Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the members across the way are giving me a break and giving me a chance to have a drink of water. I appreciate their consideration and concern but I am just fine. I believe so strongly that what the government is doing and how it is misleading the Canadian people that I think I could stand here until Christmas or after Christmas just to make that point.
Let us go on. One company has said that Kyoto will cost oil sands projects $100 million. Others are announcing a billion dollars here and a billion dollars there. I have an interesting one. The president of Syncrude is a friend of the government, has consulted with the government and has had dinner with the Prime Minister when he was here. He has done so much for the development of the tar sands but he has been a very close friend of the Prime Minister. He says that Canadians do not realize that the reductions promised are so significant that only if we eliminated all transportation, planes, cars, trucks, rail, could we meet the targets. If we shut down all the oil, natural gas and coal industries, we would only get halfway there.
Those are the targets we will be signing onto. A friend of the government is telling us to look at the targets and to look at how big they are. What does the government not get about that? How can the government not get it when even a friend has said that and has delivered that message during a dinner at 24 Sussex.
This friend has said that Kyoto means that these projects will be put on ice. That means jobs, income, GDP and our standard of living, which is what we all depend on in a modern industrialized country. Does the minister want to drive this country into third world status? Is that what his aim is? Kyoto, obviously, is just one more part of the legacy of the Prime Minister to drive us under.
I have to repeat this, and I apologize for repeating anything, but there is so much that needs to be said. According to the Marrakesh accord, “Nations that ratify Kyoto but do not meet their targets in round one by 2012, will be penalized another 30% in emissions cuts and, in addition, such nations cannot sell carbon credits in round two. If at the end of this period, a party's emissions are still greater than its assigned amount, it must make up the difference in the second commitment period, plus a penalty of 30%. It will also be barred from selling under emissions trading and within three months it must develop a compliance action plan detailing the action it will take in order to meet this commitment”.
The accord goes on to say that a nation can make up a deficit if it wants by buying the credits from a country like Russia, a country that has much dirtier industries than we do, but we will send Russia money to buy its hot air under the Kyoto accord.
If we ratify Kyoto and do not meet those targets, there are penalties. For any future prime minister to stand up and say, “Look Canadians and industry, we will let him ratify it. It is good to give him his legacy, but if it is going to hurt our country or our industries, we will just opt out of it. We just will not do it”. That does not put much onus on one's signature. I like dealing with people where word of mouth is everything and a handshake means they will deliver.
Obviously if we sign on, if what a future prime minister is suggesting, we are not even good for a signature let alone a handshake.
What does that say about our country? What kind of legacy is that for our children and grandchildren? I do not think the minister or the Prime Minister care about that. They want to bull ahead with this thing and they really do not care. I do not think that is where Canadians are at. I am sure of that. It is an irresponsible action.
Many people are saying that we need to have a lot of things happen before ratification. I have four letters here that have been written by pretty important groups: the Canadian manufacturers and the Canadian coalition for responsible environmental solutions. I have a letter from the mayor of my city written to the Prime Minister, which is after a great deal of discussion about Kyoto. I have another letter written by the chamber of commerce. All of these people say that we should not ratify Kyoto until we know the cost and we have an implementation plan.
The number of people who are saying that is huge. In fact 71% of Canadians are now saying that, until there is a plan and until we have the cooperation of the provinces, we should not ratify. Boy, is that a change? A year ago I could probably not have interested anybody in talking about Kyoto. Today I could go to any city anywhere in Canada and get a crowd to talk about Kyoto. That is how much more interest there is.
If there are some Liberal members who want to put together some ridings and have me debate Kyoto with the environment minister, I would love to have that challenge. That would be the thing to which I would look forward to more than anything else. But I imagine that the minister will not accept that.
It was pretty interesting to be at a breakfast meeting in Victoria and realize how little a large number of the business community and professionals know about Kyoto. That is from the minister's riding. It is shocking that they know so little about Kyoto.
Obviously Canadians do not understand it very well. Canadians also need to be sure that they understand the 12 requirements of the provinces. I meant to mention that when I was talking about the provincial issue. I will not read all 12 at this point, but I really think that the 12 issues that the provinces want to hear, want to have answered, are the ones that the government needs to address.
I would like to talk about the modelling. The government says that models are the key. We had a few members across the way make sarcastic comments about models yesterday. Obviously they think it is a fairly funny issue. I do not find any humour at all in Kyoto. I do not find any humour at all in the potential of what it could do to our country. I find it an extremely serious matter. So when I talk about modelling, it is important that we look at some of the input.
First, we must go back in time to look at what changes have happened over the last 1,000 to 2,000 years. We must remember that the science has been done, the figures and the detail on how much rain there was, how many droughts there were, what kind of life existed and what was the chemical makeup of the air. The science has been done through ice samples and cores. There was a major study done in western Canada where cores were taken out of slough bottoms and interesting things were found.