Thank you, Madam Speaker, for bringing decorum to the House. Obviously we are talking about a very important subject that many Canadians care an awful lot about.
I must apologize for not putting out a notice so Liberal members could have been here to hear my comments. I will do that tomorrow and I will try to give them a breakdown of the areas to which I will be speaking so they can be prepared a bit to ask some questions. I would not be afraid to have them ask me questions. The minister of course was very afraid and did not allow questions to be asked.
The IPCC is a group of 200 scientists. These scientists really care about climate change. They are a lot of good, top-notch people. As I said, I will be quoting from a number of texts prepared by the IPCC in relation to its studies. It is working with 40 different models right now and those 40 different models come up with very different conclusions. This obviously will be for the benefit of some of the members across because most of the Canadian public may not be quite as interested in these models as they are.
I have noticed in the so-called PowerPoint presentation of the government that it actually gives no credit at all to technology. It does not look to the future. It does not talk about the advances of technology. Instead, it deals in hypothetical kinds of things, picking the models it wants to pick and picking the few examples it wants to. As we go through it line by line we can then examine exactly where the flaws are and where there should be some clarity before we ratify the proposal.
The other thing the government really fails to do is give any credit at all to humans, animals or plants for adaptation. In all my university biology I learned about adaptation and the adaptation that animals, plants, insects and bacteria undergo in order to change. Adaptation is the way to go. It really is too bad that someone might be under water in 100 years but with a little adaptation they could handle it. Certainly the Netherlands demonstrated that it could handle that sort of climatic change without very much trouble. It will not happen tomorrow. It will happen over hundreds and hundreds of years and people will adapt. That is what is important.
Then we get to the consultation part of it. We need to really look at that term because the minister keeps using it saying that he has consulted so widely that everybody understands this. Well the people do not understand what Kyoto is about. Maybe that is Parliament's fault. Maybe that is the media's fault. Maybe that is someone's fault but the government needs to take the responsibility to inform the people.
Before we ratify the protocol the people have to understand. I am not talking about the select group of 84 people who were invited to the meetings that went on through June. I am talking about the person on the fixed income. I am talking about the mom and dad with two kids. I am talking about the single mother. I am talking about the working poor who are having a hard time making a go of it. Those are the people who need to understand the implications of Kyoto. The government has not delivered that information. When we talk about consultation that is the first line.
The one big failure in Kyoto is that the government has left out the people. All I can do is just remind the government what happened with the Charlottetown accord when the people were left out. It was great. It was cooked up here in Ottawa and everyone said it would work. The bureaucrats said that they could do up the paperwork. The politicians agreed to it. They said that they could make it happen but that they would not answer many questions or give much information. Well, obviously we know what happened there. The Canadian people engaged. When they engaged they ordered 12 million copies of the Constitution.
What bureaucrat or politician would ever have believed that could or would happen, that the Canadian people would engage like that and get involved? Well they did and we know what happened to the Charlottetown accord.
I put forward the same argument for Kyoto. As people understand and as they see what a phoney, eurocentric, bureaucratic document it is, they will say no to Kyoto and yes to a plan, but a plan they have been part of developing and have bought into.
Industry will be on side because industry knows it is good for business to be green and to be environmentally friendly.
What about the provinces? I think the provinces have stated their position fairly clearly. The Prime Minister, probably right now as we speak, is meeting with the premier of B.C., and will be meeting tomorrow with Mr. Eves in Toronto. The only real purpose, it appears, for the Prime Minister to do this is to divide and conquer.
What I saw in Halifax from the ministers was anything but a divide and conquer success story. I saw all provinces, Quebec and Manitoba included, and the territories together saying, “Listen federal government, we want to work on a plan, here are the 12 proposals that we are putting forward and you had better listen to these”.
Of course the response in the House was, “No, I will not meet with the premiers. No, we will not agree to those 12 points”.
Therefore when the minister stands in the House and says that he has the cooperation, we now have two failures. The Canadian people have not been consulted and the provinces and territories do not feel that they have been part of developing the plan.
What about the third aspect of the consultation, and that is with industry. Industry provides the jobs in this country and that includes the small and medium sized businesses. Do they feel that they have been consulted? Ask the chambers of commerce. I ask members of the House to ask their chambers of commerce what they think will happen if they have a rise in their energy costs and if they have to live by restrictions that they were not part of developing. The members can tell me that it will not affect jobs and will not affect the income of a communities.
There is a very important word that we will be discussing over the next while and that is the one of consultation: consultation with Canadians first, consultation with the provinces and territories, and consultation with the people who provide the jobs. When we have those three on side, we have an agreement that will work and is destined to work.
As part of my introduction I want to talk about the ministers of government. I think it is rather interesting where their positions have come to and I would like to quote a few of them. I think these quotes are kind of interesting and will give Canadians an idea of just exactly where the ministers are on this whole agreement.
Let us remember that the Prime Minister has promised to consult fully with every province, to consult with all individual Canadians and to make sure it does not hurt any province or any person very much.
It is really nice, if one is the Prime Minister, to say that it will not hurt the economy or the people. I guess that is what he thinks Canadians want to hear, but is that really what will happen? Until we see the plan and until we know how it will be implemented, how can we possibly do that?
Let us examine a few quotes. This is a letter dated March 26 from the Prime Minister to Mr. Perrin Beatty, president and CEO of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. The letter states:
I have stated that the Government would like to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, but we will only do so once we have a workable plan for meeting our target.
Is it not interesting that on September 2 the Prime Minister decided, probably surprising his own ministers and his bureaucrats, and said “we're ratifying it by the end of the year”.
Let me read what the Prime Minister said to the head of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. He said, “I have stated that the government would like to ratify the Kyoto protocol--”. There is nothing wrong with that. However he goes on to say, “--but we will only do so once we have a workable plan for meeting our target”.
That is pretty important and that will be the first set of words I think that will condemn the Prime Minister to not doing what he said.
The Prime Minister, on March 26, again in the same letter, stated, “I assure you that there is no artificial deadline for a ratification decision”.
There is no artificial deadline and yet a few months later he has a deadline of the end of December 2002.
I am not a lawyer and yet I am putting forward evidence here, using the man's own words, and asking the House whether he is living up to what he said.
Again, the Prime Minister said in a letter “...the emission reductions that have been agreed to in the Kyoto Protocol will not be sufficient to stop climate change...”, so what does that mean? I interpret that as meaning it is probably not going to make much difference. The environment minister confirmed that in Calgary about a month ago when he said there will probably not be a single bit of environmental change in the next 100 years. It will take much longer than that. All of these things are going to happen to us with very little gain.
Let me go on with statements from the Prime Minister. On September 25, 2002, he said, in
The Toronto Star:
We will sign the protocol, we'll ratify it, and we will develop the plan. We will give the framework of the plan, but all the pieces of this plan will take 10 years to finalize.
One might say, well, that is great, he is going to take 10 more years and he has already had 10 years. We must remember that this was started in 1992. But there is one big problem. Article 3 of the protocol states that we will have to show substantial improvement in CO
2
emissions “by 2005”.
This is stated clearly in black and white. A country must show that it has substantially reduced its CO
2
emissions. Between 1999 and 2000 we increased our CO
2
emissions by 5%. In 2000 we were 20% over 1990 levels. Today we are 25% over 1990 levels. How is the Prime Minister going to substantially reduce our CO
2
emissions? As everybody says, emissions will be another 5% higher by the year 2005. Again I guess it is a matter of the fact that he will not be Prime Minister much longer so he will leave it to the guy he does not like much and let him deal with the problem. As we know, though, that still comes back to the average Canadian I am talking about. It comes back to the family of four, to the single mom or to people on fixed incomes. They are going to have pay the price for the Prime Minister to live up to that commitment, whoever that Prime Minister might be.
The Prime Minister even said in the House that in 30 years our children and grandchildren will be dying from the heat. There is not a scientist in the world who would agree with that. None of the people in the IPCC, in those models, say that in 30 years people are going to be dying from heat. We must remember that the Prime Minister himself said that in 100 years we probably will not notice much change, so how the heck are people going to be dying of heat in the next 30 years when in 100 years they will not notice much change?
Let us look at the environment minister. We talked earlier today on a point of order about the ad during the Grey Cup game yesterday. I hope you will not mind me using this example, Madam Speaker. Just before that government ad that we the taxpayers paid for to try to blackmail and calm the Canadian people, there was a Viagra ad. A guy jumps out of his house and, boy, he is feeling great. He feels wonderful. All the old guys on the street envy him. He bounces over the white picket fence, runs down the street, dunks the ball and does all that stuff. When I saw the Canadian government ad and all its propaganda, I expected to see the environment minister jump over the white picket fence and tell us that there will be floods and pestilence and disease and all that comes with not signing Kyoto. It would have fit. That is probably for the next issue of the ads paid for by Canadian taxpayers.
This environment minister talks about all of these good things. He put out a note to his cabinet colleagues saying that all of us should set an example and have small cars that are environmentally friendly and use transitional fuels. There is one problem with that. Only one person replied. That was himself. The opposition leader at that time, our House leader, applied for one but he never did get it. He is still waiting. So we have one car.
After votes in the House in the morning, how many of us have walked out there along the road and have seen ministers' cars turned off, saving fuel and not releasing CO
2
? I do not think so. What I have seen is that they are all running. We could not have a minister getting into a cold car. They run for hours and hours and that includes the Prime Minister's car out there. Again, it is typical Liberal propaganda: talk a lot, say they are doing a lot and then do absolutely nothing or the opposite. I would encourage people to start asking their MPs to start asking their cabinet ministers just exactly how committed they are to doing something about the environment.
I have listened to the environment minister many times. I am sure he is a very honourable person and that he really believes in what he does, but when I had that breakfast meeting in Victoria 10 days ago, with all those tables filled with people from the business community, doctors, dentists and other professionals, they said that they did not understand Kyoto. That was in the minister's riding. They do not understand it in the minister's riding, let alone in the rest of Canada, and of course they are getting no help from him.
What about the natural resources minister? He said that the government would not implement it until it knows it will not do any damage to our industry, that we will not have an investment freeze, and that it will all be fixed. I think the only fixing that got done was probably by the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard who fixed the minister pretty good, and it may well mean that he is not going to be in this place anymore.
What about the industry minister? The industry department had an interesting report last week. It said that the government is underestimating the costs of Kyoto by 30%. I cannot help but think of some of the other underestimates that have happened in this place. I was in the House when a minister said that we were going to have this Bill C-68 and it would cost only $87 million. He said they would have it all cleaned up and done right away. It would be smooth and easy with no problems. Within this next year that bill will have cost us $1.053 billion and has probably accomplished only about 10% of what it was set out to do.
The government traditionally underestimates things. I have been talking with the oil industry, for example, which says that the government is working with a figure of 3¢ per barrel. That will be the increased cost. If it is 3¢ a barrel, then the government is right and it really will not make much difference, but nobody I have asked in industry will even come close to 3¢ a barrel. They say that figure is out by hundreds of percentage points, so really how valid is this whole thing?
What about the health minister? As we are talking about cabinet ministers and leadership, she is pretty interesting too. In The Edmonton Journal of September 7 of this year, she said, “An awful lot of countries have ratified Kyoto without a plan and that to me is irresponsible and frightening.” I think she is right on. She obviously knows where it is at. It is pretty irresponsible and frightening to adopt this without having any kind of plan.
Of course, we have talked about the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard. He has an interesting position, which kind of goes like this: “I think Kyoto is pretty good, but, you know, Kyoto could be bad, but it's good, but if we ratify it, we might not, but if we do, we could, but if we don't, well, then, we won't and then it won't hurt anybody and it won't cost anything, and I think that's what we should do”. I think maybe he has to clarify his position a little bit.
I think he has quite a bit of room to manoeuvre, but if he wants to show real leadership this would certainly be the time to do it. He has said in the past that we must have a plan, we have to know how it will be implemented, we have to know what it will cost and we have to work with the provinces and Canadians. That is right on. I just quoted what he really says. I do not think anybody understands. He has said that “Canadians are entitled to know” exactly what the government's plans are and “I don't think you can spend the next number of years working that plan out”. That is a quote from the member for LaSalle—Émard.
He is right. We must have a plan. We have to know how it will be implemented. That is what this whole thing is all about.
I do want to tell the House about the presentation which I have been making at the town halls across the country. Hopefully you will be in the chair tomorrow morning, Madam Speaker, as I do not want to start now because I will not have time to finish. Certainly in my notice to the member across I will let him know that I will be doing that presentation first thing tomorrow just so he can be here bright and early and get a seat.
Let us talk about the polls. Polls are pretty interesting things. Someone said a long time ago in the House that “polls are for dogs”. Other people have said that the polls that are good we believe in and the polls that are bad we do not, but let us talk a little bit about these polls and the polling that is being done.
We must remember that the government has now spent $1.7 billion on Kyoto. What we have to show for that is a bunch of advertising, but most important, the weekly polling that the government does to see where Kyoto is at to decide how fast it will move.
Seeing that the government likes polls so much, I decided that I would do a poll as well, in my own riding. Let me tell the House about this poll. I heard the minister say that we have to represent our people first and I believe in that more than anyone else. Let us talk about my poll. We surveyed 1,230 people in my riding and asked, is climate change a problem? Forty-seven per cent said yes, climate change is a problem. Twenty-eight per cent said no, it is not a problem, and 24% did not understand Kyoto well enough to know whether it was a problem or not.
Next we asked, will Kyoto harm our economy? Eighty-one per cent said yes, it will. Eight per cent said no, it would not, and 10% were not sure. Next was, is Kyoto the right way to deal with climate change? Thirteen per cent thought it was. Seventy-two per cent said no, it was not, and 13% did not know enough about it to respond to that question. As well, the comments are interesting. Of those 1,200 people, over 1,000 wrote comments. I have some of the comments here, very few in favour of Kyoto. That is exactly what I am finding when I go out on the road. That is what I found in Hamilton yesterday. I was supposed to be in Toronto tonight, but obviously I need to be here to help the members understand Kyoto better.