Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to the motion. The hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill who spoke some 20 minutes ago pointed out that it is a motion taken directly from the words of the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard, the former minister of finance.
I would like to encourage the opposition to continue to use members on this side to draft the motions it puts forward, because when we saw it we were surprised at how good it was. I am quite willing to accept the motion. I intend to vote for it. It is an excellent motion. The member for LaSalle—Émard should be congratulated and the opposition should be congratulated for realizing that it does not have the ability to do the things that the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard does so well.
I welcome this debate. I welcome the opportunity to speak today. In fact, what the opposition is asking the government to do in the resolution of the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard is exactly what we did today, namely, put forward a plan before the House and the people of Canada.
I do not want to suggest that it is the final plan of all time. No. As the Prime Minister made clear, it is going to be changed and modified as time goes on. As we know, we will be discussing that with the provinces and territories next Monday, again on November 21, and perhaps after that, who knows.
What we have put forward is an approach built on the best ideas to come out of the five years of constructive consultations with the provinces and territories, with private industry, with environmental groups and with the Canadian public. In fact it goes back 10 years, since we first agreed to the United Nations framework convention on climate change back in 1992, previous to this government.
We released an overview of our draft plan today so that we can engage in substantive discussions with the provinces and territories when we meet on Monday and so in fact we could have a substantive discussion this afternoon.
The elements of this document have been the basis of recent discussions with industry and stakeholders. The draft plan is about innovation and technology, energy conservation and energy efficiency. It is about all Canadians everywhere in our country. It is about all governments and industry sharing the responsibility for combating climate change. And it is about a cleaner environment and a better quality of life for Canadians and for, in particular, future generations of Canadians.
Starting in the 2003 budget and in subsequent budgets, the Government of Canada will announce investments in partnership and cooperation with the provinces, territories, municipalities, communities, aboriginals, the private sector, non-government organizations and, of course, individuals.
We have prepared a draft plan under which no one region of the country will assume an unreasonable share of the burden. This plan is in response to the unique challenges facing Canada to reduce its emissions. This plan will also promote an economy that is strong, competitive and growing.
Fighting climate change provides Canada with two opportunities to explore. State of the art technologies can help us reduce our emissions and the latest processing technology can help put us on track to reduce emissions in the long term.
Canada's investment into new technologies is starting to pay off in terms of productivity.
Thanks to our policies, we have created economic and financial stability, and we have increased funding of research and development in the country. In this context, Canadian businesses will be able to improve their productivity even more in the future.
Our approach recognizes that reducing emissions will require cost sharing among the private sector and governments. For our part, we will increase investments in innovation and technology and reallocate funds in some existing programs to climate change objectives. We will also explore promising new areas, such as renewable energy, bioproducts, bioenergy and biofuels, fuel cells and the hydrogen economy, clean coal technology and CO
2
capture and storage, distributed power systems and eco-efficient industrial processes.
We have heard a lot over the last few weeks and months from the opposition about businesses, business organizations and their lobbyists and their claim that somehow jobs will be lost. I would remind those business lobbyists that the true objective of business is of course shareholder value or what some people call profit. However, the true objective of labour unions, of the association of workers, is the number of jobs for their members, the safety of employees in the workplace and of course their pay. These are among the issues that concern unions.
I would like to salute the Canadian labour movement, in particular the Canadian Labour Congress and Ken Georgetti, its president, for the resolution it has passed and for the determination it has shown in the ratification of Kyoto. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada and its president, Brian Payne, understand despite the fact it represents many workers up in the tar sands, in the oil patch, that the environment and job creation can go hand in hand.
I look forward to working with labour and labour representatives, particularly the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union in a partnership to anticipate changes that may occur because of Kyoto measures, to identify how we can smoothly have a transition, and of course to identify appropriate methods of training for people who may be displaced, if that is the case, or who may be moving into new technologies. It is an opportunity for the Government of Canada to work together with the labour movement, who are the people who should be and in fact are the most concerned about the jobs issue. There has been a little too much in the way of crocodile tears from lobbyists from big business on this issue.
A draft plan is aimed at ensuring that the overall economic impact of the Kyoto measures is modest and that those impacts are balanced across provinces and sectors. Decisions in our approach are based on the results of our latest modelling and the representative reference case.
The results reflect that deliberate policy choices can lead to zero and less than a cent increases in gasoline prices and only minimal cost increases for natural gas and minor decreases in the price of electricity. The modelling case leads us to see 1.26 million new jobs created by 2010 compared to 1.32 million new jobs in the business as usual scenario. That is a difference of 60,000 jobs over an eight year period, but that is without the full count of the jobs that will be created by adopting the new technologies that will be required for the climate change constrained world. To put things in perspective, I would like to suggest the number of 427,000.