Madam Speaker, I want to comment on this debate and on one particular item which I hope the government will pay close attention to. It was the proposal put forward by the leader of the fifth party concerning tradable emission permits.
I remind him and the government that when one sets up a system of tradable permits of a limited stock, and as the leader of the fifth party says, they are starting to trade at a profit, the end result is they end up in fewer and fewer hands. Competition in the economy is therefore reduced and the ends are not necessarily achieved. Something which is a permit to pollute basically takes on a tremendously large value.
I ask the government, before it goes down that road, to consult with municipalities across this country that are desperately trying to get out of exactly that same system. That is precisely what has happened. Competition has disappeared. More and more of the resource has been concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and nobody benefits.
To the member for Davenport, he and I had the privilege during the 34th Parliament of working on a series of reports on our planet. They were all put together at the end of that Parliament by the committee in a compendium that I would recommend highly, particularly to the members of the official opposition.
I want to go back to some of the comments made in that report about the situation the globe faces. I want to quote from the president of the World Watch Institute: “On the environmental front the situation could hardly be worse. Every major indicator shows a deterioration in natural systems. Forests are shrinking, deserts are expanding and crop lands are losing top soil. The stratospheric ozone layer continues to thin. Greenhouse gases are accumulating. The number of plant and animal species is diminishing. Air pollution has reached health threatening levels in hundreds of cities and damage from acid rain can be seen on every continent”.
Maurice Strong said: “If we continue our present course, life as we know it will not survive the 21st century. Indeed, our grandchildren, even in this blessed nation, will be experiencing a very severely deteriorated quality of life if we continue on our present course. The course we are on is like a cancer, headed for terminality. We simply cannot survive the pathway”.
I wonder if the member for Davenport would care to comment on whether he feels the situation on the globe has changed in the now nearly six years since our last report on global climate change was produced in that committee.