Madam Speaker, I want to compliment the member from the NDP for this motion. I think it is an excellent motion that speaks to a challenge we are all facing.
I will just ask him to be perhaps a little patient. As the parliamentary secretary for the minister said very clearly in his comments, currently we are engaging in negotiations with the auto industry. They are at a sensitive time right now, but I hope that he will be pleased in the near future with what will come out of those deliberations. I know that the minister, the parliamentary secretary and the government are working very hard to resolve this conundrum.
Let me just say we know that the transportation industry is the fastest growing industry. It is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The interesting thing is that the technologies to actually implement this change already exist today. If we look at the experiences of Europe, California and Japan, we see that they have done an excellent job in reducing those emissions, not based on technologies that we hope we have but on technologies that we have today. Interestingly enough, that does not include the very expensive hybrid cars we have now, which is a good move. We can actually accomplish the 25% goal with what we have, without hybrids, and I am sure that in the future hybrids will become more popular.
My question to the hon. member is this. With respect to a Kyoto plan, a significant but under-reported and unrecognized element of what ought to be a part of that plan is not so much how much we burn. It is one factor, but there is another way in which we can actually meet our Kyoto requirements and indeed go beyond them, and that is in the area of conservation. In other words, we burn fuel and we emit energy, but how do we manage to conserve that energy, which obviously affects the amount of carbon materials and fuel products we burn?
Is the hon. member aware of and does he support the notion that we should adopt better ways of conserving energy through the way in which we build and insulate our homes and buildings? Does he agree that this is a significant way in which we can meet our Kyoto requirements?