Mr. Speaker, one aspect I would like to address immediately is U.S. support for Kyoto. In fact, the Attorneys General of 11 major states, including California, New York and Massachusetts, wrote to President Bush deploring his current policy as failing to mandate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They stated:
To fill this regulatory void, states and others are being forced to rely on their available legal mechanisms...[which] will necessarily lessen regulatory certainty and increase the ultimate costs of addressing climate change, thereby making the purported goals of the Administration's current policy illusory.
I think there is widespread support for addressing climate change, but I think the process is what we should be focusing on. I feel that the goals, at 6% below 1990 levels, are very modest, and I understand that there have been issues around consultation.
What I would like to focus on now in going forward is setting a target and trying to achieve that target in consultation, with industry, provinces, municipal governments, provincial governments, NGOs and citizens' coalitions around the table, so that we can all work together to look at a solution that is implementable.
This has to be done on a regional basis to make sure that regional interests and concerns are addressed. Certainly in the case of Alberta, for example, which has a large oil and gas sector, we must take that into account in looking at job creation and opportunities for corporate growth in the oil sector.
I think that the issue here is not about the ratification, but more so about the implementation, in a consensus building fashion.