Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today in this House. I am doing so from a new seat, a little closer, in the front row next to my colleague. I am sure this will allow me to better comment on this government's initiatives which, as we can see today in the Speech from the Throne, far from meet the needs and interests of Quebeckers in terms of the five conditions the Bloc Québécois set for supporting the speech.
This Speech from the Throne is very disappointing. It is especially disappointing when it comes to fighting climate change. When I came to this House 10 years ago, there was a Reform Party and a Canadian Alliance Party on this side of the House and they did not believe that climate change existed. They did everything they could to undermine the opposition parties who at the time believed that the Kyoto protocol was the best tool for fighting climate change. Those hon. members at the time preferred to believe in the analyses and studies from the oil industry, which said that climate change was strictly a natural phenomenon that had nothing to do with human activity. Even though the world's leading academics showed that there was a direct link between human activity, industrial activity and global warming, those hon. members, who are now in government, weakened and killed the best tool we had and that was the Kyoto protocol.
Ten years later, we are proud that, in a Speech from the Throne, this government recognizes for the first time that climate change does exist. However, we would have preferred that those parties and those members of Parliament had recognized that fact at the time. We probably would have been able to progress more quickly and been able to present the international community with a record of greenhouse gas reductions that was more impressive than the Minister of the Environment reported to the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Nairobi.
In the Speech from the Throne, in particular on page 14, we read that the government believes strongly in an effective global approach to greenhouse gas emissions. It believes that must include binding targets that apply to all major emitters, including Canada. However, in fact, those binding targets proposed by the government are nothing more than targets based on an increase of our production and not on a real, absolute reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. That means that the more barrels of oil we produce, the more we will continue to pollute.
With this Speech from the Throne, the government is trying to make the public believe that there are binding targets that will help us to improve our performance on greenhouse gas emissions. We say again: the intensity targets favoured by the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are nothing more than window dressing and serve only to benefit the petroleum industry which makes exorbitant profits and which continues to ignore a worldwide social consensus that should enable us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This international leadership to which the government supposedly wants to commit us is clearly spelled out within the Speech from the Throne. It refers to meetings of APEC and the G-8. One could even add the meetings between the Prime Minister and George W. Bush in Washington and the meetings in Australia with Prime Minister Howard, whose purpose was nothing less than ensuring that there were no real targets for reducing greenhouse gases in the short or medium term and no timetable.
What the government decided to do in this Speech from the Throne, is clearly drop its support for the Kyoto protocol. It is our duty to denounce that decision.
We have to remember that the government lied to the public. We have to remember that in Nairobi, where I was part of a delegation of parliamentarians, the then Minister of the Environment made a solemn promise in front of the international community that Canada would respect its obligations under the Kyoto protocol. More than a year later, we learn that the government has decided to toss the protocol out with the trash.
We cannot accept that in Quebec. Why? Simply because 90% of Quebeckers want to respect the Kyoto protocol. The Government of Quebec has implemented a plan that allows our province to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Quebec's industrial sectors have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 7%, in an absolute manner, not on an intensity basis, as the government is proposing.
We were the first province in Canada to come up with a plan to fight climate change. That is why we want the government to respect the Kyoto protocol.
We are also disappointed that the government has not said anything about where the carbon exchange announced in the Speech from the Throne will be located. The Montreal Exchange has already achieved an enviable degree of expertise that gives it an advantage over all other stock exchanges in Canada except for Toronto, of course. Now Toronto wants control over derivatives. The Montreal Exchange developed the derivatives market and has significant expertise in this area. It signed an agreement with Chicago. Why is it that now, 10 years later, just as the agreement between Montreal and Toronto is about to come to an end, Toronto wants control over the derivatives market that strengthened the Montreal Exchange's role at a time when none of the other Canadian stock markets believed in it?
Today we are telling the government that if it sides with Bay Street, we will side with Saint-Jacques Street because these businesses operating in various industrial and manufacturing sectors—I met with their representatives again yesterday—have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 25% to 30%. They decided to invest in changing their industrial processes. They have accumulated credits by making structural changes in their industries, and they are ready to participate in an emissions credits trading system now.
Now these businesses are being told that they should pay for the failure of other provinces to reduce emissions. That is completely unacceptable.
Today, I was very disappointed to see the Liberal Party of Canada support this Speech from the Throne. I am disappointed because I thought that the opposition parties in this House had built a strong consensus concerning our Kyoto commitments. Quebec and the Bloc Québécois still support the Kyoto accord, but elsewhere in Canada, support is dwindling. For years, the Liberals supported Kyoto, but now, the Conservatives have told the international community that they want to toss it out with the trash.
In closing, I would like to assure Quebeckers that as long as we are here in this House—and there will be more of us than ever before in the coming years—we will continue to support the Kyoto accord because we believe that fighting climate change is both an environmental imperative and an economic one.