Let me preface my comments.
I had a perfectly good vehicle, a 2005 mid-sized one, and it had decent fuel economy, but I thought I had a responsibility to buy something much more fuel-efficient, so I did. I thought I would like to buy a hybrid.
I couldn't test-drive a hybrid. I had to put my name on a list, and when one came in, in about three months, if I liked it, I could keep it; if not, it would be made available to somebody else.
So I ended up buying a hybrid, and I like it—it's a very nice vehicle—but there was additional cost to make that conversion, and it wasn't necessary, because I had a perfectly good and fairly new vehicle.
The other thing that makes me a little puzzled is that in the newspaper I looked at before flying back on Sunday, there was a full-page ad on new vehicles from a new dealer, and there were three vehicles being advertised. They had 425 horsepower. I thought, that's a lot of horsepower. They were mid-sized vehicles similar to the one I had. I think mine had about 170 or 150 horsepower, or something like that. But 425....
I go back to my original question. Do people want 425 horsepower because it's been built, or are you building it because that's what people want?
What sparked this interest is a comment made, I believe, by Mr. Nantais, that the cost of fuel is low in Canada. I've visited Europe, and yes, the fuel costs are over double what we pay here, and they drive much smaller cars. We just experienced some dramatic increases in fuel prices, yet vehicles such as the Hummer experienced dramatic increases in sales. So here, fuel prices are going up, yet people are still buying bigger and more powerful vehicles.
As the Government of Canada, we have a responsibility and a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to make the air cleaner for Canadians. We are moving from voluntary to regulatory, yet Canadians are buying bigger and more powerful cars. Would somebody like to cast light on the apparent inconsistency here?