The smoking gun, the member for Davenport says as an example. I remember that. They wanted the smoking gun. They discovered the smoking gun in 1985 and now there is a number of people who think it was too late.
Nonetheless, the Montreal protocol was signed and there are very real examples of progress to follow with regard to what it has been able to accomplish.
First of all, one of the things done in the Montreal protocol was the recognition for the first time that developing countries and developed countries needed to be treated differently. There was a very lucid view brought to the signing of that agreement in 1987 to the effect that if we imposed on developing countries the same standards we were going to ask of developed countries, they would never live up to them, it would never happen; that it was wiser and better to actually impose and ask them to adopt a different schedule that was slower, but at least allow them to meet the targets. That is what was done, and done successfully.
The second thing I remember about the Montreal protocol that was successful was the commitment to develop substitutes to ozone depleting substances like CFCs, thus the development in Canada in particular of HCFCs which, by the way, let us be very clear, are not pollution free products. In fact, there are no pollution free products. They do not exist. But they were a substitute that was a lot less damaging than CFCs. Real progress was marked and we were able to move from there.
From the Montreal protocol on, we were able to make some real progress and today this is an issue that I think is well understood. The science is well established. It happened maybe a little too late. It did happen too late, actually, for people who continued to be the naysayers, but here is an example where Canada, I am proud to say, played a very real role in bringing about an environmental agreement that worked.
The same is true in the second example about sulphur dioxide emissions. Do you remember, Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, what sulphur dioxide emissions are about? I know the member for Davenport and also the member for Lac-Saint-Louis know what I am talking about. I am talking about acid rain.
Acid rain was probably the number one issue, one of the number one irritants between Canada and the United States in the 1980s. It was one of the top issues between the previous Conservative government and the Government of the United States from 1984 to 1990. I remember what was said in industry, much as the leader of the Reform Party said tonight, when confronted with the importance of our cleaning up our own house first.
Those who were there will remember that Canada could only make a case to its southern neighbour if it started by cleaning up its own act. So we had to make a commitment to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions at home, which we did in the signing of an agreement, if I remember correctly either in 1986 or 1987, committing us to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 20%. Low and behold, if we went back and saw the record and the reaction of industry at the time, which I am sure was sincere, it said it could not be done, that this would kill jobs, that it would kill the economy. Guess what. It had exactly the reverse effect.
Again I want to be cautious. My memory may not be exactly correct on this, but it was Inco in the region of Val D'Or in northern Quebec. Through this commitment it was forced, coerced, into reviewing its production processes and by doing that not only did it reduce sulphur dioxide emissions, but it was able to reduce the cost of producing its product. That is one of the consequences, one of the very positive consequences that emerged from that initiative. Yet it was not described as that from the beginning.
In fact, what we heard was very similar to what the leader of the Reform Party said tonight, the sky is falling, from the reverse side of the coin. There is a real example.
Then we went on from there to sign an agreement, the clean air agreement of 1990, with the American government.
The problem of acid rain is not solved, far from it. We should debate that another day because there are issues on the horizon with regard to that agreement. We certainly met our objective at the time. We made progress since then. We were proud of what we were able to accomplish.
I hope this language is not unparliamentary but it needs to be said because much like the leader of the Reform Party tonight, the American president at the time, Mr. Reagan, also said there was no acid rain problem. Some members may remember because it was reported—I do not know whether it was true—that apparently the American president, Mr. Reagan, said that acid rain was caused by “duck shit”.
The Minister of Natural Resources has said that though it may not be the best parliamentary language, he can live with it. Being at the cabinet table I will take his word for it.
Does that not remind us of how some political leaders can get embroiled in their own rhetoric and ignore the science or the basics? Yet we had to persevere. Yes, we did and we were able to come to an agreement.
I want to speak on the science aspect. Let me be very clear that I am not a scientist. In fact, when I was minister of the environment it was one of the most challenging areas for me to deal with. Believe me, ministers who have been there know how tough a department it is. It is a department that is on the cutting edge of science, of law and of public administration. It is very challenging.
We are lucky in Canada because we have within the Department of the Environment some of the best scientists in the world. We certainly have the best public servants in the world.
I will take a second to attest tonight that when we were in Rio, Canada's delegation was the best served delegation in the world with regard to its public servants. Whether it was the Department of Foreign Affairs, CIDA, natural resources, energy at the time or the Department of the Environment, they represented the absolute best, no question asked, of public servants in the world. It is still true today.
When as a layman in the department I had to rely on them for science, I found them to be rigorous and honest in their assessment. I also found it was very useful for me to have no knowledge of science, because by the time they explained it to me and I could figure it out I could explain it to anyone else. That was a real advantage for me.
On science, just to reassure Canadians, there is no one who takes it lightly. We have in excess of 150 countries involved in the agreement signed in Rio. Does anyone think for a second that all these countries got involved in it, not caring what the consequences would be and what it would lead to? Of course not. I do not take it for granted that they were all right because they were all there, but I can report how the science was developed. Again Canada was intimately involved.
There was a conference here in 1988 on the changing atmosphere in Canada. From that conference emerged the commitment to put together an international panel on climate change, known as the IPCC, which then produced a report and followed it up with others. The latest was in 1966 at the Geneva conference that resulted in the declaration calling for commitments to control emissions in a post-2000 era to be legally binding.
The conference also endorsed the IPCC climate change 1995 report which concluded that the balance of evidence—and the words here are carefully chosen—marks a “discernible human influence on the global climate”, which has a destabilizing impact on the globe's ecosystem.
There is no one who ever pretended for a single second that the science in this regard was ironclad and absolute. Rarely is the science on anything ironclad and absolute. To pretend or imply that is the case is to deliberately mislead. That should never be allowed to happen.
Beyond that, I can certainly reassure Canadians we are working on very solid science that has been verified. I hear members of the Reform Party laughing.