Madam Speaker, I know I do not have much time as we have only five minutes left.
I rise once again to speak about the establishment of a foundation by this government. The least we can say is that the rules governing its establishment will not allow the public to know what is going on. Neither will these rules allow the best interests that are supposed to be served by this foundation to actually be served.
This is not because there is no environmental problem in Canada. This is not because Canada is not having trouble meeting the targets it agreed to in Kyoto; on the contrary. The stakes are extremely high.
With regard to the recommendation made to the federal government, instead of ensuring that the extremely necessary funding be provided in a timely fashion to advance these urgent projects to develop technologies to address climate change and pollution, the government is embarking on the creation of a foundation through a rather bizarre piece of legislation.
Essentially the bill has only one purpose, as stated in clause 5:
- The objects and purpose of the Foundation are to provide funding to eligible recipients for eligible projects.
Its purpose is to provide funding for eligible projects. It would be given an insufficient amount of money for the sustainable development that is necessary. However the definition of eligible project reads as follows:
“eligible project“means a project carried on, or to be carried on, primarily in Canada by an eligible recipient to develop and demonstrate new technologies to promote sustainable development, including technologies to address climate change and air quality issues.
The only guideline to this foundation if this definition of eligible project. However, and this is also disturbing, with respect to the establishment of the board of directors, it is stipulated that there shall be seven members appointed by the governor in council, that is by the government, on the recommendation of the minister, and these seven members shall co-opt members in the other areas.
What do we see? We see a great danger that this would be a small group of friends whose task would be to fund eligible projects. These eligible projects are extremely wide reaching and we do not even know if this will go in the direction of the commitments—