My apologies, Mr. Speaker. Someone who is involved in the issues of health might want to know that it costs more than $1 billion a year in hospital admissions, emergency room visits and absenteeisms. This is according to the Ontario Medical Association.
In Quebec the flooding of the Saguenay Valley in 1996 caused almost $1.1 billion worth of damage and killed 10 people. Damage from the 1998 ice storm was also in the billions. In Atlantic Canada sea levels are rising and severe storms in New Brunswick and P.E.I. in the past few years have damaged coastal communities.
In northern regions, as we have talked about, scientists are already reporting serious changes in the polar bear population. Warmer arctic weather patterns are causing earlier ice breaks and are affecting the feeding habits of bears as well as the use of ice as a platform for things like the seal hunt.
What can we do? I have laid out the argument. We have climate change and what is affected. We can do a heck of a lot more than what is being proposed by the government.
We need to strengthen the emissions reduction targets. We need to enforce them and implement backstop legislation for automakers, so that if they do not do the right thing voluntarily, we make sure that it is enforced to ensure they make the transition.
We need to provide incentives to promote the adoption of energy efficient technologies and non-polluting renewable electricity generation.
We need to set building efficiency standards. I am proud that in the western part of my riding of Ottawa Centre, Mountain Equipment Co-op, bar none, set the standard on how to create and build energy efficient buildings. It can be done. It needs support. We should move on it.
We need to use the partnership funds to lever actions from the provinces and territories on the implementation of renewable energies.
We could also take a look at how we generate energy. I do not think there has been enough done. We could take a look at wind energy in Europe. Spain set targets and exceeded them. What we have right now in Canada is just a blip on the map. We have not gone far enough in terms of wind energy.
We know it can be done. We are looking for leadership. We are looking to the federal government, and the current government in particular, since it seems to want to do something about climate change, to invest. Sadly, we did not see that in the budget. With all due respect to bus passes, we need to go further than that.
We need to make sure there is infrastructure. We need to make sure that there is clean green energy to drive those buses. We need to make sure that when people go to work they have options that presently are not in front of them. Quite frankly, that is an issue in my own riding.
I started off my comments by saying it is an embarrassment in having to have this debate today. We should be talking about how much further we could be going. Instead we are trying to convince people of the fact that there is a necessary call to arms on this, that this is the issue, and that this is something we should all be focusing on daily. We hope that when we look back at this debate 10 years from now, we will be able to say that we actually listened and we took action.