Mr. Speaker, before question period I was in the midst of doing the report card on the budget as seen by environmental groups. I was just concluding my comments with regard to the tax break that was given to the mining industry which will benefit specifically the coal industry, allowing it another tax incentive in effect to continue to pollute the environment.
As part of the goal of the environmental groups, there was also a request that a fund be established to deal with the agricultural sector, in effect to foster and encourage the development of organic agriculture. It is interesting that on its own it is the fastest growing industry within the agricultural sector. Even though it is a very small proportion, it could go some distance, we have been told. As much as 10% of the Kyoto target could be achieved if organic agriculture were allowed to expand to a significant degree.
I have a couple of more points with regard to the report card. That takes us over to the funds that were allocated for national parks. We had heard from the Prime Minister in the throne speech in the fall of 2002 about the expansion he was proposing in particular with marine conservation areas. When the budget came down the allocated funding was somewhat less than one-third of what would be necessary to obtain the desired results in terms of establishing those new national parks and marine conservation areas. There is no indication whatsoever where those funds will come from to establish them. The budget as proposed is simply not sufficient to meet those goals.
There was also a proposal to establish an information system for the environment. This would allow us much greater capacity in this country to monitor the state of the economy and whether we are achieving our goals on sustainability, on cleanup and on preparing the environment for future generations. There was absolutely no provision for that.
Finally, one item we had pressed for was a relatively modest one from a financial standpoint. It was to encourage ecological gifts and to allow them to be tax deductible. There would be a tax incentive to encourage private owners to make ecological gifts, mostly in the form of land transfers to governments and authorities. Again, a very modest amount was estimated. It was estimated that it would cost approximately $5 million per year in lost tax revenue. That was not proceeded with in the budget.
Coming back to my opening comments and the government's touting of this budget as a green budget, it is anything but that. Many additional items could have been put in, some that were of minimal expense and others that would have required significant financial contribution and commitment by the government. It did not do that.
Again, we are left way behind where we need to be in terms of meeting our Kyoto requirement, meeting our requirements to biodiversity and meeting our requirements to clean up the environment. It is just not there. The budget did not accomplish any of those ends to any significant degree. The government should be ashamed of its record in that regard.