Exactly.
It is an issue in terms of the provinces, for sure. He says that the matter has to be “sufficiently distinct to distinguish it from matters of provincial concern”. In his view, it does not.
So, “the vagueness and breadth of Bill C-377 has the potential to reach deeply into many fields of provincial authority”. That's a concern for Saskatchewan. It's a concern for every province. It's obviously very much a concern, I would think, for Quebec, as well. It reaches into no end of areas of provincial authority.
“Without more careful definition of the kinds of regulations that are contemplated,” he says, “the bill is outside the national concern branch of peace, order, and good government.” His conclusion is that “the Parliament of Canada lacks the power”, clearly lacks the power “to enact Bill C-377, and if Parliament were to enact the bill it would be struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada”.
That was the respectful submission of Peter W. Hogg, a distinguished legal authority in our country.
I'll come back to that a little bit later, in terms of the constitutionality, because I think it's a big one. It's probably reason enough to do some further study of this and to get this thing right. But in its present form, even with many amendments, it needs to be started all over from scratch. I think that would be the better approach.
As a member of Parliament for just about eleven years now from the province of Saskatchewan, I saw the impact that this particular bill would have in a disproportionate way on my home province. It's a province that for the first time is coming out of the have-not status, coming to a point where we're doing well, and we will do so in more significant ways.
Compared even to places like Alberta, we have a greater breadth, if you will. We have uranium, we have diamonds, we have the potash there, and we've got fairly diversified. We could have a much more diversified economy than some of the other provinces. So that stands us in pretty good stead.
But I'm speaking of the impact of Mr. Layton's bill, and as I said once before in a meeting here, I'm not exactly sure what Mr. Layton has against that province, the birthplace of the NDP or CCF. The only thing I can figure is that it's because they've turned the NDP out on its heels just recently. As of last fall, we have a Saskatchewan Party government in place.
Typically, in our province of Saskatchewan, it's kind of ironic. Whenever things are looking up, looking a little better, we don't figure we can trust the NDP, the socialists, to carry it from there, so we turf them out. If we get down on our luck and things go unfortunate, then sometimes we'll allow them back for a short period of time.
That's the typical and historic pattern in the province of Saskatchewan. If things are looking up and looking good, we don't trust the NDP to steward that economy and steward things for the days ahead. We've just had to evict them, I guess, for the present, and they've been relinquished by a fairly significant majority.
Rather than the bill before us, we should go back to C-377, the common-sense approach that our government was taking, which is far superior and supercedes all of the attempt of the bill here by the leader of the NDP and advocated by Mr. Cullen here in this committee on his behalf. I think anybody who is fair and objective would want to admit that this government is serious about tackling climate change and about doing it in practical ways, in terms of clean water, clean land, clean air.
It's been in our budgets, it's gained significantly in the budget 2008. For my province, there is a big impact in terms of what we can do now by way of carbon sequestration.
The government is serious about tackling climate change and protecting our environment, cleaning up the air Canadians breathe today and down the road, as well as looking to the future, for my children, for my soon to be six grandchildren. We need that kind of thing, and we want to do that in Saskatchewan.
This Bill C-377 will simply not do that. In fact, as opposed to this bill before us, back in October 2006 we were already moving to regulate greenhouse gases that caused climate change, as well as air pollution. We've proceeded on that with the necessary implementation.
Some of the effects of climate change in Saskatchewan are pretty serious, pretty severe. That's why we need to move on it. I think all of us around this table would be agreed on that.
We're not immune as a province to the effects of climate change. Environmental impacts of climate change on Saskatchewan include challenges for agriculture. That's a big thing in our province. It's not as much a percentage of the gross domestic product for our province, but it's still significant. It's still a huge percentage. It will impact pretty significantly on agriculture.
My province of Saskatchewan is a fairly cold place sometimes, but too warm a climate would create droughts. We've faced some of that in the past and could in the future. It would also produce the kinds of conditions for weeds and insects, which would reduce crop yields, and cause some summer heat stress in livestock as well.
So that's a concern for those who farm, for my constituents, and for me. We've just bought a little farm there outside of Saskatoon, so we'll be directly involved in experiencing that, and hopefully not too many of the serious adverse effects of that.
The severe weather is something we need to take seriously in our province. A warming—