Mr. Speaker, there is nothing here on the environment, something else that is very important to this party. We need to see something in energy on supporting expansion and use of public transit. As my colleague from Winnipeg Centre mentioned on countless occasions, we need to retrofit buildings to meet higher standards of energy efficiency and we need a green screen. We need to encourage green industries and technologies, but we do not get very much, if anything, from the government opposite.
Something potentially very interesting is happening on this front in the province of Saskatchewan. One company is looking at building an ethanol plant in the prairie provinces that would use straw and other biomass which could produce up to nine billion litres of gasoline. This holds some hope for the future but it is not clear to me what, if anything, the government is doing to assist that process.
We seem to be stumbling toward Kyoto without our ducks being lined up, without knowing what it is that we will actually achieve on that front.
We want to promote fair fuel prices through an energy price commission and approve fuel price increases in the future in a transparent way. We want to reduce gridlock. We want greenhouse gases to be controlled, none of which is happening because of the higher prices that Canadians are paying at the moment.
In conclusion, with the deficit eliminated finally there is certainly no rationale to keep the surtax on. As far as it goes the motion is supportable by us, but we do so with the recognition and realization that it could have been so much better by way of a resolution to the House which would have included an energy price commission, a green screen and a rational way to absorb price hikes in the future.