Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the adjournment proceedings tonight in accordance with Standing Order 37(3) on the subject of ethanol.
The ethanol gasoline mixture to replace regular gasoline has been highly successful in western Canada and for many years highly successful in the United States. The proposed ratio of mix here in Canada is 90 per cent gasoline and 10 per cent ethanol, that is a 90 per cent non-renewable source of energy and a 10 per cent renewable source of energy.
This fuel mix has been available in western Ontario and is now becoming available in eastern Ontario. There is talk of a plant, and hopefully it will materialize, in my own riding of Leeds-Grenville. The manufacture of ethanol started with a group of farmers, about 135 farmers, who got together and each threw in $2,500. I think it shows commitment.
We can talk about the advantages of using ethanol mixed with gas and we can do it from various viewpoints, but a former colleague of mine, the hon. Ralph Ferguson, was a pioneer of blended fuel in this House in the last Parliament. I became interested in blended fuel from listening to the hon. Ralph Ferguson, the former Minister of Agriculture, because he spoke on it many times. I think maybe we could name it Fergie's fuel because whenever you got talking to Fergie he would want to promote the idea of ethanol. He really believed in it as a source of energy for Canadians.
Because of the time restraints I have to summarize a bit. The biggest winner in the blended fuel business is the environment. There is no question about that. The exhaust from a car using blended mix will contain 30 per cent less carbon monoxide and 6 to 10 per cent less carbon dioxide. The manufacture of ethanol from grains, primarily corn but it can be other grains, makes a great market for corn farmers and for farmers in general.
One gets about 10 litres of ethanol from a bushel of corn. The byproduct, once the starch is removed from the corn to make the ethanol, is an excellent source of feed for beef and dairy cattle. The ethanol is manufactured from a renewable resource, so there is a real plus for everybody. That is not the case with fossil fuels.
What prompted my original question to the Minister of Finance is the cost of production. That is the problem. If we applied the federal excise tax to ethanol and put the provincial excise tax on ethanol, the product would be just out of the question. It would be too costly. People would not buy because of the price. Nobody would choose it as an alternative fuel.
We would miss the manufacturing of it, the sale of it and everything that is associated with it but most important, we would miss the environmental advantages of this friendly product. The assurance I got from the Minister of Finance was okay as far as it went, that the government would not impose an excise tax on ethanol.
Governments come and governments go and these people are looking for a little more assurance than that. What the ethanol industry wanted was assurance similar to the one that Ontario gave the industry not too long ago. The Government of Ontario announced that if a future provincial government wanted to reimpose the provincial excise tax on ethanol, the manufacturers would be compensated. The ethanol industry is asking for that kind of assurance from the federal government.