Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to take part in this very lively debate. It is good for the House to be debating this issue.
At the outset, I want to read the motion from the NDP into the record:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should recognize the public health impacts of smog and the failure of voluntary emission standards by legislating mandatory improvements to vehicle efficiency in all classes of light duty vehicles sold in Canada.
As my colleague just said, we certainly recognize that smog is a problem, a huge problem, particularly in our larger centres. We need to recognize that sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide are the main contributors to this.
Our party supports, and in fact our environment critic, the member for Red Deer, has called for, a clean air act and environmental legislation that would address this. We put this forward before the last election, calling for the government to take action on NO
2
and SO
2
in particular. In fact, we should not stop with clean air; we should address clean water and obviously some of the land issues as well.
Before I get to the specifics of the motion, I want to address the issue of Kyoto because we have just heard from the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Natural Resources. Members of the Bloc, of the NDP and certainly of my party have pointed out that the government in fact has no plan. It was basically admitted by the Minister of the Environment as recently as this week in an article in The Globe and Mail . The article stated:
The federal government admitted yesterday it has no plan in place to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol....Ottawa had promised to have a comprehensive implementation plan ready no later than next week's budget, complete with the regulatory or tax measures needed to meet the Kyoto targets for greenhouse gas emissions.
But [the] environment [minister] said yesterday it will be “several more weeks” before anything is ready. Cabinet ministers have made no firm decisions, he said.
That is completely unacceptable. The government signed on to Kyoto in 1997 and ratified it in 2002 and still has no plan.
The government references a plan from 2002. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and the member from Windsor know full well, because they sat on a committee that studied the implementation plan at that point, that even members of the government would have to admit the plan was lacking in detail. The then minister of the environment was before us as we were asking about things like whether there would be tax credits for vehicles to allow people to buy hybrid vehicles. The response was that the government did not know if it was going to do that.
There was a mention in the plan of a CO
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sequestration and pipeline. What is the government planning to do with this? This could actually reduce CO
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emissions substantially. The minister at the time said he did not know what was being done with that and that the government would have to see where that goes.
We will have to see where that goes? These are the sorts of answers that the committee received, which basically revealed that the government has absolutely no idea what it is doing on Kyoto, and it has caused some serious problems. It is a matter of international standing when one signs on to an agreement with absolutely no idea of how those commitments are going to be fulfilled.
The government should be honest with Canadians and start to address environmental problems as a whole issue, as I was mentioning about the gasoline industry. The gasoline industry has reduced sulphur, and we certainly support that, but in doing so it increased some of the CO
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emissions. We need to look at addressing environmental issues overall, especially the more noxious toxins like NO
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and SO
2
I want to address some specifics of the motion. My colleague from British Columbia raised this earlier. I think NDP members should perhaps in their future speeches talk specifically about what they are calling for in the motion with regard to greenhouse gases, NO
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and SO
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, with some plans, some specific mandatory measures to be put in place. As members of the House know, there already are a lot of mandatory measures on that industry. In fact, the industry would argue, and I think this party would agree, that there are too many regulations on this industry. There are too many regulations that are different from the North American regulatory market.
Why are we only addressing this industry? Why the focus on this industry, particularly in regard to the members from Windsor? We should look at why we are only addressing and targeting the auto industry, particularly when the two members from Windsor have an awful lot of auto workers in their ridings who rely on this industry. Why are they targeting it and singling it out for what is in my view unfair attention? Why only vehicles sold in Canada? This is something that I think the members should look at closely: “legislating mandatory improvements to vehicle efficiency in all classes of light duty vehicles sold in Canada”.
Members should know that 80% to 90% of the vehicles manufactured in Canada are exported primarily to the United States. Is the NDP arguing that we should have two assembly lines, one with regulatory emission standards for the 10% to 20% of vehicles sold in Canada and the other with different standards for the 80% to 90% of vehicles that are exported? Perhaps members opposite could clear that up with respect to the motion.
In our view there is a need for regulatory harmonization with this industry. I would like to quote a spokesperson for the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers' Association who said it very well in 2002 when he addressed the fuel efficiency target of 25%. Mark Nantais, president of the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, said:
The government's choice of a 25% target, without due diligence for what is achievable in the stipulated timeframe, given the other very important considerations of consumer safety, technological feasibility, and economic impact, is a major concern. It creates, quite frankly, unrealistic public expectations for both government and our industry. If we put it another way, we're being set up for failure.
That was said back in 2002 when members of the industry and others were raising this issue and saying that it was an unachievable target and that it would harm the industry. The government, unfortunately, did not listen to their concerns and did not recognize what the industry had already done.
The member for Oshawa, the chair of our auto caucus, pointed out very well what the industry has already done in a proactive way to address its emissions. Emissions coming out of its assembly plants between 1990-99 and the energy intensity of its plant operations were reduced by nearly 18%. We should recognize that and celebrate the fact that the industry has taken action by and of itself.
We need to understand that the automobile industry in Canada is within the context of a North American industry. However, the NDP, with its motion today, seems to have no clue that we are within a North American market and that we do export most of our vehicles to the United States. It would be nonsense for us to create further regulatory disharmony between our regulations and the regulations in the United States. It would harm the industry and the workers in Windsor, Oshawa, Cambridge, Alliston and elsewhere. What the NDP does not understand and will never understand is that to create regulatory burdens on the industry drives people out of work.
Let me address some solutions. We in the Conservative Party do support a clean air act. We would deal with nitrous oxide and sulphur oxide. Our environment critic will be here this afternoon and he can present it to members then.
We support infrastructure spending. We have called for the government to share the federal fuel tax with communities across Canada to address the issue of congestion. One only has to go to areas like Windsor, Toronto and Edmonton to see the congestion caused by a lack of available infrastructure.
There are three approaches to the environment that the government could take. First, it could impose further regulation on the industry, but we believe that would harm the industry and not lead to overall economic growth or environmental stewardship.
The second approach would be through program spending. Some program spending may be necessary. The government will be outlaying $3.7 billion. Members of the environment committee are studying this issue. I know the member for Essex is also involved in this. However the government has not been very forthright about where the money is going.
The third approach could be through incentives. I am speaking about incentives to encourage the industry itself to innovate and change consumer habits. The Conservative Party believes the government should head in that direction. We think providing tax credits for buying hybrid vehicles would be a sensible thing. It is something the government should do and we hope the government will do so in the budget. It should encourage people to change their habits and reduce some of the emissions.
Another thing that could be done by the government, which I referenced earlier, is that instead of putting $3.7 billion into these various funds and having the people go to it, the government should work with the industry, particularly those in western Canada, and look at a CO
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sequestration and a CO
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pipeline.
If we were to combine that with a clean air act that addresses NO
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and SO
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, we would address the CO
2
by sequestering it and using it to filter out more of the oil from the ground. This would actually address CO
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emissions in a very substantive way and it is something we hope the government looks at as a solution to environmental challenges, rather than just focussing on Kyoto, and in fact not focussing very well by not in any way tabling a reasonable plan.