Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for reminding me.
In last year's budget we had some investments in Kyoto. I would like us to build on that experience. We need some more beyond the measures in last year's budget. We need some more investments in economic instruments and incentives for industry to adapt and change, some market signals.
I know there has been this concept that has been floating out there about a fund that would buy up credits. Those areas where we have greenhouse gas reductions would get a refund from this fund. That allows the market to some extent to focus on what are going to be the major efficiencies that we can accomplish. I would like to see some emphasis on alternative fuels and renewable energy. We have various instruments in our tax policy, in the budget before us today and in future budgets, that will deal with that.
I would like to see the budget deal with municipal solid waste. We often forget that the landfills that we see all across this country produce methane. Methane rises into the atmosphere. In some cases we collect it underneath, but in most cases the methane just rises into the atmosphere.
Methane is about 20 times more harmful with respect to greenhouse gases than CO
2
. We still allow this methane to drift into the atmosphere. I know that there are technologies available to convert methane. I have worked with the city of Toronto and our ministers here to see if we can encourage the kinds of technologies that will convert this municipal solid waste into methane and turn it into electricity, and into products that could be used for example by the farming industry.
We need to invest further, beyond the measures in this budget, in public transit. In a city such as Toronto we see the air quality diminishing. I would like to see measures that will encourage energy efficiency and encourage investments in alternative energy, such as wind power, solar, the use of hydrogen, et cetera.
Having said that, we must remember that we still have some work to do on taxes. In last year's budget, the budget before us today and in future budgets, because of various commitments that our government has rightly made, I am not sure that there will be a lot of flexibility for the finance minister to look very aggressively at tax cuts.
In the forthcoming budget I would like to see a discussion around where we are going with taxes, particularly personal income taxes which are still somewhat high in Canada. We still need to be mindful of work that we have to do on taxes.
However, we learned in Ontario under the Harris and Eves governments that tax cuts are not the panacea. In Ontario, the government went well beyond what was required, necessary or prudent. We saw a gutting of programs. Canadians and Ontarians said the government had gone too far.
We must be careful about how we go with tax cuts because we erode the revenue base of the government and then we cannot deliver on some of our national priorities, some of the federal government's programs that most Canadians like and need. We must look at that.
We need to invest in our national security. I will declare a conflict of interest in the sense that I am the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. We need to deal with law enforcement. We need to deal aggressively with organized crime. We need to invest, as was discussed by the member from Windsor, in our borders. We need to increase our defence spending.
I suggest that this will be a difficult budget. I am confident that our Minister of Finance will come out with a budget that will reflect the priorities of Canadians.