Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the exciting field of alternate energy. That is the future that the government should be looking into. That is the future that the government should be putting out front, the made in Canada plan that involves conservation, transitional fuels and above all alternate energy. That is where we are going. That is where the excitement should be, instead of this negative, sky is falling, Chicken Little minister running across the country saying that everything is going to hell in a handcart not knowing what we are going to do. The government is asking us to implement Kyoto with no understanding, no plan, no cost, no implementation, and no targets; nothing but a blank cheque.
On behalf of our party I am putting forward an alternative. It is a vision that Canadians and provinces can buy into. Industry would love to be part of it. It would be exciting because it would be new. We could lead in something. We could sell that technology to countries like China and India that we talked about earlier. That is the vision I have for my children and my grandchildren, not this plan that is going nowhere.
We talk about wind energy and where it is at. We talk about how Germany is so dependent upon it and how Denmark is the leading country in wind energy. It works on a simple premise. The technology is evolving very quickly. We must remember that the price of wind and alternate energy is reducing 50% every 10 years and that by 2030 to 2040 it would become equal to carbon based energy. That figure has not been lost on Shell, BP, or Suncor. They understand that and they are investing in that whole area of alternate energy.
This is the way wind works. It works on a grade three principle of science. This is something that all of us probably remember back in grade three or four. I am sure most of the hon. members over there got that far. It works on the principle that the earth will heat during the day and cool at night. The ocean stays constant. Because of that, we have the wind blowing back and forth. It is not a big wind always, but always wind.
If a windmill were to be placed far enough out, with the smallest amount of resistance, the most advanced technology, no moving gears inside, it would turn even with the whisper of a wind 24 hours a day generating electricity.
The German wind farm of 600 windmills, 50 kilometres out in the ocean, the Irish one that is being built somewhat the same, the Danish windmills, that have developed the technology so that those windmills have so little resistance they literally could turn a huge windmill without any kind of power being put to it, are now producing 5 megawatts. That is enough for a thousand homes. The new ones are 15 megawatts and would probably produce enough electricity for 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 homes. That wind farm would produce enough power for several million homes and that is just one project.
There is no CO
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given off from that. I mentioned a few hours earlier that maybe we will be short of CO
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in the year 2060 or 2070. Wind power would become so efficient that every country would use this alternate energy. Who knows what that might bring. It is exciting because that is how we solve these problems.
Wind energy maybe only 10% or 20%. The only two provinces that are using it at this point are Alberta and Quebec. Those are the two Canadian provinces leading in wind energy, but not leading in wind energy technology. They are leading in the construction of windmills. I visited the one in Pincher Creek, Alberta. Windmills are being put up at about one every three months. There is a major wind farm being developed there. All of Calgary's transit system works on wind energy. That is not publicized very much but that is the future.
Let us move on to solar power. Solar power has its limitations on earth but members should think about it this way. There are about six billion people in the world and just under five billion who do not have a regular source of power. I was in Tibet this past May. On Tibetan houses there were solar collectors being used to cook food and to power one light bulb per day. Every house had a photovoltaic cell for storing the energy. That is pretty interesting because five years ago the source of fuel was yak dung which was dried on the side of a wall and then burned. The problem with yak dung was the bad smell and it affected people's eyesight. Some 20% of the people have impaired eyesight, right down to blindness.
The developing world would be able to use tiny solar collectors to store energy which it never had before. China is using solar collectors. It used to burn soft coal briquets. I have been in Beijing in every month of the year. I have been there in December and January when I could literally chew the air. I started coughing after being there for a couple of days because the pollution was so bad. It is not that way anymore. Part of it is because China is leapfrogging technology and utilizing some of these innovations.
What application does this have for us? The most interesting solar project I found was one developed by NASA. The project would build the same kind of solar cell as used on a space station but would be a mile square. It would be up in space and rotated by computers toward the sun. There would be no clouds and anything affecting the solar cell. The sun's energy would be available 24 hours a day. The solar energy would be turned into a microwave and beamed down to a generating station on earth to drive a generator.
It would be perfectly clean and cost nothing. It would be there forever as long as the sun shines and there would be no CO
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being released. That potentially could provide all the electricity that we might need. Is it economical today? No. Will it be economical in the future? Yes, particularly if it gets a buy in from governments.
What governments are promoting it the most? They are Denmark, Germany, the United States and Japan. Those countries are part of these kinds of projects. If our government were to have any commitment to the environment, to cleaning up the environment, to providing Canadians with a guaranteed energy future, it would be into these kind of projects.
Instead it has Kyoto where we do not know the costs. We know the government would have a tax. It is saying we must cut our energy use by 20%. It would ensure we do by having a tax to make us do it. That is the future that it sees for the country but that is not the future that this party sees for the country.
This party sees a future that is much greater and has much more. We talk about the environment minister and the Viagara ad, except he is in reverse. We could come out of that white fence pretty excited about things, if we got into alternate energy.
What about biomass? What is one of the biggest problems with the large agricultural feedlots and so on? We all know what that is, it is the smell. The smell is the rotting manure that is produced by large farms. Humans also produce that and we call it sewage, but there are solutions.
I hate to keep using one country as an example, but I visited Berlin, Germany. I have made a habit over the last 30 years of asking people wherever I go what they do with their garbage. I find the answers very interesting. In Canada we still have landfill sites, we are still building them, but most places do not have landfill sites any more.
I have short side story. I was in Vienna sitting next to the mayor at a banquet. I asked him what he did with his garbage. He said, “Are you interested in garbage?”. I said, “Yes, I am really interested in garbage”. At eleven o'clock at night I was with the mayor of Vienna driving down a street downtown. We stopped in front of what looked like an apartment building. It was all lit up with curtains and everything. It was only six feet deep. In behind was an incinerator and recycling plant.
Let me come back to Berlin. What does Berlin do with its garbage and sewage? A private company runs their sewage disposal. Sewage is deposited into six large vessels where it is fermented. Bacteria is added and it is fermented big time. Methane is produced and the solid matter is dried. That methane is used to incinerate the garbage, with collectors on top of the stacks so nothing goes into the air or water. What happens to the water in the sewage? The water in the sewage is heated and that heat is then sold in pipes all through Berlin which is how all the buildings are heated.
The pipes are right on top of the ground going into every building. Buildings are heated by fermenting the sewage and burning the garbage. It is a totally closed system. How long has Berlin being doing that? Forty years. That is technology; that is the future.
Our government does not have any vision for biomass, solar power or wind power. It does not even talk about it. Chicken Little never talks about that. He talks about the sky falling.
Geothermal energy has become a favourite for me because it is being used in my constituency. A new recreation unit and swimming pool were being built in Sylvan Lake, Alberta because energy costs were going up. The town wanted to find another way to heat the building and the swimming pool. It found a company located in Calgary which had just moved a division from New Zealand to Canada. It had been using geothermal energy for a long time. The town of Sylvan Lake wanted to take a look at it.
Let me read this letter to the House:
Thank you for your kind letter of October 11th and attached certificate.
They had their opening and I had to be here, but I sent them a certificate.
As we discussed briefly in Innisfail, the geothermal system at the aquatic facility cost us an additional $200,000 over the cost of a natural gas system. We estimate at today's gas rates that we will save approximately $80,000 per year in operating costs. This will give us a two-and-a-half year payback, an enviable return on investment which reduces harmful emissions. If you find time for a tour, I would be pleased to make the arrangements. Again, thank you for your support and keep anti-Kyoto work going.
That is small-town Canada. It has a solution.
Does anyone know what happened in that plant? I visited that plant about two weeks ago. The exciting part is that it is now at $10,000 to $20,000 above the savings it thought it was going to have. It will have the whole system paid for in under two years and then it will have free energy forever. That is the vision for this country. That is where we are going, but the government does not talk about that. It is going to sign us up to these commitments in an international boondoggle called Kyoto. We will have penalties associated with that. We will be sending our money to Russia to be used there to develop whatever, not spent here to develop technology like that being used in small-town Canada.
It is important that we know and that Canadians know what they are getting into. There are exciting projects going on across the country. We can talk about bio-digesters. One is here in Ontario and now is up and working. There are feedlots in the U.S. that are now collecting methane and burning it as fuel. Are we doing that? Is the government encouraging that? No, it is not. Remember that the government is “feel good, talk about it, but do not do anything”. And when it finally does something, it is the wrong thing. Obviously we have a lot of examples of that.
There is also tidal research. I am afraid I do not know a lot about the future of tidal energy, but I do know that it is there. I know there are companies working on it and I know it has potential.
I have left the most exciting one for last and that is the whole hydrogen and fuel cell potential. The use of hydrogen as a fuel is exciting. It is exciting how fast that technology is developing. It is exciting because countries like the U.S. are putting major, major dollars into developing it. It is exciting, and it is sad in a way that Mr. Ballard from Ballard Power in Vancouver is saying that the worst thing this country could do is sign on to Kyoto because it will end the development of the fuel cell in this country. I will quote him later on when I have time to talk about some of these important quotes from Canadian citizens who are out there in this business.
What is hydrogen? There are various sources for hydrogen, but probably the major source is water. It is an interesting project. The technological problem today is splitting the water molecule to get the hydrogen and then storing the hydrogen and using it in the fuel cell, but those problems are being solved very quickly.
It is interesting. General Motors has talked about a project that it is doing in Idaho. It is building a solar factory. The solar factory will use solar energy to split the water molecule and store the hydrogen in titanium tanks. Those titanium tanks will then be put on half-ton trucks. It is building 42,000 half-ton trucks that will run on hydrogen in the year 2004. It is trying them out in Idaho because of the varying weather conditions and because there are enough people to drive half-ton trucks. The reason it is using half-ton trucks is that it works better for the titanium tank than putting it into a car.
The point is, it is being done. The point is, Los Angeles is implementing 1,000 buses that will run on hydrogen and fuel cells. As well, it is interesting that Beijing has ordered 10,000 natural gas fuel cell hybrids because it wants to clear up its air in time for the Olympics. It is interesting that countries like that are doing so much while we are signing on to Kyoto, which is going to send away money that should be used in developing these systems in this country. It makes no sense and I think members are now getting the picture as to why I can put so much into fighting this thing, because it is so wrong. It is just wrong, wrong, wrong. There is nothing in here that makes any sense.
What do we need to think about in alternate energy? What we have to remember is that we need government to set a vision. We need government to provide leadership. We need government to show that we have solutions, because every Canadian cares about the environment. We want to fix the problems that are there. We want to deal with climate change and we want to deal with pollution, but Kyoto is not the way. That is the message we must get out.
We have to remember that when it comes to alternate energy and the excitement of that, the costs are being reduced by 50% every 10 years. That is an important figure to remember. Today it is not economical, but it will be at some time in the future. With government initiative and support, it will happen sooner rather than later. We have to remember that it is estimated now that between 2040 and 2050 these alternatives will be equal to the carbon based fuels.
We will never use up our reserves of coal in this world. We probably will not use up our reserves of oil and gas either. In 1950 we were told that in 10 years we would have no more gas and oil. In 1960 we were told we would be out of oil and gas in 10 years. It has been 10 years, 10 years and 10 years. Today we have more reserves than we had in 1950 and they are increasing.
Should we do something? Yes, we should do something. What should we use the oil and gas for? We should use it for value added things like petrochemicals. We can preserve the oil and gas industry for thousands of years simply because that fuel should not be used in those cars sitting out front. It should not be used for that. We should be using other energy sources, which are of course more environmentally friendly. The 33 cars sitting out front is just an example. It comes back to the whole leadership issue.
I hope this gives people a feeling for where our party would go. Our party would deal with this issue. It would deal with the environmental problems today, but it would not bankrupt us in a phony, good for nothing Kyoto protocol that will not deal with the environment, that is a waste of money, that is a forced bureaucracy and that will lead to our standard of living decaying even further. It is no vision. It is no vision for anything.
As I have presented this across the country, I have not found many people who disagree. In fact in one place some of the people who were there said they thought I almost had the guy from the Sierra Club buying a membership in my party. He could see that we had some solutions, that we had some answers, and I think it is pretty important to demonstrate that.
Mr. Speaker, that is our vision of where we would go. I hope you have appreciated the opportunity to have it explained.
I want to now get back to the actual government plan and the Kyoto protocol. That was just a little introduction to what I have to say. I know that some members across the way will probably ask me to their ridings and have me do a presentation on Kyoto. I would be more than happy to do that and let them know. Of course, I trust that at their caucus meeting tomorrow they will be sure that any Prime Minister or future prime minister knows what the Kyoto protocol says about the penalties. Just in case any future prime minister does not understand the penalties, he should understand this, and if they need copies, I know that the pages would be glad to make them and distribute them to the members.
I would even go further. If they would like me to do a little session at their caucus meeting about Kyoto, I would certainly be more than happy to do that on behalf of the Canadian public.
Let us get back to the Kyoto protocol and some of the issues that I know the government wants to talk about and would like me to really get into.
As far as the polls are concerned, of course with every day that goes by we know that the support for Kyoto drops. We know that people are starting to say that they would prefer a made in Canada plan, one that involves alternate energy and vision for the future, and we know that they are starting to say that they probably do not understand Kyoto well enough but now they have their doubts. They now think it is going to affect their jobs and their standard of living. They now think they will have to pay more and it is going to affect their taxes. Call it a carbon tax or call it whatever we want, but the bottom line is that somebody has to pay for all this and that means a tax for Canadians.
Canadians are starting to realize this and I think the government of course is starting to panic a little bit. The very fact that it is not going to take the opportunity to send this to committee and have witnesses brought in to look at it I think is pretty indicative of how frightened it is. If it would send this to the environment committee and bring in witnesses on both sides of the issue, Canadians would really understand where it is at. There are as many witnesses saying “don't sign” as there are saying “sign”, and Canadians just do not know what those facts are.
We could talk about the polls, and Mr. Speaker, I have so much material here that I hope I can get it done by Christmas.
Let us carry on and get back to the plan, the powder-puff PowerPoint presentation that the government has put forward and faked as a plan. Let us see what the provinces think of this plan, because that is who it was done for. It was not done for the Canadian people. It was certainly not done for our benefit. It was done for the provinces.
The November 21 meeting of environment and energy ministers was postponed. Of course, we now know that the meeting on November 29 has been cancelled totally. Now the government is saying to forget the provinces, that it does not have to consult with them at all. It has told us in the House that it does not have to listen to the MPs at all, that it can ratify this without us.
This means that people elected to represent Canadians here do not matter. Nobody is going to listen anyway. We can talk all we want, but the government is not going to listen. It will not listen to parliamentarians. It will not listen to the Canadian premiers. It will not listen to Canadians. Why should it consult them? They are the ones who are going to be affected by this. It will not consult with the manufacturers. It will not consult with the chambers of commerce. It will not consult with those small businesses out there that are going to be affected.
Think about it, Mr. Speaker. When have we heard any government say that it would not ever talk to the people? What kind of government is it that would do this sort of thing?