The member just asked about Manitoba. I love the environment minister from Manitoba. He is a real piece of work, that guy. He is there saying let us sign Kyoto. All he wants is to be sure the feds develop Manitoba's hydroelectricity and run transmission lines to Sault Ste. Marie so the province will have a guaranteed source of income forever. Manitoba wants to become the hydro centre of Canada, have the feds pay for it, and for that Manitoba will sign Kyoto.
Well, that is really good for the environment. That is a real commitment. It is about money. That is where that environment minister is coming from and he accuses others of the same sort of thing.
Let us go on. This says that Kyoto is only the first step and will not have much impact on climate change. Did everyone hear that? Kyoto is the first step and will not have much impact on climate change. The Prime Minister said a couple of days ago that in fact we will notice no change in our environment. The environment minister at the University of Calgary a few weeks back was asked whether we would stop having droughts, floods and ice storms. He said that in about 100 years we probably would not notice much change in the environment.
We are being asked to take a 30% economic hit on every man, woman and child, and it is not going to make any difference to the environment. Little Johnny will still have asthma. There will still be the health problems. This is about CO
2
, climate change and global warming. It is not about pollution. We must get that message across, and if I have to stand here until Christmas to get it across, I will do it. That is how much I believe it.
It says that Canadians' participation is necessary. Well, I guess so. If we will have 80 kilometre an hour speed limits and not allow any speeding, because that obviously would use less fuel, we will need some commitment or else a heck of a lot of police. If truck drivers will not be braking or accelerating as fast, we will sure need a lot of commitment. If businesses literally will be laying off 30% of their staff, we will need to have commitment.
There will be a need for a lot of commitment. When it says that we need Canadians' participation and commitment, we are asking people to change their whole way of life. We are saying that they must cut their carbon use by 20%. It says right in the report that is their commitment. Twenty per cent is a major reduction in the use of carbon.
I can hardly bring myself to deal with the section of the report that deals with modelling, because I do want to spend a lot more time on the IPCC modelling. It is very important that we talk about the 40 models.
I know there is one member across the way who is waiting. He probably has had to delay his town hall meeting so he could find out about this modelling because he is very interested. I think he even wants to be a model in another career. I do not think he is going to make it but I would not want to be the one to mention that to him. We will deal with the modelling that has gone on a little later, because I want to talk about the IPCC modelling which probably is not nearly as interesting as other types of modelling.
On investment and new markets, obviously the government and the environment minister think that all of a sudden all of these new companies will spring up because we have signed on to Kyoto. What the minister does not know, or I do not think he knows, is that places like Denmark and Germany are leading in this technology. Because we signed on in 1992--and we sign everything--and we then signed the Kyoto accord in 1997, we have not encouraged industry to become innovative.
Compared to some of the other places, we have not done much to really develop this. We are not the leading edge, which we should and could be. We need to see a government commitment before that will happen.
I like this one. We need to talk further about fair and competitive taxes. I have talked to many industries, many companies and many Canadians about taxes. I have never heard anybody say that we have fair and competitive taxes. We do not even come up to the standards of the poorest state in the U.S. in terms of what we get for our tax dollar and how much tax we pay.
I remember being at the OECD in Paris a few years back and asking what is wrong with Canada. Why is our dollar so low? Why are we not achieving anything? Why are we going down instead of up? It was made very clear what the reasons were. First, we have a government without a vision. We have a government that does not know where it is going. It jumps from pillar to post and does not show any leadership. The second reason was that our taxes are too high. The third reason was that we have too much debt.
Those were the reasons the OECD gave for Canada having so much trouble, why our dollar is so low and why we are having difficulty. We need to examine that if we really want to talk about fair and competitive taxes. When our number one business partner, the U.S., where 85% of our trade goes, is not part of an agreement that we are part of, we had better believe that we are not giving ourselves a competitive advantage.
Mexico is not on side. None of the South American countries are on side. All of these countries have opted out. Australia is not part of it. China and India are not part of it.
It does not give us a competitive advantage, by taxing our businesses, by making them do things that others do not. That is not a competitive advantage. That cannot be used as an investment strategy. Uncertainty cannot be a reason that companies will invest in a country. It has never worked that way and nobody would buy into that argument.
It goes on to talk about risk management, that we will work with industry to reduce uncertainties, limit risks and impact on competitiveness. That is really great. The way to do that is to give them an implementation plan: industries will have to have these targets; they will have to achieve this amount of emissions and this is what it will cost. That will help them decide either to stay here or to leave so they can survive or not survive but they will know. However, by not telling them of any implementation plan, by not telling them of any cost, by not showing anything, how will we keep those businesses? How will we hold them if there is not a competitive environment to be in?
We will build in contingencies to limit the risk. I translate that to be government giving guarantees, I suppose like Bombardier. I guess we are going to do that right across the country. We limit the risk and we build in contingencies to limit the risk.
The problem I have with that is, where does the money come from? Why should I as government be involved in businesses and guarantee them against risk? How would that work? The communist countries tried that, the east bloc countries tried it. They tried to guarantee businesses to keep people in business who were not competitive and we saw how far they got. We see where they are today. Today the only advantage they have is that they are out of business and now will be able to sell credits to us. Maybe they will have another source of money. Maybe they knew more than we thought they did.
We will work in conjunction with the U.S. Do we not like this one? I guess we will. I guess we have to. If it has 85% of our trade, and one in four jobs depend upon it, we had better work with the U.S. and we had better not start calling the Americans morons because they do not take that very well. If someone from another country called our Prime Minister something like that, I would sure be on that person's case. It would sure make me mad. If we were to say it internally, that is one thing, and it is fine over there for them to say it, but boy, we had better not say it. How are we going to work with these guys when we start treating them like that?
It says that we will keep open Canada's long term undertaking under the protocol and no commitments to the second commitment period. That sure sounds like a good, solid environmental commitment. We will be part of phase one but we will not commit to phase two.
The environment minister said that nothing much will happen in phase one. That will deal with 5% of the problem. Ninety-five per cent of the problem will wait for phases two, three, four and five down the road. We are not committed to phases two, three, four or five. Is this saying that we are not committed to doing anything?
That is not what Canadians are saying. Canadians are saying, “Fix the pollution problem. Deal with global warning. Have a plan that will work. Tell us what it is, tell us what it will cost and we will get behind it, but do not tell us that you are not going to tell us anything”. That is what they want to hear. That is the purpose of debating this issue in the House, making sure that Canadians connect with this issue.
We need to talk about these targets because in the next document it deals with them a little bit further. We need to start off by making it very clear, and this will allow me to develop the numbers. The actions that are under way will cover 80 megatonnes. We dealt with some of those actions this morning.
It is pretty scary, the actions the government says it will take credit for. It is pretty scary that it might even believe some of its own propaganda, that it might actually agree that it will have these emissions credits for things it is doing now. They are things like everybody will drive the speed limit, things like 20% of the homes will be retrofitted, things like training truck drivers to drive slower and so on. It is taking credits for things like that. Of course it is taking 30 megatonne credits for sinks, and we will talk about that as well.
Then it talks about actions for the future, 100 megatonnes. The government does not have a clue where it will get those from.
We will review and analyze the second report province by province. As we analyze each province, we will see what is expected of those provinces and why not a single environment minister, including those from Manitoba and Quebec, will meet with the government on Friday. They will not meet because there is no way they could agree to the stuff the government is putting forward.
Then of course there is that nagging 60 megatonnes that we really have no plan for at all. We have no idea where we might find it. At one point the environment minister went so far as to say that maybe we cannot achieve our total targets and maybe we will just never get to the 60 megatonnes.
The truth is there are penalties if we sign Kyoto. Kyoto says that according to the Marrakesh accords, nations who ratify but who do not meet their targets in round one by 2012 are to be penalized another 30%. That could not be much clearer. There are penalties if we do not keep up to these commitments. When the environment minister, the natural resources minister and the Prime Minister say that maybe we will not make our targets, then Kyoto is saying there are penalties. We can get out of those penalties. It is easy. Buy the credits from someone else.
In other words, in 2012 when we have not achieved the targets, and no one says we can hit those targets, does that mean there will be a proposal that we spend billions of dollars to buy credits so as not to be penalized by Kyoto? That is how most people would read it. Everybody agrees, the economists, the business community and the provinces, that we cannot meet those unrealistic targets in that timeframe.
What does the government not understand about that? We cannot meet the targets within that timeframe. The provinces are saying to extend the timeframe to something they can achieve. Nobody is saying to do nothing. Everybody is saying, “Let us do something, but let us do something that we can achieve. Let us be honest for once. Let us not sign this international agreement, which is totally dishonest because we cannot get to those targets, and let us do something with realistic targets and with a genuine plan”.
I will follow up further on that because the government has developed that a little further by province. As we review the next document, I apologize for how many days it will take but it is a rather wordy document. We will have to analyze it in depth. It is important that Canadians understand it because the government has no intention of letting Canadians find out about it.
Let us look briefly at what the government says are the actions that it is taking right now. Here is its action plan. It has invested $1.6 billion since 1998. In what? What have we saved? Where is the beef? Where are the savings? One point six billion dollars should buy us something.
The government can argue that it has given money to the municipalities. Yes, it has. Two hundred and fifty million dollars went to the FCM to develop grain projects, which are very good in many places, and it has helped the municipalities to build infrastructure. However, does anyone know what they had to give in return? They had to give a guarantee to support Kyoto. The municipalities have that money but it has been made very clear to them that there is a price.
Why do people think so many of the municipalities supported and told the government to ratify Kyoto? It is because they had projects approved. When they are asked about that, they say that is not true at all. They say that it has been totally fabricated. All I know is that $250 million in projects were approved and that where they were approved those councils sent back letters saying to ratify Kyoto. Draw your own conclusions, Mr. Speaker.
What about David Suzuki? What about the Pembina Institute? I have faced many of those people now in debates across the country. They are so righteous and care so much but every one of them raises money with a tax credit. Every one of them is on the dole to the government for tax credits. Why are they supporting Kyoto so strongly? The government pays them to support it. I do not need to say any more. It goes on and on.
People who are out there working for a living, the taxpayers, they are the ones paying the bills. They are the ones who really matter. They are the ones at the grassroots level. They are the ones who should be asking what they received for $1.6 billion.
The government says that it has action plan 2000. It is expected to lead to a 50 megatonne reduction by 2010. I have tried to find out a lot about action plan 2000. It is a great piece of paper and it has a lot of good ideas in it, but when the Auditor General examines it I think it will be like the rest of the Auditor General's report, which I have read a couple of times into the record, it is talk and more talk but no action.
The Auditor General said in her report that we have an environmental legacy that we are leaving to our children and grandchildren. She also said that we have a failing grade on the environment.
I think that is exactly what we are finding and it is exactly what we will find when we start to search out where these funds have gone. What friends and relations have received these funds from the government? We have lots of examples of that.
This is the best one and we have reviewed this a few times: 30 megatonnes from agriculture and forestry sinks. Is that not great? Do not give it to the farmers and the foresters. Do not give it to the provinces. The feds will claim it. That is really great. As if that will really help national unity. That will really help the farmers and foresters of Quebec. They will be really happy when they find out that this is a grab by the federal government of provincial jurisdiction. It is a direct grab from them. They are lying to the provinces.