Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Athabasca.
It is certainly my pleasure to be able to stand in the House and speak further about Kyoto and what it means. My first comment is that I get tired of listening to members across the way and the Prime Minister saying that we in our party do not care about future generations, that we do not care about our grandchildren and our children. Of course that is totally not true. We care every bit as much about our children and our grandchildren as anybody across the way. I know I cannot use a prop, but I have a picture of my granddaughters here if anybody wants to look at it. I certainly care about them every bit as much as members on that side care about theirs.
On the street, what are people saying about Kyoto? They are asking four questions. Their first question is, what is Kyoto? The Ontario minister of environment says that a lot of people are telling him that it is a car. The level of understanding about Kyoto is very, very light. There are some who understand it totally, but the main question out there is, what is Kyoto? People want to know that. The government has not done its job of telling them.
The next question is, how does it affect me? What will be the economic cost? What will happen to my gas bills, to my job, to my kids? What is going to happen because of this? The government should be providing answers. What is it going to cost? And that is in full costing, as others have talked about.
The third question is, how will it help the environment? People really care about the environment. Certainly everyone in my constituency does. Right across Canada in all the town hall meetings I have attended, people care about the environment.
Finally, the fourth question is this: Is there a better way than Kyoto?
I want to talk about the last two questions. Other members of our caucus will talk about the first two. I want to emphasize what this will do for the environment. I am the environment critic and I believe that is what I should be focusing on. Also, is there a better way?
First, let us go back and examine the government's environmental record. It is rather fitting, I think, that the environment commissioner gave her report a couple of days ago. She commented on the government's record in her document, talking about Rio in 1992 and beyond and the 27 guiding principles that the Canadian government agreed to. The commissioner has done a report card on how well the government has done.
Of course the government also signed the UN framework convention on climate change to reduce CO
2
levels by the year 2000. It has signed some 200 other international agreements since then. The results given by the commissioner of the environment are based on 60 audits. She states:
The federal government is not investing enough–enough of its human and financial resources; its legislative, regulatory, and economic powers; or its political leadership–to fulfill its sustainable development commitments.
The result is a growing environmental, health and financial burden that our children will have to bear, the same children, I assume, that the Prime Minister and the party across the way think so much of. She went on to describe the government's huge environmental “deficit”.
The government has other deficits--