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.