And from the right as well. I intend to address most of my comments to the issue of fossil fuels. I would like to discuss a number of issues related to natural resources but there is not enough time.
I posit to the members here and to yourself, Mr. Chairman, that the whole issue of fossil fuels requires very close attention. I think I speak on behalf of all our caucus in expressing grave concern with regard to comments the Prime Minister has made to the media in the last few days and again today in the House.
We are concerned about what appears to be a willingness on the part of the government, with very little forethought or planning, to deliver our fossil fuels wholesale to the U.S. market. That gives us great concern because it does not seem to take into account the environmental issues that are related to that type of development. It does not take into account the issue of the air pollution problems which will come from that. Quite frankly we think it does not address the issue of the cost of developing some of those resources in the long term.
As the parliamentary secretary has already said this evening, we have the tar sands. We can bring gas in from the territories. Those are very expensive processes. If we did not have some of the tax breaks that have been accorded to the tar sands, those tar sands would not be economically viable at this point. I know I will get some disagreement on this but they are certainly much more expensive than the alternative of renewable resources, like windmills in particular. Even solar energy is getting very close to being as expensive as the development of those tar sands.
The other problem with the development of the tar sands is the type of air pollutant that will result from that. I know I have thrown this figure out once before in the House, but I will do it again. The Suzuki Foundation made very clear in the research that it has done that just one tar sand plant would be equal to putting 1.3 million automobiles on our roads, and all the pollutants and toxins of course that result from that type of expansion in the use of vehicles.
The reality is we cannot keep going this way. We are faced as a society with international agreements. In spite of the fact that the Bush administration has now taken the position that it will reject Kyoto, it will probably only be there for four years. Then what will we do if we have developed the tar sands at that point? We will be faced with a new administration, probably a wiser administration as far as the environment is concerned, saying to us that it is sorry but it will be going the route of conservation of technological changes which will reduce the need for that much fossil fuels. Then we will have just blown all that money.
We will be faced with that same administration, which will be more environmentally concerned, saying to us that yes, we have to meet Kyoto and that its state governments will not take our pollutants any more. I speak very personally about this given the jurisdiction from which I come.
My riding, where we get a lot of the pollutants from the Americans who are in the process of starting to clean that up, has the attorneys general of both New York State and Connecticut saying to Ontario that it has to clean up. We have all those coal fired plants. They are not going to want to take Ontario's pollutants any more. We will be faced with an administration which will be saying those things to the government and country in four years. The Bush administration may not but the next one will. If it is not in four years, then it will be in eight years. We have to plan for that.
In coming back to the cost issue, just yesterday Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie went down. One of the reasons was the high cost of fuel to run that plant. It was a highly efficient plant according to the statistics. It was the 12th most efficient steel plant in all of North America. One of the reasons it went down was because of the fuel cost.
We just cannot keep going down that road. We have seen the Prime Minister taking positions in the last four days which are dramatic shifts, as I see and our party see it, away from where we thought we were going, which was moving more toward conservation. We just cannot keep following them.
Let me make a couple of other points, some of which came out of the information at the summit of the people in Quebec City over the weekend.
David Suzuki was there and pointed out that from his foundation's research because of the trade deals we have a huge demand that is going to increase for bunker fuel. Over the next 10 to 12 years that is going to increase by 300%. That is just about the worst fuel we could be burning. That will be dumped into the atmosphere and the rest of the world will not accept it any more. We are hearing it very clearly at this point from the European Union.
The end result of this is going to be that some time in the next four to eight years, whether it be this political party running the government or another one, we will be faced with all sorts of communities that, having some development work done in natural resources around fossil fuels, will be looking at losing their markets.
If we look at rural development, what is going to happen? Will we be faced with a situation such as Elliot Lake where after the nuclear industry began to cut back we lost that mine? That was a success story. How many more of those can we do? Very few. We will to be faced with having to deal with those communities. If we do not do this planning and prepare for some of the alternative fuels, wholesale communities will be faced with extinction. There will become ghost towns.
From the New Democratic Party's position we are suggesting that we have to prepare for that. We have to look very closely at what we are doing. Our question is what will be done in terms of the development of those types of tar sands or bringing fuel in from the territories, if in fact the market is not there?
Bush stood up and made great statements. He said that if we had the fuel he would take it. I do not think he has the support of his congress in that and he is not going to have it in four years. I would like to know from the government side what it will do at that point if those errors have been made in developing them.