Mr. Speaker, like others before me, I want to thank the member for Saint-Jean for bringing forward this motion that deals with a most important issue.
If we are elected to this House to speak on behalf of our constituents, we should have the right to speak to these kinds of issues. I am always outraged to see the government make decisions without giving us the opportunity to debate the issues, as is the case today since it is not the government party that brought this issue forward, even though it should have done so.
I was a provincial MP in Quebec and I remember that, when there were fundamental issues to be discussed, René Lévesque always told us, “We will discuss it on the floor of the National Assembly; that is where the representatives of the people are and that is where we should have the right to express our views on behalf of our constituents”. Mr. Lévesque was a person who truly believed in democracy.
Personally, I think that the last question asked by the member for Saint-Jean is fundamental. What kind of world do we want to live in? We are globalizing poverty and imbalance. We have to protect ourselves more and more because there are people in other countries who will live in poverty because of our wealth, and we are letting it happen.
This morning, I think someone raised the matter of the U.S. president's discussion paper. The document says that the number of poor people will increase and that there will be fewer and fewer rich people, but that they will be increasingly rich, and that they will need to protect themselves against the poor. It is quite alarming to hear such comments and to know—on top of that—that it is true. That is where we are headed.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 9th Conférence de Montréal, which brings together all of the countries of the Americas to discuss various themes and subjects. I went along with two ministers from the House and there were also other members there. There are always experts who speak at these conferences. This time, there were experts from the World Bank who told us that unless we woke up, we would basically put an end to this world as we know it.
They showed us, for example, that 20% of the world's population, 20% of the world's countries, do not have electricity. This figure will surprise many people. As population increases, more and more hard energy is used, such as coal and wood, because it is cheap energy. We are in the process of polluting the planet in certain areas.
I am not making this up, this comes from an expert from the World Bank who gave a presentation. In some parts of the world right now there is a cloud of pollution that filters out between 10% and 15% of the sun's rays. This expert told us how to make you aware of this problem and to tell you that now is the time to act.
He told us that with approximately $600 billion, we could provide clean energy for the whole world. Six hundred billion dollars over 15 years would solve the problem. Otherwise, we are headed to our demise. I did not make this up. Ask some of the Liberal members who were at the same presentations as I was.
Obviously these people who are invited to show us problems as they are do not come there to lie to us. They come to tell us the truth because they are scientists who travel the world over in their work with the World Bank.
We are now talking about a missile defence plan that will cost somewhere between $60 and $100 billion, or one sixth of what we would need to solve a major part of the global energy problem, to solve a major part of the pollution problem that we are responsible for because we do not take action and we wait until tomorrow, because there is not enough of a financial advantage for us, because we do not give a damn about the people who live in misery and poverty.
Every time I attend such conferences, I wonder what we can do to get some response. I asked a Liberal member who was with me, “Do you think that the Prime Minister and Mr. Bush listen to these speakers? Do they ask them questions?” He said, “I am sure they do not. And even if they listened to them, they would not believe that they are telling the truth”.
However, these people are our leaders; they are making decisions about our future. We were talking about young people. My colleague was saying that yesterday he met some young people who are concerned. They are right to be concerned, not because we would not be able to change things, but because we do not have the courage to change things, because we do not have the guts to change things, because we live as though we are the last people who will walk on this planet. I find this quite discouraging.
When the government tells us, “We have no choice; the Americans have decided this”, I say, “No way. We are a country. We are able to take our responsibilities”. We should be able to tell them what is wrong—