Mr. Speaker, I will just remind the member that this is new material, that this has not been read into the record. Therefore I will carry on from where I left off. It would be good if the member would listen and keep his notes up to date so that he knows when we are dealing with new material or when we are simply making a point.
Let us talk about the 100 megatonnes, the future, and where the government will get this from.
The government says that it will have targeted measures on individuals and consumers. Like everything else, we have to translate here because it is a different language.
We are going to have targeted measures on individuals and consumers. I think that means tax. I think that means that when consumers use gas, use power or something else they will be paying for it. Those will be targeted all right. We will have to target transportation, electricity, agriculture and manufacturing. We will have to hit the industry in Ontario because it is producing and emitting CO
2
. What do we not understand? If we manufacture something and we use energy to do it, and everything takes energy, we will release CO
2
and we will have targeted measures against us.
At least we have the right to know what those targeted measures are. The government says that there will be targeted measures to support individual actions by consumers. That is tax.
The government further says that there will be a comprehensive approach to industrial emissions, including domestic emissions trading, technology and infrastructure, investment targeted measures. Notice how it keeps sneaking in targeted measures.
If the government knows what those targeted measures are, why do we not know what they are? Why do the provinces not know what they are? Why does industry not know what they are? What is the government hiding? If everybody is going to be so happy and cooperative and working together on targeted measures, why hide them? The government should be putting them on the front page of every paper because everyone will be so happy to have these targeted measures.
The point is that the government should let Canadians know what this stuff is saying. The government says that it will have direct government participation in international credit markets. That has been translated to say that it will buy international carbon credits. Now we are going to have the federal government sending money to wherever to buy those credits to sell to our companies, or give the credits to them, and we are going to be out that money. That money will be gone.
When that money is gone, it means less research and development, lost jobs and lost productivity. Who wants to get into that bureaucracy? Obviously the countries we have to go to are Russia and East Bloc countries. I suppose in the second round we could go to African and Asian countries and send them money. They want money.
Like Mr. Putin said in Johannesburg, “Don't you guys come to me and expect our credits for millions. They are worth billions. If you're not talking billions, don't come to us”. Of course the Dutch government has already gone with millions and hundreds of millions of dollars to buy credits. The Dutch government figured that it would be good to get in on the ground floor before the price rose. It was probably smart that it bought those credits. I think it spent $300 million on them just as a first bid.
The price has gone up from $10 to $38. Some people think the price will hit $500. Our government is using the price tag of $10. How realistic is that? Who knows? Certainly no one knows and certainly the government modellers do not know. No one knows until this whole thing starts to work.
We must remember that Kyoto cannot be ratified yet because 37% of the emissions in the world are covered so far by countries that have ratified.
The agreement only comes into effect when 55 countries representing 55% of the emissions of the world ratify. Where are we at with that ratification proposal? Where we are at is that 37% have signed on now. The Russians represent 17%. Canada is 2%. Does anyone care whether we sign on or not? I am afraid not. Who do they want to sign on and ratify? The Russians. Mr. Putin said that the Russians may sign on in May or in the spring sometime provided billions of dollars of international credits are paid for in advance.
Where does this money go when it goes to Russia? I wonder how many people in the House think it goes toward helping granny in Russia who is trying to find bread to feed herself. I have seen the bread lines there. I wonder how many people think it is going to help the moms and dads and the kids in Russia. I wonder how many people think it will build clean energy, clean power plants and clean industrial plants so Russia can compete with us. How many people think that will happen?
Do members know where the money will go? It may go to the military, more likely to corruption and more likely to Swiss bank accounts. Maybe we could get a deal if we sent it directly to Switzerland instead of via Russia. Maybe we could make a better deal on it and not send quite so much.
Is that what the government is talking about when it says that it is going to buy international credits? I think so. That is how I interpret it. I do not know how else someone could interpret it. How does that help the environment? How does that help the people in Russia? How does that help us as Canadians? How does that help us to achieve cleaner air and less global warming? I do not know the answer to that. I have no idea how someone could answer those questions at a town hall meeting.
It is quite a bit of fun to think of possible future actions. By having partnership initiatives we will save 20 megatonnes; technological investments of 10 megatonnes; provincial actions, 20 megatonnes; municipal reductions of 10 megatonnes; consumer challenges of 7 megatonnes; as well as credits for clean energy exports. I had better stop here.
Credits for clean energy exports of 70 megatonnes. Clean energy credits have been ruled out by everybody. We are never going to get clean energy credits for anything because if we get them, then Russia has to get them from Europe. All Russian natural gas goes to industrial plants and homes in Europe. Our natural gas goes to a country that is not even part of Kyoto. At least Russia might be part of Kyoto when it gets its credits. The Europeans have said to forget it. Do we think they are a bunch of dummies to give Russia a bunch more credits that they will then have to buy back from it? The Europeans are not stupid.
The government in this country has the audacity to put in its plan clean credits for energy exports. How does it do that? How can it put that in the plan when it knows it will never get those credits? We must remember that there are penalties if a country does not achieve its targets. Those penalties are 30% above what the target is.
Why would a country sign on when it knows it will handicap the people of 2012, my children and my grandchildren who the Liberals claim they really care about? Why would we ever sign something that would inhibit them like that? I think we will put a black mark through that one because it is a non-starter and yet it is in here.
Then there is a preferred mix of instruments. I do not know whether the Liberals are planning to start a band or whatever, but innovation and technology, partnership programs, infrastructure, emissions trading, tax initiatives and smart regulations, I do not know what those instruments are. I do not know how to play them. Smart regulations? Should every regulation not be a smart one? The Liberals are saying that they have stupid regulations, but these ones will be smart ones.
We like the one on tax initiatives. We sure know that would not be unfair to anyone. We sure know who would get those tax initiatives and those tax breaks. We already see that.
We have discussed emissions trading.
With respect to infrastructure, yes, we need lots of infrastructure. Truck drivers are driving over bridges right now that were built in the 1950s. Bridges are collapsing. I have talked to a number of truck drivers over the course of my time here and they have said the government does not do anything about infrastructure. The government spends about 3% of the gasoline tax on infrastructure and the rest goes into general revenue. That is how the Liberals do business.
The government says it will use initiatives and it will build infrastructure. Where will the money come from to do that? From taxes. We know that is the answer, yet it does not say that anywhere here.
With respect to transportation, this is quite good too. Under the action plan, we already have 9.4 megatonnes for things we are doing now. I think that means that the minister's car he drives now is fuel efficient, so we count that. I think that is what that means. The fact that the other ministers leave their cars running outside all day does not count. We have one minister, and I was told today there is one more, or maybe two who have fuel efficient cars. While our House leader was serving as our interim leader, he applied for an energy efficient car and it has not arrived to this day. That is commitment.
Through transportation, 12 megatonnes will be reduced from somewhere but that has not been pointed out from where. There will be more intense negotiations with manufacturers and possible legislation to improve fuel efficiency in new vehicles by 25%. What happens with an automobile manufacturer in Ontario when the government says that it needs to have new fuel efficiency to save 25% by 2010? That means the whole factory needs to be retooled. If an investor, the options will be to retool or to move.
Is the Canadian market big enough that companies like General Motors, Ford and so on will retool or will they move to the U.S., to Mexico or the southern states? Where will they go if they have to build a new plant? That is a real threat to Ontario and Quebec where cars are manufactured. The reality is that these companies will be forced, if we have these regulations for a small market like ours, to possibly move. I talked this over with General Motors and it did not deny it.
Again we come back to how it affects the average person. The guy in Hamilton will say that he works at that Ford plant. He never thought this thing would hurt him. He thought it would have no effect on him. He thought it was some international thing. The government said it would not affect him at all. If we accomplish one thing in this debate, it is to let Canadians know that it does affect them, that it will have an impact on them and that it will cost them potentially even their jobs.
We go on to federal assistance and initiatives to increase use of urban transit which will be seven megatonnes. That is good. I do not see much problem with that. We should use more urban transit. If I lived in cities like Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, if I could I would probably try to use urban transit rather than fight traffic, fight parking, et cetera. However in a lot of Canada urban transit will not be possible and really will not help us very much.
This is something to note. Just before question period a member disputed the fact that there were more cars outside and that not many had run more than five or six minutes. At this moment, 13 cars outside are running. Maybe we should keep a tab on this. We could probably run out and check every hour or two. I wonder how many of them would leave and I wonder how many of them would be turned off if we started a little survey? Every half hour we could go out and check the number of cars and how many are running. That might be fairly interesting. I will keep the House posted as to how many cars are outside running, setting an example for Canadian people on conservation of energy and releasing less CO
2
. That would be an interesting survey which would keep our viewers excited. I know many Liberal members over there are just riveted on learning what their cabinet minister colleagues are doing.