Madam Speaker, my thanks to my colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore for generously sharing his time with me and for his kind comments about the province of Manitoba. We take the issue of climate change very seriously.
Yesterday, the first day of the implementation of the Kyoto accord, should have been cause for great celebration in the land. I am surprised there were no people dancing in the streets. We would like to think this was the first day on the road toward a cleaner, healthier environment. The reason we have not seen cross-country jubilation and celebrations in the streets is no one has given the general public any indication that there is a plan in place which may lead to improving the quality of our air and therefore the quality of our life. There is an absolute dearth, a paucity, an absence of any concrete plan whatsoever.
I would like to table today something for the Liberal Party. If the Liberal government is devoid of any plan or any idea on how to achieve the Kyoto goals, the NDP has a concrete plan. We are willing to share that with the government of the day. It is even costed out clause by clause. I will be happy to go through some of that should time permit.
The Liberal government is not even at kindergarten level in terms of how we might achieve our Kyoto goals. The Liberal government is being out-greened by a guy who drives a Hummer. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, is light years ahead of the Government of Canada. The Prime Minister of Canada is out-greened by a guy who drives a Hummer. This is shocking to me.
California has taken seriously the fact that voluntary compliance for reduction of emissions will not work, which essentially is the content of our motion today. If we are waiting for the air to clean up through voluntary compliance or voluntary measures, we had better pack a lunch and a puffer because we will be wheezing like my colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore, complications that we do not wish on anyone.
Our excitement about the advent of the Kyoto accord is tempered greatly by the fact that we do not see a plan on the part of the government to help us get there. We do not have a road map to get to where we need to go. We have soiled our nests so badly that our kids cannot breathe, and it can only get worse unless we take drastic measures. I do not accept that what we are proposing is drastic at all. We believe it is reasonable, achievable, cost effective and necessary.
Our motion simply states:
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.
This is not rocket science. The industry and Canadians should have been going in this direction all along.
There has been reluctance in the industry to accept regulation. It is not in its nature to willingly accept limitations on how it conducts business. However, there is a duty and an obligation on the part of government to ensure that businesses act in the best interests of Canadians. I remind members that voluntary compliance to ethical guidelines in the accounting industry is what gave us Enron and Nortel, et cetera, until the government in the United States swept in and introduced strict regulatory measures.
In this example there is perhaps something even more important at stake, and that is the air that we breathe. What could be more important and what could be more natural than the government to intervene on behalf of the well-being of all Canadians? If some people are unwilling to accept that we should do these measures for the right reasons, then they can look at the monetary reasons.
Canada's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development has calculated that the benefits, when compiled about achieving air quality standards contemplated in Kyoto, would be valued at $10 billion annually. That is a $10 billion net benefit for doing the right thing and making our air safe to breath. Do we need any more arguments about why we should take steps now? There are secondary impacts that are not even usually factored into the equation of air quality.
Research shows that in the greater Vancouver regional district, improving the quality of air would prevent $74 million a year in crop damage. That is something we do not consider. As we soil our nest and pollute our environment, it has an effect not only on the air we breath for human consumption, but the residue hurts agriculture and that industry sector. The B.C. Medical Association estimates that 2,000 premature deaths per year in B.C. are the result of air pollution. I will not bore the House with those statistics because shocking as they are, I think we are all quite aware of them. That is only one province alone.
There has been a pattern of reluctance of the industry to even implement research and developments to the auto industry without regulation. There was opposition to even publication of car-gas mileage in the early years. In 1975 the American Environmental Protection Agency wanted car companies to start listing what mileage one could expect from the cars they were selling. They baulked at that. They did not want to do it because they thought it would interfere with their ability to market certain models of cars. Now, after a threat of action from the EPA, car companies stamp right on every product what mileage one can expect from X, Y and Z car. This has been a net benefit. It now becomes a marketing advantage for companies to brag that their vehicles achieve X, Y and Z kilometres per litre.
The Environmental Protection Agency met with car companies to try to implement reduction of smog causing tailpipe emissions. The industry was not crazy about it. Some even claimed that such a rapid change would lead to bankruptcy. Some of the big three car companies said that if they had to reduce tailpipe emissions, it would be the road to bankruptcy. That was not the case. Now Ford and other companies claim that they go beyond regulatory requirements and that is part of their marketing strategy as well, to promote what they make.
We argue that there will be no negative impact on the industry if we raise the bar and expect a higher standard of fuel efficiency. In fact, the industry will rise to those new expectations, meet them and we will all benefit from that.
We have a number of points that we put forward in a comprehensive package on how Canada would meet its Kyoto obligations. As I alluded to earlier, I am glad to share these good ideas with all Canadians, and specifically with the ruling party of the day. We not only have the ideas, through consultation and canvassing right across the country, but we costed them out. We did an analysis as to what the impact would be on jobs. I am happy to report that there are far greater job creation possibilities in the demand side management of our energy resources than there is in the supply side of natural resources. We should all take note of this.
I used to work on the oil rigs and it does not take very many people to produce a barrel of oil. Once the well is pumping, there are very few people involved at all. However, it takes a lot of person hours to energy retrofit a building envelope to save energy.
As we clean up the environment, we will be creating jobs. This will be jobs and the environment, not jobs versus the environment. This is something to celebrate as we implement these things on our way to Kyoto.
Yesterday is a day we are celebrating, the first day in the survival of the planet. Let us put a road map in place. Let us implement motions like this and clean up together for a better world.