Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but respond to those comments because, clearly, there were some pretty sharp jabs at myself, my constituency and the people who earn an honest living in my constituency.
We may have our heads in the oil sands but I would suggest that the hon. member who just spoke perhaps has his head in another orifice. He should perhaps remove his head and take a look at the reality.
The whole concept, as he pointed out, of demand side economics has merit. The government introduced its program with great fanfare and great promise to retrofit government buildings. Strangely enough we do not hear anything from the government, and have not for some time, about the success of that program. We do not hear why it did not catch on and why more of the many buildings the government owns were not retrofitted. We would be interested to know the reasons.
The government has launched a number of initiatives to deal with climate change and emissions, including not only the retrofit of buildings but also the conversion of the government fleet to a cleaner burning fuel. Strangely enough, when it introduced that particular program it committed to converting 75% of the government fleet to cleaner burning fuel by the year 2000 but in reality only about 5.5% was converted.
If these programs have such merit and would be of benefit to Canadians, could the member explain why they are not being implemented and why they have not caught on with Canadians and caught the imagination of Canadians?