Mr. Speaker, in speaking to the motion to hoist the bill, I always accuse the government of being naive, but perhaps I was a little naive on this one.
In the last session we had the opportunity to see this bill in its prior incarnation as Bill C-57. As I was reviewing some of my notes for today, I looked at some of the comments of the member for Davenport. He asked his own government to take another look at this. My naiveté is that I thought the government might take another look at the bill over the summer and not bring it back, or if it did bring it back, it would be in a significantly different form that would not have allowed for the removal of the liability that extends presently under the act to people who are financing the development or rebuilding of nuclear plants in the country.
Perhaps this is asking too much of them, but I thought they might take a look at an overall comprehensive energy plan. That would have required them to look at the Kyoto protocol and map out in quite significant detail an implementation plan. In addition, it would have required them to do what England has done, which is to develop a long term energy policy.
There are two parts to that. It would require them to do an inventory of our energy sources in the country now, what we would continue to have from whatever sources, and then decide with very detailed recommendations any plan of how they would phase out heavy polluters such as coal and other fossil fuels, how they would phase out the nuclear industry over an extended period of time, and how they would phase in the available alternative sources of energy that require some technological development but in most cases simply need a plan of implementation.
On looking at experiences in Europe and other countries we can safely say that they are moving along those lines and are a decade to a decade and a half ahead of us. That puts us in a very bad position in terms of developing our technology as opposed to having to buy it from Europe or other countries over the next decade or two.
As I said, I expected that we would see some very extensive proposals and plans from the government. Obviously we did not get them.
The attack we have seen against Kyoto centres on the incompetency we are seeing from that side of the House. They are unwilling to face the reality that we need that type of long term planning and are refusing to carry it through. We hear the Prime Minister, for instance, saying that it is no big deal, that we have until 2012 to have the implementation plan in place. I do not know if he really understood how erroneous that was in terms of the requirements we have to meet under Kyoto. It is just dead wrong in a number of ways. We have to do a lot of preparatory work well in advance of 2012.
His comment a couple of weeks ago also reflects the attitude that this is something they will do, probably because of the political pressure in the country. However it reflects that the Prime Minister and the government do not care a lot about the quality of life we will live if we do not deal as quickly as possible with climate change and global warming. It reflects a real unwillingness either to face that reality or to have the sensibility to understand the need to get started right away.
There is lot of criticism of the government. The start of this should have been four or five years ago when we first signalled that we would ratify Kyoto. We were the first country in the world to sign on and we are one of the last countries in the developed world, with the exception of the United States, to begin to deal seriously with the issues surrounding Kyoto.
One of the reasons this hoist motion should go ahead is that the matter would be put off. It would give them another six months to begin to deal with it. I would have expected as part of that plan that they would have dealt with issues around the subsidies to both the nuclear industry and the fossil fuel industry. They continue to be granted to the fossil fuel industry and the bill is a reflection of those subsidies.
I expected that we would have seen by this time a detailed plan of how in fact we are going to subsidize, provide incentives and give the creative juices in this country the ability to move to those alternative fuels that we so badly need. Again, we see nothing like that. It is a strong reason for putting off the bill. That would send a clear message to the government that it has to do this type of planning. It is not in any way simply a method of stalling out the bill. It really would be a serious message to the government to say that this is not the way to go.
Let me in the minute or two that I have left address one final point: the issue of privatization that the bill would permit and in fact encourage, specifically in the nuclear industry. We have seen just so many negative consequences of privatization in the energy field. We have seen some of it in our country. We now are experiencing it in this province. We saw it in Alberta and we will see more of it in the next few months and years. We saw it very extensively in the United States, particularly in California but also in a number of other states that had the same problems as they tried to privatize as well as deregulate the industry.
The bill should be pulled off the order paper, sent back for more work to be done on it and brought back in an entirely different format so that the issue of privatization would be addressed full on. This would make it very clear in our country that we are not in favour of privatization but that in fact energy sources and the energy needs of the country will be met by public bodies, not by the private sector.