House of Commons Hansard #32 of the 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was kyoto.
Jim Abbott Canadian Alliance Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Mr. Speaker, in light of that I wonder if it would not be wise to suspend debate until this decision has been made.
Points of OrderGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)
The Deputy Speaker has ruled that debate must go ahead. I am advised the Speaker himself will come back as soon as possible, and before a vote, with his ruling on this important matter.
The House resumed consideration of the motion.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
Mr. Speaker, I will not review what I have said because everyone's attention span over there should be long enough to have handled it. I will carry on. The parliamentary secretary asked me to start from the very beginning but that would be starting from yesterday and that would probably be too much. The whole group here would not like that to happen. I will carry on and in a few days I will review where I have been.
I have barely started with new material and I am trying to keep new material coming so that it rivets members on the other side. It will enable them to carry it back to their members and tell them that Kyoto is something we cannot sign at this point in time. We need a better made in Canada plan. To provide them with that this evaluation is essential and I must carry on.
The next point that the government has put a lot of time into is domestic emissions trading. I have attended canned presentations put on by bureaucrats. The only problem was that as soon as someone started asking questions they would have to get back with answers. They gave a nice PowerPoint presentation but questions could not be asked because they did not know the answers. They said it was not developed enough to understand. The people selling domestic emissions trading did not understand it. I guess that is okay in the Liberal way of things but as a businessman I do not want to sign on to something that I do not know how it will work or what the rules will be.
The bureaucrats said that domestic emissions trading would account for an estimated 55 megatonnes reduction. What are we missing here? Mr. Speaker, I imagine you are in a fog as much as I am. A dirty company will be forced to buy credits from a cleaner company with credits. I do not understand how that will fix the environment. The only way it can fix the environment is if that dirty company goes bankrupt. I guess that is the idea. Only clean companies will be left and the dirty companies will either have the incentive to get better or go out of business.
What happens to jobs in the meantime? Is there not a better way of dealing with this? Is there not a better way of encouraging technological advancement than forcing people out of business? Will there not be a lot of deals, particularly when we read the earlier section about how government will get involved in guarantees and all of that? Does that not smell like government involvement in business at a level that we never want government involved in? That is what it says to me. I cannot read it any other way. The government is talking about saving 55 megatonnes. I do not understand that. When we transfer from a dirty company to a clean company, how does that fix anything, whether it is domestic or international? Here the government is talking domestic.
About 279 free permits are to be allocated on historic intensity improvement performance or taking technological opportunity into account. We will give 279 permits. What is magic about that number I wonder. We will out 279 free permits for stuff people have done before. That is how the government attempted to get the Quebec government on side. That is how it attempted to get Ontario on side. It is working on Mr. Eves and hoping he will say a few deals could be made under the table. Do we trust those deals? Do we trust that kind of wheeling and dealing?
I thought we were talking about a commitment to the environment. I did not know we were talking about wheeling and dealing, splitting one premier from another premier, creating all kinds of disunity in our country. I did not know that was what it was about. I did not know that it was good for the country to have one part of the country hate the other part. I thought this was something about unity.
I am a proud Canadian. As I travel around this world I am proud to say I am a Canadian. I have taken tour groups to every part of this world and I am proud to have that Canadian flag. When I see a government proposing something like this, to split people and provinces apart, to wheel and deal with provinces, that really concerns me big time.
There will be 279 friends who will get free permits. I do not know where that number came from but the government will give those away to people who have done good things. Maybe the good things are raising funds for the party. Maybe the good things are being a president or a former candidate. Maybe those are the good deals. Industry would have to purchase permits for additional emissions. So the 279 good guys get them free, but others have to buy them. That is pretty obvious and clear. People will say that they will try to be one of the good guys and support the government so that they can be one of those 279.
This thing is divisive. It is divisive for provinces and industries. It will make one industry hate the other. It will put one industry out of business while promoting another and those people will be affected down at the grassroots level, people who need that income to buy groceries. That is who the government is playing with, with these emissions credits.
The permit price is estimated to be $10 per tonne. The government picks $10 and says it will put it into its model. The present price is around $38. It changes every hour and every day. Many estimate that once this European emissions trading really begins on January 1, the price of that carbon will skyrocket. If that is the case then everything on which the government has calculated will not be there.
It talks about implementation through covenants and regulations. It says that coverage would include electricity from coal, oil and gas industries, mining, pulp and paper, petroleum refining, chemicals, iron and steel, smelting and refining, cement, lime and glass. Those are the industries that will be targeted first.
Let us just examine across this country who will be affected by that. Everyone should listen carefully because this is who will be affected and who will lose their jobs, or have their jobs threatened by signing Kyoto. People in the coal, oil and gas industries; mining; pulp and paper; petroleum refining; chemical industry; iron and steel; smelting and refining; cement; and lime and glass will be targeted. If they are not one of the 279 preferred ones they will get nailed, and if they get nailed they will have to buy emissions, lay people off, and have their businesses affected.
What do people not understand? By producing this kind of a document, even though it lacks any kind of detail of costing and so on, it does give a hint of what it means. Now, after many hours, we finally get a chance to see which industries will be targeted first.
We should probably repeat that list because there are many members here who will have one or more of those companies or industries in their riding. All these industries, the coal, oil and gas, mining, pulp and paper, petroleum refining, chemical, iron and steel, smelting and refining, cement, lime and glass, will be the first industries to be hit by the Kyoto protocol. They will be the first ones that will need to buy emissions. How many Canadians out there will be hit by that?
This has been the only opportunity to talk about those industries, because we better believe the government has not told the industries out there or the people working in those industries that they are being targeted. They do not know that they are, but now we know they are because it is right there in black and white.
The government says that companies will have access to domestic offsets. Companies will be able to invest in sink and landfill gas capture, and then of course the international credits. I do not know about landfill gas trapping but there is a lot of gas around. I could remind some of our members that we should probably check how many cars are running out front.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
Oh, so now there are 12. There were 13 out there. It is good that there are only 12 running.
Just to bring you up to date, Madam Speaker, we have a little pool running here in the House to see how many ministers' cars are running out front at any given time of the day. We were told that there were only five or six and that they were only there for five or six minutes. Maybe tomorrow we could keep track of licence plates and we could actually bring those into the House and find out how long the cars have been running. Maybe we could get some help from our security people just to keep track of how many cars are running for how many hours per day. We will then get an idea of the ministers' commitment to the environment. I think it is a good little pool that Canadians probably will catch on to. Over the next few days and weeks leading up to Christmas they would probably like to have that information. We would be more than glad to provide it, with your permission, Madam Speaker.
I want to welcome you back, Madam Speaker. It is good to have you here. I will not be able to bring you totally up to date from 10 o'clock this morning. I could send you some notes but of course you have access to Hansard. I am pleased to see you back and becoming informed on the subject of Kyoto.
I hope, Madam Speaker, that you do not have any coal, oil and gas, mining, pulp and paper, petroleum refining, chemical, iron and steel, smelting and refining, cement, lime or glass industries in your constituency, because if you do, they will be the first group targeted under these emissions. You might just want to let them know that they should probably find out a little more about the Kyoto accord and how it might impact them. They may just be able to buy some landfill gas to help them offset these emissions.
We need to again talk about sinks because sinks are mentioned so often in all of these presentations. This was the thing that we won. Our big victory in Bonn was that we won on sinks. What the Europeans did for us was give us the throw-away when it came to sinks. In this report we are including sinks and landfills. I think they fit rather well together.
We are saying that there is a real development of a measurement and inventory tools to qualify for credits and promotion of agricultural sinks. I wonder what that spells out. I think that says that we will have a bureaucracy built that will keep track, tabulate and do an inventory on all the sinks in this country.
I think that should absorb some of the people from the coal, oil and gas, mining, pulp and paper industries, et cetera who will be unemployed. Maybe they can go out and become tree counters and decide how much CO
2
the trees are absorbing. Perhaps they could check out the grasslands and the fields and so on to see just how these sinks are working. Everyone had better believe that no one else knows and certainly the government does not.
This plan will enable sinks and landfill gas capture to be sold as an offset into industrial emissions trading. What is it that I do not understand about this whole thing? We are going to start buying these credits for this gas being given up. How does that help the environment? How does that work? I do not understand. The gases are being given off and we are going to take credit for those. What is it about that? It is just words, words and confusion.
We are going to consider increasing forestry sinks in cooperation with the provinces. I guess the government had better cooperate with the provinces. Who is responsible for forestry and agriculture?
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
The provinces. In the same report the feds say that they are going to take credit for the sinks for forestry and agriculture.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
The provinces do not get it. The farmers do not get it. The foresters do not get it. What does the government not get about this? The government then is into a grab in the area of the provinces.
The members from Quebec have to realize that the feds are lying. Once we ratify there will be penalties. The member from the Bloc is a good friend of mine. I respect him. He cares about the environment. He is on our environment committee. He does a great job on that committee. However he has to understand that the federal government is grabbing something that belongs to the provinces.
By going ahead with the ratification, we are giving the government a blank cheque, which it will cash. When it cashes it, we will never get an implementation plan that will consider the provinces. That is why the premiers are not meeting and that is why the environment ministers are not meeting with the federal government on Friday. It is because it is a grab. The members from Quebec have to understand that.
The next point is investment in renewable energy and innovative technology. The government has finally come to something that perhaps makes some sense. Let us examine that and see what it means by that. First, it says it is doing 12 megatonnes already. It says it is already doing something, and that is 12 megatonnes.
It says that it will target 10% of new electricity generation from green sources. It is saying that 10% of our power in this country has to come from green energy. Alberta and Quebec are the only two provinces moving toward that goal, and, of course, they are doing that by introducing wind power and electricity generated from water, hydroelectricity. All those things are achieving that green energy.
However the government says that any new projects must be 10% green. The provinces that do not have hydro will be hit pretty hard by that. It will be pretty hard on some provinces that may not have the economics to make it happen. It will be hard on Saskatchewan when SaskPower is saying that it cannot convert its coal generation plants that quickly to some other form. What will we do, turn the lights out? It is already having economic problems.
It also hits Atlantic Canada pretty hard because it is just about to have a huge resource base in the area of oil and gas and mining.
I will go back to that cab driver in Halifax who said to me that Atlantic Canadians were just finally getting on their feet and the federal government was going to whack them again. This time it will be Kyoto. This is another lost promise and a lost opportunity for Atlantic Canada.
Yes, we can achieve that. We can achieve much better than that but we need to have a plan. We need to have a plan that has worked, that is in the right time and that will work as the technology develops.
We are going to partner in clean coal technology projects. That is interesting because one clean coal technology project, a pilot plant, which has been in the planning for 10 years, will be coming on stream in 2008. This does not happen very fast. It takes 10 years from the time the government decides to go ahead with a project until it actually comes on stream.
Clean coal technology is there. It is in Europe and in the U.S. and, yes, Canada should use clean coal technology. The government is saying that could save us 4.5 megatonnes.
The government says that we should partner in a proposal for a CO
2
pipeline system. I think that refers to the taking of CO
2
and sequestering it in the ground. A lot of research is being done on that. It is being done in Texas and in other parts of the world. Russia even tried a project of sequestration of CO
2
. Canada is getting into that and that is good; that is 2.2 megatonnes. Look at how much we have to do to save megatonnes. It is not that easy. When we have to hit 260 megatonnes it is not that easy to all of a sudden get rid of those 240 megatonnes. How do we do it? That is the very point.
I did not mention that clean coal technology would save 4.5 megatonnes. If 10% of our energy was from green sources we could save 3.9 megatonnes. Even if it were 50% it is still not very much. If members will remember, we were getting 30 megatonnes for our sinks even though we did not know what they were.
I must again remind the members from Quebec that just having green energy is not the whole solution to the megatonne problem. There are a whole bunch of other things. People give off CO
2
through driving cars, riding in trains, riding in buses, and all kinds of manufacturing. Manufacturers produce a lot of CO
2
. What the people in Ontario must understand is that they will get hit because they will have to reduce their output of CO
2
by 20%. It is just that simple.
The government says that we must consider investment in the next generation technology for low cost nuclear power. Did that one sneak through somewhere? I do not know what people think about that, but the Canadian government has always been committed to nuclear power. We in fact have kept that industry alive for a long time.
Yes, I have met with people from the nuclear industry and they feel they can cut costs. Right now, however, the nuclear industry is about eight times more expensive than the coal fired generation plant. Now we have another cost. Maybe the nuclear industry can improve on that. Maybe it can be brought down closer to conventional. However the industry does not think it can do that right away.
What about the issue of waste from nuclear power plants? What about building nuclear power plants on faults? What about all the environmental problems. I would really like to know if the Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund all support nuclear energy. I assume that they do because they support Kyoto and they support the government's plan. I think from now on we must assume that those agencies all support nuclear power.
I am not aware that our party supports holus-bolus nuclear power plants. I know the government does because it finances it. I guess all the environmental groups support nuclear power. I wonder if they will be cut off from their international roots because Greenpeace and the Sierra Club certainly oppose it in the U.S. and Europe.
The Canadian groups support it because they support the government and the ratification of Kyoto. What other assumption could we draw? I have to assume that. We could ask them about old growth forests. They do not absorb as much CO
2
. The environmental groups cannot have it both ways.
I repeat for those who were not here yesterday that I am an environmentalist. I am proud to be an environmentalist. I want to preserve the environment. That is what my training would show.
Let us talk about the other actions. I think we hit a pretty important one there. It is an awfully important thing to look at when we discuss it with these various groups.
What about other actions? One would be to expand Canadian industry programs for energy conservation, 0.7 tonnes. We will have industry programs. I am not sure what they are. We will reduce flaring and venting of waste gases on a voluntary basis by four megatonnes.
I would like to see us stop all venting and burning of waste gases. I talked earlier about how it bothers me to see those flares burning into the air, hundreds of them, when I know there is technology that is being used around the world. Little tiny plants are put beside the wells to capture the energy. They are cogeneration plants. That electricity is fed into the grid. It works, so let us use it. How much does it cost? I am not sure of the figures, but I have been told it costs $30,000 to $50,000 for one of these units. That would probably be made back in a matter of months, not years, from selling power into the grid.
Why is it not done? I do not know. Maybe more government pressure is needed to do it, but they are doing a lot of that now on a voluntary basis.
The Canadian government will purchase a minimum of 10 megatonnes of credits from the international market. That keeps sneaking in here.
We discussed this earlier. That means the government is going to buy them and serve as banker. It is going to distribute them among Canadian companies, I assume for sale. Think of the bureaucracy that would be needed to handle that item. Why are we doing that? Why would we want to set up an international agency to buy credits to redistribute through the country? How would that benefit Canadians?
The next point is really important. It is why this debate is important and why we should be here until Christmas. The government challenges individual Canadians to reduce emissions by one tonne per person and encourages them to operate their homes more efficiently, buy more fuel efficient vehicles, reduce car usage by 10% and retrofit their homes.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
There are 12 cars outside right now. They have been running most of the day. There were 13 but I guess one left. There were 19 in the earlier survey.
We all are going to reduce our emissions by one tonne. The average for a Canadian person, man, woman and child, is five tonnes. We are being asked to reduce it by 20%. Do Canadians know that? Do Canadians really understand what kind of a commitment that would be? How would we do it?
First of all, we breathe. We breathe out CO
2
. Maybe the government will propose that we should only breathe every second time which would reduce CO
2
emissions. I do not think many people would be able to achieve that.
What will we do? The government says that we will use our cars 10% less. How will we administer that? What about the guy that uses his car more? Will we have car police? Will we have meters on our cars and inspectors? Maybe they will say, “You can only drive this many kilometres. You went over so we are going to tax you”. I do not think we will do that.
The easiest place to do it would be at the gas pumps. The easiest way to handle it is by raising the price of gas. The Europeans have often said, “Why are you guys paying 60¢ or 70¢ a litre for gas? Why is it so cheap?” The only way to achieve a reduction of CO
2
from automobiles is by making gas $2.50 a litre. If we made it $2.50 a litre we would reduce the use. We would reduce it by 10%. I expect that we would reduce it by more than 10%. Are Canadians ready for that kind of a decision?
Canadians need to discuss it. Canadians need to understand Kyoto. Canadians need to know whether they want to commit themselves to that sort of a reduction. It should not just happen because the Prime Minister says, “I do not even have to talk to the House. I do not even have to consult with members. I do not even have to listen. I can simply ratify this without any consultation at all. In fact, I do not have to listen to the provinces. I do not have to listen to industry. I do not have to listen to anybody because I can ratify this agreement on my own. I do not even have to care because I am not going to be here. Those rotten Liberals ran me out of my job, so let the next guy worry about it”.
The next guy had better be worried about this piece of paper because it says that Kyoto has penalties. If and when the future prime minister returns to the House he will be reminded again that there are commitments. The day that we ratify the agreement we are stuck with it and there are penalties, big penalties. The members across the way who are going to vote for this or defeat this have been threatened with an election. Is that not blackmail? That is nothing more than simple blackmail.
Now we come to the real crunch. All of us in Canada are expected to reduce our emissions by 20%, reduce our use of cars, reduce our use of electricity, reduce our use of any kind of power, reduce our manufacturing, reduce our use of consumable goods. We are all going to reduce those by 20%. What will that do to our country? What will that do to our economy? What will that do to our jobs? What will it do to our children and our grandchildren? What will it do to them?
A reduction of 20% is pretty darned critical and will have a major effect on Canada. We will buy more fuel efficient vehicles. I know a lot of Canadians who are having difficulty buying a vehicle let alone buying a fuel efficient vehicle that costs more money at this point in time. They will have trouble.
Who am I talking about? I am not talking about the Liberal cabinet ministers whose cars are running out front. I am talking about the moms and dads trying to take their kids to a hockey game. I am talking about the single moms. I am talking about those people out there. That is who we should be concerned about. That is who we should be talking about when we talk about these more expensive vehicles and about reducing consumption.
Retrofitting homes is a great idea. Greenpeace says it would cost $12,000 per home, but the manufacturers and the home builders say it would cost $30,000 per home. It would be somewhere in between.
I built an energy efficient home 11 years ago. I put in triple pane glass and double insulation. I have the facility to put in a solar collector on the roof of my garage, because I believe in that stuff. I know what that cost me. I can guarantee it did not cost me $30,000. It cost me considerably more to make that fuel efficient house. That was 11 years ago. Prices may have been reduced since then for insulation, triple pane glass and so on, but I do not think so. I do not know of much else that has been reduced in price.
What will it mean to Canadians? That is the question we have to continually ask.
David Anderson Canadian Alliance Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
It is getting lonely in here again. I think I would like to see you call for quorum.
It is important that members hear this. What the member for Red Deer has to say is very important. It would be good if the members would come in, listen to what he has to say, continue to take notes and continue to learn from him.
Kyoto ProtocolGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)
There is quorum in the House. The hon. member for Red Deer may continue.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
Thank you, Madam Speaker. It was nice to have a little break and a glass of water. I appreciate that. I know, Madam Speaker, that your heart is with us and that you want us to get this information out to Canadians so that they have a chance to learn more about Kyoto.
That is what democracy is all about. In some countries if we were to do this sort of thing, I would have been hauled off long ago and imprisoned as a political prisoner. Maybe I should be careful when I go past those running cars out there and hope they are not running too fast after me.
We are talking about Canadians and the things being said in this report. It is saying that they must cut by 20% their use of all the things that make our standard of living what it is. That is a huge commitment.
I have travelled across the country doing townhall meetings on this subject and I usually ask Canadians, “Do you think Kyoto affects you?” At the beginning of the presentation they usually say, “No, I don't think so. I don't think it's going to affect me. I want to fix the environment. I'm worried about health”.
All of us are worried about health. Kyoto is not about health. It is about CO
2
and climate change. Yes, we should do something about it. Yes, there is a better way. The better way that I talked about this morning is the way we should go. We should be doing conservation, transitional fuels and alternate energy. Those are all important areas and I will have a chance to talk further about those when I talk about modelling. We must discuss modelling. I have three books I want to review just to describe the modelling process because it is that important. Everybody must understand this issue.
Municipalities are expected to reduce 10 megatonnes through land planning, waste diversion, investments in renewable energies and sinks. Municipalities are expected to do that. I guess the decree will come down from almighty planet Ottawa saying, “You shall do the following things”. That sounds very good, but if I were a municipality anywhere in Canada, I would be asking if the funds are coming to help me do that, or is this just another effort to transfer the costs from the top to the bottom and let the little guy pay for it? It is telling municipalities and provinces that this is what they must do, but it does not transfer any money.
It is sort of like health care. It is rather fitting that the government would choose to bring health care out the same week as Kyoto. I am sure it is not trying to confuse the issue at all. The federal government got the provinces involved. I would like all Bloc members to think about this. The federal government brought all the provinces on side with health care by offering them a fifty-fifty cost sharing. That was a good deal. The provinces said they could not afford all that health care so the feds would pay 50% and the provinces pay 50%.
As the Romanow report will point out, about 11% of health care is paid for by the feds and the rest is the responsibility of the provinces. What do members in the House not understand about the feds and their sharing programs? They will get people on side and then they cut their heads off, and that is exactly what they have done with health care. That is exactly what they will do with the environment.
The government says it will strengthen the understanding of science and likely impacts. Is that not refreshing? Finally, on the last pages of this document, it is saying that it will strengthen the understanding of science. My God, we will put this whole thing into science. We will to look to the scientists to tell us if what we are doing will make a difference. I wonder if that should not have been at the start instead of at the end. One would sure think so. One would think that when it talks about these wonderful models that it has that it would have talked about this whole science thing a little bit earlier.
It talks about establishing regular monitoring, reporting and regulatory structures. That would be typical of Ottawa to come up with. That is bureaucracy. What does the government not understand? There must have been a lot of European influence here. Many countries of the world seem to like bureaucracy. Everybody wants to work for the government. It is a good job. It is a guaranteed job. Nobody ever gets fired. People can keep building a pyramid, get other people under them and they will never lose their job. It sounds good.
When I call Kyoto a Eurocentric, bureaucratic nightmare, that is exactly what we have just reviewed. We have talked about something that is pretty good for Europe, but not worth a darn for a country in the Americas. We have talked about bureaucracy that is beyond all belief, from tree counters to regulators, monitors, reporters and structural setups to monitor everything that every Canadian does including how they drive their car. This is nothing but bureaucracy. It is about waste and bureaucracy.
There is a much better way. There is a way based on technology, advancement, and getting people involved. We do not need bureaucrats counting trees. What we need are people to understand what they can do to help the environment.
I will stop reviewing the report at this point. I have read the highlights and there is a lot more. Now I will review the second report in much more detail. This was just a brief overview of the first report and I have been working hard. I have about 80 or 90 pages of review instead of this brief five or six page review of the first report. I will review the second report in detail so that the House can understand all parts of it. There is a lot more detail required.
This report was prepared for the October 28 joint ministers meeting. There was another meeting set for November 21 for plan 2, the one we have not reviewed yet but we will get to it. Plan 2 was for the meeting of November 21 but it was cancelled, postponed. Then it was worked on a bit more and turned from a stapled copy into a more expensive copy, which includes all the changes that were made, and that was for this Friday in Toronto.
I planned to be in Toronto this Friday to talk to the environment ministers and the energy ministers. I was worried about that because then I would not have been able to be in the House and I did not think you, Madam Speaker, would let me do it on a conference call. I was worried that I might have to stop speaking, but that has now been cancelled because the provinces say the government has nothing to offer them. It has nothing new. It has not consulted any more. It has not done anything.
What is the Prime Minister doing? He is trying to pick the premiers off one at a time. Yesterday he met with Mr. Eves from Ontario to try to bribe him. Wink, wink, nod, nod, “Maybe we'll give you something later.”
Today he is meeting with Mr. Campbell who is in Ottawa. Wink, wink, nod, nod, “Maybe we'll let you develop your offshore oil and gas without any problems environmentally.” I wonder how David Suzuki likes that one, that the Prime Minister is starting to make a behind the scenes deal with the Premier of B.C. I expect that David Suzuki is not happy right now with Mr. Campbell.
That is how the government operates, trying to make deals under the table. Does the House know who the government has forgotten in this whole thing? It has forgotten the people.
It is not about premiers, cabinet ministers, or members of Parliament. It is about every single person out there who is a consumer. It is about people who drive cars. It is about people who live in houses, who buy groceries. It is about people who do not understand what Kyoto means to them. That is why we must keep talking. That is why we must keep the message going out there, because it is those people who will be affected.
We should look at where we are at now. The premiers are not meeting. The Prime Minister refused to meet with them except in little, sneak visits to the capital. The provincial environment and energy ministers are fed up with the federal government and they have cancelled their meeting. We now have a real problem.
We have a Prime Minister who says there will be a vote in the House on ratification. He does not have to listen to anything we say. I suppose he could say that this is all falling on deaf ears, but I do not think so. There are some Canadians out there who are starting to pay attention. If we in the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party are that concerned about this issue, then maybe there is something there we should look at. That is the purpose of this whole thing.
We need to take a look at the member for LaSalle--Émard who peeked in occasionally today and we need to ensure that his position is clear. I will review again as I did yesterday what his position is up to this point. His position has been clear. He said that Kyoto is good, but it might not be so good, but we should ratify it, but maybe we should not, but if we do, we could, but if we do not, we will not, and we will not hurt anyone, and all parts of the country will be treated equally. He said that we will only move as fast as we can and would and should, and maybe we will but he does not know for sure and we will see how it goes. That is his position.
He needs to be clear because he said in Toronto that Canadians are entitled to know exactly what the government's plans are. He did not think we can spend the next number of years working that plan out. That is the position of the member for LaSalle--Émard. He is saying that we must know that. He has also said that maybe he would have to vote for ratification in the House but that would not mean anything because he would take a hard look and if it was going to hurt our economy, it would not be implemented.
What does ratification mean? Ratification means that according to the Marrakesh accord nations that ratify Kyoto but do not meet their targets in round one by 2012 are penalized another 30% in emissions cuts, and in addition such nations cannot sell carbon credits in round two. In the case of compliance with emissions targets, annex I parties, that is us, are granted 100 days after the expert review of their final annual emissions inventory as finished to make up any shortfall in compliance, mainly through emissions trading. That means if a country does not hit its targets it can buy its way out by sending money to other countries.
If the Prime Minister and any future prime ministers do not understand that commitment, we should be saying it over and over again because that is a critical point.
There are penalties to ratifying Kyoto. Members who have been told to ratify this for the Gipper because he will not be around long, and that yes, he is kind of out of date, and to ratify because it will be his legacy, should remember what the Kyoto accord says. It says that once we ratify and sign on the dotted line there are penalties.
Industry, economists, scientists and everyone says that we cannot hit those targets. We cannot do it. We know that the parliamentarians of 2012 will be buying emissions to make up the credit targets that we did not hit.
We are already saddling future generations with a debt. We already have $540 billion in debt. That is $40 billion a year that everyone in Canada is being saddled with. What is a billion dollars? A lot of people do not know what a billion dollars is, but let us put this into perspective. We are saddling future generations with this environmental treaty. We are saddling them with a debt. That debt amounts to: $12 billion, give or take, for education; $15 billion or $18 billion for health care; $10 billion to $11 billion for the military; $9 billion for Indian affairs; $22 billion for social services; and $40 billion for interest payments. That is what we are leaving our children and our grandchildren.
So when Liberals stand up and say they care about our children and our grandchildren and about the environment, what they are saying is that they are leaving them with that debt. They are leaving them with an agreement that we know we cannot achieve and will penalize us and will cost billions of dollars when that day comes. The last thing I would want to do is to be able to say in 2012, “We told you so”. I would hate to have to say that. That does not bring me any pleasure at all because it is my kids and my grandchildren this is going to affect.
Again, simply standing in the House and saying how great we are really does not do much for me when it comes to what the Liberals are proposing and what they are about to do.
So what is the answer? Obviously we are asking the member for LaSalle—Émard to take some leadership, to really be honest, to really examine this, to know that there are penalties and to vote accordingly. We are asking the members from the Bloc to really think about the power grab that the federal government is going to do here with ratification. We are asking the backbench Liberals to think about how it affects their individual constituents. I do not think there is much hope with the NDP, so I will not bother addressing them. I just hope that people will think about those things.
Just to summarize this portion, I think what we have to do is again repeat some of these consequences: the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs; $25 billion to $45 billion less in economic activity in this country; and we will not reduce the smog, the acid rain and the pollution in an appreciable amount by signing on to Kyoto. Even the minister said the difference it will make to the environment will be minuscule. It may double the amount we pay for gas, for electricity and for home heating. It has the potential to do that. It will reduce investment because of the investment freeze in our country. It will require the formation of a whole new level, a whole new bureaucracy, just to administer, which we have talked about in detail in reviewing this report. It will put us at a huge economic disadvantage to our major trading partner, the United States. It will subsidize some of the biggest polluting countries in the world, those with dirty industries. We are going to send them money. How does that help the environment?
The government has no idea of how it is going to implement this plan. When it signed the accord in 1997 it had no idea of how it might implement and how it might carry out this plan.
It is important that we review exactly where we are now. There are some other issues, and I guess I would call them side issues, that I want to deal with. This is part of a scientific presentation. This is probably a fitting time to do this. The members are very alert at this point and very keen on getting into some of this.
The key abatement strategy the government has put forward at some of the meetings we have had is to use less fuel. It wants to start a major advertising campaign. We should remember that the Liberals have spent $10 million in this last month in advertising on how good Kyoto is for us. That is $10 million.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
Right during the Grey Cup they spent that money to tell us how good Kyoto is and how important. Now they will spend money on advertising to Canadians that we must use less fuel, we must use different fuel and we must capture all of the flue gases from industry. Some of these we would agree with. We are going to use sinks, but the federal government will take credit for them even though they are under provincial jurisdiction.
Generally speaking, what the Liberals really are saying is that they will use Kyoto as an excuse to deal with some environmental issues. Would it not be better to simply say that they will have two plans? They could have a plan that deals with pollution and they could force, if they have to, companies to put in scrubbers and all kinds of things to remove sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide, particulate matter, mercury and all of those things that are pollution. They could clean up industry if they wanted. It is good business for the Liberals to do that and industry would participate.
On the other side, let us take a long term view of how we can deal with climate change, how we can deal with reducing CO
2
. The reality is that as we get into alternate energy, we will in fact reduce CO
2
emissions. On that day in 2040 or 2050 when we are not dependent on fossil fuels and are using alternate energy, and some scientists have now started writing about this, we might well have a CO
2
shortage, which will then inhibit plant growth on earth. That is a whole other side of this whole issue that is far out there. The Liberals cannot predict the next week, let alone 100 years from now, although the government believes it can.
The Kyoto treaty participants are significant. There are all of those developed countries that are part of this agreement, but the critical part is all those countries in the developing world that between now and 2012 are not part of Kyoto. All those countries that are not part of this original Kyoto treaty will continue to do what they are doing. If any members have been to those countries they will know that the level of pollution, the level of CO
2
, is far in excess of anything we would have here in Canada. That is a problem.
A lot of people asked this question and so I will review a few of these things. We find now that about 95 countries have ratified, and I mentioned this figure before, representing 37.1% of the emissions. We must remember that for Kyoto to come into effect, there must be 55 countries representing 55% of the emissions.
I will just interrupt myself here for a moment because I know our viewers are waiting for this. As of now, there are five ministers' cars running outside Centre Block, so we have gone from 19 to 13 to 12 to 5. I wonder if the time of day has anything to do with that. Tomorrow we will monitor this, and I know that you, Madam Speaker, will want to know how many ministers' cars are sitting out there running with no one in them because the ministers do not want to get into cold cars. Commitment to Kyoto, that is what it is all about. It is commitment. We need Canadians to be committed for it to work. We need cabinet ministers to show some commitment as well. We will start keeping track of which ministers they are and if the Prime Minister is also out there with his car running, and how many cars. He has about five or six because he is more important than everyone else here.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
They are not small and energy efficient cars either, and that is another point.
We have to keep this in mind because a lot of Canadians are asking when this will come into effect. We are at 37% right now. Some 90 countries have ratified, but some of them do not have any emissions at all. Caribbean countries have ratified, but it is easy for them to ratify because there are no targets so they just have to sign on the dotted line. Those 90 countries represent 37% of the emissions. We must remember that Canada represents 2% of the emissions and Russia 17% of the emissions. If Canada signed on, it would not matter. It would really matter if the Russians signed on, as they say they might if there is enough money in it for them. That would take it to the 55%, the critical number, and at that point, I repeat, the penalties begin. The clock starts ticking. That is when Canadians would start to see the repercussions of ratifying Kyoto. That is when we would start paying our dues.
Madam Speaker, I know that you would like me to read the entire Kyoto accord into the record. I do not know if I will have time for that because it is a fairly long document. I do have it here if members would like me to read it in.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
Maybe I will do that tomorrow or later on.
The important point is that section C of the Kyoto accord states that by 2005 a country must show substantial reductions in CO
2
. That is what we are talking about ratifying. Where is Canada in this regard? In 1999 Canada was 15% over CO
2
emissions from 1990 levels. In 2000 we were 20% over in CO
2
emissions. Today we are 23% over in CO
2
emissions.
I do not know what the government does not understand about “substantial reductions by 2005”. If we do not do it, the European Union has said, WTO penalties may be brought forward on countries. If it succeeds in doing that, we will be first, saying “pick us, pick us, we ratified, so pick us”. We ratified, so penalize us. Hurt our trade so that we will not have as many jobs and people will not have as much security in their manufacturing jobs. That is the kind of stupidity that the Prime Minister and future prime minister do not seem to understand. There are penalties involved in signing this thing. We cannot just sign it, walk away and forget about it.
Kyoto is critical. Our major trading partner, the U.S., is out. Europe is in but even it is having trouble getting to its targets. It is starting to worry. A meeting was held earlier this year where some countries were told they were going to have real trouble. Britain was told it would have trouble. In fact, in the parliaments of those countries debates were held about getting out of Kyoto. Those are the Europeans who designed this thing and who really do not have hardly any targets compared to ours.
Japan basically has said that it does not want those penalties in there. That was its argument in Marrakesh. It does not want so many harsh penalties in because countries will opt out. Countries will not sign on. Maybe Japan feels so strongly about this because it has the name Kyoto on it.
So as for examining the costs of Kyoto, there is no one estimate. There is nothing in the modelling that will tell us what it is going to cost. The bottom line is that nobody really knows what the cost will be. No one really knows what the target is. No one really knows what the policies are. All those penalties and all those costs will be determined by the targets, industry by industry, and I read out those industries earlier.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
A member asks what the social costs will be. What are the social costs for people when they realize that they have to change their entire way of life?
We are asking them to undergo a massive change in how they do things. Will we say no, that they cannot drive little Johnny to hockey on the other side of the city because they cannot use expensive gas to do that? Will we take them out of those hockey programs? Will we tell seniors who get special treatment from doctors on the other side of the city that they cannot do that any more because we have signed Kyoto and we have to hit our targets?
We have to ask these questions. We have to discuss what the implications are before we simply sign this agreement. As far as international permits and credits, that is a huge unknown. No one can really put costs on that.
As for the range of social costs, the figures the government has used in its models are $150 million to $12 billion annually. That is what these models are about. It uses this kind of range, $150 million to $12 billion. That is a pretty good range. Then the additional costs that could be involved have not been calculated into that.
The government talks about all these rolling targets. It talks about tolls on roads. Who will pay for those? It says that if we put tolls on major highways and enforce the current speed limits, we could save 4.1 megatonnes. Think about that for a minute. We will put tolls on roads and enforce speed limits. It is not quite that easy to do those things. That again takes infrastructure, it takes police and all kinds of things to save 4.1 megatonnes.
We can expand the public transit and save 3.4 megatonnes and so on and so forth. These things are hard to achieve. These targets are not easy. We should not be forced into Kyoto until we are ready and have the commitment from the provinces and the Canadian people. Until we have those things, how can we do it?
Some of the big unknowns are the costs of the targeted measures, the effectiveness and feasibility and the willingness of Canadians to cooperate. Who can predict that? The availability of permits, the sensitivity of costs to the policies of the government, the role of the modelling assumptions are questions that we need to ask.
I think we can examine the willingness to cooperate. I think most Canadians are concerned about their environment and most would want to do something, but Canadians have to know that what they do will make a difference. If we are to make this sacrifice and take this big economic hit, we have to know that it will be worthwhile. If it will not make a difference because the developing world is not part of it or we will have businesses move out of this country, we have to know that as well.
We could go through many of these things and talk about them indepth, but I have a lot of other areas to which I want to get. I will go through this deck of material fairly quickly because I know the members over there who have been keeping track of all this have had a pretty long day.
We know the federal government does not understand any of these issues. It really does not have answers, so asking it questions really does not make much difference.
The final point comes from a question that I am asked an awful lot of times, and that is that this is the same as the free trade argument. Those rotten Conservatives did not give us any information and they forced the whole thing on us. I want to review very briefly what we had in 1988.
We had an exact text of the policy. We had at least three independent cost estimates. We had two commissions into the labour market adjustment policies. We had all major federal governments prepare a report. Then we had a national election on the issue. That was pretty fair consultation.
This government opposed free trade. It said it was the worst thing possible and it would rescind it as soon as it formed the government. That is like the GST and all these other things it promised. However there is no comparison between these two.
The government says that we do not have to listen to the debate in the House. We can ratify it without coming to the House. That is quite a different attitude. I would be the last one to defend Mr. Mulroney and what he did. However no Liberal or supporter of Kyoto should compare the Kyoto debate to the free trade debate. It was a pretty different argument and it was handled in a pretty different way from this argument.
This is being rushed through this place because the government wants to say that the House supported it. Then it wants to ratify it, the Prime Minister can get out of town and the chips will fall where they may. That is not a very healthy approach to something that will affect every man, woman and child in Canada.
I want to talk about the costs and get into a little more detail before we review the third plan and talk about modelling. It is kind of late in the day to really get started with some of those complex issues but it is important that we probably finish our discussion today on what some of these costs will be. Tomorrow we can get into modelling and the 40 models of the IPCC. I know everyone has been just sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for us to discuss that.
Let us look at some quotes on the costs. The first one that I will quote is from Mr. Jeff Rubin, CIBC, Chief Economist. He said:
No wonder Alberta sees Kyoto as a life and death issue. Particularly when investment is free to migrate to developing countries with huge tar sand deposits like Venezuela that are not bound by Kyoto-mandated GHG reductions.
That is an important statement coming from the chief economist of a major bank in Canada. We are cooking that up in the House here. A chief economist put that in writing and sent it to a national newspaper.
On this side of the House we believe that Diane Francis has credibility. She said:
--the Protocol is a flawed deal that will damage Canada and not even contribute much toward cleaning up the environment...how can Kyoto clean up the environment when countries like China, India and Brazil are exempt from emission controls?
We have been asking that question all day. How can we be part of it and how will it help the environment when that is the situation?
Let us quote Saint John, New Brunswick, Board of Trade president, Dianna Barton, from the Canadian Press of October 10. She said:
We are a trading province. We do a lot of exports. If we are not competitive in energy costs this will increase our product costs with our trading partners.
Is that not what the cab driver was telling me in Halifax? He said that they finally had a chance to make it, to get on their feet and provide their own source of resources and that we were going to shut them off with Kyoto. That is exactly what this lady from Saint John has said.
I go on to quote the Nova Scotia premier:
If you have an unknown cost impact then it is very difficult for anybody to assess the viability of any project. Until we have a plan there will be no certainty.
That is exactly what we have been saying. How can we do this to Canadians when we do not have a plan and when we do not have any certainty? How will we keep people investing in our industry? How will we keep people providing jobs when we do not have any certainty? Those are the questions.
Perhaps if I stood here for days and just repeated two or three questions over and over again, maybe the government would get it. I do not know. I just hope that in trying to bring up these substantial items they are getting through.
Let me quote Geoffrey Ballard, geophysicist and Canadian father of the fuel cell. Remember, this guy now makes his money from fuel cells. On October 8, 2002 in the National Post he said:
I believe no developed nation, which has seriously studied the environmental issues that confront us, can in good conscience sign this protocol. I believe implementing the Kyoto Protocol would be a huge step backwards.
This is a geophysicist, a guy who has developed a fuel cell, who has put Canada on the map and who should benefit from signing Kyoto. He is saying that Kyoto is the worst thing we could sign. That has to be a credible condemnation of what Kyoto is all about.
We will be going backward in signing Kyoto. We will not be going forward. We are not moving where we should be into conservation, into transitional fuels and ultimately into alternate energy. Our party stands for that. We recognize that Kyoto has some good points but we would not ratify it because of the penalties that would be imposed. We would come up with a conservation plan into which all levels of government, the Canadian people and Canadian industry could buy.
We would look at transitional fuels. We would look at everything from biofuels to biogas to all those things. We would look at implementing them economically to help our economy and to help us get to the alternate energy sources. We expect to be there by 2030, 2040, 2050, in that time range. Then we would put our money into that alternate energy. We would do everything we could to develop wind farms. We would use the Queen Charlotte Islands. It is a perfect place for a wind farm and we would develop that.
Wind farms work on the principle that the land heats during the day, cools at night and the wind blows 24 hours a day. It is a simple science principle. It is one that the Danish and the Germans have figured out. They know that by building windmills that do not have gears and moving parts and that move with just the slightest bit of wind, they can create energy and that energy can be used.
We have solar possibilities. There are huge solar collectors, like the ones that are used on the space station, that could be put into space. They could collect energy that would then drive generators on earth. That is the future. The future of that is even greater because we could give developing countries a source of power that they have never had before. That is exciting.
It was exciting to talk to someone in Tibet who had power for the first time. It was exciting that they were so proud of the tiny solar collector. One lady said that she had a light, a photovoltaic cell, a solar collector and that she had light. For the first time they have light. It is pretty exciting that we can take this new technology and help people like that to have light and energy with which to cook their food.
A reporter asked me during question period if I had said yak dung. Yes, yak dung is what people in Tibet have been using for thousands of years to cook their food. The fumes given off by that have caused serious eye problems in many of their children. They do not have to do that any more. They have solar collectors. That is pretty exciting.
That technology has implications for developing countries. It has implications for Canadians. It has implications for the world.
Another member brought me information on another geothermal town in her constituency in B.C. I will find that and be sure to introduce it tomorrow. I cannot put my fingers on it right now.
I am so proud of the town in my riding which built its whole recreation unit on geothermal technology. I mentioned this earlier. The extra geothermal plant cost $200,000. Think about that small town making a decision to spend an extra $200,000 of taxpayer money to implement this new technology.
Who in Sylvan Lake, Alberta understood geothermal energy? I do not think too many. Those people took a gamble and said, “We are going to spend $200,000 of taxpayer money”. I am sure there were people who said those guys were crazy, but they went ahead and did it. Today they are saving $80,000 per year in energy costs. They do not use gas and they do not use electricity. They use geothermal energy. The mayor said that the plant will be paid for in two and a half years. When I visited the plant two weeks ago, he told me it will be paid for in under two years.
That is the kind of thing that Canadians would do. That is the kind of vision the government needs, not signing a Kyoto protocol that sends millions or billions of dollars to Russia so it can develop those sorts of things. That is the bottom line.
To lead into our discussion of models, I have to keep repeating this because I know some members do not understand it. It is what we put in that determines what we get out of a model. The IPCC took 200 scientists from around the world to come up with these models. They basically said, “Okay, here are some of the things”.
The first thing was to not include clouds in the models. Then they realized that greenhouse gases are 97% clouds, water vapour. The first models that were done did not have water vapour in them. They showed results that were unbelievable and obviously we are about to fry any time soon. Then they decided that was not a good model to build and they put in clouds. The government in its wisdom has reduced the amount of cloud effect that it has put into the models. How can it do that? The clouds are the clouds are the clouds. It is 97% and it is not going to change much. Why is it doing fooling around with reality? That is what is being done.
When we discuss these models, the government is really wise.
Bob Mills Canadian Alliance Red Deer, AB
The member hears the word model and he tries to audition for the model contest. I hate to keep telling him that he does not qualify. There is no way. Maybe if he comes back in another life he may qualify, but not this time.