Actually, we have signed on. The question would be, are we taking out the whiteout and taking our name off the document, if I could rephrase your question? I don't think we should, because I think we did this in good faith with an enormous amount of support from Canadians. I believe Canadians want us to be part of this process.
Does it mean there will be some penalties because we didn't make the grade? Yes. Should we negotiate how those penalties are to be addressed with the other countries and show them how we'll take the next steps? Yes, we should.
Someone could correct me here, but it might well be that if we were to take out the whiteout, we'd be the only country to have actually walked away from the commitment. The Australians never actually signed but decided to sign in terms of Kyoto itself.
I think that would be a very sad day. I regard the 10th anniversary of Kyoto as an optimistic day, because I think more and more people want to see action taken. They're taking it in their own lives. People in communities all over the country are doing wonderful things. The question is, are we as a Parliament going to get behind them and encourage them with some goals and targets that can really allow people to reach a little higher? It's a little like you do if you're coaching a group of young people; you're always trying to get them to go a little higher.
I think of the people who thought about connecting one end of the country to the other with a railroad. Do you think they had it all figured out as to how they were going to pull it off? Do you think they had figured out how they were going to pay for it all? Did they do it perfectly? The answer to all those things would be no, but they had a dream about where they wanted our country to be, and they took on the impossible and they focused on it.
We do it at wartime. We've done it at different times in our history. We've done it when we've taken on certain kinds of projects, with a sense of Canadian pride and can-do attitude. I think we can do it here. I'm absolutely convinced we can.