Madam Speaker, I would like my friend across the way to clarify a couple of things.
He talked a lot about the rhetoric around the debate and the vision for the future and leadership. We do not want a leadership that is foolhardy, that says we all jump off the cliff together.
When he talks about Kyoto, we want to make sure that he is honest with the public, that there is a clear distinction between pollution and climate change. I often hear them mixed up. Everybody is against pollution.
Do we have any cost benefit analysis for anything that we do and the investments that we make? To penalize behaviour through disincentive taxes, to perhaps reduce gasoline consumption, to change industrial activities or whatever would be done through some subsidies that would cost. Also, penalty taxes to shape behaviour would be tremendously disturbing to the economy, but perhaps that is what we need to do.
However, the cost of that versus the benefit has never been laid before Parliament. In fact it has never been laid before the Canadian people anywhere. We need some kind of cost benefit analysis. Canadians are prepared to dig into the issues, look at them and make a judgment, but the scenarios are being kept away from them. It is all on emotionalism. It is much like what I would describe the member was trying to promote this afternoon, that it is the patriotic thing to do, or it is the reasonable good thing to do, because it makes us feel good.
We all want to feel good about doing right for the environment, but where is the cost benefit analysis? Tell me why some of those things were even denied his caucus. When they were discussing the issue, they were kept from that caucus.
I am suggesting that we had better be very careful before we spend a lot of money which would have very little benefit for climate change, because that is what it is all about, climate change.