Let us talk about acid rain, which was a great example. I acknowledge the member for Fundy--Royal and the great work of the Conservative member of Parliament, Stan Darling from Muskoka--Parry Sound, when he almost singularly said that he would lead the way to get the congressmen of the United States to come onboard on the acid rain protocol.
Quite frankly, a lot of us thought that Stan Darling was just going uphill with grease on his shoes but, God bless him, he mobilized Americans. He mobilized the grassroots in the United States to force their congressmen and congresswomen to say, “yes, this acid rain protocol is important”. The results are a magnificent achievement for both of our countries together.
I believe there have been ample precedents for the mobilization of not just the will, the activism and the ingenuity of our country to take up this Kyoto challenge, but we have precedents: the 6% and 5% program, Stan Darling's acid rain protocol. I believe Canadians are waiting for us to lead on this in a very direct way. I do not think Canadians support the coalition of the antis, the anti-Kyoto crowd or group, wherever they are. I think they want us to come together and get this done.
A more fundamental issue is at stake here. It has to do with our sovereignty and our own self-confidence. As the House knows, in the last few years the foreign control and foreign infiltration of this country has just gone so high it is right off the Richter scale. If we are not careful there could be a tie-in to sort of slowing us down on this issue. We had better keep our heads up and appeal to Canadians to use their ingenuity.
I want to close by using an example of TeleTrips, a Canadian software that monitors men and women who work at home one day a week. It shows what is saved in terms of travelling on the highways and how it cuts back on waste and emissions. The United States is already doing this in five major cities and it is saving billions and billions of dollars a year in terms of its environmental costs and damage. We have not even started here. Therefore in many respects the Americans are ahead of us in working on some of these targets.
As my colleague from Don Valley West said earlier, we have green technology that is the envy of the world. If there was ever a moment to celebrate and support our technology, it is by getting our technology activated on this particular challenge. We know, from previous experiences, that all Canadians will rally.