Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the members for Peace River, North Vancouver and Fraser Valley.
I want to start by asking, Mr. Speaker, that you permit me to entertain a fantasy, and I do not want you to get nervous. Let us imagine for a moment that the Minister of the Environment decides that as part of his job he feels he should consult Canadians, door to door, about the Kyoto protocol.
Now let us imagine that the environment minister arrives at the door of my neighbour, Dave Neilson, on his acreage just outside of Brooks, Alberta. Dave is a welder and works for a company that makes oil rigs. Apparently he is pretty good at it. He and his wife Linda have a very nice home. They have raised a very nice family.
Let us also imagine that the minister has been given some medication that compels him to tell both sides of the story. I want the House to listen in with me on this imaginary scenario as the minister talks to my neighbours, the Neilsons, about Kyoto.
First, the minister would clear his throat, as he is wont to do. He would say, “Mr. Neilson, the drugs force me to be candid with you. I know that a generation ago scientists predicted confidently that the world was headed for a global ice age. And they had the data to prove it, just like today. Sure, it would have been the end of our civilization as we know it, but imagine the skiing. Anyway, we all stocked up on thermal underwear, but it seems that the scientists were all wrong. I also know that at the time of the oil shortages in the 1970s scientists reached a consensus that the world would run out of petroleum in 25 years. That was a good one. Obviously all that data that they had so much confidence in proved to be wrong”.
The minister would go on and say, “Meanwhile, many scientists at the UN, using the most sophisticated computer modeling known to man, have told us every 10 years or so that we are on the brink of overpopulating the world and that we will soon be in the grip of worldwide food shortages. That appears to be a tad alarmist”.
The minister would continue and say, “But now we have conflicting reports about the degree and source of global warming. Land based weather stations seem to indicate some increase in global temperatures, but other scientists question this because too many of the earth stations may be affected by urban heat pockets. Meanwhile, satellite temperature readings indicate no increase in temperatures at all. And yes, there is a dispute about the cause of warming, if there is any warming, because the increase in temperatures does not correspond with the increase in man-made CO
2
emissions and some speculate that the warming, if it exists, may have to do with solar activity. Yes, of course the earth has warmed up at periods and points in the past when obviously it had nothing to do with man-made CO
2
emissions”.
The minister would then go on to say, “Mr. Neilson, you should also know that this multibillion dollar plan is not, I repeat not, a direct attack on the smog problems in our biggest cities, nor will it clean polluted waters or the hundreds of hazardous waste sites recently identified by our Auditor General”.
At this moment I imagine the Minister of the Environment clearing his throat once more and going in for the big finale. “Mr. Neilson”, he would say, “you should also know that our largest trading partners, the United States and Mexico, will not be part of the treaty. Therefore, Canadian businesses would be asked to bear the costs that our trading partners will not have to bear. Meanwhile countries like India, China and Indonesia are exempted from the treaty. The bottom line, Mr. Neilson, is that based on what I have just told you, it seems that some people will probably lose their jobs because of Kyoto. Because your work is tied to the oil and gas industry, you will probably be one of those people, but given what I have told you about the evidence in support of Kyoto, I know it is a sacrifice that you will be willing to make for your children and grandchildren and country”.
At this point, I imagine that my friend would do what any normal person would do. He would grab the environment minister by the scruff of the neck and throw him out of his house, perhaps through the door, perhaps through the window. In this fantasy of mine, I imagine the environment minister hitting the ground and all that pent up gas causing him to explode, releasing CO
2
and other gases into the air.
This scene of course does not need to be confined to Alberta. It could be played out in any one of tens of thousands of homes, throughout southern Ontario, for instance, in the manufacturing belt, in the home of a steelworker or an auto worker, whose livelihoods are just as threatened by Kyoto.
Is it possible, I wonder, that the science of climatology is too young and imprecise a science to say with any certainty where the climate will be in the future? After all, if we are now in the grip of global warming caused by man-made CO
2
emissions, then why did these scientists not predict it? Why in fact did they predict global cooling? If it is in fact quite possible that climatology is not yet advanced enough a science to be a foundation for predictions, then is Kyoto itself not just a wild scheme premised on a fantasy? Canadians deserve better.