Mr. Speaker, we are debating the Kyoto accord which is an economic disaster and an environmental fraud. I cannot understand how any government, that respects itself and wants to represent the people, could perpetrate on a trusting group of electors something that is economically unsound and environmentally fraudulent.
I am opposed to the ratification of the Kyoto accord. Someone might say that means I do not want to have the environment cleaned up. Nothing could be further from the truth. We know that the environment must be cleaned up.
I want to pay special tribute to one of the businesses in Kelowna that has done something of its own volition. It did not need the Kyoto accord to have geothermal energy and heating in its building. It built a brand new, high tech building for high tech people coming to Kelowna. All of the heating in that 12 storey building is by geothermal power. It did not have to be told that the Kyoto accord was necessary. It cleaned the environment in its area and did it of its own volition.
It is terrible to think that someone should dare to come forward and say that we must do this. I ask Canadians, what good would it do? Even if we agreed to this thing, what good would it do if Canada approves it but the United States does not? And the United States will not.
It reminds me an awful lot of when the law came in that restaurants needed to have smoking and non-smoking sections on their premises. Guess what? If people went into the non-smoking section of a restaurant, eventually, and it did not take too long, the smoke from the other section came over to the non-smoking part.
The whole idea behind the Kyoto accord is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That is good. Now we are going to buy some hot air from Russia. What does that do to the total emissions from Canada or anywhere else? It does nothing. The total carbon dioxide emitted is still the same as it was before. The only thing that has happened is that the wealth has shifted from one country to another country. That is the effect of it.
The government, in its wisdom, has said as recently as yesterday or this morning that there would be a $15 a tonne limit on the amount that would be charged to industry. Where would the rest of it go if it goes beyond $15? It would either go to the consumer or to the taxpayer. What is the difference between consumers and taxpayers? Are they not the same people? In many instances they are, so will they get hit twice. They will pay for it either directly as they purchase various items or they will pay for it through taxes. Either way we will be paying for this.
The suggestion has been made that this would clean up the environment. Can we bet on that? Because it does not deal with pollutants, it primarily deals with carbon dioxide. It is really a bad thing to do that.
Something that intrigues me more than anything else is that there seems to be a debate about the number of scientists who are for it and the number of scientists who are against it. If we add up the number of scientists on the one side and the number of scientists on the other side, we would discover that on the pro side there is one more scientist than there is on the nay side. So it must be a good idea. Are the scientists here to tell us what the facts are or what their opinions are?
It reminds me of the kindergarten teacher who had show and tell, and one of the students brought in a little rabbit. One of the bright guys in the back asked, “What sex is the rabbit?” The teacher did not know anything about determining the sex of a rabbit and said, “Let us vote on it”. It is a ludicrous kind of situation to determine the sex of a rabbit on the basis of who thinks it is a male and who thinks it is a female.
This is the kind of nonsense that goes on when we do the same kind of thing here, when we debate science on the basis of how many are on one side and how many are on the other side. It is wrong. We need alternative sources. We need businesses like the one that I mentioned a moment ago. We need sources of energy like wind power and various other things. We have a business going up right now in Winfield, in my constituency, which will be producing ethanol, a beautiful fuel source.
In conclusion, I hope everyone remembers that the Kyoto deal is an economic disaster and an environmental fraud.