Mr. Speaker, I listened to the comments from my colleague from Gander—Grand Falls. His last analogy probably sums this up as good as any analogy that I have heard. He said that the whole is only as strong as the sum of its parts, that Canada is only as strong as its provinces.
Instead of having a confrontational attitude and approach to difficult issues, the government would have been much better served to have had an approach that would have brought the provinces on board and would have allowed them some modicum of cooperation and some reward in the process that would have encouraged them to embark upon the Kyoto protocol.
Instead, it is typical of the government and its almost now 10 years in office. It did not have a plan. It waited until the very last moment in the process. It is my understanding that the Prime Minister has given word that the vote will occur on the Kyoto protocol on Monday. It would seem to me that there is a very limited amount of time to debate this in a responsible, reasonable, rational manner and, hopefully, in an intelligent manner.
I do not think many members of the House, although there may be a few, would debate that climate change is not occurring. There may be some debate about why it is occurring.
What went wrong? How can a government, which has been in power since 1993 and which signed this Kyoto protocol in 1997, now all of a sudden say that Kyoto has to be signed by December 31? All the legislation in the House seems to have to be passed before 2003, whether it is the nuclear bill, Bill C-4, or the gun control bill or Kyoto. There must be something awfully bad coming in 2003, something that we do not understand on the opposition side. What would be the difference if Kyoto was signed by August of 2003?
Have we somehow given a promise? All our trading partners have not signed on to it. All our trading partners do not intend to sign on to it. We do know enough about this legislation.
If we go back to the Rio summit, two major issues arose from that summit, biodiversity was the first one. Ten years later we have a Liberal government that has failed to pass the species at risk act. It has failed to pass any significant piece of environmental legislation.
Global climate change was the other issue that came from the Rio summit. That was in 1992. Kyoto was in 1997. On December 31 are we going to turn into something, but we do not know what it is yet. There is absolutely no reason for the government to pursue the course that it has. There is no reason the government could not have had the provinces on board. There is absolutely no reason that it could not have lead by example.
Two years ago in the natural resources committee members asked the committee to investigate the Kyoto process and look at the issue of climate change. Nothing happened. While we had agreement from some, we could not get an agreement from all government members. We could not get agreement from all opposition members. There were at least two of us who agreed to the motion but we could not get agreement to work on the cost of Kyoto. That was amazing.
Here we are at the last hour of the last day debating this issue and trying to find some reasonable position to take. The government has changed its position. It turns over more than one would turn bacon in a frying pan. It is absolutely incredible. It started off with an implementation date of 2008 to 2012. Now it may be 2020, 2030 or 2040.
Canada is the highest energy user per capita in the world. We use energy. We live in a cold climate. We have big distances to travel. Canada is a huge country. Our energy costs are high now and they will continue to be high.
What has the government done to lead by example? The Parliament Buildings do not even have thermopane windows. If we wanted to reduce heating costs that would be a small and fairly inexpensive first step. The government should wrap its head around that. The government is telling the rest of the nation how to retrofit for billions of dollars and it has not spent 2¢ of its own money to do the job itself.
What will a litre of gasoline cost at the end of the day? Do not say it will only be 3¢ or 4¢ more expensive because we know that is not true.
What will be the cost of a litre of home heating fuel? What will be the cost of a cord of firewood? We live in a cold climate. It is important to keep warm. A sweater will only do so much; we have to have an alternative heating source.
Why did we embark upon a program that encourages pollution by third world countries? We are saying that we will forgive the carbon produced by third world countries until they get up to scale with their own economies. Would the world not have been better served and would Kyoto not have been better served if we had said we would supply those third world countries with clean sources of energy? Would that not have been a better process to embark upon? Did no one think of that? Is that too complicated for the members on the government benches? Surely it is not. It is pretty basic.
How will carbon credits work? I still have not heard a satisfactory explanation from the government side.
Why did we not receive credit for clean exports? Hundreds of thousands of megawatts of clean electricity go from Canada into the U.S and there is no credit for those clean exports. With respect to the natural gas which comes from Alberta, the east coast and the high Arctic, there is no credit for those clean exports. We will be shipping product to the U.S. and allowing the U.S. to cut its carbon dioxide emissions but we will not be getting credit for shipping that product.
It seems that there has been a lot of obfuscation to make a fairly simple issue very complex. The government has done a poor job of defending the interests of Canadians. There is not an issue that we have ever supported in the House that was not costed out ahead of time. The government could say, “We have a cost here and it will be so many billion dollars in the first year and so many billion dollars in the second year”. We do not believe it, and Canadians do not believe it. There has to be a better and more pragmatic approach to this issue.
Where have we looked at emissions? What has the government done to foster green energy? What has the government done to foster ethanol production in Canada? We could have 10% to 20% of all the gasoline in Canada supplemented with ethanol. Nothing has been done.