Mr. Speaker, first of all, I certainly agree with the hon. member about the international record. It is pretty disgraceful. It is kind of embarrassing. When his leader and I were in Buenos Aires, we sat with representatives from 150 other countries. They told us we were a bunch of laggards. It was pretty embarrassing to be put in that situation. All we could do was point to the environment minister and say that he was to blame, that it was not us.
On the Kyoto plan, yes, my party has one. Yes, I have reviewed the NDP's plan. I think it has some problems. What I have learned is that there is a party in government which, if given everything up front before an election, it steals what it wants and discredits the rest. It does that on everything. It is best to hold one's fire, get that party right in one's sights and then pull the trigger, but do not pull it too soon because one just might miss.
As far as climate change is concerned, we have always maintained that our environment is in great need of help. There are boil water warnings. The aquifers are becoming polluted. The air is polluted. There is an increase in asthma cases caused by particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide, all of those things.
Just as a precautionary principle, we have to deal with greenhouse gases. Climate change is occurring. It is occurring every day. It has occurred 33 times before and will probably occur 33 times again. We are probably having an impact on it and we should deal with it. Just as a precautionary principle, we should deal with it. My party's plan deals with it in a clean air way.
We cannot pull out of Kyoto. Section 26 of the Kyoto protocol says that we have to give one year's notice and then wait three years before we can opt out. It takes four years to get out. It is not practical to waste time doing that. Lawyers get rich. The WTO would punish us. Instead of doing that, it would be much better to come up with a real solid plan and go for it. Get industry and the provinces on side and go for it. We can achieve those targets and better. We could be leaders, but we are not leaders now, I guarantee that.