Environment Committee on May 29th, 2007

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

Yes, but I want to come back to the comment by Gary Doer. He said that he had never gotten a dime from the federal government—

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

I'm sure you do, but allow me to—

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

Well, you mentioned the provinces, and I think I have a right to respond. I respectfully listened to your question. You raised the provinces' lack of support. We are, for the first time ever, working with provinces, providing funds to help build the hydrogen highway, to help build a national electricity grid, to help, finally, my premier, Premier McGuinty, to close the coal-fired plants he promised to close by 2007. We're working hard on initiatives right across the country with provinces, something that never happened before.

With respect to a “polluter pays” principle, I think it is important. I think the investments are going to have to be made in every single industry, whether it's pulp and paper, oil and gas, chemicals, or smelting. All are important. Everyone has to play their part.

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

You've agreed to this $6.4 billion figure. Your government assesses the value of a Canadian life at $5 million, in the economic models you use. When I'm looking at your sectoral charts here, Minister—this is important, and you might want to listen to it—there's an exemption made for the oil sands, whereby they are allowed to increase smog pollution by 60%.

Has your government factored in the cost in human life, or the cost to taxpayers in health costs, to allow the oil sands to expand at that rate and to allow the pollution from those projects to expand at that rate?

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

Every sector is participating in the reduction of pollution. We're going to see a massive reduction in the amount of pollution in this country as a result of the plan we've come forward with. I think you're confusing the reduced health costs from air pollution and greenhouse gases and global warming, though.

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

Minister, these are from your own data. You take credit for and claim a $6.4 billion savings because of the reduction of things that cause smog and cause detriments to human health. You then allow—the only exemption in the country that we can find—one sector, in northern Alberta, the oil sands project, to increase their pollution of those very same chemicals that cause people to die and cause an increase in spending to taxpayers.

Has your department figured out what the cost is to allow the oil sands to triple their expansion plans?

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

No sector is exempt from the regulations we brought forward. I know, sir, that you voted for an amendment to Bill C-30 that would allow the minister, with the stroke of a pen, to exempt certain areas. So I'd ask you, did you conduct that same thing?

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

You have not taken any costing; you have not factored in the impacts on human health, people's health, not just in northern Alberta but across the country, of allowing this.

You've done a noble thing in having an E85 vehicle—is that true, your minivan? How many times have you filled up with the E85?

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

Whenever we can, and if we're in Ottawa, every time, at Natural Resources.

There's a new plant opening; there's a new gas station in Guelph open providing 85% ethanol. I spoke to the owner the other day. We hope it expands in a major way.

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

Do you agree with the continuing subsidization of the oil sands in northern Alberta? The Canadian taxpayers are subsidizing this project. It seems somehow counter-intuitive to a lot of Canadians—allow me to finish my question—that on the one hand you make great claims of being new devotees of trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while on the other hand taking taxpayer dollars, subsidizing the oil sands, and then suggesting that we should subsidize carbon capture and sequestration for pretty much the most profitable companies in the world right now.

Why should Canadians be contributing to that bottom line?

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

Let me say two things. One is, I thought it was rather indefensible to be providing tax subsidies through the accelerated capital cost allowance to the oil sector. We're phasing those out. I think we spoke very clearly of that in the budget; it's laid out in the budget document.

I can tell you that the partnership we have with Alberta on carbon capture and storage would not build a pipeline. What that is, is to set up the regime that it would require, whether it's legal, whether it's regulatory, whether it's liability, whether it's technology, whether it's how people would get access to it. The Government of Canada has made no commitment to help fund a pipeline.

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

You have made commitments to help fund carbon capture and sequestration. On the spending to sell this plan, your department will spend close to $1 million pitching this to Canadians. Is that true?

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

We did have a radio campaign of about $1 million.

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

How many greenhouse gas emission reductions are you expecting out of that expenditure?

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

Out of reporting to the public? I think we have an important responsibility to report to the public. To put it in context, the previous government spent $1.6 million promoting the big environmental meeting in Montreal. I think we have an important responsibility.

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

It's an interesting reaction from you, only because it seems to me that the standard by which you are judging yourself and your government's performance is on the failed experience of the previous government. It seems strange to Canadians to take an example of failure under Mr. Dion as an excuse to allow the next government to say, “We will only do slightly better than failure.” That doesn't seem acceptable.

My question to you is this. You'll be having Mr. Schwarzenegger come to this country and sign some memorandums. Will you agree to California's proposed auto standards? Your committee members in the Conservative caucus have suggested that auto jobs have been saved by not making efforts towards Kyoto. Do you believe in that statement?

I'll quote from Mr. Watson here that a major protection for the auto industry is to not meet the Kyoto targets. Is that an official position of the government?

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

You asked about five different questions. I'd like to—

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

There were two, by my count.

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

Well, I counted five. So could I get chart number 12 up? You said that we were using the record of the previous government, which failed. The previous government spent $1.6 million on advertising the United Nations conference on climate change in Montreal. I didn't support that. You voted for the budget that paid for that. So I'm saying that we're not only better than the Liberals, we're better than you, because you supported the Liberal budget. You voted for that.

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

The government has done no economic analysis of the impacts of climate change on the Canadian economy, what you have called one of the greatest threats facing our country. How can you possibly justify not understanding what the impacts of this threat are to our well-being in this country?

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

I think if you look at the report commissioned by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, the Stern...if you could hear me out, I'd tell you the rest of it. The Stern report talked about the global effect of climate change, and I think made a very powerful business case.

If the desire of the New Democratic Party is that we go on and have more studies and more debates—we are sold on the need to act, and we are acting. I am not in the mood to commission more major reports to study this problem. Canadians want to see real action to reduce greenhouse gases, not another talkfest or another study. We're focusing all of our efforts on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and not embarking on any more major studies.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Warawa, please.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here, and the people from the department.

There were some questions about the premiers. I have a quote I'd like to read here from Premier Doer when he was interviewed on the environment and the funding from the previous Liberal government. Premier Doer said:

Well it's very significant to have a federal partner. The last ten years everybody has been talking about this but you know to quote an old commercial “Where's the beef?” we had nothing from the national government

—referring to the former Liberal government.

Question: What about money provided by the previous liberal government? How does that compare?

Gary Doer: We didn't get any.

Question: You didn't get any?

Gary Doer: No. Nada.

So obviously he was quite concerned about the funding from the previous government.

I would like to ask you, Minister, what's the status that Canada finds itself in right now? What is the percentage? You touched on this in your presentation—and thank you for that—but what was the percentage of increase in greenhouse gases since 1990 under the previous Liberal government? Where do we find ourselves right now in Canada?

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

Just under 33% above the Kyoto target. This is extraordinarily high. When the previous government went around the world lecturing others on taking action, and they looked at Canada's lack of progress and lack of success and lack of efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, it was a source of embarrassment for this country.

I'm excited that the Prime Minister will be able to go to the G-8 meeting next week as the first Prime Minister of Canada to go with a significant, detailed, meaningful plan to reduce greenhouse gases, a plan that will deliver the goods. That's something they were used to: great speeches by Canadian prime ministers and Canadian ministers of the environment, but they never saw any action. We hope to change that. We hope to regain the credibility that Canada once had on the environment.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Minister, you're saying that emissions didn't go down under the previous Liberal government; they went up and up. In spite of spending billions of dollars, greenhouse gases continued to rise, and their so-called plan did nothing.