If I may, Mr. Chair, with respect to Kyoto, I think Canada is getting off base. The issue isn't about the Kyoto Protocol; the issue is about climate change. The fact is, I think all parties recognize that there's an issue and it has to be dealt with, and we're allowing the debate about the mechanism to get in the way of actually taking action. So I think we all would agree here that we need to take action.
Is conservation cheaper than production? With respect to energy demand in this country, it's growing significantly, and just as we need all sources of energy supply in order to address that demand, we also need to utilize not just supply methods but also conservation methods. So again, my message is that it's not one or the other; we need both approaches.
I think all of it can be summed up in your question of metrics. There's a real issue here in Canada about the ability to develop effective public policy without the necessary metrics that go behind it. At the federal level I'll cite an example. In 1995, under program review, Natural Resources Canada lost 52% of its budget. In a program review process several years later there was another significant cut. The ability to measure and analyse was lost as a result of this. I think that's an example of some capacity that needs to be added back into the system in order for it to be able to produce the data that we all need to judge what we should do and how effectively we are doing it.