Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Windsor—St. Clair is very kind in his remarks and too generous in attributing to me a knowledge on clean coal technology, which I do not possess.
This firm has been with us for some time. A considerable amount of research was conducted in the 1980s, particularly in Nova Scotia, in order to keep our coal mines there open. I suppose there are processes available today that claim to achieve clean results.
I would imagine the thrust of the member's question would be better addressed to the Minister of Industry in order to establish whether, in the technology research program that he announced as part of his department some 18 months ago, a particular effort is being made toward achieving this particular activity in the field of energy.
There is no doubt that energy efficiency and energy innovation in particular will be needed to achieve our Kyoto goals but we should also keep in mind that the outcome will not depend just on the technological fix. The outcome will also depend on an enormous amount of discipline on the part of ourselves as consumers, an enormous amount of innovation in the field of energy conservation and an enormous amount of initiatives that are crying to heaven for attention.
We only have to consider the tremendous use of energy by supermarkets at the retail level which are consuming tremendous amounts of energy every day in a manner that is unconscionable at times. One only has to go to Europe to see the difference. The Europeans conserve their energy very carefully compared to the manner in which we use our energy on this side of the Atlantic.