Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by paying tribute to my colleague from Honoré-Mercier for using his private member's opportunity to bring such an important bill to the House of Commons. The short title of the bill is the Kyoto protocol implementation act. I can serve notice that the NDP is in support of Canada maintaining and fulfilling the obligations it stipulated itself to in ratifying the Kyoto accord. I can say categorically that this initiative has our support.
The first leader of the NDP, Tommy Douglas, was fond of quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson by saying, “Courage, my friends, 'tis not too late to build a better world”. Many of us have not lost faith that it is not too late to build a better world. We are still true believers in our international institutions. Even as some countries are turning their backs on the United Nations, many of us still have hope that internationalism is the way forward, whether we are dealing with overall development aid, fighting world poverty, or in fact this critical issue of climate change. Surely the world can come together and agree on a priority like saving our planet.
When Canada ratified the Kyoto accord, there was a wave of optimism throughout the land that the world was finally seized of this pressing issue. Finally those in the flat earth society who had been denying the science about climate change had come around and matured in their thinking. We were coming together as a global community, but now, one by one, even some of those countries that did stipulate themselves to putting in place a climate change action plan along the guidance of the Kyoto protocol are cooling off and backing out.
This is an opportunity for us to serve notice to the government of the day that the majority of the members of the House of Commons disagree with the minority ruling party in this 39th Parliament. We disagree profoundly and we are demanding that the government take action and fulfill its obligation.
It was not the Conservative Party of Canada that signed the Kyoto protocol; it was not the Conservative Party that ratified the Kyoto protocol; it was Parliament on behalf of the people of Canada. The majority of Parliament say that we want Kyoto implemented. We demand that Kyoto be implemented. The Conservatives seem to want to cut and run, as they are fond of saying.
When I was the head of the carpenters union, we did a lot of research on energy retrofitting, on the demand-side management of our precious energy resources. This is an area in which perhaps the Conservatives, even in the absence of a commitment to Kyoto, could take the opportunity to engage themselves.
The federal government has direction and control over 68,000 buildings. Many of those buildings are energy hogs. They were built in an era when energy conservation was not an issue.
A unit of energy harvested from the existing system through energy retrofitting or demand-side management is indistinguishable from a unit of energy generated at a hydroelectric station or a nuclear power plant, except for a number of key things. First of all, it is available at about one-third the cost. Second, it provides a cost saving to the building owner. Third, it creates seven times the number of person years of employment to harvest this energy through demand-side management versus supply-side management. As well, that unit of energy is online and available for resale immediately instead of the seven year lag time that would be the case if we needed to build a new nuclear power plant, like Ontario is contemplating today.
The federal government could show leadership to the private sector by embarking on a comprehensive demand-side management energy retrofit program of its own 68,000 buildings. I believe the estimate is that at 30% savings, it would be $1.5 billion a year in energy saved. Look at the jobs it would create. Look at the greenhouse gases that it would preclude from being generated through generating stations. This is an idea whose time has come. All of these things would be given life. They would come to fruition under the rubric of the Kyoto accord.
I am concerned that in the absence of any structured commitment, such as this international accord, none of these ideas will occur, or if they do, they will be done in a piecemeal fashion and random ad hoc little flare-ups. It will be just enough to keep the public quiet, but in actual fact there will be no real comprehensive strategy to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions and also, by this one simple initiative, to enjoy these many secondary benefits that I have outlined.
There is a secondary point. Coming from the province of Manitoba, I would be remiss if I did not remind my colleagues in the House that there is another national strategy which needs to be embraced in the context of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that is the fact that my province of Manitoba has a net surplus of hydroelectricity. We produce and generate more electricity than we can use. We export it. We export it to the United States, whereas Ontario is on the verge of another brownout season for its want of electricity. We have no way of transmitting and selling it domestically. We end up selling it internationally. It is madness that we do not have a national energy strategy.
My colleague from B.C. will testify to this as well. British Columbia is also a net producer of hydroelectricity while parts of Canada are wanting. We need an east-west domestic electricity grid so that we can produce virtually environmentally friendly hydroelectric power. I am not trying to diminish that there is a footprint left behind in the generation of electricity, but it pales in comparison--it does not even compare--to that of nuclear energy, thermo-generated electricity, an appalling producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
Again, I am concerned that it is difficult for us to raise the east-west power grid in isolation, but in the context of the Kyoto accord protocol, in the context of implementing our commitments under Kyoto, the east-west power grid would be a logical place to begin as a benefit to all Canadians and to bail out Ontario in this emergency the province is facing, which is a looming political problem if nothing else.
I am pleased that the 39th Parliament will in fact be dealing with and be seized of the issue of the Kyoto protocol. I am grateful to my colleague from Honoré-Mercier for bringing this forward.
I should spend the last minute of my time in recognizing and also paying tribute to my colleague from the Liberals, the hon. member for Don Valley West. In the previous Parliament, he was the former secretary of state for municipal infrastructure and investment.
I would like to recognize him personally because in the last Parliament the Kyoto protocol had no greater champion. In fact, there was only one place where practical measures were not only being recognized and acknowledged but implemented. For some of the municipal infrastructure initiatives being put forward, my colleague from Don Valley West had the pleasure of going around the country signing and delivering the cheques to municipalities. We have to recognize that this was taking us in the right direction.
Again, this is the type of initiative that loses its momentum in the absence of a greater context, which the Kyoto protocol initiative offered.
If we can say anything to Canadians, we can say that they should be lobbying their members of Parliament, especially those on the government side, to make it known that Canadians expected Kyoto to be implemented. They approved it and they directed their Parliament and their House of Commons to ratify it. Now we are waiting for the action plan to implement it.