible. If we are to expect the private sector, or households, or small businesses to move in the direction of energy efficiency, to turn in their older appliances and recyclables and buy more energy efficient equipment, surely the government should set the stage by example.

Environment Canada, alone, owns more than 5,000 buildings, yet only one of those buildings is in the process of being retrofitted. If we retrofitted the public buildings and saved only 1% energy use in our public facilities, we would save $3.5 million a year. If we improved the energy efficiency of our public buildings by 5%, we would save more than $18 million a year. Think of the programs for child care, for education, for seniors, for affordable housing, for environmental protection that we could benefit with $18 million a year. Essentially Canadian money is going out the stack in these government facilities.

I commend the government for bringing the bill forward. It is a nice tiny baby step forward. However, if we are to live up to what the bill says, which is improving energy efficiency in all sectors of the Canadian economy, then it is incumbent upon the government to table legislation forthwith to move us forward into this century and take real action on climate change, pollution reduction and protect Canadian health and save Canadians money.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the member's speech. I will use this opportunity to bring up a point raised by one of my constituents and ask the member if she would be supportive of it. It is related to wind energy. Wind energy in the north costs a lot more because of the difficult conditions for putting it in, accessing it, repairing it, et cetera. We want any wind regime that the Government of Canada puts in place to reflect the higher cost, otherwise it does not make it effective. If we give $5 off a Cadillac and $5 off a bicycle, it has an effect on a bicycle, but not so much on a Cadillac.

Would the member be supportive, in any wind regime, to give us more of a break in the north to make it effective there?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is my understanding that other jurisdictions have come up with remarkably innovative mechanisms to foster the move toward renewable cleaner power. Some of those are to give a higher rate for the power sold from renewable sources. However, particularly for the areas of our far north, where there are many isolated communities, and this would also apply to the northern Prairie regions where there are isolated communities, many of them first nation and Métis, it is incumbent upon the federal government to put money in to initiate these smaller distributed power centres.

One of the biggest losses to electricity is the long distribution lines, which are being fed by oil, gas or coal. A lot of dirty pollution goes out and it burns a lot of waste. It makes more sense to have localized energy production. If we are to move in that direction in some of these communities, it is incumbent upon the federal government at least to partner with either the territorial governments or some of the provincial governments, or maybe some of the first nations or even private enterprise. To move in that direction is a laudable suggestion.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my hon. seatmate for her knowledge of Bill S-3. With regard to the fabrication of appliances that are not energy efficient, should they be left up to market forces, or should they be directed by the government to manufacture energy efficient appliances?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, as the House has probably surmised by now from my interventions, I believe very much in law and order for the environment. We are talking about serious issues such as pollution control and the health of children who are severely impacted. I know studies in southern Ontario show that we have a serious problem with the health of families from the coal-fired power plants and other pollution sources.

It is time for us, the elected people, to be asserting our powers and directing the kinds of products we are manufacturing, importing and selling in our country.

Generally, under federal jurisdiction, we are left with the power over the manufacturing and import. We would set a course for Canada if we put in place much higher binding standards for equipment that is sold in Canada, whether appliances or otherwise, or the bigger sources of pollution, including automobiles.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have a very simple question for my hon. colleague. Does she not think the government ought to do a much better job to engage the public in the use of the tax credit system for initiatives that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions? How we construct our buildings can massively reduce the consumption of greenhouse gases, 70% or more of what they found in Europe and in the Far East.

The government put in a credit system for changes to people's homes. Does she not think that a wise move would be for the government to apply that credit more specifically for initiatives that could involve the change of window panes, or insulation or the use other alternative sources, such as solar, geothermal or wind to power their homes?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member's suggestion is a good one and it should be followed. We should revise our national building code to ensure that future buildings are built to the highest possible standards. Those amendments are long overdue and there should not be any choice. People should not be offered a so-called cheaper alternative.

In the jurisdiction I come from, when electricity generation was deregulated, all the costs were downloaded to the people. We think we are saving in the short run, but in the long run we are paying more.

I was very disappointed that the budget bill gave money to people so they could have the freedom to build decks or renovate their basements. Instead that stimulus package should have been directed solely at helping people to retrofit their homes. That way perhaps more money could be available to more people for energy savings.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, what would she do to mandate more energy efficiency in the automobile sector and in the airplane and other transportation sectors?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, similar to the fact that the building codes should be revised, it is regrettable that the government missed the deadline, which I understand was last December, to bring forward the new fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. Now is the time to set the stage so Canada has a bigger piece of the market. It is absolutely critical that we bring forward these standards not just for vehicles, but for rail, buses, airlines and so forth.

We absolutely need to be setting the course and directing, not just sitting back and waiting for the market forces. Clearly the market forces have not worked. There should be no further incentives to any of these industries unless they agree to comply with these standards. I know that was tried with the automobile sector under the voluntary agreement, but it does not seem to have succeeded in bringing more fuel efficient vehicles.

The only answer is we need the federal government to enact a law that will direct that new course.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, when we look at the issues of energy efficiency and we recall Bill C-30 from the previous Parliament, the so-called clean air act which contained some of these provisions, we can also recall the government talked about how it wanted to have a made in Canada plan. That was its position when it took government. Now it seems it is no longer interested in that. It has dropped that kind of phrasing. Now what it looks like is it is waiting and we are going to have a made in the U.S.A. plan.

Could she comment on what the government is doing in this regard?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is absolutely right. Unfortunately, we are no longer even looking at a made-in-USA/copied-by-Canada plan in response to greenhouse gas emissions. We are looking at even less than that when we look at the minimal energy efficient provisions that have come forward today in this bill. We are not even copying the United States of America any more. We are even taking a minimalist approach at the provisions that it is bringing forward.

I think it is absolutely incumbent upon the Government of Canada to set the stage. Right now, as I understand, in Bonn, the governments around the world are talking about what they are going to bring forward to Copenhagen at the end of the year. I would strongly recommend that the House consider approving Bill C-311 when it comes up for a vote on Wednesday. That would provide at least a made-in-Canada target for the next 40 years.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill S-3. This bill would enable the government to regulate products that use energy, as we have heard before, and my party is going to support it in order to move it forward.

Elements of this bill came out of the former Bill C-30, which had the misnomer being called the clean air act, which did a little for the reduction of pollution but missed the central challenge of our times in terms of the environment, and that is how to deal with global warming. The government has essentially been missing in action on this global challenge, which is going to require all countries to move forward.

We heard from the previous speaker about what is happening this year. We are at a fork in the road because later on this year in Copenhagen world leaders will meet to wrestle with and develop a mechanism to effectively reduce greenhouse gases against the backdrop of some new scientific data which, at the very least, should be keeping those tasked with this challenge awake at night.

It should keep all of us awake at night because when we compare the evidence from two years ago, sea levels are rising at twice the speed of what was anticipated. That is shocking. We have seen how the Arctic ice cap, the Antarctic ice cap and glaciers are shrinking at a rate that is absolutely unprecedented. Part of the reason is that global warming is actually causing rifts and crevices within the glaciers, which is causing water to seep through and big chunks to fall off. These areas which reflect sun back into the atmosphere are being removed and it is contributing to the problem in terms of global warming.

It is part of a nasty feedback loop that ties into something I will talk about a little later with respect to the warming of the oceans, but it also has an impact upon how the currents work in the north Atlantic. If that current system changes, we are going to have a catastrophic feedback loop that we have no idea how to address. This is a much more serious problem than scientists even thought.

At the end of the day, we are going to have to put a price on carbon. There is no two ways about that. There is no better system. We are going to have to put a price on carbon. We will have to find a way to develop a carbon trading system so the private sector can trade credits. This will enable us to bring down emissions.

We also have to deal with supporting initiatives that work. We need to encourage the use of solar power, geothermal power and wind power. Many of the technological challenges that have existed around wave and tidal power have been overcome, and I might say proudly that many of those have been overcome by Canadian scientists who have been working very hard to do it. That is an inexhaustible source of energy.

We can also look at some new technologies in terms of rotating buildings. There are new initiatives in the UAE and other countries where buildings can rotate to follow the sun and absorb energy, thereby reducing the amount of energy that is required to heat buildings.

The other issue, which is a new change on an old idea, is electric cars. There have been some new discoveries in electric cars. Lithium phosphate batteries are able to store enough energy but also release the energy quickly. Previously, we never had an effective battery that was able to store energy as well as release it quickly, which is what electric cars require. I would suggest the government invest in and encourage scientists working in these areas. A full court press must be done to support these initiatives.

Unfortunately, what has happened, quite shockingly I might add, is that in the last budget the government actually cut moneys to some key monitoring areas for global warming. Canada was a leader in terms of building a network across the world to address climate change. Unfortunately, as a leader in this, these groups are going to have those moneys eviscerated by the government. That would be a tragedy for our country and for the world.

At the end of the day, we also have to look at how we can educate the public to use inputs that are going to dramatically reduce their use of fossil-based fuels. It is interesting that we can dramatically reduce our utilization of fossil fuels by how we build our buildings. We can reduce the use of fossil fuels by 70% or more if we change how we build our buildings. The member who spoke last gave the very good suggestion that we should work toward a national building code that will set standards on how buildings can be built. That is one of the most effective ways to reduce our consumption of greenhouse gases.

A couple of years ago, Scientific American really did a fabulous job. It devoted a month to climate change. In that, it showcased a number of very effective solutions that have been done around the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deal with climate change. One of the great articles in that journal was about how we can change the way we build our buildings.

In my last speech, I also spoke about the issue of forests. We know that deforestation is occurring at an unprecedented rate. As our population grows exponentially, our demand for products is also growing, so we are seeing an unprecedented level of deforestation. Madam Speaker, you and I know that our world cannot exist without forests. Forests have a value when they are cut down. Yet, suppose those forests had a value as they stand. In fact, they do because forests are, in effect, public utilities. They function as public utilities because they absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis. That has a value.

If we put a price on carbon at $10 a tonne and we know that a hectare of jungle in the Congo River Basin or Amazonia can absorb about 200 tonnes of carbon a year, that is $2000 a year per hectare. Previously, when Kyoto was put together, countries with large tropical forests like Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil were leery of this and did not want to pursue it because they thought it might mitigate and affect their development. However, they have come around because they recognize that those moneys can be used for the development of the country in a sustainable way. In the case of Indonesia, that could be a net benefit of about $2 billion.

The catch in all this is that the people who live around and near these forests have to benefit. Where these programs have been tried, the failure, as it is in many development projects, is that the moneys do not get down to the people who need it the most. That is the central failure. The people who need to benefit, who are frequently the poorest people in the world, do not benefit from this. We need to enable ourselves to have a system with accountability to make sure that the people around those areas get a value for that forest and therefore do not cut it down.

If we do not do that, the system is doomed for failure. Putting a value on our forests, which are the lungs of the planet, is an intelligent way to preserve them. Our country has massive resources in terms of forests and we need to do a much better job of managing those forests. As I said earlier, we have rules and regulations that are governed by the provinces in terms of forestry code practices. However, speaking for my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca and from having worked up north in B.C., we have found that in many cases those forestry practices are simply not adhered to because the companies doing it know that there is no effective enforcement mechanism.

We are seeing forests cut down right to the edge of rivers and where salmon-bearing streams occur. As a result, we are seeing that it is partially responsible for a massive depletion of our salmon stocks on the west coast. This is not an inevitable situation. This does not have to occur. If we are smart about how we develop and enforce our forestry practices, it will go a long way to ensuring that we have stable fisheries on the west coast as well as a forest that will be there in the future.

Biofuels are the coal of the renewable energy sector. Biofuels, in particular corn ethanol, is a disaster. Corn ethanol is the coal of the biofuel industry. We are subsidizing land to be wiped out and reseeded with corn which has a downstream effect that has been opposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Food Programme and others. By taking land and planting corn for biofuels, the energy that goes into processing that corn is much larger than what we get out of it. In other words, we are burning more fossil fuels to get a unit of energy out of corn. Also, we are removing areas that were previously acting as major carbon sinks and replanting with corn.

This is a lose-lose-lose proposition. I would strongly encourage the government to wrap its head around this. Corn biofuels are bad. It needs to stop subsidizing corn biofuels and start looking at alternative energies that actually work, such as solar, wind, tidal power, wave power with geo-thermal.

Some biofuels might work in terms of the detritus from forestry practices, and a few others, but, for heaven's sake, to take land and encourage the planting of corn to warp, twist and distort the system, that is actually causing incredible damage.

Another interesting thing that has happened concerns carbon scrubbers. We now know that there are proposals and developments that enable us to actually scrub the air of carbon dioxide, transferring that into a situation where the carbon is being pulled out of the atmosphere. I would submit that is something we need to consider and need to look at and I would encourage the government to do this.

Something the Liberal Party railed against In the previous budget was the government's failure to support research and development. We know that research and development will be the cornerstone of our country's ability to be competitive in the changing economy that will come out of the economic tsunami that has rolled across our planet and destroyed so many people's finances, so many countries' economies and has hurt so many people here in Canada and around the world.

The government must stop its antipathy toward science and research and understand clearly that research and development is one of the key cornerstones of the future of our country. The failure to invest in this will cause huge economic damage to our people and our country and it will result in the egress of a loss of some of our best and brightest minds.

Back in the late 1990s the then Liberal government saw this as a priority. After the deficits were slayed, the then government of Jean Chrétien put moneys into research and development dramatically. As a result of that, we were able to attract some of the best and brightest scientists from around the world. We have started to actually get to the forefront of science and research in many fields, whether it is medicine, physics, chemistry, proteomics or genomics.

In our neck of the woods, adaptive optics is being done at the Hertzberg Institute of Astrophysics. In fact, we are the third leader in the world in astronomy

What is happening now, whether it is in the Hertzberg Institute of Astrophysics, in Genome Canada, the Canadian Institute for Health Research or NSERC, the sudden cut of moneys by the government at a time when an economic stimulus demands that it invests in research and development, will negatively and profoundly affect the ability of our country to be economically competitive in the future.

What the government is doing is harming the future of our children and of our grandchildren and we cannot allow that to occur.

I know that my party, the Liberal Party, has told the government, loud and clear, to get smart and understand the importance of research and development and understand that it is a cornerstone of our economy. We cannot divorce publicly funded research and development from the future of our economy or our nation. It is critically important.

It also speaks to the critical importance of the government to invest in scientific research and climate change. We know there is a great deal of skepticism on the other side that this is even occurring. We know the government thinks this is simply a natural ebb and flow of temperature changes over time. However, that ignores 99% of the scientists who have made a clear, compelling and provocative argument to say that this is not simply the normal variance of temperature over time, that this is a fact. Unless the government deals with this now and works with other countries, the future of our nation and our world will be compromised. It is a very serious problem because we are dealing with the extinction of a lot of species. I do not want to be alarmist about it but we are one of those species. It is critically important that the government do this.

The government also needs to look at best practices. One of the singular failures that we have seen, for some strange reason, is the inability of the government to say that it does not need to necessarily reinvent the wheel, but as a first step we should look at best practices within our country and around the world. We should draw them together to ensure those best practices are moved out from the bench, from theory, from small practices and into a much larger acceptance and involvement by a greater number of people. This can and has to be done and it is simple to do.

Why not create a centre for best practices at the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and all of the different scientific areas, whether it is NSERC, CIHR or SSHRC? We can take best practices in all those areas and do a good job of trying to share them with others in our country and with those around the world.

When the world comes to Copenhagen at the end of this year, Canada will be sitting there but we cannot be a second rate player in this. We cannot sit on the sidelines and simply see where this goes. What is required, before the world comes to Copenhagen, is that we start to develop and begin to lead. We develop a coalition of the willing, and there is no reason the government cannot do that.

We know that President Obama is trying. I believe 10% of the $783 billion stimulus package is devoted to climate change. The Americans are trying to find ways to bring down the utilization of fossil fuels and utilize new tools and new technologies to address that. The president also knows that there will be a global demand for this.

We all know that China and India are producing increasing amounts of greenhouse gases. We also know that as their demand increases, and it will increase geometrically, the impact upon our environment will be huge.

The previous president of the United States and our current Prime Minister have made the fallacious argument that these countries need to grasp onto this themselves and come to the table or we will not play ball. That is not leadership. What the government could do is sit down and engage both of these countries. At the end of the day, they will be impacted by global change just like everybody else. That is not something any government wants to do.

With the diaspora that we have here and have come from Asia, why do we not utilize those folks here and engage both China and India in a way that few other countries can?

We have an opportunity to cease the day and engage other countries. We can use best practices and tackle this beast called climate change once and for all. Failure to do that is not an option.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech of my colleague from the Liberal Party and I took notes on what he had to say about leading, about bringing together other parties, about showing best practices and about taking a major role in Copenhagen.

The first question that comes to mind is whether the Liberal Party will continue in that trend that it has already stated by voting, as it has in the past, for the important climate change bill being introduced by my colleague from Thunder Bay which provides for the most stringent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The Liberals have already voted for that bill once before and yet in the past couple of days we have had disquieting indications from some Liberal members that they have been looking for some way to duck from their responsibilities.

Hansard has what my colleague from the Liberal Party just said and Canadians who heard him have what he just said, but I would like to give him the opportunity to tell us that the Liberals will actually pass this litmus test, because when one of his colleagues, his young new colleague from Montreal, spoke recently in the Thunder Bay area he was less than clear that the Liberals' support for the bill would continue.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will try to allay any kind of disquieting comments that my colleague thinks are coming from us. The last thing we want to be is disquieting.

I will be happy to look at the bill. I must confess that I have not read the bill but I will look at it and I will consult with my colleagues. I am confident that we will come up with the best position possible to ensure we are doing the right for our public and for our country.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, the member talked about the cuts in scientists and research. I know he was not referring to the cutting of the scientists in the three major granting councils, which everyone knows has the hugest amount of money for research. However, because he talked about the effect on the north, I want to specify one area in particular where climate change is having a much bigger effect than anywhere else. It is with the elimination of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. This foundation funds, I think, 24 other research centres with hundreds of scientists. It is our only major centre to study droughts and their effects in western Canada, violent storms in the Arctic and the effects of weather in the Arctic. The government cancelled this major research and the violent results coming out of climate change is just totally nonsensical. I wonder if the member agrees.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am glad my colleague from Yukon raised this because it does have a massive effect on where he is from. This is something the government needs to change right away. This has been a huge, unmitigated disaster for the government to cut moneys to this group, this global network that deals with climate change. It cannot be reconstructed overnight. It has taken a long time to put that together.

Professor Andrew Weaver from the University of Victoria, who is part of the Nobel prize winning international panel for climate change, has spoken out loudly and clearly about this, as have other scientists. This is a train wreck that the government can stop. It can stop it by investing and funding this group, which is doing an excellent job. The member for Yukon knows this, particularly coming from the north, where the melting of the permafrost is releasing methane into the air. Methane is 25 times a more powerful greenhouse gas agent than carbon dioxide. As that methane goes up in a powerful way, a feedback loop continues causing us to approach a critical time in the history of our planet, and that we cannot allow to happen.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, during the speech of my hon. colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, something was disquieting when he talked about Antarctica and what was happening there. My colleague from Saskatoon—Humboldt spoke out and said that Antarctica was actually increasing in size, in other words, the ice was growing.

We have all seen the evidence on television, in movies and elsewhere about the Larsen ice shelf collapsing and so forth. It seems to me that all the evidence is that it has been shrinking and that the ice has been decreasing. We are talking here about ice that is created, not in a year but over thousands of years. The Larsen ice shelf would have been created by snow falling year after year for thousands of years and being compressed gradually into ice. How he could possibly think that this was the case is beyond me.

Second, it appears that he did not get the memo, because this kind of climate change denier language is the language the Conservatives are not supposed to use any more. He did not get the memo from the Prime Minister's Office telling him not to talk along these lines these days and not to keep being the kind of climate change deniers that they have been and that they obviously still are.

I would be interested in my colleague's comments on what we saw here.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, if the government believes for a second that the Antarctic ice shelf is growing, then that is along the lines of believing that dinosaurs roamed the earth 7,000 years ago, because it is not happening.

What is happening, as my colleague said, is that the Antarctic ice shelf has contracted considerably. Not only has the Larsen ice shelf hived off and disappeared, but in huge chunks. I would encourage anybody to look at satellite pictures of the Antarctic ice shelf. Look at the pictures of Greenland. Look at how it has shrunk, and look at the rate at which the shrinkage has occurred. In that shrinkage of the ice caps, the decrease of the white space is resulting in an exacerbation because reflective capacity has gone.

This is a disaster, and we are certainly willing to educate the government and work with it to deal with this issue in an intelligent way.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, I always appreciate the comments of the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fucain the House, but he used the term disquieting, and according to the Oxford Dictionary, “disquieting” means to be troubled.

I am very troubled because despite the fact that we have had a number of Liberals intervene in the House, quite rightly condemning the Conservatives for their complete lack of action on the environmental file and a budget that attacked the very fundamentals of environmental protection in the country, Liberals rubber-stamped the budget. Liberals have been rubber-stamping every action that the government has taken for three years.

My question for the hon. member is this: Is it not disquieting for Canadians, is it not troubling for Canadians that Liberals rubber-stamp everything the Conservatives do, when quite frankly they admit that the Conservative plan for the environment is not good for the environment and not good for Canadians?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, this comes from a member whose party leader said that he was not going to support the budget, before he even saw it. That is irresponsible.

We were faced with a very difficult decision. In Bill C-10 and in the budget there were some good things that the Liberals fought for. They fought for the credit through the EDC. They fought for a stimulus package. They fought for moneys through infrastructure. They fought for some changes to EI but not enough.

Then the government plugged in these other things that we found despicable. The government did not give us an option. It said we could change the bill but the bill would not pass and we would have an election.

We did not think that was in the best interest of our country. We did not think it was responsible for the nation to be deprived of the stimulus package and these other changes that we fought for. Therefore, we allowed the stimulus package to go through, but we will change the odious parts of this bill when we become government, which will be very soon.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Resuming debate.

The hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie may begin his speech, but he will probably continue it when debate is resumed.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to take part in today's debate on Bill S-3 to modernize the Energy Efficiency Act. This bill was introduced in the Senate on January 29, 2009 by the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

This bill represents and replicates, for all practical purposes, part 2 of Bill C-30.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. Can we have some silence, please?

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, as I was saying, this bill replicates for all practical purposes the now defunct Bill C-30 on air quality introduced by the government. It caused considerable debate, especially at the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development. The second part of Bill C-30 aimed to modernize and improve the Energy Efficiency Act. Of course, that legislation needed to be renewed, updated and improved. For that reason, among others, we will support Bill S-3.

However, the fact remains that it is clearly not enough and more needs to be done. It is clear from many of the comments made by stakeholders in the industrial and business sectors, as well as the environmental community, that the industry proposed these regulations with a shrug of their shoulders. That says it all. It is a step in the right direction, since the amendments presented in these regulations were necessary, but it is not nearly enough to address the problem and improve energy efficiency. We simply must go even further on this issue, because it constitutes one of the most important pillars in a real policy to fight climate change.

A climate change policy must have two basic components. The first is the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at their source and changing our industrial processes and lifestyles in order to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One way this can be accomplished is by changing how we produce energy. In the next few years, we must reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, whether coal, gas or oil. We must develop new sources of energy in order to reduce our dependency on oil, for instance, which strains the budgets of individuals as well as of businesses and government. When we reduce our dependency on oil, we create conditions conducive to protecting the environment and improving the economy of our society.

This bill amends regulations to reflect advances in energy efficiency, especially with respect to standby power. That is significant. We must encourage such changes, suited to each type of appliance, especially in our homes. For example, an energy-efficient television will use 1 watt compared to 12 watts for a conventional television set. That is the case for certain appliances. If we really want to eliminate consumption, we should just pull the plug However, quite often we cannot because some devices have a memory and we would lose all the information.

It is important to update these technologies, to introduce regulations and to force businesses to change the manufacture of appliances especially when the technology is available. It is estimated that the implementation of new technologies for standby power alone could save families $35 a year and result in electricity savings equivalent to consumption by 300,000 households.

That part of the bill is good for the economy and for people's budgets.

This bill would also give the minister more power when it comes to labelling products that consume energy, and it would standardize the process, broadening the range of products to which labelling applies. That is important, but we feel that the government should go much farther. This kind of energy use labelling should not be restricted to appliances, such as dishwashers and televisions, or to light bulbs. It should also bring in a vehicle energy use labelling system like the one in Switzerland and elsewhere. In 2002, the Swiss implemented mandatory energy use labelling for new vehicles. That is the kind of energy use labelling we need.

Our proposed measure would require those who make and sell cars to affix a label containing information about fuel consumption, CO₂ emissions and energy efficiency to all new and used vehicles for sale. We think that this information should also appear on brochures and all advertising material. Labelling would raise awareness among individuals and companies about vehicle efficiency by providing information about fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions. People need that information to make responsible, well-informed choices.

We think that the government should go further than this bill and implement mandatory energy use labelling for new vehicles offered for sale, something along the lines of the Swiss system. I really want to emphasize that because we believe that energy efficiency is about more than the environment and environmental protection. It is also about saving money and creating jobs. This is an opportunity for businesses, states, nations and countries to create jobs based on energy efficiency.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I apologize for interrupting the hon. member. He will have about 11 minutes left when debate resumes.

The House resumed from March 30 consideration of the motion that Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to participate in the debate on Bill S-3, a bill that would amend the Energy Efficiency Act.

The basic premise of this bill is to broaden the scope of the government's ability to regulate energy-using consumer products. We can all think of a whole range of consumer products that people have in their homes, whether it be washing machines, dryers, fridges or so many others. The government already does regulate many of these under the existing act, through standards, through labelling, and through the promotion of energy-efficient products.

Indeed, this is something that needs to be broadened, because there are so many new appliances and new electronic gadgets these days.

So many of us in this House, of course, use the BlackBerry, which is a great Canadian-made product from my wife's home area of Kitchener—Waterloo. I must say, of course, that I am proud that Research in Motion also has a building in my riding of Halifax West. That is an interesting connection that my wife and I have with our hometowns.

There are so many items we have in our homes that use power, and there are programs when one is shopping for these things. One can look for the EnerGuide label or the Energy Star label to find out how, for example, one fridge compares to other fridges in its energy consumption, or whether a computer monitor falls within the group that is low enough in terms of energy use to have received the Energy Star. Those are good programs that have been around for a while.

The issue of standby power is an important one. That is one of the things this bill purports to regulate. That is to say, we all know of things in our homes that use power all the time. It may be only a little power, but they are still using power. Anything that has a light on all the time is using power. Often our televisions, even though they are turned off, are still using some power unless they are unplugged.

I can think of things like the new digital video recorders that use quite a bit of power, I gather, particularly if they are recording. Even if they are not recording, there is still a light on. The VCR has a light on, the stereo system has a little light on, and all these things use power.

Even an intercom system is often on all the time. These things are using power.

What this bill will allow the government to do by regulation is limit the amount of standby power that these products can use. Many of these products today use in the range of six to eight watts. At the same time, some of the new products are able to use as little as one watt of power per product. That would be a much better standard to apply to all of them. In fact, that is part of the plan, from what I hear of the government, and that is a good thing.

There are so many things: computers, battery chargers, adapters, stereos, TVs, and microwaves. If a charger for a cellphone is left plugged into the wall, it will become warm. The adapter will become warm. It becomes warm for a reason. That is because it is using power.

One thing that is worthwhile to mention during the debate on this bill is that it is a good opportunity to remind people to unplug these things. It is costing money and it is using power unnecessarily. We all know there are many good reasons not to do that, notably to save money and to help the environment.

In fact, Natural Resources Canada has an office of energy efficiency that has looked into this. They say that as much as 10% of household electrical consumption in Canada comes from this standby power issue. In other words, we could each theoretically reduce as much as 10% of our electrical bills by unplugging these things.

They say that if we did this and dealt with this issue, it could be the equivalent of turning off the power in 300,000 homes. In other words, 300,000 homes worth of electricity per year could be saved across the country. When we are looking at issues like blackouts in Ontario and problems when there are peak energy uses in the summer in particular, we can all see the importance of having that kind of room in the electrical grid.

However, as many have pointed out before, it is not simply what is in this bill that is of concern here and that we ought to be looking at. In fact, what is not in the bill is of major concern.

The measures in this bill were originally in Bill C-30 in the previous Parliament, the government's so-called clean air act which purported to deal with climate change. A special committee of the House was set aside to deal with the bill. Once it actually got hold of it and made a variety of amendments, it did become what could realistically be called a clean air act, but it certainly was not that when it was proposed by the government. It was the opposition amendments that put it in a form that would have actually achieved something.

What did we see? Did that bill go forward? No, it did not go forward. In fact, the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament and called an election. We have not seen the bill come back from the government. We have had lots of comments from the government about dealing with climate change which that bill purported to do, but no action.

In June 2005 the previous government actually listed in the Canada Gazette the six major greenhouse gases. That is the beginning of the 18 month process of regulating those greenhouse gases.

There is no reason why the following Conservative government that took over in February 2006 could not have regulated to limit the production, the emission, of those various greenhouse gases within that 18 month period.

Now it is more than three and a half years since those were listed, and we still see no regulations from the government in relation to the limiting of greenhouse gases. We have heard the government talk about cap and trade, we heard that it has a so called “Turning the Corner” plan, but we do not see any corner being turned. We do not see any actual regulations, any real action to deal with greenhouse gases or climate change. That is a concern.

The total lack of trust Canadians have in the government is also a concern. The kind of thing I have talked about is one of the reasons they have so little trust in the government. When it actually comes to bringing forth regulations to ensure the impact of amendments outlined in this bill are actually felt, we do not know what the government will do. This bill does allow the government to regulate in a whole variety of areas.

One of the questions we have heard during debate, both in the Senate and here, is this question of whether or not this bill could be used, this law could be used, to regulate automobile emissions. Well, the wording is very broad. I had a look at the law that exists now and it says in section 200, the definition section, “'energy-using product' means a prescribed product”.

Actually, that means that the government can set out in regulation what products are included as energy using products that fall within the scope of this bill. In other words, it could certainly regulate automobiles, as they do use an energy product: gasoline obviously, ethanol, even hydrogen these days or electricity. All these things are using energy. In theory, then, the government could certainly regulate automobiles through this bill, although we would expect it to use other legislation that is on the books to do that. It is interesting that that is one of the options.

The point I am making is that we do not know what the government will do with these regulations. We do not know if it will take any action at all. Its record so far in regulating on the environment is so weak that it is hard for Canadians to have any confidence that this bill will actually be used to do anything worthwhile.

The idea of the bill is a fine idea, but it is how it is used. The bill is all about giving that power to regulate to the government. That is an important point.

There are also concerns about the Conservative government's complete failure to understand that energy efficiency is a fundamental issue not just for the environment but for the economy. Dealing with these things is important in terms of where we go in the economy. What was lacking, for example, in the budget was an understanding of the importance of that.

In the U.S. we have seen the Obama administration's package for economic stimulus. We have seen six times as much spending per capita on the energy efficiency side of things and renewable energies as here in the Conservative government package. That was disappointing. I think the government ought to consider that, reconsider its position, and recognize that it is important for the economy that we become efficient. It can save us in many ways. It can help us with the strains in terms of our electrical grids and in many other areas.

I suspect that the fact that many government members are still climate change deniers is a factor here. I have witnessed that in this House. I witnessed it on Monday during debate on this same bill. My colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca was speaking. He was talking about Antarctica and how we have seen ice shelves, such as the Larsen ice shelf, collapse there and what a concern that is for situations like that around the globe. He gave examples of global warming, examples that are alarming scientists around the globe, and some of the reasons why scientists tell us the evidence is overwhelming that climate change is happening and that it is caused by human activity.

However, the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt was in the chamber and he said that Antarctica is growing. I do not know what planet he is talking about. Maybe there is another Antarctica on another planet somewhere that is growing, but I think it is pretty clear that the opposite is happening here.

In fact we understand, and I think most people do, that the ice in Antarctica does not just freeze every winter. With the ice in Antarctica, or on the Greenland glacier or Arctic ice cap, we are talking primarily about ice that has been formed with snow falling and then more the following year and so much over centuries that it pushes down, compacts and turns into very hard and very old ice.

When we see something that is thousands of years old collapse and fall into the ocean, and a colleague thinks that Antarctica is actually growing, I think he ought to give his head a shake.

It is a bit like those who suggest that there is no link between HIV and AIDS. All the science is in the other direction. It is overwhelmingly clear that there is a link between HIV and AIDS. Or it is like the techniques that were used for years by those people who said there was no link between tobacco and cancer. We hear the same kinds of things from the other side.

It seems to me the Conservatives have not gotten the message. It seems to me that they forget the poll that came out in January 2007 which said that the number one concern of Canadians was the environment. This was about six or eight months after Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth came into the theatres and people started to become much more concerned about these issues. The media started to talk about this. People got more and more concerned, but it was only after that, that the government suddenly and totally changed direction and started to admit that there was a concern about climate change, or at least it wanted us to believe that it was reformed, that it actually had bought into the idea that this was a real problem.

Yet, it seems that many members on that side did not get the memo, that they have not gotten the message that in fact they are supposed to believe now in climate change, because we hear them say things like the notion that Antarctica is still growing. We hear them say things that are utterly ridiculous and that fly in the face of the overwhelming science that tells us that climate change is real and is the result of human activity.

Maybe they should work on their messaging over there and get the message out. Maybe they need another memo for more of the members on that side to get this clear. Most of them do not say very much normally without the office of the Prime Minister giving the approval, so one would think that maybe they need clearer direction from the PMO on that. Perhaps it is the fact that they are climate change deniers that accounts for their dismal failure to grasp what really are the larger implications that are at play with this bill and the issues of climate change, to which Bill C-30 in the last Parliament was tied.

When this bill was debated in the other place, that red chamber down the hall on the east side of this building, my colleague from Alberta, Senator Grant Mitchell, raised many important questions about this bill. In fact, while this bill was introduced in the Senate by the government leader there, it was Senator Mitchell who has been the driving force behind this idea for some time, pushing for energy efficiency improvements and pushing for changes, so that the government can regulate classes of products, not just certain products. That is a good thing, there is no question.

He was right, in the Senate, when he noted that perhaps one of the biggest questions was the lack of trust Canadians have that the Conservative government will do anything it promises. I have heard from many Canadians that they do not trust the government. They simply do not trust the government to actually implement this or any significant environmental policy because its record is so dismal.

While the Liberal Party supports a broadening of the government's ability to regulate products that use energy, this does not disguise the fact that these changes are in isolation to create the false impression the Conservatives are actually doing something on this file.

Well, they are not, really. We know that. That is why Canadians do not trust the Prime Minister or the government on the environment any more than they trust them to properly manage our country's finances or our economy.

This is the same government that told us last fall that there were no problems. The Prime Minister said that if it was going to get bad, it would already have been bad. We heard that during the election: if the economy is going to be in recession, we would have already had it here.

Well, things got a lot worse. In September he said it was good time to buy stocks. Not only was that insensitive but it was incredibly bad advice, when we consider what has happened since. For a guy who claims to be an economist, that is a pretty scary bit of prognostication. I think most people would have to recognize that.

Why the lack of trust? That is the result when the Conservatives deny climate change in the face of the kind of overwhelming scientific evidence that exists, or when they deny there is a recession in the midst of a global economic meltdown as we have been seeing over the past number of months, or when they say they will balance the books when they have been in deficit for months, as we heard last fall in the fiscal update, which was clearly absolute nonsense and from which the government retreated.

That is the question. Will the Conservatives actually implement these amendments in this bill and act on the regulatory power that this gives them?

We all saw what the Conservatives did with the Kyoto protocol. We saw an announcement related to cap and trade two years ago, and nothing has happened. We saw what they did with Bill C-30 in a previous Parliament, which is where this initiative first saw the light of day.

And did we not have a bill related to fixed term elections? That seems to be something I can recall; something that evaporated in the mind of the Prime Minister around about last September.

Did we not have a promise not to tax income trusts? Did we not have a signed offshore accord with Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador that the Prime Minister said would not be abandoned? I think we did.

On the environment, in general, the trust factor is non-existent for the Conservative government. It announced a $1 billion clean energy fund, which sounded great. But how much of that is going toward things like solar power, wind power, tidal power or geothermal power? When the deputy minister appeared before the natural resources committee, she was asked about this fund and she told the committee that $850 million was targeted toward carbon capture and sequestration. Now, that is an important technology and it is of great concern to the oil sands, certainly. However, it is not the only issue. What is concerning is that the Conservatives want to give the impression they have this wonderful clean energy fund for a whole range of clean energies. We really see it is almost all going to one particular area.

Aside from this fundamental issue of trust, there are also concerns of what is not in the bill that raises other questions. For instance, what kind of consultation took place in relation to the second section which talks about interprovincial trade? Did the government consult the provinces? We do not know.

There are a variety of other concerns. The questions and comments that I hope will follow will give me an opportunity to talk about them more.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would very much like to bring up something from the past and ask my colleague who just spoke for his opinion on this.

The first legislation on energy efficiency was passed in Quebec in 1982. In 1992, the Conservatives passed the existing Energy Efficiency Act.

It is a fact that the new Conservatives, the more Reform Alliance members, have been dragging their feet for three years. I hasten to add the Liberals could have amended this piece of legislation in 2002. In 2000, they were in power, but they did not do it. They dragged their feet too.

Why does the hon. member think that, as mentioned in clause 6, we should consider American and Mexican legislation on energy efficiency, when they do not set good comparable standards? Does he not think the standards to compare our own with are the ones found in the Nordic countries?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague. His question on the Nordic countries’ standards is interesting. There is no reason why the government and parliamentarians should not examine and compare our systems and situations with the energy efficiency standards in those countries. But we live in North American, and our major trade partners are the United States and Mexico. It is important to be competitive with them.

I certainly appreciate this comment because Nordic standards are indeed excellent. We should examine this issue more closely.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, does the member think that Bill S-3 includes or should include autos, buses, planes, et cetera?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the member asks an interesting question. Where should the emissions of cars, planes, trains and even ships, for that matter, be regulated? Should they be in legislation that is designed for appliances and electronics or ought they to be in another area?

I am open to arguments in relation to whether this is the best legislation, but I would think there could be legislation better targeted toward those kinds of major machines that we use in our society, such as trucks, backhoes and so on. How should we deal with the emissions of those kinds of heavy machines that are an important part of the equation of climate change and greenhouse gases? Does it make sense to have them regulated under this legislation?

Clearly the government could do that. In my view, the regulatory power is given by this bill to regulate anything that uses energy and they do use energy.

However, if we were to look at this more closely, I think we would probably find reasons why it make sense to have legislation specifically designed for that purpose.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his excellent speech.

We know that the Conservative government has cut the program to encourage the use of more fuel-efficient cars.This program allowed new car buyers to purchase more energy-efficient cars and get a tax credit for doing so. The Conservatives have felt that offering the program for just two years would be enough for people to convert to such cars.

I think it should have continued to make programs and incentives available to allow people to purchase more fuel-efficient and environmentally cleaner cars and save on gas.

Does the hon. member think that the program to encourage people to buy smaller, more economical, more fuel-efficient and more environmentally friendly cars should have been maintained?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Madawaska—Restigouche for his excellent question.

That is somewhat strange indeed. That was a successful program. That is why the government has decided to cancel it. In fact, the government said that it was too successful, that too many people took advantage of the program to buy more energy-efficient cars. I agree with my colleague that the success of a program is not a good argument for terminating it.

Personally, I drive a hybrid car, a Prius, which I really like. It is an excellent car, easy to use and similar to other cars in terms of driving. I encourage everyone to consider buying a hybrid car or any other low-emission car, or else—I do not know if that is an option in my colleague's riding—to use trains and buses. That is not always an option, but many Canadians can travel by train or by bus, or carpool to commute to work.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I sometimes find it difficult to sit in the House and listen to members opposite talk about anything to do with the environment. Prior to being elected here, I was chief of staff to Ontario's first commissioner of alternative energy. At one point, we came through with a very extensive, all party report with over 130 recommendations with respect to clean energy, hydrogen, solar, wind and energy conservation.

The Liberals were in power at that time and to get them to move on any of those recommendations that were brought forward was impossible, even with all party support in the Ontario legislature. We know they broke their word with respect to Kyoto. I wonder if the member is not continuing the Liberal legacy of saying one thing but doing another. They signed the Kyoto protocol but we know they did absolutely nothing to meet our targets. In fact, they brought no money and no initiatives forward.

Now, here the government stands actually doing something. The Prime Minister came to my riding to announce funds for the Nature Conservancy of Canada so that we could bring some of our natural heritage under the protection of the government. We are investing in chemical waste management.

I wonder if the hon. member could explain to the House why, when the Liberals were in government, they failed Canadians on the environment so often.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, for someone who was thoroughly involved in matters related to the environment, one would think he would know the history a little better. He would know, for example, that the Kyoto protocol did not actually come into effect until 2005. I wonder if he knows that because I do not hear that in what he is saying.

He also should know that the Liberal government of Mr. Martin did bring in a range of measures in its green plan to deal with climate change and other environmental matters. However, it was the member's party, along with other parties, that defeated the previous Liberal government when it was bringing forward spending plans and other measures that would have taken effect.

If he had been listening, I already mentioned in my speech that in June 2005, we listed the six greenhouse gases and started the process of regulating those greenhouse gases. In spite of promises from the Conservative government to regulate them, we have seen no action.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Bramalea—Gore—Malton, Airport Security; the hon. member for Mississauga South, Health.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Trois-Rivières.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to discuss Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act, which is intended to expand the regulatory parameters of the present act.

The essence of this bill is laudable. The present act dates from 1992. With all the technological innovations, it is thus extremely urgent that we take another look at this act. I can see how often we are late to take action. My 15-year-old son is constantly reminding me that we have to pay attention to the environment, use recycling bins and save energy. So I will be pleased to be able to tell him on the weekend that we are working to make things better.

The amendments proposed in this energy efficiency bill are going in the right direction, for they target non-regulated products and raise the standards for other products. However, we have to determine whether this bill is not simply an update of the standards of the Office of Energy Efficiency. In this regard we must display a real will to improve the energy efficiency of certain energy-using products with the aim of improving our energy efficiency and not with the aim of permitting the federal government to say that it is looking after the environment. We must admit that this initiative offers very little in the face of the problems of climate change, our spiraling consumption of fossil fuels and this government’s lack of will to act to protect the environment. All the same, this bill is a start, and however little this government is doing for the environment, we must nonetheless consider the improvements being made to the present legislation.

The amendments made by this bill are thus intended to consider the advancement of knowledge about energy efficiency, to broaden the minister’s regulatory authority, to introduce the concept of classes instead of considering each product individually, to strengthen the minister’s powers over the labelling of energy-using products, to standardize procedures, and to increase responsibilities for reporting to the House of Commons. These objectives, I repeat, are entirely laudable. The extent to which they will be applied remains to be seen.

For example, the amendments proposed in this bill would permit the establishment of strict vehicle emission standards and improve the energy efficiency of vehicles, since they have an impact on energy consumption. The bill would also permit, as proposed many times by the Bloc Québécois, the standardization of energy efficiency regulations in classes of products, thereby introducing mandatory vehicle eco-labelling, a measure that has existed in Switzerland since 2002.

In this way we could send a clear message to consumers who wish to use energy more responsibly, by directing them to a class of vehicles classified as “green”, instead of certain very specific vehicles.

There are a number of worthwhile amendments in this bill, including the following. Classifying energy-using products as proposed will mean that they can be grouped based on a single, common energy-consuming characteristic and the intended use of the products. The second amendment is the power of the governor in council, which will cover a class of products and not just one product. Extending the regulatory power will mean that the act provides better coverage of a whole range of products in terms of energy efficiency. This bill also provides for new or additional standards to be established for industrial and consumer products and goods, such as commercial washing machines, dishwashers, fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs, battery chargers, and many others.

This bill means that standby mode can be taken into account, and that is a good proposal, because of the proliferation in recent years of energy-using products that consume energy even when they are turned off. The new types of televisions, DVD players, household appliances and a host of other products consume energy constantly even when they are not in use. These items are equipped with an internal memory that can be affected by simply unplugging them.

In this regard, the Office of Energy Efficiency estimates that if all of these products used minimum energy in standby mode, a typical household would save $35 a year in electricity. That does not seem like much, but an energy saving like that all across Canada amounts to the energy used by about 300,000 households in a year, and so it is a considerable amount. What this bill does in this regard is really very important. The number and variety of appliances that use standby mode will undoubtedly continue to grow in the years to come. That is why it is important to think about regulating energy use in sleep mode for these kinds of items.

Requiring that the minister table reports in the House of Commons is an important amendment, and one that I think is desirable. Once every three years, the Minister of Natural Resources will have to compare the standards here with those in the United States and Mexico, to determine whether they are in step. Because many household appliances come from those countries under free trade, standardization is important. This approach, by standardizing labelling and energy efficiency criteria, may eventually facilitate the creation of a carbon market in the future.

Obviously, that must be done willingly and competently. On these two points, allow me to question the Conservative government's intent to really protect the environment. The Conservative record does not lead us to believe that the environment is a priority for this government. I will explain. This bill has a number of qualities, including that of considering the standby mode, essential to the operation of a number of devices today, in setting energy efficiency standards.

However, the government is bragging that, with these amendments proposed for the Energy Efficiency Act, it is implementing its nebulous green plan. This green plan is turning brown. I realize that strengthening laws on the energy efficiency of televisions, DVD players, household appliances and other energy-using consumer products is a good thing. However, strong and integrated measures are needed to achieve real results. We have waited too long.

The government's regulatory framework to fight greenhouse gases is biased at its source. It is based on reductions in emission intensity for individual product units instead of on an absolute greenhouse gas emission target. There is, however, a consensus in Quebec and elsewhere in the world advocating the absolute reduction approach, which will lead to the establishment of a carbon market and a carbon exchange in Montreal.

This government's approach is unfair to Quebec, which has made a huge effort since 1990 to genuinely and absolutely reduce its GHG emissions. However, businesses in Quebec cannot benefit from nearly 20 years' efforts. It is our duty to prevent these efforts from being swept under the carpet because of the neoconservative ideology that goes to any length to put the environment and the economy at odds.

For example, a Quebec aluminum company that has already reduced its GHG emissions by 15% in 1990 terms will have to agree to the same reduction in emission intensity as a company operating in the oil sands in Alberta, whose GHG emissions have doubled since 1990. Our manufacturing industry will be penalized once again because it will not benefit financially from its efforts as it could have under an absolute target reduction plan.

In Quebec, we reject this outdated view. The economy and the environment work in tandem, and our businesses are often among the most productive in the world in environmental terms. Quebec's economy is separate from Canada's. By applying this standard approach to all businesses, the government is leaving no room for a real territorial approach that would allow Quebec to act according to its own interests and peculiarities.

This is why we are saying that the government's green plan, which gave rise to this bill, is ineffective.

Climate change represents one of the biggest challenges we have to deal with.

As scientific evidence piles up and we see just how staggering the extent of the consequences is, it becomes imperative to act without delay, and in an efficient and fair manner.

This bill represents a step in the right direction, but there is still a very long way to go, and this government totally lacks the desire to go the rest of the way with Quebec. The Bloc Québécois is calling for a Kyoto implementation plan, namely an average greenhouse gas reduction of 6% below the 1990 level for the period 2008-12.

The inaction of the Liberals and the ideological pig-headedness of the Conservatives are doing nothing to help us deal with the problem.

The plan proposed by the Bloc Québécois is based on establishing reduction targets in the short and medium term, that is between 2012 and 2020, with 1990 as the reference year; the use of a territorial approach; establishing a carbon exchange in Montreal; and federal measures that the government can implement in its own areas of jurisdiction.

In closing, Bill S-3 is, as I have said, a step in the right direction but there is still a very long way to go. We are in favour of the essence of this bill, but with this government we have doubts about is sincerity as far as environmental protection and energy conservation are concerned.

The Conservative government ought to stop handing over millions of dollars to the oil industry and stop encouraging tar sands development. Instead it ought to be decreasing our oil dependency, and allowing the development of renewable energies, encouraging environmental research and the growth of the green economy, which is the economy of the future, rather than making this bill, which is limited though laudable, the foundation of its rather murky green plan.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we know that the government passes bills such as the one that set the date for the next election, which was to be in October of this year, by the way. Then only months later it pulled the plug itself, causing an unnecessary election. It did not even wait to be defeated in a vote in the House.

We are still waiting for the all-inclusive airline pricing that was included in a bill passed two and a half years ago. It still has not been implemented.

There is a lot of posturing and public relations in bills like this one. Does the member not agree with that?

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. It is often hard to make sure that the government puts its money where its mouth is. There is a lot of talk but it is sometimes hard to see any action happening when it comes to regulations. Despite the bill's laudable goals, the government is already way behind and there is a dreadful lack of vision.

Consider, among other things, the implementation of stricter vehicle emissions standards. If that had been done years ago, we would be in a much better position today because the effects of pollution would be less noticeable in our cities and we would have fewer health problems. It is a shame that the vision is just not there.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her excellent presentation on a relatively weak bill. I appreciate her moderate approach, which I find quite fair.

I would like to call on her considerable parliamentary experience—she is also the natural resources critic—and ask her what she thinks of a clause that I do not think is particularly relevant when it comes to overseeing labelling of all energy-using products. It is the same thing. Almost everything consumes energy. My suit consumes energy. A drinking glass consumes energy. Everything consumes energy.

In the context of this bill, is it realistic to think that the committee will be able to specify things to such a degree that we will know where the government is headed?

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. It may seem difficult to apply. The intention is to provide limits and a framework. The fact that products have been placed in categories may simplify the task. However, I agree with him: it will be truly difficult to reach a consensus in committee on these materials and on their energy consumption. It is a challenge but it is a first step.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act. Earlier, my colleague from Halifax West spoke extensively on the bill and made a number of valid points on energy efficiency. I would refer people to those comments. He talked especially about wasted energy. When politicians are out on a political campaign, we walk into houses and see little lights flashing here and there, on VCRs, computers and telephones that are not in use. All those units are using energy unnecessarily. It is a lot of wasted energy.

The bill makes a series of changes to the Energy Efficiency Act to broaden the scope of the government's ability to regulate consumer products that use energy. We can certainly go the regulatory way with encouragement in that area, but as citizens of the country, we also need to do a lot of individual things to save energy in terms of shutting down computers and so on when we may be gone for more than a day. There are all kinds of things we could do.

The bill is rooted in old Bill C-30 from a former Parliament, which was a plan to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Bill S-3 goes back to some of those points that were made in Bill C-30. After the House committee made wholesale amendments to the climate change provisions in Bill C-30, the government chose not to bring the bill back to the House for further debate. When the first session of the 39th Parliament prorogued, Bill C-30 died. Instead of bringing back the bill in its entirety, the government decided instead to carve off the Energy Efficiency Act provisions and introduce them as a separate bill in the Senate. The bill did not receive second reading in the Senate before the election was called in August, 2008.

The provisions of the bill are not controversial. In fact, it is widely expected that most MPs and most parties will support the bill in the House of Commons because the spirit and the intent of former Bill C-30, what opposition parties mainly drove for, is encompassed in this bill.

An effective regulation of energy-using products is one of a suite of tools the government will have to fight global warming. As my colleague said earlier, there are a lot of global warming deniers on the government side of the House. A lot of points have been raised by previous speakers as to that being the fact. Through this bill we hope the Conservatives will take, not a big challenge, but a small challenge to do a number of small things that can make a difference in terms of energy use itself.

On this point, Canadians know what we should be doing each and every day to improve energy efficiency in many small ways, but sometimes it takes a little encouragement. Although none of us really likes regulations, sometimes it takes a little push with regulations to encourage us to do the right thing on the environment.

Another important area for us to do the right things on the environment and to increase our energy efficiency is a stronger education process. Sometimes we do not realize how the small points on energy efficiency can add up in the global context to big savings on energy.

Let us look at what little things can do. We can go back to Christmastime, when many people light up their houses with Christmas light bulbs and so on. In my province, Christmas was the peak energy period of the year because of the lights on Christmas trees, houses, floodlights and so on. When the LED lights came in, they created such energy efficiencies that the energy use at that time went down substantially.

Therefore, it shows what can be done by both an education campaign and any regulatory campaign. It is one example of many.

It is unbelievable the gains in energy efficiency that have been made in the agricultural industry over the last 15 to 20 years, and there is a lot more we can do. There is a lot more the government can do to assist us in getting there.

It would be really helpful if the government, in its programming, used some of its available resources. We know it has clearly failed the agricultural industry to date, especially the primary producers, but it is not that difficult for it to develop the programs. Whether it is through tax incentives, grants, regional development agencies, Industry Canada or Environment Canada could come up with funding programs that would assist primary producers in purchasing equipment and technology that would reduce the amount of energy used on primary production units on our farms.

Although the government fails to admit it, we know that the agriculture, fisheries, mining and forestry sectors in rural Canada are the generators of economic wealth in the country. Anything that can be done to assist those hard pressed industries in this time of recession would be valuable in moving our country forward.

There is an opportunity, at a time when a so-called economic stimulus is being made available, if the Government of Canada would develop the programming to assist all those industries in reducing their energy use and improving their bottom line. The government seems to have failed to seize that opportunity.

I want to provide some examples in the farming sector. On the equipment side, the tractors we use today are much more energy efficient. Cultivators do a better job with less use of energy on a per acre basis. One of the big areas is the use of GPS equipment, whether it is on equipment used for cultivating potatoes and row crops or whether it is on sprayers where one can do a better job of going over the ground just once. Instead of going over a field or a crop two or three times, one can go over it with a single pass, saving a tremendous amount of energy and greater efficiency. Therefore, less greenhouse gases are put into air for each production unit that is produced on farms.

Many Canadians, especially people who live in urban centres who do not understand the farm community that well, have a strange picture or perception of farmers. Primary producers, farmers, have always been at the cutting edge of technological change. Whether it is energy efficiency, more production per acre, whatever it may be, they have always been at that edge of technological change. This is a great opportunity where we could assist the farm community in making its operations more efficient.

Another example that I could give would be dairy operations. I was a dairy producer, and I have been on many of these operations. More people should see this efficient use of energy. It is an area where expenditures could be made to get more producers on those kinds of efficient uses of energy systems.

To draw a picture, when milk is produced, it is a warm product that has to be cooled by what almost looks like the old type of radiators. The milk is produced by the cows, comes out of the milking system and goes through that radiator unit. The heat is taken out and used to heat water for sanitizing and cleaning up the system and, in some cases, for heating barns. There is great efficiency.

Instead of losing the heat and putting it into a cooler that expends energy to cool the milk so it keeps and can be trucked to the processing plant in a high quality state, the new systems are used to take the heat out of the milk and use it for other purposes, whether it is heating water for sanitizing or whatever. The temperature of that milk is reduced and then when it gets into the cooler, it is already partially cooled. Therefore, it takes less energy to cool the milk product to the proper temperature so it stores safely until it can be shipped to a processing plant for bottling, or for cheese or for whatever its use may be.

From my own experience in the past, I know that originally there were grants from provincial governments at that time to encourage people to move into the earlier concept of bulk milk coolers. This is an area that the government could be assisting the production sector, with stimulus packages and creating energy efficiency as well. I know that goes beyond the concept of this bill, but it is an example of where government action, beyond the regulatory regime, could be a huge help to the farming community.

The same applies in the design of farms. Rather than using the fans, which are used in so many places, there are new concepts where we use natural movement of air.

As another example, this morning I had a great meeting with the greenhouse industry. The Canadian greenhouse industry is one of the most innovative industries in our country. In Ontario alone there are about 1,800 acres under glass. In B.C. there are about 700 acres. I believe it is something like 60 acres or 80 acres in Quebec.

I was in one operation that had 52 acres of tomato and cucumber plants under glass, growing year round. One of the highest costs is the use of hydro. Therefore, farmers have been moving to new concepts. Again, it is an area where the government could assist. In fact, I believe it costs close to $6 million to put the new system in for one of these operations.

Beyond the solar efforts of the sun, using natural gas to heat that generates a byproduct containing CO₂, which plants need to produce the cucumbers and tomatoes. A recycling effect is created and it will pay off over the long term tremendously. Again, it is another case of using greater energy efficiency to have greater economic and energy efficiencies in the operation and less greenhouse gases as a result at the end of the day.

There are so many opportunities available to us in terms of energy efficiency. This bill will move us a little farther along that line. It significantly broadens the government's ability to regulate products that affect the use of energy and we support that. It does not have to be an obtrusive regulation. As I mentioned in the very beginning, to a great extent, it can be more of an education campaign to have people understand what is available out there. The regulations can encourage better use of products, whether it is shutting down equipment or buying more efficient equipment or machinery on the industrial operations, on farms, on fishing boats, in the forestry industry or whatever.

We support these amendments, since they are substantially identical to the proposed amendments to the clean air act, Bill C-30, which the Liberal Party supported. For some reason the Government of Canada wanted to make that disappear. Maybe it was too forward-looking a bill for the current government to grasp, take hold of and put Canada in the lead in terms of environmental change.

If we had moved forward with that act, instead of being a follower, we would have been a leader. In this recession, we see more followers than leaders from the government side. Maybe that makes the point as to why the government abandoned the clean air act. Now we have to at least try to encourage it to move a little step forward with the Energy Efficiency Act.

We look forward to seeing regulations, but it will be necessary to ensure that the impact of these amendments are fully felt in Canadian society.

I want to make one quick point about my own province. One initiative of Premier Robert Ghiz and the Liberal government in P.E.I. is on energy. We are increasingly using wind energy to meet our energy needs. The province has laid out a master plan of how we can use the production of energy and hydro from windmills to meet a greater and greater share of the electricity needs of Prince Edward Island. The Canadian wind test site is on Prince Edward Island. I think it shows that a little province is leading the way in this country in terms of using wind energy to meet Canadians' needs and reduce greenhouse gases.

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

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague has just given a long speech about Bill S-3. I would like to remind him that energy efficiency is changing at such a pace that the law will have to be revised every five years. That is not currently happening. When the Liberals were in power, they never changed it. This law has not changed since 1992.

Although the Liberals did nothing when in power, are they now prepared to accept that the law include a clause providing for its statutory review every five years? This bill requires reports every three years and requires the minister to report to the House every four years. But there is nothing about revising the law every five years. I would like to hear my colleague's opinion about that.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, the first point I have to make is that I just cannot understand where the member is coming from when he claims that the Liberal government did nothing when it was in power. Where has he been? It was the Liberal government that turned this country around and put it on the road to economic success, which has now been virtually destroyed by the Conservative government. It was the Liberal government that increased research and development in this country to make some of the new energy efficiencies possible.

I referred to the example in terms of wind energy in Prince Edward Island coming from windmills. Our former minister of the environment, the former leader of the opposition, signed an agreement with the previous Conservative government in Prince Edward Island for a $30 million cable so that energy produced with wind on P.E.I. to reduce greenhouse gases in the country could be shipped into the export market. What was the first thing the Conservatives did when they came to power? They cancelled that signed $30 million agreement that would have gone a long way to increasing economic opportunities in Prince Edward Island and reducing greenhouse gases through the use of windmills.

I can clearly show that when the Liberal government was in power, it was moving this country ahead. It is too bad that the current government has put us in a hole again.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, first I want to commend the member for making a very interesting speech.

Manitoba Hydro has had an extremely effective energy-saving program, called Power Smart, for some years now. Consumers receive incentives to purchase energy efficient appliances, and the reduced energy consumption leads to the extra power being sold on the export market into the United States at very healthy pricing. This keeps Manitoba hydro rates low for Manitoba. As a matter of fact, we have the lowest hydro rates in North America.

Would the member support the expansion of programs such as this one across the country to other utilities?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, there is no question that we would support the expansion of those types of programs across the country because they only make sense.

There is no question that the government could learn a lot from the Government of Manitoba. I know it is an NDP government, but the premier has done a remarkable job of managing the affairs of that province and putting it on the road to future success.

With the hydro development that the member talked about and the energy advantage that Manitobans have, whether it is heating their homes or doing industrial business, it goes a long way in terms of enhancing that economic prosperity.

It is just too bad that the government across the way and the Prime Minister could not get the message and understand that governments play a very important role in Canadian society. It is sad to say that we have no national leadership at the moment and no vision in terms of where this country is going either on energy or the economy.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am going to help my hon. friend understand, because in response to a question from a Bloc member, he said he did not understand. I guess where the Bloc is coming from is that when the Liberals were in power, they actually signed the Kyoto protocol in 1998, yet under their watch, greenhouse gas emissions increased by 26%, and under their watch, Canada became the worst per capita user of energy in the world.

He talked about their record with respect to the economy. The reality is it was a previous Conservative government that brought in the economic policies that allowed that Liberal government to balance the books later. It really was not that government that balanced the books, it was Conservative provincial governments across this country that balanced the federal budget when the Liberals took $25 billion out of the provinces unilaterally without asking them. That is the record of the Liberal Party: increased greenhouse gas emissions and nothing to address the financial situation.

We have a government now that has brought forward an economic action plan supported by the member opposite that is going to address Canada's economic difficulties. It is investing in people, roads, bridges, sewers and highways. It is doing everything it needs to do to keep Canada as the most prosperous nation in the world.

I say those comments so that the hon. member can understand where the member from the Bloc was coming from when he made his comments.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, I would love to answer that question.

What we see in this House during question period every day is the Conservative government giving misinformation, more misinformation and more misinformation when ministers respond to questions. It seems that they misinform the public three or four times in the hope that the misinformation will become the truth. Well, it will not.

The fact of the matter is when we took over government, we were facing a $42 billion annual deficit which was left to us by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

If the hon. member wants to talk about the provinces, then let us talk about the provinces. The man who currently sits in the finance minister's chair, who is now driving this country into deficit, did the same when he was minister of finance in Ontario. Now for the province of Ontario, yes, it is going into deficit again, but the mess that was left because of that Minister of Finance right there in terms of managing the affairs of the province of Ontario drove the province pretty near into bankruptcy. It is too bad. One would think the current Minister of Finance would have learned a lesson from his mistakes in Ontario, but now he is trying to impose the same pain on all of Canada.

The other point I would make is that when the Liberal Party was in power, Canada was the envy of the industrialized world in terms of its fiscal capacity and in terms of the management of its financial affairs.

The biggest joke that I see on the international scene these days is the Prime Minister parading around the world talking about our wonderful banks, how good it is that they have been regulated and that they are in much better shape than anywhere else. That Prime Minister, when he was in the opposition, opposed that move. I sat in the committee that was looking at those banks and it was during a Liberal government. We convinced the then finance minister, Paul Martin, that we should not go the way others have gone in allowing foreign ownership and deregulation of the banks. The current Prime Minister opposed that move.

It is thanks to the former Liberal government that we have the banking system that we do in this country, thank you very much.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on Bill S-3 and take part in this debate.

It is always instructive to see the Liberal member for Malpeque grilling the Conservatives for having plunged Canada into a deficit when the Liberal Party of Canada supported them no less than 62 times in this descent into hell with the creation of a Canadian deficit. I find it hard to understand, although that is not the only incongruity in this Parliament. This kind of thing is why politicians are always second last on the list of people Canadians trust. I will not say who is last. Members take positions in the House that are totally contrary to what they say in their speeches. That is the Liberal reality and it is why they have almost no credibility in Quebec.

Bill S-3 was introduced yesterday and is an act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act. I want to say right away that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of this bill. Environmental groups and people who take some interest in the environment are not easily fooled, but when the Conservative government introduces a bill on energy efficiency, it is at least a step. We should study it therefore in committee, improve it, and see how open-minded the Conservatives are about analyzing it. This bill is not a panacea for all our energy problems, far from it, but my colleague from Trois-Rivières did a good job of presenting the Bloc’s position. When the government takes a little step, we should all go along, while remaining very realistic about the likely results.

There are eight clauses in Bill S-3. I will summarize them for the benefit of the men and women watching.

Clause 1 creates section 2.1 in the definitions in the Energy Efficiency Act. Its purpose is to specify the meaning of the word “class”. A class of energy-using products can be defined according to common energy-consuming characteristics of the products, their intended use, or the conditions under which the products are normally used.

Clause 2 is about interprovincial trade and importation. In the current act, paragraph 4.1(b) forbids dealers from shipping an energy-using product that does not comply with certain requirements from the province in which it was manufactured to another province for the purpose of sale or lease. Clause 2 changes this provision by replacing the last part with the following: “from one province to another province” for the purpose of sale or lease. In addition, paragraph 4.1(b) in the current English version requiring that a label be attached to the product or package is changed to require a label “in accordance with the regulations”. This is a welcome clarification because they are talking about appliances in this bill and all energy-using household equipment is included.

As we know, many of our citizens still have appliances that consume a lot of energy. In Quebec, Hydro-Québec is paying $60 to anyone who gets a new fridge. Hydro-Québec will even come and take away the old one. That is one way of getting rid of appliances that consume too much energy. If we want to use a bill to prohibit interprovincial transportation of equipment, we are talking about importers, retailers and suppliers. The equipment is not always new. There is business in second hand equipment. We do not want such equipment to be transported between the provinces, or even sold in any province.

Clause 3 adds a clarification to the information that a dealer must communicate to the minister.

From now on, prescribed information must include information about the shipping or importation of the material in question.

Clause 3 amends section 5 of the Energy Efficiency Act, which requires that dealers who ship or import energy-using products shall file a report with the prescribed information. Under the current subsection 5(1), the “dealer...shall file with the Minister...a report setting out prescribed information respecting the energy efficiency of those products.” The bill changes the wording to require the dealer to “provide the Minister...with” the prescribed information, so it is not a matter of merely filing a report, but rather being obliged to provide the information concerning those products, including their energy efficiency, their shipment or their importation.

This is important because, at the end of the day, this bill attacks the very foundation of the distribution chain. This affects dealers and importers. This is unfortunate because we have heard members, both Liberals and Conservatives, pointing out whose record was worst or best. But one thing is certain: we must target importers, because there is almost no more manufacturing of such products here, simply because these sectors have been abandoned and left to emerging countries.

So now that we have virtually stopped manufacturing these products, we must ensure that the products we are sold respect the environment, and that is where the problem often lies.

During the holiday season, there is the issue of all the toys that contain lead and all the problems Canada has because it has not passed strict enough regulations and has allowed countries to produce goods that we would never dare produce here. We let them produce such goods, then we buy them. We also let these people distribute equipment produced in other countries that is no longer in keeping with how we see the environment and how we consume goods and services.

Similar technical changes—still with reference to clause 3—are proposed for subsections 5(2)(a) and 5(2)(b) and subsection 5(1). In addition, this clause allows in certain circumstances for an exemption from the requirement to provide information related to the energy efficiency of energy-using products, while leaving in place the requirement for shipment and importation information.

It is a bit complicated, and I would say that that is unintentional, at least I hope so. In any case, I have confidence in my colleague from Trois-Rivières, who, in committee, will be able to ask the witnesses the necessary questions to ensure that these requirements are really intended to facilitate information sharing.

So once we know that all or nearly all consumer products and equipment come from other countries and we realize that some products and equipment do not comply with our energy efficiency standards, we need to make sure with this bill that there are no loopholes. The Conservatives like to try to introduce a bill and allow, say, the oil industry to get off scot-free. It is a bit like when they talk about their carbon exchange and use 2010 as the reference year.

Members will recall that the Kyoto protocol sets 1992 as the reference year. This means that all the industries in Quebec—the aluminum smelters and paper plants—that reduced their greenhouse gas emissions in relation to 1992 levels and succeeded in meeting the Kyoto targets will have to do so all over again in relation to the Conservative government's proposed new reference year of 2010 or 2012, even though they had achieved what no company in Canada had managed to do.

That is why, day in and day out, week after week, we in the Bloc Québécois rise in this House to make it loud and clear to all the other parties that they must not forget that the effort has already been made in Quebec. In Quebec, the large manufacturing companies have made efforts and are prepared to comply with Kyoto, but it is a different story in the other Canadian provinces, especially with oil companies and tar sands. In a way, it is sad to always have to stand up for the people of Quebec.

We too would like all the members of this House to understand what manufacturing industries and other industries in Quebec—the logging, aluminum and paper manufacturing companies that have made efforts to achieve the Kyoto objectives—are going through. If an international carbon exchange was established, they would be ready to sell their credits because they have exceeded the objectives of the Kyoto protocol. They could be making money as we speak. The environment is no longer only costing money; it has become a source of income, an area of economic interest. Now, the environment is a money maker, provided one puts in the necessary effort.

After all the efforts that have been made in Quebec, the Conservatives are suggesting that the clock be reset, proposing a new reference date of 2010 or 2012. We will start over, and the industries with emissions lower than at the reference date will be allowed to issue emission credits. We can imagine what this means for the logging, aluminum and manufacturing companies which have already made the necessary efforts. They are being asked to make an additional effort. That is why we are saying that the government has to provide compensation to those who have done better than everyone else and are being penalized.

As I mentioned earlier, when the Conservatives introduce a bill, they once again cater to polluters. They are going to warn oil companies that the year 2010 or 2012 will be the starting point, and that they will have to reduce their emissions. If the companies do that, they will be eligible for those credits. They will not even have to buy them, because they will be in a position to sell them. For those who are following this issue, it just does not make any sense.

However, this is not funny for aluminum plants, for paper mills and for all the companies that anticipated this move. The companies that wanted to sell a product abroad told themselves that they would make an effort and be conscientious. They had decided to comply with the world target set in the Kyoto protocol, with 1992 as the reference date. However, because of a decision made by the Conservative government, these people will forever pay a price, this in an already difficult economic context. Once again, the Bloc Québécois has no choice but to rise day in and day out in this House to condemn the Conservatives' way of doing things.

So, this bill seeks to amend the Energy Efficiency Act, and it is meant to be an environmental act. The Conservative Party even claims that it is part of its green plan. The nice Tory green plan that will save the environment. Still, it is a first step and it means that the government is doing something. Indeed, there are problems with electric household appliances. We import a lot of those appliances. We buy them from countries that do not have the same environmental standards, and it is only normal to impose labelling provisions. Things must be clear when these appliances arrive in Canada. We must know about their energy consumption. If they do not comply with the standards, they should simply be sent back, or they should not be bought. This is more or less what this bill seeks to do. If it does not do so in its present form, we can trust the hon. member for Trois-Rivières that it will once the committee will have dealt with it. That is the objective. This legislation will help us make progress regarding the environment. Hon. members can trust the Bloc Québécois to achieve the objective set in this bill. We are going to make sure that the process is free of “Conservative” diversion or secrecy.

Clause 4 makes several technical wording changes dealing with the records and documents that dealers must keep. In the current section 7, the documents and records must enable the minister to verify the accuracy and completeness of the information. Under this bill, they must be sufficient for the Minister to do the verification.

I agree with my colleagues who spoke before me about this bill or asked questions. This bill ought to have been amended and there should be adjustments to the legislation every five years. Industrial changes happen very quickly. The government therefore needs to be sure it can monitor the situation in order to have the legislation tailored to technological developments in the industry.

This should be done automatically. The minister wants to change the definition through clause 4 by adding the term “sufficient” relating to the documents and records the industry needs to provide. He has noticed that he was not getting what he needed to support an informed decision. So, as I said earlier, clause 4 targets the dealers, all the importing dealers who purchase products or have them manufactured offshore, very often in developing countries not required to respect the environmental standards we have set for ourselves. So if we do not have all the details we need about the manufacturing process, content or energy efficiency, it becomes rather difficult to know if the product complies with our standards and conditions.

It is therefore normal to want to cast some light on this clause. It is a matter of semantics, but does add a bit more rigour to this legislation, which probably ought to have been amended very promptly five years ago and so is likely to be totally out of date. Once again, I rely on my colleague from Trois-Rivières and my fellow members of the Bloc Québécois who will sit on the committee to ensure that this bill develops along the right lines and is adjusted as developments in the industry take place.

Clause 5 broadens regulatory powers, one of the main amendments that Bill S-3 would make to the Energy Efficiency Act. This clause amends the Governor in Council's regulatory power. The Governor in Council will now be able to implement regulations that target categories of products, not just individual products; products that control energy consumption; and products that affect energy consumption. It also amends the English version of the Act.

With respect to labelling, Part III will give the Governor in Council broader, stronger regulatory powers over all of the information included with energy-using products. Previously, the Governor in Council could regulate only information about energy efficiency. Once again, the definition has to be broadened to make it stronger. Labels will now include all of the details.

These measures were deemed necessary because it is clear that the industry, importers and dealers have done everything in their power to not reveal true energy consumption numbers so that they can sell products that cost less to produce. They did everything they could to claim that their products complied with the law even though they did not. That is one of the advantages of this bill.

However, the Conservative government must not try to use distractions to pull a fast one on us. Once again, I am counting on my colleague from Trois-Rivières and other Bloc Québécois members who will ensure that the right questions get asked in committee. Clause 5 will also make some changes.

Clause 6 is about the report to Parliament. The second major amendment relates to the minister's responsibility to report to the House of Commons. Usually, the minister has to report on the implementation and enforcement of the bill once a year. Clause 6 adds a provision requiring the minister to compare Canada's energy efficiency standards to those of the United States and Mexico every three years. The purpose of the comparison is to demonstrate the extent to which the stringency of Canadian standards matches that of the other jurisdictions. I think that is a good idea. As I said earlier, things are changing quickly in the industry.

Since I see that I have only a minute left, I will close by saying that people can count on the Bloc Québécois members, who will work hard in committee to promote the idea of a potential obligation to review the legislation every five years. This situation is very important, and it is being submitted to our colleagues so that we can guarantee our citizens that what happened in the past will never happen again. People are trying once again to conceal information and use labels that do not meet standards, in order to achieve their own goals. I can assure you, Madam Speaker, of our full support for Bill S-3, but with the improvements that the Bloc Québécois will propose in committee.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the Bloc member indicated that his party will attempt to improve the bill at committee. I wonder what sort of amendments he was contemplating. Will he look at the scope of the bill to include cars, buses, farm machinery, planes, boats and other motorized equipment of that type?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, as we know, our work in committee is constantly evolving. The problem with the NDP is that they always want to achieve their own objectives and present their own opinions, without looking at all possible situations, while the Bloc Québécois' goal is to hear all the witnesses and move forward on the issue. What our NDP colleague is suggesting is not out of the question, nor is it out of the question that we would make such an amendment or support the NDP, but I do not wish to make any assumptions before the debate.

As we all know, the Bloc Québécois has always been responsible. We do not vote against a budget without seeing it. That is just one way we conduct ourselves. We do not vote against a budget without making some proposals, which is what we have always done. When budget time comes, the Bloc Québécois makes its proposals three or four weeks in advance, in order to make its position clear to the government. We always act responsibly and many parties would do well to follow the Bloc Québécois' example in this House.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel for his excellent presentation. My question will not be like that of the member for Malpeque, who went into a partisan tirade, so that I can at least have an answer.

He spoke several times about improving the bill in committee and I agree completely with him. I wonder if he would agree that this bill, in its present form, is very weak when it comes to buildings?

The energy consumption of buildings represents 47% of all energy consumed in Canada. Should we not establish energy efficiency targets for buildings or review building codes? Is this something that should be examined by the committee when it studies this bill?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Brome—Missisquoi, who is a hard-working member. I have the good fortune of working with him and he is very passionate about the environment. That is an important asset. My colleague raises an excellent point. In fact, the objective of a committee is to contribute new ideas. First, the Conservatives need them because their ideas are fairly passé. Thus, new ideas may just do the trick. Those are the kinds of ideas that my colleague contributes.

It is known that I have a municipal background. The building code has not changed much. We should be able to exert pressure and to push a great deal more for change especially in the building sector, which is protectionist and, again, I would say very conservative. We will try to open it up a bit and to give it some flavour from Quebec. That is the best way to open them up to the world.

I thank my colleague for the suggestion.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche will have about five minutes.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Madam Speaker, with only five minutes, it will be hard for me to do justice to such an important issue, so I will concentrate on certain specific elements.

This bill deals with energy conservation and energy efficiency. People who live in a rural area as I do definitely understand the importance of energy efficiency. All members who live in rural areas do. We understand the importance of our wealth of natural resources. Often, people will tell themselves that it is just wood or mines or fish. In fact, a natural resource is a treasure. We understand that it is important to take care of our treasures. Sometimes, people who live in other areas may have a hard time understanding that. That is why this big country has representatives of urban and rural regions. That gives us an opportunity to explain our reality, the reality of the rural environment.

As for the issue of natural resources, as I said earlier, we often have to make sure we have good energy efficiency. We live in remote areas where we have to travel greater distances, which means much higher costs. These are also areas where people earn their living from the land and from nature's bounty.

In Madawaska—Restigouche, where I live, the forest provides an extremely strong economic base. People have to protect the environment so that the forest will still be there in the future and our children and grandchildren can continue working in forestry, which is their own natural resource. People often ask those of us who live in rural regions what the environment means to us. The environment is everything, because it is what enables us to create jobs where we live. If we take care of our environment, then we will also take care of our treasure, which is the natural resource.

Energy efficiency affects us every day. We therefore need to keep abreast of developments and give more thought to how we can improve the future of our environment, which surrounds us every day. In this connection, I had the chance just now to question one of my colleagues from the Halifax region of Nova Scotia. I asked him whether the Conservative government had made the right decision when it cancelled the financial assistance program for the purchase of more energy efficient vehicles. That program was working very well, though there were some shortcomings. The government was extremely slow in sending payments to people who made such purchases. We will put that aside, however, and not be too negative; the program itself was extremely positive. The government was negative, but not the program; it was positive.

After barely two years, however, it has suddenly been announced that the program is going to disappear because it is not important. In today's reality, with the importance of energy efficiency, we need to make sure our citizens are provided with tools, with incentives. That is done all the time, through tax credits and other means. We do these things to encourage people to take positive actions. In this case, it was to encourage the purchase of more energy efficient vehicles.

People in our rural regions have to travel long distances to get to work. This means they need to spend more than other people on gas, which makes energy efficient transportation extremely important. We know that energy efficient vehicles cost more as well. This is a parallel with what I was saying before: those of us in rural regions understand the importance of our environment and of taking care of it. Energy efficient vehicles combine those two aspects and that combination makes it possible for us to help people.

You are about to cut me off already, Madame Speaker, which is regrettable. I will certainly have the opportunity at some other time to revisit this matter.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member will have 15 minutes remaining when debate resumes.

It being 5:39 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from April 1 consideration of the motion that Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support this bill which makes a small and incremental change to the Energy Efficiency Act.

We all know that when a number of small actions are added up, the results can be enormous. They can be impressive. When all the gains in energy efficiency that we can make in Canada are added up, we discover that the most important energy resource we have is actually not under the ground, but right in our homes and communities. Energy efficiency is our forgotten resource.

When we take a look at its potential from a collective point of view, we see that it is our biggest energy resource. It is the cheapest and it creates the most jobs. It is integral to helping Canadians live in a low carbon future.

My disappointment with this bill and with the approach of this government is that it has not realized the full and enormous benefits of this energy efficiency solution. What we see today is a small incremental change. What we need from our federal level of government is a view of the bigger picture. A real plan to tap into the benefits of energy efficiency as a resource and to mine its future potential.

The government does pay lip service to this. Some in government have clearly read some of the documents by Ralph Torrie from the David Suzuki Foundation. They know how to use the rhetoric, but they either do not know, or they do not want to produce a real and aggressive energy efficiency plan for our country.

If we count negawatts in addition to megawatts of energy, energy efficiency should be providing 30% to 50% of our energy requirements in a low carbon future. To do this we need to start investing today.

Not only is energy efficiency a huge resource, but it is also an excellent form of economic stimulus. It reduces costs for businesses and homeowners over the long term. It is estimated to create five times the number of jobs compared to conventional energy. It is estimated that 80% of the investments made are actually spent in the local economy.

Instead of an economic stimulus plan that makes investments in our future, creates jobs and puts money into our local economy, we have a government that is looking at backyard decks as a stimulus plan. Instead of having something to show for ourselves by building up an energy efficient economy, we are going to build a bunch of backyard decks instead of energy efficient homes.

In Nova Scotia I have been privileged to work on this issue in-depth. I am a member of the Affordable Energy Coalition and a representative of low-income Nova Scotians in front of our utility board. I have worked with our power utility, with the Ecology Action Centre, with industrial operators, municipalities and consumers. Together we have agreed on a plan to start investing in energy efficiency in our province.

I will share with members of the House that Nova Scotia is poised to be a cutting-edge jurisdiction on energy efficiency. An economic analysis of our electricity system was conducted that tried to figure out the most cost-effective plan for going forward in the future. The results were very clear. The results were that our province must aggressively invest in as much energy efficiency as possible. The alternative was to build another coal plant that would add $1 billion more in costs to electric consumers. Instead of building another 400 megawatt coal plant, the plan now is to build a power plant out of energy efficiency.

Stakeholders got together and agreed that these programs, first, have to be invested in; second, they have to be effective; and third, they need to actually work. After a long and deliberative consultation we also agreed that the best way for us to move forward was to create Canada's first third party performance-based administrator. Unfortunately, this action has been delayed. It is very unfortunate because every wasted day means more wasted energy.

An impressive strategy for energy efficiency has been pushed by the stakeholders in Nova Scotia, but it will not go anywhere unless we see leadership from all levels of government. Now that I am an MP, I recognize the importance of speaking about this issue today in the House of Commons.

There is also an important social dimension of energy efficiency because having access to energy efficiency services for all, rich and poor, rural and urban, homeowner, tenant and business, is very important. In a future where energy costs are sure to rise, energy efficiency is a new type of social service required to provide security. It needs to become a basic right for all. It needs to be a component of a green new deal that Canadians are waiting for.

In Nova Scotia, stakeholders agreed that everybody needs to participate in energy efficiency programs. This includes low-income Nova Scotians, who face the highest barriers to energy efficiency.

I have worked with low-income Nova Scotians in Canada facing energy poverty. They have decisions about whether to feed their kids or heat their homes. They make decisions between heating or eating.

I worked with members of one family in particular who lost their electricity, which meant they had no heat or lights. They were very worried that children's aid would take their children. They did the right thing and went into the shelter system until they could save up enough money to pay for their power bill. Going into the shelter system meant splitting up their family. The kids were taken out of their school because they had to go to another jurisdiction where the shelter was located. Dad couched surfed. Mom stayed with the kids. They lived in a shelter while they tried to cobble together enough money to pay for their electricity, have it reconnected, turn on the heat and have a safe home.

I have also worked with clients who have scraped together the money to pay down their electricity bills and, as a result, had no money left for food. Many people do not realize the circumstances that low-income Canadians are in when faced with having to choose between heating or eating. Some of my clients have ended up living on cat food because they have used all their money to pay their electricity bills. It is shocking to hear, but it is true that it is happening in Canada.

Upgrading insulation, changing light bulbs and caulking windows are really good investments, but for low-income Nova Scotians and Canadians who are barely scraping by, these investments cannot be made. We need a program in Canada that ensures that low-income Canadians can cut their bills and help the environment.

Organizations such as Green Communities Canada have been calling on the government to create a national low-income energy efficiency program, but the government has not done it. This means that some of the most vulnerable members of society are excluded. These people could be helped the most by these programs, but instead they are being left out.

Energy is a basic service that is required in Canada but we need to truly start thinking of it as a service, which means asking questions about how much heat and light we get instead of how much energy and fossil fuels we burn. People are rightfully concerned when the cost of energy increases. They think more about the rates than about the bills. What is required is the ability to give people the tools to cut their bills in a future when our electricity and heating rates will no doubt increase in price.

It is no surprise that people are concerned with rates or the per unit cost of energy. We have built a huge infrastructure with transmission lines, natural gas pipelines, and oil refineries all of which are dedicated to energy supply, but we have yet to build the infrastructure required to reduce energy demand.

We need to start living in a world where accessing energy efficiency services is as easy as accessing energy supply services; where saving energy, upgrading light bulbs and getting a home audit is as easy as filling a tank with fuel oil that efficiency displaces over time; where accessing public transit is as easy as pulling into the gas station; and where talking to an energy efficiency professional is as common as going to the convenience store.

With so much potential, we need a lot more than incremental changes to energy labelling. We need a real strategy that includes investments, a strategy that includes consistent upgrades to appliance and equipment efficiency.

A labour market strategy is needed to kickstart the energy efficiency industry in our country. There needs to be training at all levels. I have worked on these programs in Nova Scotia and we actually had to have a component in the budget for training. We are creating jobs. There are not enough people to do this really amazing work, and it is skilled work. There are thousands of people needed to do this work across Canada. With so many people losing their jobs now, it is extremely disappointing to see the total lack of vision from the government on the potential for an energy efficient economy of the future.

It is the federal government's role to look at the big picture. While the small, incremental changes in this bill are important and need to be supported, the federal government also needs to be prepared to look at the big picture and to exercise some vision and leadership in building an energy efficient economy.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was very impressed with the speech of hon. member for Halifax. She has obviously thought deeply and widely about the issue of energy efficiency. There was a lot to digest in her speech and I look forward to reading it.

There is one part that really caught my attention. It seems that we have a lose-lose situation in that the government is not paying adequate attention to energy efficiency and at the same time, it is not adequately focused on the problems of the poor.

Could the hon. member for Halifax expand a bit on this lose-lose scenario and what she would recommend to put in its stead?

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to think about what these solutions or programs would look like. It is a very fair question to ask.

I had the honour of being a community stakeholder and consultant with the EnerGuide for low-income households program. The EGLIH program was introduced by a previous Liberal government. It never made it off the paper. As a community consultant, I did have a view into what the EGLIH program would look like. It works with low-income homeowners. The key thing is that we cannot have up-front costs for low-income families. People on welfare in Nova Scotia get about $6 a day. A compact fluorescent light bulb costs about $6. If I had to make that decision, I would not buy the CF light bulb. I would choose to eat on that day.

With the EGLIH program there was no cost to homeowners. We would go into the home, do an energy audit and work with the homeowner. We would take out the incandescent light bulb and crush it so that it could never be used again. We would put in the compact fluorescent light bulb. We would insulate the roof. We would cover the hot water tank with an insulating blanket. We would go in and make the changes without any cost to the homeowner. We would then go in for another visit to ask how things were going and ask, for example, whether or not they were remembering to put the lid on the pot when they were boiling the spaghetti because it is more energy efficient. It was a lot about education. It was a lot about transforming households.

One flaw with the EGLIH program, and this was known, was that it was only for homeowners. Nova Scotia is an exception in that the majority of low-income Nova Scotians live rurally and quite a few of them own their homes. However, for the rest of Canada, most low-income Canadians are renters. How do we deal with renters? EGLIH was considering this. Community consultations were being done to figure out a good way to offer the program to tenants. One solution was to tell landlords that if low-income people were living in their building and they planned on doing renovations, we could give them a percentage of the renovations per capita. There are solutions out there.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague. The process the government goes through to arrive at these policies is a curious one to me.

She talked about being involved at the grassroots level in developing, designing and helping people with what government can and cannot do. The federal government seems to be unwilling to listen to anybody who is not part of an inner sanctum of oil producers, in general, when it comes to energy. Bills like this one that come forward are so limited in scope and nature that one wonders if the government is listening and consulting with Canadians who actually deal with these issues.

I wonder if the member could talk about the value of the government going beyond its own comfort zone, going to the ground and talking to people at the community level about the issues that matter the most. In this case it is energy efficiency which, as she mentioned, is good for the planet and the pocket.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, this is an area of interest for my colleague for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. He does great work on energy efficiency and other energy issues. He asked a good question.

I will reflect on some personal experience of mine in Nova Scotia. The most success that we in the Affordable Energy Coalition and community groups that were working on energy issues had was in working with a corporation. We were asked by Nova Scotia Power to be consultants and stakeholders in helping to design energy efficiency programs. I was involved. Large industrials and manufacturers were involved. A consumer advocate was involved. Municipalities were involved. We worked together with some experts to design the programs.

On the face of it, it does not make a lot of sense that this corporation would ask an anti-poverty group to help design the programs. They were mandated by the utility and review board to bring down their energy use and implement energy efficient measures because it would save money. This means that the electricity users and consumers would save money. They were mandated to do this work. They realized that there is a lot of expertise in our community in Nova Scotia. They brought in some folks from the eastern seaboard of the United States where they are doing amazing work on energy efficiency. They are absolute role models.

For all of us to sit in a room, to have people from the pulp and paper company sitting in a room with people from the anti-poverty organization, it worked. We came up with solutions. We designed these programs. They are being implemented in Nova Scotia and government is sitting up, paying attention, listening and realizing that this is a process that works. Perhaps it missed the boat and should have gotten on this earlier. We have a government agency, Conserve Nova Scotia, that has taken quite a few of those programs. They are the administrator right now.

We are really proud of what is happening in Nova Scotia. As I mentioned earlier, we are definitely leading the charge when it comes to low-income energy efficiency in this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is with sincere pleasure that I rise to speak to this bill, not so much for the contents of the bill, which are thin gruel in some respects, but to the actual challenge put in front of this country and the world.

Bill S-3, An Act to amend the Energy Efficiency Act, seeks to give government further powers and restrictions on certain products that Canadians use every day, such as, washers, dryers, and the like. It is a disappointment in the sense that it is such a small measure in overall goal that Canada must set for itself. Canada must take a leadership role globally.

It is a small measure with respect to the serious issue of rising energy costs. Canadians have seen those costs grow year after year, although there have been some dips along the road when energy prices have fallen. We always notice that as prices go up on the world market, prices correspondingly rise here. However, when the prices on the world market fall, the price at the pump or the electricity prices do not fall correspondingly. The overall trend continues to be bad for consumers.

The bill attempts in some small way to address what are the government's powers. The response from industry has been best described as tepid. It does not seem to be excited one way or another about this, which is usually an indication that not all that much is going on. When the government comes forward with bold and strong measures, there is often a response from industry asking for less to happen or asking for it to happen in a different way. If government comes forward with something that is lukewarm, much more subtle and non-intrusive to the industry's own plans, then we see things such as this bill, which is not much.

The response from the groups concerned with these issues specifically on the environmental side has been mildly positive, in that it is seen as a small step forward. However, the government consistently has failed to come forward with anything comprehensive. That will be the focus of my comments today, because efforts outside of any comprehensive cognitive strategy, anything that people can understand as a cohesive plan, are just efforts in the dark. They are one-offs and do not do enough to bring us to where we need to be and where I sincerely believe Canadians want to be.

It seems there might be one small glimmer of hope contained in the bill, but one has to read into it and dig into it to find whether this is a real potential. That is the possibility that the government could restrict the water usage of some appliances. For example, there are clothes washers and dishwashers that use a third, a quarter, a fifth of what the standard models use. These types of measures are needed.

There are cities that need to invest billions upon billions of dollars on infrastructure. There are water shortage issues in certain parts of our country. This has been a crisis in Alberta in the past. This most likely will continue to be a problem for consumers and for industry. The government should clamp down on products that are wasteful for no good reason. They do not deliver a better service to Canadians. They do not deliver at a better price. They just use more water and more energy for no good reason other than that we have had it too good for too long.

We have had so much in the way of natural resources in countries like Canada. The notion was that there would always be more. There would always be more water, more trees, more energy and that we could simply design our industries and our entire economy based on the principle of waste, based on the fundamental principle that if prices drop, we just do more, that it is okay to waste a bunch, the volumes are so great it will not be a problem.

We are starting to bump up against the natural limits of the environment, the natural limits of what our resources can actually sustain. This is happening globally. We are seeing more and more conflicts around the world on issues involving water and energy. We are still experiencing the war in Iraq, which the American administration has finally admitted was an energy war. We are seeing it happen at a national level with a government that claimed it was going to map the water basins throughout Canada and failed to do so. We consistently hear of boil water advisories in our poorer communities. We also see it at the local level, where people are struggling to find ways to use less water and energy, to turn off the tap, to turn off the lights. Folks are unaware that a lot of the products they buy are vulture electronics. They are called that because they draw power all the time.

With the old televisions and stereos we used to have, we would turn them on, it would take a couple of seconds for them to warm up, and then we would see the screen or hear the music. Now we hit a button and our computers, televisions, or stereos are on in an instant. The reason they are able to do that is because they are constantly drawing power from the grid, anticipating that split second when we might need to see them, use them, or have them available to us. All that power is being used over time.

When we look at the need for new power in this country, in this province of Ontario and my own province of British Columbia, all sorts of money is being spent by government and industry to create new sources of power, when the easiest way to create that new power is not to use it in the first place, to actually conserve, which fits the interests of all our voters, the people who put us here, to lower their energy bills.

The only people who have an interest in keeping more power on the grid or producing more power for our cars and vehicles are the people who produce that power, so they can make more money.

There is a strong and deep interest and we are finally starting to see it from some of the more enlightened energy companies. Investing more in energy efficiency and understanding more about the need to make a more efficient, more productive, more competitive economy is fundamentally based within questions of energy, whether it is human energy or the energy that we typically talk about in this place, which is electricity, oil and gas, and the like.

Canadians need to know that this bill, for all its small merits, takes place within a policy vacuum of the government.

I had a term turned back on me just yesterday while meeting with some energy consultants. They mentioned the Turning the Corner plan. It had been so long since I had heard it. It had been so long since I had heard the government mention it.

The government brought out this plan in 2007, for those who will remember, and there was the promise of regulations and rules by which this plan would actually be achieved. There was the promise, and nothing was delivered.

What does industry do when there is a policy vacuum? What does industry do when there are no actual rules in place? They continue on with business as usual.

Some of the investments we are talking about, particularly in higher stakes energy, such as the oil and gas and the electricity producers, require billions of dollars to switch from one to another. I recall a meeting I had with some folks who were involved in the mining industry, both in extraction and in the refining or smelting side of operations. They were furious with the government and the previous governments.

One would assume they would be natural allies of the government. They no longer were because they had seen the government issue statement after statement about requiring energy efficiency, requiring fewer greenhouse gases in the operation, yet time and time again, industry had made those investments assuming the rules would follow and nothing followed.

They are still waiting for the Turning the Corner regulations and rules. Not one has been issued of any substance.

In the policy vacuum that has been created, we see Canada, under the Minister of the Environment and others, trying to enter the slipstream of what is happening in Washington, waiting, delaying, not setting any price on carbon, not setting any regulatory limits on what happens with pollution, waiting for the Obama administration to make the effort for them.

As we have seen just this past week, the Obama administration came out with its climate change plans, a document of some 600 pages, and the response from the Canadian government is that everything is fine with us, using measurements that will simply not coincide with what our American partners are suggesting and will do, from all prescriptions.

We are seeing in Congress, both from the House of Representatives side and the Senate side, bills coming forward that are absolutely counter to what the Conservatives have proposed. On one specific issue, how we measure greenhouse gases, which would be one of the most fundamental issues if we are trying to control greenhouse gases, the government here insists on using intensity-based targets, which nobody in the world uses. Certainly nobody who hopes to participate in a carbon market is proposing the use of those targets. It is just simply not done because it is not possible. It is apples and oranges.

One measures the amount of greenhouse gases going out per unit of energy or per unit of economy, which is this intensity fiction that the Conservatives promote. The other one just says, “Here is a hard cap. Here is your limit. Below it, you can trade. Above it, you have to buy”. That is how the market works.

When I was recently in Washington talking with some of our congressional allies, I asked them what kinds of conversations they have had with Canada about integrating our market systems. These were the principal movers of these bills, the folks whose signatures are now going on these pieces of legislation in Washington.

They said their conversation me was the first one they have had with a Canadian legislator, impossible for me to believe when we have this great and glorious embassy in Washington with all sorts of staff and very bright, smart people walking around. We have an entire bank of ministers heading down to Washington every so often, yet the conversation about integrating one of the most important and fundamental markets, which will be upon us within a year, had not started, thereby not allowing Canadian industry access to one of the most important markets they need to access.

Further to that, and this speaks to the energy efficiency of this, the Americans have been talking about a low-carbon standard for fuels for some time. The initiative started out of Maine, New York, California, and Washington state, and is now being picked up by Washington, D.C. The Canadian response to this is that we hope they don't do it, because Canada produces some of the highest carbon fuels in the world. The Americans are saying they are going to put a limit on the amount of those fuels they allow into the country. They are actually putting a limit on the amount of carbon that is emitted by the fuels that American consumers and industries are meant to consume, which is produced in Canada, which is apparently the Conservative government's preoccupation on a daily basis and it has not made any efforts to understand the absolute train wreck that is coming our way if we do not react to this and start to produce fuels of a lower carbon standard.

Canada's response, to this point, is simply to say that it won't happen, that the Americans will blink and simply won't have a low-carbon fuel standard. I have news for the Conservatives. The folks who are drawing up this legislation, within the White House and on the Senate and the House of Representatives sides, have all said and have written in black and white for the Canadian government to finally see, “This is happening”. This is what is on the table, and the Canadian government refuses to take any real recognition of the scope and scale of the challenge that is put before us.

It is absolutely fine for the government to give itself some more powers with respect to the efficiency of electronics and the efficiency of appliances that Canadians use on a daily basis, but it does not ban the most inefficient ones. It simply says we will allow a few more of these to come forward in a more efficient way. However, the real culprits, the ones that consume the most power, the most water, and waste the most, are still not available to the government to stop outright. Why that would be, I have no idea.

It is not as if the administration of other countries around the world have not gone down that path with no serious detriment to consumers or industry. We have seen the Europeans and Japanese go forward on this for more than two decades, and the Australians, New Zealanders and others. The path is laid, which may be the only advantage Canada actually has at this point when it comes to dealing with climate change or energy efficiency. Because of the delay of the Conservative government and previous Liberal regimes, the path forward has been paved with respect to certain basic elements of how to make a more efficient and less polluting economy.

It is not as if Canada has to reinvent the wheel at this point. So many administrations have gone before us with sincere and genuine leadership. We see this now taking place even at the G20. Today, our Prime Minister and leaders from around the world are there.

It is actually 22 countries. They are going to have to change the name at some point, I suppose, but we will call it the G20 because all do.

At this summit with the European leaders and the American administration, in the talks about the stimulus packages that are needed, there is talk about what level, if Canada is below the 2% commitment it made six months ago in Washington at the G20. In the recovery packages that the administrations are talking about in Europe and the United States, they are talking about a green recovery. They are saying that if they are going to spend this much public money into the private markets, as the Canadian government and other governments are doing, for heaven's sake, should they not put some other public interests in place as well?

The public interest has been consistent and strong over the last number of years that we want less polluting cars, less polluting industry and greater efficiency with what we do, because Canadians do not like the idea. Where it may have been a historical reality for those who built this country that there was just such a wealth of resources that waste was not a deep consideration, it now is and Canadians concern themselves with this. It is why they recycle. It is why they attempt to do things such as carpooling and buying better electronics and equipment for their homes.

It seems to me, though, at this time, when the world is talking about putting in place a green recovery, our administration here is still seized with some ancient ideas. I cannot count how many times I have heard the so-called Minister of the Environment say that we have to choose between the environment and the economy, that we cannot threaten the economy by dealing with the environment at this point in time.

When times are good it is not time to deal with the environment, and when times are bad it is not time to deal with the environment, according to that type of thinking. The conclusion is always the same from the Conservative and Liberal leadership, that it is not time to deal with the environment.

The current Liberal leader, for goodness' sake, called the tar sands a national unity issue. I have heard it called many things by those who promote it and by those who decry it, but I have never heard it spoken of as a thing that bonds all Canadians together, that somehow folks sitting in Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver are on bended knee every day, praying for the health and welfare of the tar sands.

Of course, it is important to hone in on something that is going on, but for goodness' sake, we have to have some sort of measure of balance.

When bills moved previously through this House, spending bills from the government talking about energy efficiency, talking about the need to do better on climate change, the first one that came forward was a bus transit pass allotment. The government put in place the idea of making it easier for folks to get on transit. All the transit authorities across Canada said it was a wonderful idea but to give them more buses because they knew their users, they knew the people who use transit, and what they needed was greater efficiency and greater allowance onto the transit system, that this was the problem.

The government said, no, it was not going to listen to that advice. It was going to go its own way and offer people a tax break so that they could submit their monthly transit receipt and get money back on their taxes.

There is not a problem the government sees that cannot be solved by a tax credit of some kind or another. Lo and behold, that type of neo-conservative economic policy has put us into a certain situation and it still will not be reconsidered by the government, for reasons that are beyond me.

We said not to do this because it would not actually solve the problem the government was going after. It would not get more people onto transit. It would only affect early adopters, the people who are already use transit. As well, the amount of greenhouse reductions would come at an exorbitant price. It would be very expensive per tonne reduced, per car removed from the road.

The Auditor General unfortunately proved us right. That program ended up costing Canada between $5,000 and $6,000 a tonne. It is impossible to imagine that the government has the capacity and the intelligence within it to actually achieve any of the targets that it proposes. It puts out things like this bus transit pass that, if we actually ran the numbers at $5,000 or $6,000 a tonne, would make it impossible for Canada to achieve its goals under the current government's thinking.

A second bill that came forward is absolutely mystifying to me. The government brought forward a biofuels initiative about 18 months ago. We gave it a good look and allowed it to go to committee. At the committee stage, we moved two amendments. This was some $2 billion, a significant chunk of taxpayer money, going towards biofuels. We said that if we were going to subsidize biofuels--the ethanols, the corn ethanols, and the fuels of the world, maybe sugar or beet, we did not know what--there must be two filters applied over top.

One would be how many jobs we could possibly create with the expenditure of $2 billion. That should be a factor. At that time, we were not in a recession, but certainly there were some very shaky elements of our economy that we saw, the government ignored, and we all landed in. We said to at least put in a job component, a metric that says how many jobs we will create for the $2 billion invested. The government said, no, it did not need to do that; it would just simply spend the money.

The second thing we said was that if we were trying to reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by Canada, should that not be a filter on the greenhouse gas program? Could we not put that down as a measure, as a marker to say that we were going to achieve the most greenhouse gas reductions possible? The government said, no, why would it do that, and it did not. As a result, the $2 billion went out the door. It was a farm subsidy. Fine, if the government wants to do a farm subsidy, it can. However, $2 billion goes out the door and greenhouse reductions from that subsidy are negligible, according to every study that has been done on it.

So in this policy vacuum, when bills such as Bill S-3 come along and the government waves them around and says it is fixing climate change and not to worry about it, it happens within the context of nothing else.

Certainly when the governments of the day were looking at developing the tar sands in the first go-round, they did not just do one-offs. They had a comprehensive strategy. They put every measure of government forward--money, research, support, and expertise--to develop that project, and lo and behold, it was successful. They are doing a lot of tar sands right now.

When it comes to the environment, there is not that same intelligence or that same authenticity and sincerity. That is what has been failing Canadians, and that is why this bill, while a small measure, is certainly not going to get the job done.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, this bill is about appliances, and the member rightly points out that the bill does not actually outlaw the biggest offenders, the appliances that are the greatest offenders. However, energy efficiency is about so much more than appliances.

In Nova Scotia, we have a ton of energy efficiency programs, some run by our utilities, some run by the provincial government.

For example, there is a commercial lighting program that actually helps commercial industries figure out what is the best lighting system for them, what is the most energy efficient lighting system. We have programs for energy efficient households and energy efficient businesses, even programs to help manufacturers choose the most energy efficient motors or refrigeration systems. These are big companies that we are talking about.

Because of this member's expertise in energy efficiency and other energy issues, I would be interested in his thoughts about energy efficiency programs beyond simple appliances.

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

Mr. Speaker, the folks in Halifax have done this for a long time. In fact, in many respects, they have led the country, not only on energy efficiency but also on waste reduction. They have thought about these as comprehensive strategies.

Right now the natural resources committee, to which the bill will be sent, is looking at integrated energy systems. We have looked at whether communities and regions have integrated energy systems, and right most do not. A few communities such as Halifax, Okotoks, Guelph and Vancouver are trying to integrate their energy systems and are thinking about them in a comprehensive way.

These are very challenging questions in my area of northwestern British Columbia. We must always be consistent and thoughtful of folks who do not live in our big metropolises, of those smaller communities that make an effort to do the same thing, communities that are more car and truck dependent and are more reliant on the primary heat because they tend to be farther north.

These communities can also be brought in, with efficiencies that make sense at their level and in their circumstances. This is why the cookie cutter approach by the government has not worked. It is why its policies have not been adopted across the country. The Conservatives pretend that all Canadians live in the same circumstances and that is not true.

If we were more adaptable, folks in northwestern British Columbia, in Halifax and others would pick up this charge. It makes sense environmentally and makes sense on a financial and personal level. The ethics and economics work out in this scenario and we need to push that. We need to have something a lot more comprehensive than this.

Last night, we passed Bill C-311, by the member for Thunder Bay—Superior North. It is a good bill and it sets out the framework for this.

The House needs to be much more aggressive and progressive on this. Canadians are expecting it and demanding it.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one thing I have not talked about very much, but is very important and it happens around the world, is extended producer responsibility. In fact, that applies a lot with electronics.

It has been done in the forefront by a lot of manufacturers, based upon metals and other types of materials in electronics, which are valuable through scrappage and so forth. There are also many environmental reasons for companies to have that responsibility. A company would either take the product back or would have process to dispose of it so it would not end up in landfills.

Many different problems arise from some of the electronics, which can cause contamination. As well, we have a high amount of recycling of those products, which is important. It not only does it preserve further metals from having to be extracted sooner, it also makes use of the materials in appliances that are no longer be of use.

Could my colleague comment on that policy? Where is Canada on this? I do not think we are anywhere near where we should be. Automobiles are one good example, but there is also electronics. Could the member comment on this? I know he has been around the globe and has seen what has happened in other places.

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

Mr. Speaker, there is this notion of cradle to grave product stewardship. When a product is designed by the manufacturer, there is a certain sense of ownership through the product's entire life and then brought back. We have seen this in some small measures when we have looked at tires, or batteries or some of the more toxic products. We know there is a liability when a product is created.

There is an actual inherent and contained component that at some point someone will have to take care of, particularly when the components are toxic. We know that is true with electronics and the auto sector. When a computer is made, we know there are toxic elements contained it. Imagine all the computers that will eventually be released into the environment unless we plan otherwise.

We have seen the job creation potential in thinking about this and putting in rules that work this way, whether in electronics or otherwise. I have seen it in other countries with respect to the auto sector. Alongside assembly plants, which we all know well and are losing memory of because they are shutting down so fast as they flee to other jurisdictions, no thanks to the government, are de-manufacturing plants.

Electronics in automobiles are constructed in such a way that their deconstruction is imagined. Some of the resources contained in electronics within automobiles are precious resources. They are hard to find. They are often located in politically unstable parts of the world.

Why would we continue to design BlackBerries, washers, dryers and vehicles that require us to acquire more and more resources from a shrinking and limited world and in the process not create any jobs? Never mind the cost and burden to the municipalities, which are cash strapped now. They are dealing with landfills that are filling up with toxins and they can barely contain them. It is a huge challenge.

Our resources need to be considered in a comprehensive way. This bill goes some small steps toward something else, but until we have that comprehensive thinking in this place and show real leadership, Canadians will be on the hook for this stuff, because the liability transfers to them. The jobs that could be created are forsaken and that is wrong. It is simply wrong on all sorts of levels.

I thank my colleague for his leadership in the auto sector. If only the government had listened to some of his calls earlier on about the coming crisis and the types of things we are now seeing. It is a tragedy and a shame for families.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

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

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Accordingly the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)