A member asks what the social costs will be. What are the social costs for people when they realize that they have to change their entire way of life?
We are asking them to undergo a massive change in how they do things. Will we say no, that they cannot drive little Johnny to hockey on the other side of the city because they cannot use expensive gas to do that? Will we take them out of those hockey programs? Will we tell seniors who get special treatment from doctors on the other side of the city that they cannot do that any more because we have signed Kyoto and we have to hit our targets?
We have to ask these questions. We have to discuss what the implications are before we simply sign this agreement. As far as international permits and credits, that is a huge unknown. No one can really put costs on that.
As for the range of social costs, the figures the government has used in its models are $150 million to $12 billion annually. That is what these models are about. It uses this kind of range, $150 million to $12 billion. That is a pretty good range. Then the additional costs that could be involved have not been calculated into that.
The government talks about all these rolling targets. It talks about tolls on roads. Who will pay for those? It says that if we put tolls on major highways and enforce the current speed limits, we could save 4.1 megatonnes. Think about that for a minute. We will put tolls on roads and enforce speed limits. It is not quite that easy to do those things. That again takes infrastructure, it takes police and all kinds of things to save 4.1 megatonnes.
We can expand the public transit and save 3.4 megatonnes and so on and so forth. These things are hard to achieve. These targets are not easy. We should not be forced into Kyoto until we are ready and have the commitment from the provinces and the Canadian people. Until we have those things, how can we do it?
Some of the big unknowns are the costs of the targeted measures, the effectiveness and feasibility and the willingness of Canadians to cooperate. Who can predict that? The availability of permits, the sensitivity of costs to the policies of the government, the role of the modelling assumptions are questions that we need to ask.
I think we can examine the willingness to cooperate. I think most Canadians are concerned about their environment and most would want to do something, but Canadians have to know that what they do will make a difference. If we are to make this sacrifice and take this big economic hit, we have to know that it will be worthwhile. If it will not make a difference because the developing world is not part of it or we will have businesses move out of this country, we have to know that as well.
We could go through many of these things and talk about them indepth, but I have a lot of other areas to which I want to get. I will go through this deck of material fairly quickly because I know the members over there who have been keeping track of all this have had a pretty long day.
We know the federal government does not understand any of these issues. It really does not have answers, so asking it questions really does not make much difference.
The final point comes from a question that I am asked an awful lot of times, and that is that this is the same as the free trade argument. Those rotten Conservatives did not give us any information and they forced the whole thing on us. I want to review very briefly what we had in 1988.
We had an exact text of the policy. We had at least three independent cost estimates. We had two commissions into the labour market adjustment policies. We had all major federal governments prepare a report. Then we had a national election on the issue. That was pretty fair consultation.
This government opposed free trade. It said it was the worst thing possible and it would rescind it as soon as it formed the government. That is like the GST and all these other things it promised. However there is no comparison between these two.
The government says that we do not have to listen to the debate in the House. We can ratify it without coming to the House. That is quite a different attitude. I would be the last one to defend Mr. Mulroney and what he did. However no Liberal or supporter of Kyoto should compare the Kyoto debate to the free trade debate. It was a pretty different argument and it was handled in a pretty different way from this argument.
This is being rushed through this place because the government wants to say that the House supported it. Then it wants to ratify it, the Prime Minister can get out of town and the chips will fall where they may. That is not a very healthy approach to something that will affect every man, woman and child in Canada.
I want to talk about the costs and get into a little more detail before we review the third plan and talk about modelling. It is kind of late in the day to really get started with some of those complex issues but it is important that we probably finish our discussion today on what some of these costs will be. Tomorrow we can get into modelling and the 40 models of the IPCC. I know everyone has been just sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for us to discuss that.
Let us look at some quotes on the costs. The first one that I will quote is from Mr. Jeff Rubin, CIBC, Chief Economist. He said:
No wonder Alberta sees Kyoto as a life and death issue. Particularly when investment is free to migrate to developing countries with huge tar sand deposits like Venezuela that are not bound by Kyoto-mandated GHG reductions.
That is an important statement coming from the chief economist of a major bank in Canada. We are cooking that up in the House here. A chief economist put that in writing and sent it to a national newspaper.
On this side of the House we believe that Diane Francis has credibility. She said:
--the Protocol is a flawed deal that will damage Canada and not even contribute much toward cleaning up the environment...how can Kyoto clean up the environment when countries like China, India and Brazil are exempt from emission controls?
We have been asking that question all day. How can we be part of it and how will it help the environment when that is the situation?
Let us quote Saint John, New Brunswick, Board of Trade president, Dianna Barton, from the Canadian Press of October 10. She said:
We are a trading province. We do a lot of exports. If we are not competitive in energy costs this will increase our product costs with our trading partners.
Is that not what the cab driver was telling me in Halifax? He said that they finally had a chance to make it, to get on their feet and provide their own source of resources and that we were going to shut them off with Kyoto. That is exactly what this lady from Saint John has said.
I go on to quote the Nova Scotia premier:
If you have an unknown cost impact then it is very difficult for anybody to assess the viability of any project. Until we have a plan there will be no certainty.
That is exactly what we have been saying. How can we do this to Canadians when we do not have a plan and when we do not have any certainty? How will we keep people investing in our industry? How will we keep people providing jobs when we do not have any certainty? Those are the questions.
Perhaps if I stood here for days and just repeated two or three questions over and over again, maybe the government would get it. I do not know. I just hope that in trying to bring up these substantial items they are getting through.
Let me quote Geoffrey Ballard, geophysicist and Canadian father of the fuel cell. Remember, this guy now makes his money from fuel cells. On October 8, 2002 in the National Post he said:
I believe no developed nation, which has seriously studied the environmental issues that confront us, can in good conscience sign this protocol. I believe implementing the Kyoto Protocol would be a huge step backwards.
This is a geophysicist, a guy who has developed a fuel cell, who has put Canada on the map and who should benefit from signing Kyoto. He is saying that Kyoto is the worst thing we could sign. That has to be a credible condemnation of what Kyoto is all about.
We will be going backward in signing Kyoto. We will not be going forward. We are not moving where we should be into conservation, into transitional fuels and ultimately into alternate energy. Our party stands for that. We recognize that Kyoto has some good points but we would not ratify it because of the penalties that would be imposed. We would come up with a conservation plan into which all levels of government, the Canadian people and Canadian industry could buy.
We would look at transitional fuels. We would look at everything from biofuels to biogas to all those things. We would look at implementing them economically to help our economy and to help us get to the alternate energy sources. We expect to be there by 2030, 2040, 2050, in that time range. Then we would put our money into that alternate energy. We would do everything we could to develop wind farms. We would use the Queen Charlotte Islands. It is a perfect place for a wind farm and we would develop that.
Wind farms work on the principle that the land heats during the day, cools at night and the wind blows 24 hours a day. It is a simple science principle. It is one that the Danish and the Germans have figured out. They know that by building windmills that do not have gears and moving parts and that move with just the slightest bit of wind, they can create energy and that energy can be used.
We have solar possibilities. There are huge solar collectors, like the ones that are used on the space station, that could be put into space. They could collect energy that would then drive generators on earth. That is the future. The future of that is even greater because we could give developing countries a source of power that they have never had before. That is exciting.
It was exciting to talk to someone in Tibet who had power for the first time. It was exciting that they were so proud of the tiny solar collector. One lady said that she had a light, a photovoltaic cell, a solar collector and that she had light. For the first time they have light. It is pretty exciting that we can take this new technology and help people like that to have light and energy with which to cook their food.
A reporter asked me during question period if I had said yak dung. Yes, yak dung is what people in Tibet have been using for thousands of years to cook their food. The fumes given off by that have caused serious eye problems in many of their children. They do not have to do that any more. They have solar collectors. That is pretty exciting.
That technology has implications for developing countries. It has implications for Canadians. It has implications for the world.
Another member brought me information on another geothermal town in her constituency in B.C. I will find that and be sure to introduce it tomorrow. I cannot put my fingers on it right now.
I am so proud of the town in my riding which built its whole recreation unit on geothermal technology. I mentioned this earlier. The extra geothermal plant cost $200,000. Think about that small town making a decision to spend an extra $200,000 of taxpayer money to implement this new technology.
Who in Sylvan Lake, Alberta understood geothermal energy? I do not think too many. Those people took a gamble and said, “We are going to spend $200,000 of taxpayer money”. I am sure there were people who said those guys were crazy, but they went ahead and did it. Today they are saving $80,000 per year in energy costs. They do not use gas and they do not use electricity. They use geothermal energy. The mayor said that the plant will be paid for in two and a half years. When I visited the plant two weeks ago, he told me it will be paid for in under two years.
That is the kind of thing that Canadians would do. That is the kind of vision the government needs, not signing a Kyoto protocol that sends millions or billions of dollars to Russia so it can develop those sorts of things. That is the bottom line.
To lead into our discussion of models, I have to keep repeating this because I know some members do not understand it. It is what we put in that determines what we get out of a model. The IPCC took 200 scientists from around the world to come up with these models. They basically said, “Okay, here are some of the things”.
The first thing was to not include clouds in the models. Then they realized that greenhouse gases are 97% clouds, water vapour. The first models that were done did not have water vapour in them. They showed results that were unbelievable and obviously we are about to fry any time soon. Then they decided that was not a good model to build and they put in clouds. The government in its wisdom has reduced the amount of cloud effect that it has put into the models. How can it do that? The clouds are the clouds are the clouds. It is 97% and it is not going to change much. Why is it doing fooling around with reality? That is what is being done.
When we discuss these models, the government is really wise.