Mr. Speaker, it is certainly nice to be back. I got out of the swing of talking about Kyoto.
The most exciting part of this is that Canadians are engaging in the debate. The e-mails and calls are amazing. I would not believe that I would suggest to anyone watching, to those reporters watching, that they make sure to tell people to send their e-mails and faxes and make their telephone calls to the Prime Minister's Office so he can know what Canadians think about this whole issue.
So as not to repeat anything that I said in the last couple of days, I want to start off by talking about the provinces. We need to talk about the fact that the provinces were supposed to have a meeting on November 21 but it was postponed by the government. There was no new material. The second edition did not rate any change.
The meeting was postponed until Friday, November 29, two days from now. That meeting has now been cancelled and has not been rescheduled. All the provinces say the federal government is not proceeding in good faith.
I will use some quotes from across the provinces so that members understand what the various provincial ministers and premiers are saying about the government's action to ram through this debate in the House and to ratify this very important treaty before Christmas. That is what this is all about. It is all about the actions of the government, which has known about climate change since 1992 when it signed the first agreement. In 1997 it signed the Kyoto accord, and now, all of a sudden, it has to be ratified by Christmas.
The reason it has to be ratified by Christmas is that the government fears that when Canadians find out what it is the government is committing them to, they will be totally and absolutely opposed to it. The Canadians out there who really matter are the moms and dads who will be taking their kids to the hockey game tonight after work. They are the single moms who are trying to make a go of it. They are the people on fixed incomes who, because of our demographics, are increasing. Those are the Canadians who matter. Those are the Canadians who will be affected by Kyoto. The government is ignoring them by ramming this through.
Let us examine where the provinces are at on this issue. Let us start way out west in British Columbia, a long way from planet Ottawa. Let us hear what the premier had to say, who by the way the Prime Minister called down here to try to divide and concur, and with whom he tried to make a special deal. The only problem is it did not work very well. The premier was on television last night saying it is a bad deal, that it is something we should not be going ahead with, that it is something that needs a lot more discussion, a lot more costing and a lot more discussion on the implementation.
I will speak about the first plan and the second plan. For people to keep track of what this is, the first plan is the one that was issued on October 28. The second so-called plan was the one that was prepared for the meeting on November 21. These are the closest things the government has to some kind of statement as to what it is going to do, what implementation might include, but it will not reveal any of the costs of it.
Mr. Campbell, the Premier of British Columbia, said that this is no way to build a country. He said:
We are not going to stand by while the federal plan, the favoured plan, blows away 11,000 British Columbia jobs.
That is his evaluation of the first plan. Then we go on to the second plan. Remember that the Prime Minister attempted to coerce him in between. He said:
British Columbia has grave concerns about the Kyoto accord. There is no implementation plan, there are no targets that have been set. The federal scenarios that we see, British Columbia seems to be taking a greater hit in terms of job loss, a greater hit in terms of gross domestic product and that is not acceptable to us.
That is fairly clear. I could quote the energy minister and the environment minister of British Columbia, but I think that gets the point across. British Columbia is saying no way to the Kyoto accord, no way to ratification by the end of December, and no way to proceeding with the plan.
Moving on to Alberta, many people do not know Alberta's stand on this but let me quote Mr. Klein about the first plan. There have been many quotes but I will choose one. “We are giving as strong a signal as we possibly can that the Kyoto protocol, as it is now written, is the wrong way to go”. That was on November 5. The energy minister, Mr. Smith, around the same time said , “It is a long way from completion. It is very clear that they are not ready”.
Of course the environment minister, who largely has carried the ball for Alberta, has made many comments about how there is no plan, there is no costing, how they have not been consulted, and how there has not been anything to allow the ratification of this protocol. Remember, as I pointed out, there are penalties when we ratify.
Mr. Taylor commented on the second plan, the one issued a month later. He said, “It is a clear breach of trust. It looks just like the original plan that all of the provinces rejected. One might say it is like putting lipstick on a pig”. That is fairly clear as to how acceptable this plan is to Alberta and how ready Alberta is that the government should ram through the ratification, should do it now, and then force it on the provinces, on industry, and on the Canadian people.
Moving east to Saskatchewan, Mr. Eldon Lautermilch, the industry and resources minister, has had a lot to say on television. A lot of people would be familiar with him. Saskatchewan derides the document as a non-plan. “No detail, no specific information, no cost estimates”, said Mr. Lautermilch, the Saskatchewan industry minister.
Then he got the second draft, which I intend to review today. I reviewed the first draft yesterday and I will review the second draft today. He said, “I can say from our perspective it is not acceptable in any way, shape or form from what we see”. Three provinces have spoken out. He further said that the province will not accept the plan for the ratification of Kyoto. It will not accept the plan.
If members recall, we have a Prime Minister who does not care. there is a potential future prime minister who says we should not ratify this agreement unless we have the full cooperation of the provinces. It is time that the future prime minister stood up, was honest with Canadians and said, “That is what I believe. I know the implementation can only work if the provinces are on side, and I do not believe they are on side yet”.
Let us move on to the Prime Minister's beloved Manitoba, the one province that is on side. Mr. Tim Sale is the minister of energy for Manitoba. Remember that Manitoba wants to take hydro power, get credit for it, run it to Sault Ste. Marie, provide however many thousand kilowatts per day and have a guaranteed source of income from Ontario because it will capture half of that energy market. That is not about the environment; it is about economics.
Let us hear what he has to say about the first plan. The New Democratic provincial minister said, “Everybody in Canada now agrees that we've got to lower our greenhouse gas emissions and that's a real step forward. The question is what is the plan going to be and how are we do it so we share the load and share the benefits? That hardly sounds like a great endorsement for Kyoto or for the plan. That is reading between the lines. We do not know what the plan is so we do not know if we are for it. Remember, they are supporters of it.
With regard to the second plan, the conservation minister, Steve Ashton, said, “It's time to move beyond the issue of Kyoto, yes or no. It's time to move on to the issue of whether we can have a real Canadian plan that's going to have a substantive response in terms of greenhouse gases”. That is a question. He is saying that he wants to see the plan and how how it will be implemented, then he will support it. He is saying that there has to be a real Canadian plan. Who does not believe that? If that is outright support, then I would hate to see the ones who are opposed if that is the best they can say about this government. That is almost a condemnation of the government for not having a plan. That is the best friend the government has in terms of Kyoto.
I do not know if you were part of this before, Mr. Speaker, but I would like to give an update of the number of cars parked out front because a lot of viewers are very interested in that. Just prior to Question Period 13 cars were parked out front and three were running. It is interesting to note that so many were turned off in a day. I wonder if next week they will still be running. At present the Prime Minister has four big black limos outside, with red lights on top, and they are all running. That is just an update so people will know what kind of example the government is showing in front of the House of Commons. Obviously we would not want anyone to catch a cold.
Let me move on to Ontario where I can provide lots of quotes from the Ontario environment minister. Speaking about the first plan, the Ontario environment minister said, as noted in The Star , “Candidly I think the federal government has misread the provincial mood and the public's mood. They want the information and without the information they are not prepared to take a flyer on this one. We should not have a vote until we can have a first ministers meeting to really seriously look at a plan”.
That makes a lot of sense. All those people in Hamilton on Sunday said they did not know about this. They never thought it would to affect them. They did not know they would have to slow their cars down. They did not know they would have to have smaller cars. They did not know they would have higher power bills and heating bills.
The government did not tell them its plan and how it would be implemented. That is exactly the point. The government has not told the provinces, industry, the small businessman, Canadians, or the mom who is taking her kid to hockey after school. The government has not told anybody its plan. It does not know what the plan is. It does not know how it will be implemented. It does not know what it will cost.
Let me go on to the second plan and what the environment minister had to say about it. He said “We haven't seen any funds set aside. We have not seen any commitment to dollars and we really haven't seen the cost projections of what Kyoto will be”.
There is no plan. The government does not know what it will cost. The government does not know how it will be implemented. Ontario is a long way from being on side as well and is asking for a plan and a cost of implementation.
Let us move on to Quebec, the other friend of the federal government. Let us look what the environment minister had to say on the first plan. He said, “We stopped debating the opportunity of the ratification and we then decided to concentrate ourselves and our efforts on the implementation plan of the federal government”. Quebec wants to talk about the implementation plan and it has given up trying to get any ideas about ratification: let us do it and let us get on. However, it has asked for the costs and how it will be implemented. That is hardly an endorsement.
Mr. Boisclair tabled a motion calling for a new deal with Ottawa and all the parties in the legislature supported him. He said, “If the current plan is far removed from the principle of polluter pays, it is geared toward the principle of polluter pays. This approach goes against Quebec's vision because it attempts to protect the businesses that produce the most greenhouse gases. This proposal softens the impact of the protocol implementation on the sectors that emit the most greenhouse gases to the detriment of the manufacturing sector which is very present in Quebec”.
That is an endorsement. In other words, he is saying that we have have to give them credit for a lot of different things, that we have to have a whole different plan if they are to buy in and that we had better not count on support for the implementation plan unless we take these things into consideration. That is a big caveat. That is why all provinces are not showing up on Friday, including Manitoba and Quebec. They do not agree with this government's mini me plan which simply will not work.
Let us move on to New Brunswick. Jeannot Volpé said, “Within the next few weeks or month, we will be in a much better position to see what the financial impact will be on New Brunswick”. New Brunswick is concerned about the financial impact on it
On the second plan, the energy minister went on to say that the Kyoto accord was a moving target. He said his main concern was remaining competitive with the United States and getting credit for emissions cut on power sold to the U.S. He said, “Eighty-eight per cent of our exports are going to the United States. If the emissions reductions that we are achieving in New Brunswick cannot be credited it will be a major challenge”.
Again I apologize. I went through all the reasons why we will get clean energy credits. The bottom line is Europe will not give them to Russia for the natural gas that Russia provides Europe so why would the Europeans agree to give them to Canada for sending clean energy to the U.S. which is a non-Kyoto participant? We cannot have a deal with a non-Kyoto participant because it would totally upset the whole European plan and would require a great deal more credits that it would have to buy from Russia.
Obviously, New Brunswick has a major concern. I come back again to the guy that picked me up at the airport when he said, “Hey, you guys in the federal government are about to knock us down when we have our first chance to stand up on our own two feet”. That is exactly what that minister had to say.
Let us move on to Nova Scotia and hear what Mr. Gordon Balser the vice chair of the committee had to say.