Madam Speaker, as a practising lawyer I had one rule and one rule only: Never give away free advice. I will speak to the hon. member afterward.
He raises a good point, which is where is the plan. I say to the hon. member that even if the Prime Minister tabled the plan in Parliament today, it would be highly suspect and for the reasons that I went into.
Necessarily the economic assumptions and variables are very suspect. It is very difficult to predict what the economy will be doing next year, let alone alone 5, 10 or 15 years out.
I have a lot of sympathy with the government in its difficulties in arriving at a plan, arriving at an economic modelling and arriving at an environmental modelling. Even the environmental sciences are changing as we speak. If we were debating this six months ago, we would be talking about straight line graphs on environmental degradation. We are now talking about exponential graphs on environmental degradation.
I have a lot of sympathy with the government trying to wrestle, not only its own head around these issues but also other jurisdictions that have to be brought onside. I am little more sympathetic to the position that the government finds itself in than possibly the member on the other side.