Madam Speaker, I would be happy to go to any of their communities as their guest speaker to speak on Kyoto. I know the Liberal members would like it. They are so tired of hearing the rhetoric. It is interesting that another party has united with the Liberal Party in the rhetoric. I guess they make good bedfellows, the NDP and Liberals. We used to have another quote, but I guess we will find one for that as well.
While I am on this, it is a little off topic, but it is interesting that the NDP should support this. It is very interesting that the unions support this, provided that they get a $1 billion fund so that if people lose their jobs, they will get paid. That is real commitment to the environment; they care. Maybe they should put their hands over their hearts as well and say, “We care about the environment, but we care about the money first”.
I have heard other members accuse us of that but maybe they should not call the kettle black. I think they may have a little problem. Let us go on because time is running short and today I think the House ends at 6:30 p.m..
Let us talk about the U.S., why it pulled out and what it is doing. This is not pro-American or anything. It has answered the fourth question that I started out with this morning: Is there a better way? It has come up with the conclusion that, yes, Kyoto is a Eurocentric, bureaucratic nightmare and it does not want to be any part of it.
In February Christine Whitman said that the U.S. would try to stay in and work with the world but then the world decided on all these penalties and everything. The Americans are doing something. They have what is called the clean skies initiative. I will give a few examples of what they are doing.
The statement that kind of leads this off is important. It says that our economic growth is the key to environmental progress. If we have a thriving economy we will much more likely be able to carry out environmental projects, do new research and development and come up with new initiatives if we have the money. If we bankrupt ourselves by sending money to Russia or those kind of countries, that money is gone forever. The money does not come back in jobs for young Canadians or in research and development.
What the Americans are basically saying is that we must keep the money at home, invest the $4.6 billion in fuel cells, invest in the future, let us become world leaders in the area of environmental biology and let us sell it to the world. Let us thrive economically because we developed it.
What are we saying? We say no, we will sign onto a European policy that will handcuff us, make us achieve 30% cuts in CO
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. We will be hard pressed if we implement that. We must remember that there will be penalities associated with Kyoto once it is ratified. If we do that we will handcuff ourselves. We will not have a pot to--well, we get the idea. We will not have the money. All the other environmental projects that we might get involved in we will not because we will have spent the money on Kyoto.
What are the Americans doing? I will not go through the whole clean skies initiative. Anyone can call my office and get the website address for the clean skies initiative. I see some members are writing that down because that is something they want to get as well. They will see exactly what happens there.
The U.S. is dramatically cutting emissions from its power plants of three of the worst air pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and mercury. It has a program in place to remove those from all power generating plants. It has forced the plants to put in scrubbers and to do all kinds of environmentally sensitive projects to make sure to keep those pollutants out of the air.
What are we doing? Downtown Toronto had 45 smog days. It is concerned about it. The people in Windsor are concerned about their air. The people in the Fraser Valley are concerned about their air. What are we doing? We are signing Kyoto to reduce CO
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. What are we doing about nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury and all the particulate matter? We are doing nothing. We are frigging around with an international agreement that will not work to do anything, and we are doing nothing about little Johnny's asthma. If we want to fix little Johnny's asthma we need to go after these particulate matters and other chemicals in the air. That would be an honest policy.
What the U.S. is also doing is cutting greenhouse gas intensities. It has a program to reduce its emissions by 18% over the next 10 years. A reduction of 18% in greenhouse gas emissions would almost take us to our target. The Americans are doing that voluntarily and it is working.
What does our government not understand? If we get the provinces, industry and Canadians onside, we could have something that will work. Instead, we are ramming through this Kyoto thing that will not do a darned thing for our environment. It does not do anything about pollution and it will not solve a single problem.
The next thing the Americans are doing is they are giving credits to companies that show reductions. What does our government not understand about that? If it is to my advantage as a company to reduce my emissions, and I have a set target and set number of credits, I will do it. It is good for the bottom line, and what is wrong with that? The Americans also have a five year commitment to $4.6 billion tax credits for renewable energy use.
Let us think about that. I want to put a solar collector on my garage. If I were in the U.S. I would get credit for doing that. That will sure make a lot more people do that.
The Americans are expanding research and development into climate related science and technology and they are doing all kinds of other things to perfect the science to understand climate change better. They have all kinds of fellowships within the U.S. universities to allow people to develop this science better.
As I said earlier, the scientists at the IPCC, the ones the government believes in and who are the gospel, say that they are 10 years away from getting the science correct. When I get into the IPCC's modelling, I will get into that more and be able to demonstrate some of the problems.
I want to move on to the Canadian position. Where are we at? It is a little hard because we only started coming up with a Canadian position within the last year.
This whole thing started in 1992. We agreed to it and signed on to it because we sign every international agreement. We have a fast pen. Bring out an agreement and we will sign it. We will read it later and decide what it means later but we will sign it. Just put it in front of us and we will sign it. We must remember that the government members are Liberals and they stand for good. Canadians are led to believe what the Liberals think. This kind of misleading, hand over the heart and do nothing, is what they do all the time.
I will give another example. If we had a few more days we could get into the other examples of where the government has done this. Let us talk about the three part approach. This was developed in March 2002. I guess it was what led up to that powder-puff PowerPoint presentation. Actually, some people in communications did not think I could keep saying that without getting tongue-tied. One of these times I am going to but I will keep saying it because that is exactly what it is.
In March we had the beginning of what this was going to be. As far as emissions trading, they said that if companies could not reduce greenhouse emissions sufficiently, they could buy emission reduction permits from other companies. I guess that means that if the member over there had a company that was dirty and I happened to be cleaner than what my target area was I could then sell that person credits. The company could keep producing the same amount of CO
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and I could keep doing what I was doing, but it could buy the credits.
I do not know what is wrong but I do not understand how that helps the environment. All I can understand is that if I am clean enough and can sell enough credits I will probably get rich while the other company will go bankrupt. That is about all I can understand. Then I will have a monopoly that will probably work as well as Air Canada and some of the other monopolies, like the Wheat Board in this country. It is a real example of something that really works well. The Wheat Board is a perfect example. Will we start throwing Canadians in jail perhaps for CO
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emissions? We will have companies that will be trading permits between companies.
The second thing they say is that companies could buy credits in the international marketplace. Now we would have companies out shopping around to buy credits from some other country.