Mr. Speaker, who says that preaching is a lost art? I expected the voice to resonate as those ocean waves lapped up against the Rocky Mountains, and what were we going to do about it? I was not really moved, but I was surprised at the member.
I invite him instead to look at the speech from the member for Stoney Creek on his own side, because he realizes, as we realize, that it is not enough just to care. The member makes a passionate case for why we should care but he does not make a case about why it will work. Caring is easy. Liberals like to think they are the only people who care, but we on this side of the House, and many members on his own side, are saying, “Yes, but will it work?” The answer is, unfortunately, that I do not think this plan will work.
First the member for Stoney Creek pointed out the need to have treaties approved by Parliament before they are ratified, rather than them being just an interesting, little, useless exercise in debate. He talked about the need to have credits for early CO
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reductions. He talked about the problems in having no specific details, plans and costs. He talked about the timeframes and the fact they are unreasonable. He talked about what financial instruments we were going to use to move the agenda forward, because he wants to move it forward, like many of us do, but finds nothing in the protocol that gives us any confidence that it will be done.
He talked about not contravening the innovation agenda that has already been announced, but he feels that Kyoto will contravene it because the two place one another at odds. He talked about the North American reality and the fact that we do not have a bilateral agreement with the Americans, and if we do not have a bilateral agreement with the Americans we have almost nothing. We are the only country in the western hemisphere signing this deal.
There are things we could do and there are things we should do. Many of them have been listed by the member for Stoney Creek and others. The member across the way should realize that passionate feelings of wanting to do something good for the world do not get the job done.