Madam Speaker, I will address the first part of the member's question which had to do with the way the gas tax will be distributed among municipalities in Ontario. The government had an opportunity to negotiate with the provinces to get them to commit to an equitable distribution of this gas tax.
As it currently stands, the government had the money. It did not have to give away the store without any strings attached. It could have sat down with the provinces and told them what strings would be attached to the money before it was given and that it wanted to see an equitable distribution of the money. To date, I have not heard anything about how the money will be distributed. I think that just to give away the store to the provinces without getting some conditions back on this is not acceptable.
Furthermore, I would say that gas utilization is not the way to go on this. I think it should be done on a per capita or population basis because gas utilization is very difficult to ascertain. With the gasoline alley in Muskoka along highway 11 and other gasoline alleys in different parts of Ontario, it would mean that those municipalities would get a disproportionate amount of the gas tax even though they do not have the infrastructure that more heavily populated areas have.
The way to distribute the gas tax should be based on a per capita basis, which is what the mayors and councillors in Wellington—Halton Hills and surrounding areas have told me.
It is the government's position, its approach to Kyoto and its plan that we are opposed to. We in the Conservative Party are in favour of a strong, clean environmental policy and strong environmental initiatives, and our critic has done a lot of work in this regard.
The problem with what we have opposed, and what we will oppose in an upcoming election, are the lack of plans as to how we are going to address the issues around emissions. We are very much in support of environmental initiatives but we oppose the government's lack of an approach and lack of a plan to Kyoto.