Mr. Speaker, let me say how very pleased I am this evening to have the opportunity to participate in this very important debate in the run up to the Kyoto conference next month. I have to say in all honesty so far I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland.
First of all we were treated to some comments by the environment minister who I must say made a reasonably solid case. In fact I would say she made quite a convincing case for why we desperately need leadership from the Government of Canada to tackle the problems associated with climate change. It is the very environment minister who apparently has attempted but failed to persuade her colleagues of the critical importance of this challenge.
It leaves one somewhat worried. Once again we see an example of where the more progressive elements within the Liberal caucus—and I am certainly prepared to acknowledge that the environment minister falls within that category—are nevertheless overshadowed and prevailed upon by the regressive elements in the Liberal caucus. What we get instead is a total absence of leadership.
It is a situation where at this point in time we are coming up to Kyoto with absolutely no clear indication from the Government of Canada of where it stands and what it intends to do on behalf of the Canadian people who have elected them to office and who have been looking to them for leadership.
Then we heard the Reform leader again very effectively in his usual eloquent way damning the government for its record in regard to climate change. I want to quote directly and I hope I got the exact words. It seemed to me to be an absolutely classic statement by the Reform leader when he said that we have had a government “panting for a simplistic solution for a complex problem”. I have to say that I have never heard a better description of how the Reform Party of Canada conducts itself day in and day out in this House and outside of this Parliament in regard to practically every single issue of public policy.
We then heard the Reform leader once again make the case that who pays for this should be the single most important question. He went on, as he does so often, to define the public interest as being absolutely identical and equal to the concept of the taxpayers' interests. That vision of Canada is a bankrupt vision that is causing a lot of Canadians to lose heart these days about the amount of influence that the Reform Party has on the current federal government.
I think most Canadians see the issue of the public interest in a much broader way. They understand that it has something to do with citizenship, with community and with our sense of pride as a nation. To define the public interest in the narrowest possible terms as having exclusively to do with taxpayers' interests is an abdication of leadership it seems to me.
Finally we heard the Reform leader offer up his astounding statement about how in his view one had to recognize that there was, I guess, a pretty even balance between the international consensus that exists around the globe today among highly respected scientists, among independent peer review scientific evidence and the so-called scientific evidence that is offered up by the high paid lobbyists on behalf of the narrowest of economic interests.
To equate those two and say that they have to be balanced and they leave us not really knowing for sure whether the scientific evidence is sound is again, I think, an act of deception. It is the opposite of the kind of leadership that Canadians are looking to their parliamentarians to provide.
Moving on from there and travelling through this world of wonderland we then heard the Bloc leader. The Bloc leader in his comments tonight and the presentations that his colleagues have made in recent weeks have taken a more progressive view than the other two parties. It is certainly a more enlightened view with respect to the whole issue of climate change.
What we heard tonight was that in the process of the Bloc leader applauding the record of his own provincial government, the Government of Quebec, in regard to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, he really advanced one of the most convincing cases that I could ever hope to hear for why we need a strong federal government from coast to coast to coast in this country to provide leadership on this kind of issue.
The Bloc leader knows perfectly well that we live in an immensely diverse country, that we have very different regional economies, that the energy base and the economic base from one province to another differ greatly. I know he understands that given the fact the province of Quebec is blessed with a very generous amount of hydro energy, its economic base and its energy source are very different from those of provinces that depend upon a more carbon based energy source.
What he understands I am sure, and what I think increasingly Canadians are coming to understand, is how barren the notion is that somehow we should be able to lay on a uniform formula across the country and say every provincial government and the people of every province should expect to make the exact same contribution based on the exact same formula for greenhouse gas emission reduction.
That is not reality. We need to be clear that people sometimes try to make fun of the fact that European nations have come forward with the most progressive proposals for greenhouse gas reduction and that we understand the so called European bubble effect that allows for some flexibility across the European nations on which countries are going to be able reduce their greenhouse gas emissions most and in which particular way.
This is a phenomenon which also needs to be understood in the Canadian context. This is precisely why we desperately need leadership from the federal government. There are many different ways in which different parts of the country can and should be expected to contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. No uniform formula laid across the nation is going to do it. The impacts are going to be different. The measures are going to be different.
That is precisely the tragedy about the complete failure of the federal government to date to provide any real leadership in working with the provincial governments partners to achieve an overall strategy and to begin to address Canada's responsibility to meet its commitments made in Rio in 1992.
In answers to questions which I have raised, which others have raised, my colleagues in the NDP caucus and others in other caucuses as well, again and again we have heard members on the government side and a number of different ministers say do not talk to us, go and talk to the provinces. They do not seem willing to just sign on at the eleventh hour as we are on our way out of town to Kyoto. No wonder they are not able to just sign on. There has been absolutely no leadership from the government in any meaningful way for the past four years.
I am not in the habit of rushing to the defence of the Conservative caucus. I thought this debate around greenhouse gas emissions reached an all time level absurdity when I heard I believe the finance minister or some minister on the front benches of the government rip into the Conservative leader who was pushing for progress on this, saying it was really your fault because he was the energy minister in Rio in 1992 and you came back to Canada and you completely failed to implement a comprehensive strategy that would move us in the direction of meeting our commitments made in Rio in 1992. Think about the absurdity of it.
I profess no expertise in what went on before I came to this Parliament, but it is my understanding that such measures did begin to get under way in 1992 and into early 1993. One is hard pressed to find that the current Liberal government has done much of anything every since.