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?