Mr. Speaker, this is good debate because in fact western economic diversification is exactly that: economic diversification. I am afraid that my friend did not understand what one of my experts was saying. I will quote him:
Conversion of the landscape to one less prone to epidemic outbreaks provides the only real solution to the type of Mountain Pine Beetle problems currently seen in B.C.
He is talking about the responsibility that governments have, including the federal government, to pony up some dollars to help in the process of reforestation, and rather than just going with pine and pine and pine in the forest to come up with a diversity of pine, a diversity of stand, and to manage the forest in a way such that the forest would not be susceptible, as it has been, to this epidemic with one particular species.
With respect to the question of climate change, I can understand that he is trying to make a point about Kyoto. I think we could have a debate about energy and energy alternatives that might be well taken in the House, but let us talk about that for half a second.
Instead of shipping a couple of hundred million dollars over to Russia in this false attempt with carbon credits, why not take that money and put it into wind research? Why not take that money and put it into solar research? Why not take that money and put it into tax credits and programs which would actually develop alternatives that can make a difference in terms of carbon generation?
We are going to be requiring more and more energy. I take a look, for example, at the great nation of China, with 1.3 billion people and the rapacious appetite they have for energy. The amount of energy that it will require for its developing economy is absolutely gigantic. We cannot even imagine the amount of energy that it is going to require.
With the kind of technology we have in Canada, through either a tax credit program or some kind of encouragement, instead of shipping the money for these crazy carbon tax credits, why do we not use that money to help Canadian industry develop an alternative for countries like China or India so that they will no longer be dependent on burning fossil fuels and creating the CO
2
? That is the innovative way that the Conservative Party is looking at it, not the old, tired out policies of shipping billions of dollars for paper tax credits.