Mr. Speaker, I have listened carefully and with interest to the statements by my colleague opposite on the Kyoto accord.
I would like to ask him a very specific question. How does he possibly think Canada will succeed economically if we do not develop the environmental technologies to meet the ever increasing standards that we all realize around the world need to be met for our health and to reduce energy consumption and therefore energy costs?
For the last 10 years California has been increasingly raising its emission standards and building the environmental technologies to meet its own standards, which it then will sell to the rest of the world. However, as we move into the future and try to meet California's standards we will have to buy its technology. When we raised our pulp emission standards in the early 1990s we bought Scandinavian equipment because we did not have the technology ourselves. We did the same thing with the Japanese automobile industry in the 1970s and 1980s when the first oil crisis occurred.
How on earth does the member think we will become a competitive trading country into the future if we are going to be totally dependent on foreign technologies, largely American?
The member talks about Kyoto not being accepted and ratified by the United States. The American states are raising their environmental standards and developing the technology to meet them, which we will then have to buy from them.
Let us look to the future and not just look to the past in terms of this very backward thinking.