Mr. Speaker, because of the closure motion these speeches are short. I will present the Coles Notes version with what is wrong with several of the claims on the Liberal side. I will go through them and debunk them, because it is difficult, as the member from north Vancouver said, to find any honesty in the debate on the Liberal side.
Liberals claim they had to invoke closure today because they must get this thing passed this week. That is nonsense. The parliamentary secretary to the House leader said this vote means nothing because the government has the power in cabinet to approve and invoke this with or without Parliament. Closure is the first of the lies. There is neither a need for closure nor this vote.
The Liberals claim to have a plan on implementing Kyoto and that they have consulted. However, there is no plan. This is a sleight of hand slide show of the worst order. This is a complete public relations war. It has nothing to do with facts, implementation, credible to do lists, financial instruments or any ideas in concrete measure on how this would take place. As the health minister said during a presentation last week, she cannot explain this plan to the oil business in her riding. She cannot explain it because it is unexplainable. No one knows how it works.
Given what the government has done to the gun registry this last week and the revelations about that, this should strike fear in everybody's heart. The government does not have any dollar figures in place and there is no plan. It is just bad from the word go. It claims to have consulted the provinces but the provinces say that is not the case. The provinces are not on side. Eight of the ten provinces say there has been inadequate consultation. What they want is a first ministers meeting to sit down with the Prime Minister to ask how this would work, but that has been denied. There has been inadequate consultation.
The government says it has consulted Canadians. That is not true. I put out a household survey in my riding where 1,100 people responded rather quickly. Approximately 80% said they did not support Kyoto, 15% supported it, and 5% said they did not have a clue what was going on. In every case the more information people get about Kyoto, the less the support. In other words, when they know more, they say no more to the Kyoto agreement. It is a case in point.
Liberals say it is about pollution but it is not. We should be clear about that. It is primarily about CO
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emissions. It is not about air pollution nor about particulate matter. It is not about the stuff that causes asthma nor about the smog that bothers people in Toronto or Vancouver. It is not about stopping the SE2 project in the Fraser Valley. It would have no effect on that. It would have no impact on pollution. It would not clean the water nor clean the soil. It would not preserve the environment. It is about CO
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emissions. Let us be clear, it is not about all the nonsense we have heard the Liberals spew.
The Liberals claim the economic impact would be small but that is not the case. In fact, let us be charitable and say they do not have a clue how many jobs would be lost but the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters say anywhere from, taking the Liberal number, zero to 450,000 jobs. The impact would be large, not as the Liberals are saying. They claim our national competitiveness would not be hurt but that is simply untrue.
Our major trading partners are not signing this accord. They will not sign it because of loss of sovereignty and because they say it is unworkable. That is why we are the only country in the western hemisphere that is signing on, the only one in north and south America. The United States is not signing. The major polluters of the world, China and India and many others are not signing because it will not work. They will not sign on and it will affect Canada's competitiveness we can be sure.
The government says the costs are affordable but again, it has a plan of the day. Today's plan is that it would cap the price of emissions trading credits at $15 a tonne. Now it cannot be more than that or else what? Or else the taxpayers would subsidize businesses to continue polluting. It is ridiculous. Of course there would be costs to this and they are huge.
Liberals say they are united on that side. That is a good joke. Watching the environment minister and the natural resources minister at the same conference when the environment minister said that we should ban SUVs. The Minister of Natural Resources said, whoops, he had four of them. Every Canadian should know there would be an impact on what we drive, on how we heat our homes, and the size of home we can afford. There would be huge impacts. That side over there does not have a clue. The Liberals do not have their act together even among the cabinet.
The government's environmental policy is a sham of the worst order. As an economic policy it is a disaster from coast to coast, not only in energy producing provinces, but in every consumer's home. As a Liberal political strategy this is a dead end loss. I guess I should be thankful for that except for the damage it would do to the country.
As a feel good Liberal policy it is typical of what I expect from the government. It is a disaster for the country. We should vote against it. I will be proud to do that when the opportunity comes tomorrow.