Debates of Feb. 1st, 2007

Opposition Motion—The Environment

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's comments on the environment and his zeal to move forward. I agree with his criticism of the former Liberal government of doing absolutely nothing on the environment.

In his zeal, he misrepresented the facts. He said that he was the only member who stood up to move the clean air act through the committee quickly. In fact, the Conservative members on that committee supported a speedy passage, a speedy delivery, a speedy execution of the clean air act. We supported the vote to which he referred. I want to clarify the facts that he is not the only person in the House who wants to have clean air and have it urgently.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the technical fact of what the parliamentary secretary to the environment says is true. The 11 to 1 vote eventually became the vote that brought this back, although it was some weeks after we wanted.

It is important to note that the amendment we just brought forward is one that works completely at purposes and in line with what the leading environmental groups in the country have asked for. The amendment to motion of the Leader of the Opposition would bring it back in line, would call for that action that the Liberals so desperately want, and they just rejected it. The hon. House leader for the opposition simply shook his head, no. He could not even be bothered to rise to his feet. He rejected it out of hand.

I think of the environment groups and the people whom they represent, the many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Canadians. They want speedy action on this, and the Liberal Party of Canada dismissed them with a wave. It said that it was not interested in their views. The Liberals will go to their receptions and they may go to their fundraisers and leave $5 in the kitty, but they will not help them when something serious is going on. When there is a legislative process that has been created, the Liberals dismiss them, and that is what they just did.

I find it remarkable that on an amendment calling for speedy action, calling for some of the things that are proposed by the Liberals in the debate, they want to delay it and take more time to get it right, as if they know how to do that. They did not do that when they were in power and I am not sure they have the capacity or the willingness to do it now, and that worries me. They need to change direction quickly.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will shift gears from the hyperbole and to a certain extent the histrionics and move to some substantive questions for the member. I will like to ask the member a couple of pointed questions.

If in fact the NDP and its leader were so firmly committed to immediate action, why did they not work with the Liberal Party and the official leader of the opposition at the time to compel the minority government to regulate greenhouse gases under the Canadian Environment Protection Act, all powers of which the new government possesses? In fact, as a reminder for Canadians, our government actually amended the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, against the wishes of the Conservative Party, the new minority government, to include greenhouse gases as toxic substances under the Canadian Environment Protection Act.

Could he help us understand that?

Second, I put four pointed questions to the parliamentary secretary for the environment awhile ago. He was incapable of or refused to answer any of the four. He made a statement, which was quite astonishing, that it was the first government in the world to move to regulate greenhouse gases. Could the member help us understand what the European Union has been doing for 12 years?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the effort required to educate the Conservative Party on issues of international environmental action and obligations would take a lot longer than I think I would be allowed to speak. The Conservatives have been misguided. They have been wrong. They presented a bill before Parliament and I think they sincerely thought it was a good thing. I think they thought it would pass the mustard for Canadians. The groups and scientists, who were working on this issue, were a little stunned and surprised by the vehemence of Canadians, pushing back on them saying that it was dead on arrival.

Working with the Liberal Party is not necessarily the easiest thing to do. An impression has been created by hon. colleague's question that the Liberal Party, when in power, needed the help of the NDP to regulate greenhouse gases under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Liberals had the powers right there all the time. After it was amendment, the capacity to do that was right there.

I talked to the former environment minister about doing that very thing and his response was it was very difficult at the cabinet table because that was where it took place.

What we are suggesting to the hon. member is let us take it from behind the closed doors of cabinet, the veils of secrecy and power, and put it in front of Canadians, here in Parliament. Would that not be a more progressive and enlightened thing to do? We and the environment groups believe so.

When the Liberals were in power, we worked with them to get $1.4 billion for the environment that they did not allot. We rewrote their budget, which was the first time in Canadian history, and we were proud to do it. With a gun to the head, back up against the wall, we used what we could to get the job done on the environment, and we are continuing to fight for the environment from this corner.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley a question and perhaps bring him back to today's issue, Kyoto and the environment. We do not want to hear about committee arguments and what the Liberal Party did not do. We know that and we have heard enough about it in the House.

Can he explain how he can defend the idea that Kyoto can work mainly with sectoral programs rather than territorial programs? Take the example of Europe, which has been successful with territorial programs. Each territory has its own program for reducing greenhouse gases.

Yet, here in Canada, we do not want that, at least the NDP does not. Why not? Take the oil sands, for example. This will be a very important issue and the NDP will have to take a stand. Is it the responsibility of all of Canada to reduce greenhouse gases because there will be greater development of the oil sands? British Columbia has built hydroelectric dams. Should it pay to reduce greenhouse gases resulting from Alberta's oil production? Does this also apply to Quebec and Newfoundland?

That would be unfair. We shall see if the NDP response will be a wish to reduce Alberta's oil production to avoid paying for the pollution. My question is as follows: is that what the NDP would propose?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting comment by the member from the Bloc. We have to be very careful in this debate to not pit province against province. Under that splitting of common interest, and I believe the interests on climate change are common, climate change does not identify provincial boundaries or notions of potential sovereigntist boundaries. Climate change works across this. It is a nation that must be seized with this issue, no less.

It is confusing when my hon. colleague talks about choices. The last federal budget, which his party supported on the record, was one that absolutely slashed and crumbled funding for climate change programs in Quebec. That party also supported the softwood lumber sellout, hurting people in Quebec.

It is a confusing debate to try to suggest that the NDP are not believers in the environment. There is nothing further from the truth. We have worked consistently and adamantly across the country to get something progressive for our country when it comes to the environment.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I intend to share my time this afternoon with the hon. member for Halifax West.

Clearly, today in the House we, as parliamentarians, are confronted by the 21st century challenge: climate change.

I am proud to have been elected to keep the government accountable on the environment and to defend the Kyoto treaty. It is one of the things I ran on and it is one of the reasons I ran at all.

I have had the great privilege, over the last 20 years, of working in the area of environment and energy and I am very privileged now to have been named by the official Leader of the Opposition as the environment critic and, in a sense, I have come full circle.

I have been asking the government for a full year now a simple question: Will it table its plan to fight climate change? I have asked that question repeatedly and I have yet to receive an answer. Unless the government can show Canadians otherwise, now 12 months into a term, there is only one reasonable conclusion for Canadians to draw: there is no plan. The government is making it up as it goes along. It is, as I like to say, jumping from ice flow to ice flow, announcing programs, handing out cheques and organizing photo ops.

However, worse than that, it is now clear, after questioning yesterday, when 18 times in a row the Prime Minister was asked to clarify his views on climate change, which he campaigned against for 10 full years before becoming Prime Minister, including as Leader of the Opposition, whether his views were correct then or whether his views are correct now, and he refused, in every instance, to answer the question. It is now clear that it is worse than the fact that there is no plan. There is no vision from the government and no vision from the Prime Minister.

The Conservative platform almost did not mention the environment, except for a made in Canada plan. This, while the Minister of the Environment flies off today to Paris to do damage control at the intergovernmental panel on climate change meeting. I suppose in France he will be finding his made in Canada plan.

The federal government did not mention environment in its recent economic update. It was barely mentioned in the Speech from the Throne. The made in Canada plan right here in Ottawa was a euphemism for taking Canada out of the Kyoto treaty, something that has been the project of the Prime Minister's for a long time.

Canadians are asking what the made in Canada plan included. They want some details. As I said, it was not in the Speech from the Throne.

In late February, the former minister of the environment told The Globe and Mail, “There is an action plan that we are going to move on very quickly”. February became March and then April. The Conservatives introduced a budget that froze or cut every major climate change initiative that our government had put in place, to the tune of $5.6 billion. Bureaucrats were told to take every reference to Kyoto off every government website, including our archives.

By October, environmental groups were beginning to think nothing would happen. The former minister said, “All targets, whether short, medium or long term, will be consulted with industry, provinces and territories”. Meanwhile, our party was pointing out that there was no need for new legislation. Every legislative power that the government needs is at its disposal under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. All the government needs is conviction, vision and political will.

Senior officials were sent to deliberately undermine Kyoto, while we, as a nation state, were chairing the international talks. Now we see a second Minister of the Environment in the young government, given that the first minister had taken too many bullets already for the Prime Minister and the PMO.

Environment itself is not one of the top five priorities. It was not in the Speech from the Throne. It was slashed from the budget and was not in the fiscal update. Now we have a so-called clean air act. Knowing full well that it does not need any more legislative authority than that which it already possesses, the government creates a smokescreen, smoke and mirrors, photo ops.

We had draft regulations in place. We had negotiated these and had achieved targets with the large final emitters before we were defeated. The so-called clean air act was met with condemnation from every quarter in the country.

A new Minister of the Environment has been appointed and now he is re-gifting core Liberal programs. First, he brings back rebates for renovations that make homes energy efficient but he leaves out the part of the program that makes it affordable for low income Canadians, particularly our seniors, when it is the wish of all parliamentarians that seniors can reside in their homes independently and with dignity as they grow old in, usually, their older homes.

Low income Canadians spend 13% of their income on energy, compared with 4% paid by average households. Low income Canadians are being left out in the cold.

Second, a year later the minister also brings back funding for wind power and renewable energy, having first spuriously stated that it was wasteful spending and that it was not achieving its targets. This is cloak and dagger, behind the scenes, media manipulation where the minister disgracefully resurrects and re-gifts the programs which he had described only weeks earlier as wasteful spending.

Why were these programs ever cut? If Canadians believe the government when it described the programs as wasteful spending, then why were these programs brought back exactly as is?

Third, the government has come back to the table on clean energy technology but the year of uncertainty has had a damaging effect on young Canadian companies. Investors know which party did not make the environment one of its top five priorities and they are not flocking back to put their money in solid Canadian technologies that they were investing in 18 months ago which need a real federal commitment to turn the corner and take off worldwide. Our green industries are being left out in the cold.

Yesterday, our party held the Prime Minister to account for his radical anti-Kyoto campaign when he was leader of the opposition. In that letter he said that Kyoto was a “dangerous and destructive scheme”. He went on to say “we will do everything we can to stop Kyoto”, including, apparently, a taxpayer subsidized and disgraceful PR blitz against a proven environmental leader, the Leader of the Opposition.

I do not think Canadians buy that the Prime Minister or the government has turned over a new leaf. Just days before Christmas, in the foyer of this building, he was still talking about so-called greenhouse gases. Before that, he was saying that we must redirect federal spending aimed at fulfilling the terms of the increasingly irrelevant Kyoto protocol. He clearly believed that the Liberal government was acting to fight climate change because he was so fiercely opposed to it.

Another member of cabinet with us here today, the Minister of Public Safety, mocked the science of climate change just a few short months ago.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

I would like to advise the hon. member for Ottawa South that he has two minutes left. I would also like to remind him, since he has experience in the House, that it is not parliamentary to refer to the presence or the absence of members in the House.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I apologize, Mr. Speaker.

The Minister of Public Works and Government Services talked about the many benefits of global warming, urging his constituents to buy land so that when the thawing occurred they could flip it and make money. The day after the so-called Flintstone's moment, all evidence of his statement was removed from the minister's website.

Where are we today? We have a government with no plan and no vision and a Minister of Natural Resources freelancing about building a nuclear power plant to support a fivefold increase in oil sands production in northern Alberta. We have a Minister of Finance in China flogging oil and gas and a Prime Minister having met with the president three or four times but not a single shred of evidence that greenhouse gases, climate change or the environment was part of any of those discussions.

Now we find out that in the mandatory reporting that this country is obliged to provide under the Kyoto protocol, the only programs being reported for 2006 by the government are the programs that were put in place by the former Liberal government; re-gifting and copying once again the heavy lifting and the work done by the former government. If we did nothing, why does the government continue to list our achievements as the only ones Canada has accomplished for the full year of 2006, the Conservatives first year in government? These are questions that Canadians are asking.

It also appears that the government is misleading the international community by not telling the international community that it slashed the funding cuts to climate change in its 2006 budget and instead reporting on all the programs we had in place.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to go back to some of the work that was put in place by the Liberal government on climate reduction and perhaps look at the work done by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. She looked at the program for carbon sequestration and found that the moneys had been expended but that only one of the five projects had been completed and the CO₂ reductions from that program were a hundredth of what they had hope for.

Let us look at the wind program. Everyone was pleased that some effort was put into wind in Canada but when we compared the program in Canada to the one in the United States we found that the wind industry here was dealing with a subsidy that was half of that of the United States and U.S. wind producers were selling into a market where wholesale prices for electricity were considerably higher.

When we look at biomass, we have had a complete lack of program development in the use of biomass energy over the last number of years. We have a huge resource in waste wood. Three million tonnes a year is being wasted in our forest industry. Nothing has happened on that front.

What about solar energy? We heard that the people in charge of the Canadian Solar Industries Association admit that we are the least funded nation for solar thermal energy of all the western nations.

On every front on renewable energy, the programs that were put in place were thin soup for Canadian producers and developers.

Why should we continue with programs like that, that were not doing the job for Canadians?

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will take the opportunity to pick up on the theme of the question and remind the House of the facts, not the misstatements and disinformation from the government but the facts on what took place on this file during our time as the government in power.

In 1998, we signed Kyoto. In 2000, we spent $625 million on climate change research and emissions reductions. In 2003, we announced $2 billion in new climate change funding. In February 2005, Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party of Canada, called that budget the greenest budget in Canadian history. The Clean Air Renewable Energy Coalition said that the budget was so green that it should have been announced on St. Patrick's Day.

Further to this, of course, we see what has happened after a year under the new government. It cut $395 million from the EnerGuide program to retrofit houses. It cut $500 million from the EnerGuide for the low income households program. It cut $1 billion from our partnership fund for climate change projects with provinces and our cities that desperately need help from the federal government. It cut $593 million from our wind power production incentive and our renewable power production incentive. It cut $585 million from environmental programs at Natural Resources Canada. It cut $120 million from our one tonne challenge which we now know has been judged to be a very effective program.

Those are just some of the cuts, total cuts of $5.6 billion, effected by the government for the successful programs that were in place under our administration.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Louis-Hébert should know there is just one minute left for the question and answer.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want my colleague to know that there were cuts, but there were also major investments. He should stay informed.

As far as renewable energy is concerned, almost $1.5 billion has just been invested. The ecoenergy initiative has also just been improved. We were told of a fabulous Liberal program that was 50% effective, which is the standard rate of effectiveness for the Liberals. For the Conservatives, this was not enough; it needed to be increased to 90%.

I would like to know whether my Liberal colleague recently followed the news on the ethanol expansion program, through which we have already managed to reduce by 5%—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Ottawa South should know that the period for questions and answers has ended. Nonetheless, I will give him a few moments to respond to the hon. member for Louis-Hébert.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, to answer this question simply, I will quote former Prime Minister Joe Clark, who said just yesterday I believe:

“There is no question that it injured our international reputation”, he said, when referring to the new minority government's repudiation of the Kyoto climate control treaty.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly was enjoying the comments of the member for Ottawa South and I congratulate him on his words today.

As Canadians, what do we spend an awful lot of time doing? Talking about the weather. We get in an elevator with complete strangers and we say, “Is it hot enough for you?”, or, “Is it cold enough for you?”, or, “How about that snowstorm?”, or, “What is tomorrow's forecast?” We are used to that.

This year especially we have been talking a lot about the weather because it has been an extraordinarily mild winter. It is not the first time we have had a mild winter, but this one has been especially so. Although I remember last year during the election, one particular Friday when I was campaigning in my riding of Halifax West in Nova Scotia, I was wearing a light fall jacket because it was 13° Celsius. I had never heard of a day in January in Halifax when it was 13° Celsius. My hon. colleague from West Nova would say that down in his part of the province, which is a little more south and people sometimes play golf there on New Year's Day, it is a bit milder, but I do not think it would be very often 13° on a day in January. That is extraordinary.

We are seeing more and more reasons to be concerned about our weather and about our climate. We know from scientists who measure these things that the 10 hottest years on record since human beings started keeping records of the temperature back in the middle of the 19th century have all been since 1990. We should be concerned about that.

I have a friend who is a meteorologist and who is very knowledgeable and interested in issues of weather and also science generally. He was telling me last fall, and I believe he was talking about last winter, that there was a point at which the gulf stream was actually interrupted briefly.

Tomorrow the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be released. I saw reports earlier this week about that report and about things being said by the scientists at their meeting, which I believe is in Paris. They are concerned about whether the gulf stream will slow down.

Obviously, whether it is interrupted, slows down or whatever, any change in the gulf stream could have a dramatic effect on weather patterns in the northern hemisphere, particularly around the Atlantic. If we consider how much northern Europe depends on the gulf stream for its relatively warm climate, it could be devastated by that kind of change. It is not just Europe that could be affected. People who live in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, or any of the Atlantic provinces have to be concerned because the gulf stream has a very important impact on them.

I learned a year or so ago, when I had the pleasure as minister of fisheries of visiting Sable Island, that the gulf stream is only about 50 miles, which I suppose is about 80 kilometres, from Sable Island. I could see how close it is to my province and my region and what an impact it obviously has. To see the gulf stream being interrupted is very worrisome.

We are very concerned about the changes that are taking place in our north. For example, roads and buildings constructed on permafrost are all at risk today. Even the migration routes of the caribou now appear to be in danger.

The caribou encounter problems because there is not enough ice. That represents a danger for them and forces them to change their route. Based on the way ice is formed in the north we know that polar bears are also at risk. All of this is very unsettling.

We know already that the report we are going to see tomorrow from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is going to be bleak and sobering news. It causes us great concern, and it should cause us great concern. But it is not the first time we have heard this. We have seen in recent years an increase in what scientists and meteorologists call extreme weather events, things like hurricanes, cyclones and large winter storms. In fact, within 12 months we have had in my province both hurricane Juan and what we called white Juan, a huge winter storm which dumped a metre of snow in 24 hours. I certainly had never seen that in my lifetime. It was pretty dramatic.

Hurricane Juan was devastating for a big swath of Nova Scotia. The impact was dramatic. I remember a few days afterward the defence minister at that time and I had the opportunity to fly over Halifax in a helicopter and to see the impact on Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, a beautiful park full of wonderful trees, many of which were downed like matchsticks. It was a dramatic and very troubling sight to see from the air.

We are also seeing rising sea levels. They are already impacting some countries. There are island countries in the Pacific that have already been inundated where people have had to be evacuated. They are the first examples of ecological refugees that we have seen.

I heard a scientist just last week talk about climate change and global warming. He explained that if one has a glass of water, as the temperature in the room rises, the water actually expands and fills up more of the glass. He was pointing out the concern we should have about our ocean levels. The rise in sea levels is not just because of glaciers and ice caps melting, which we should be very concerned about as well, but if there is a one degree increase in water temperature worldwide, it means that the water is going to expand and sea levels will rise for that reason alone. We also have to be concerned about the effect of the ice caps, both north and south, as a radiator for our climate, as a way of cooling off our climate.

It is encouraging that a lot of Canadians, a lot of people in the U.S. and hopefully elsewhere have seen the movie that Al Gore produced and starred in, An Inconvenient Truth. It certainly had an impact on me when I saw it last year. It was one of the reasons that my wife and I decided to buy a hybrid vehicle. The fact is it has been a benefit. With a hybrid vehicle the maintenance costs actually go down. Over a five year period it has been shown that hybrid vehicles have much lower maintenance costs, and obviously, one is going to pay less for gas. We are certainly paying less for gas even though there was a little more initial capital cost and that is a concern.

There is a report in the Globe and Mail today that refers to a survey by Maritz Research in Canada. It said that when buying a vehicle the consideration of whether it is environmentally friendly ranked 23rd among 26 reasons for buying a vehicle. The top three considerations were value for money, fuel economy and reliability. It is good that fuel economy is one of those considerations because clearly, with a hybrid vehicle one will benefit from the fuel economy.

The point I am making is that we all have to get engaged in this issue. We all have to find ways to do better. I certainly want to keep doing better. We have done something but we have to do more things it seems to me in my home and in all homes across the country to help combat climate change. The government has to do more in terms of the variety of measures that it can take to improve the situation and to combat climate change.

There is as we know a very narrow range of conditions in which human life can exist. We see that when it gets cold. When we go outside on a day when it is -15° or -20° we realize that we cannot stay out very long without being warmly dressed. It is amazing how quickly it goes from a temperature that is reasonable, livable and comfortable to one where it is not comfortable. It is a pretty small range. Once we go outside that range, things become unlivable if we go to extremely low temperatures, unless we are in the Antarctic and we are really prepared for it, but in reality, for most people we cannot survive in those extreme low temperatures or in extreme hot temperatures if they are above 140° or 150° for example.

What has been the response of the Conservatives? After a year in power, they are still blaming the Liberals for everything. The Conservatives continue to tell us that we did not do enough; but in the past they opposed every action to fight global warming. They are still displaying signs of that attitude.

Yesterday, journalists asked Conservative members whether they believed that increased greenhouse gases have caused global warming. Most of those members refused to answer the question.

The Conservative member for Wetaskiwin, Alberta, a member for the Conservatives on the environment committee, was asked if he believed in the science of global warming. What did he say? He said, “I am going to have to defer on that one”. When asked if he believed in the science of global warming, he said he would have to defer and he would not answer the question. That is unimaginable.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member but first I want to point out some facts.

The fact is that under his party's watch, Canada was 35% above its Kyoto targets. The fact is that under his party's watch, Canada slid to 28th out of 29 OECD countries in air quality rankings. The fact is even according to the deputy leader of his party, the Liberals did not get things done on the environment. Clearly in 13 years they did not get it done.

Speaking of being 28th out of 29 OECD countries, to use a hockey analogy which I like to use, I think about an NHL team near the bottom of the standings. This NHL team has a dismal power play and is ranked, let us say, 29th out of 30 teams, second from the bottom. So bad is this team that the coach resigns and the general manager identifies the power play as the number one problem. The Liberals are like that hockey team.

What is puzzling is that when the Liberals had the chance to get a fresh start, they chose to promote the power play coach, the environment minister, who had been responsible for the astonishingly low performance in the first place. That is who they promoted as head coach, the person who had led them to second last place in the league.

Based on the Liberal Party's dismal record, do you not agree that it is refreshing to see some actual action on environmental issues? Would you not agree that this motion and what is happening in the environment committee are real efforts to change the channel on Canadians and deal with your political--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I would remind the hon. member for Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont to address his questions through the Chair and not directly to other members.

The hon. member for Halifax West.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I had the pleasure of serving on a committee with the hon. member until recently. We got to know one another quite well. I think we are friends. I realize those are the rules and I will certainly follow the same rule, but I want to make it clear that I am not offended in any way by that.

I may not agree with his comments, and I do not, but if he looked at the record he would see something quite different from what he suggested. In fact, there was a whole series of measures that the Liberal government brought in, which the Conservative government over the past year cancelled. It has brought in a few weak facsimiles of some of those programs.

For instance, the EnerGuide program was cancelled by the Conservatives. They also cancelled the one tonne challenge program. On the Thursday before Easter last year the Conservatives cancelled 17 different initiatives all at the same time. They are going to claim that the programs were all terrible and not one of them was any good. That is a little rich. It is like the suggestion that none of these measures that were in place had any impact whatsoever or ever could have any impact.

If the Conservatives want to say the programs were not perfect and point out concerns or problems, that is fine, but it is not credible to suggest that there was nothing there at all. The fact of the matter is the Conservative Party is not credible on this issue.

Look at what the Prime Minister said in his fundraising letter in 2002. He said, “Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations”.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned that we all have to be engaged. When I hear that, I turn to low income Canadians.

In the past we had programs such as EnerGuide that not only helped save precious little income that lower income Canadians have but it helped them promote good health because of the health of the home and it allowed them to live in the dignity of their own home. The added bonus it seems was the reduction of greenhouse gases.

I was hoping that the hon. member could give a little more detail and comment on how lower income Canadians have been abandoned with the introduction of, for lack of a better word, what I would call Liberal-like programs introduced by the Conservative Party.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I had just begun to talk about the EnerGuide program in general, so I am pleased to have a chance to talk about the fact that we also had an EnerGuide program for low income households. It was a very important program to assist those households that could not themselves afford the costs of upgrading their homes, households that needed assistance with the cost of upgrading their homes to make them more energy efficient, to lower the heating costs, and to lower the amount of greenhouse gases produced.

When we heat our homes, not enough of us use solar heat, and I suppose more of us should. I am fortunate that my house has it. The house I bought happened to have it for heating water. However, I think we have to do more. Many of us heat our homes with oil, wood, electricity or natural gas. All of those of course produce greenhouse gases. We ought to look for ways to reduce them. That was the idea of both the EnerGuide for low income households program and the EnerGuide program, both of which I think were important programs.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Secretary of State (Foreign Affairs and International Trade) (Sport)]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Minister of Natural Resources.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the environment today, as it is an issue that is extremely important to my constituents in Simcoe--Grey and of course to all Canadians and the international community.

Need for action on climate change has strengthened with each passing year. It is too bad that the former Liberal government turned its back on the subject and on Canadians. After 13 years of inaction, $40 million talkfests, champagne parties and promises, we are 10 years behind because the Liberals chose to do nothing.

When we look at the science that underpins the climate change issue, we see that there are several things we can agree on. Greenhouse gases are increasing in Canada's atmosphere. In fact, under the previous Liberal government, they rose a staggering 35% over a very short period of time. We also know that the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will continue to increase unless we do something to reduce our emissions.

We must ask the question of why this is: could we have been in a different position? Here is what the former environment commissioner had to say about the inept Liberal government's record on the environment in her 2006 audit report:

Since 1997, the government has announced over $6 billion in funding for initiatives on climate change. However, it does not yet have an effective government-wide system to track expenditures, performance, and results on its climate change programs. As a result, the government does not have the necessary tools for effective management, nor can it provide Parliamentarians with an accurate government-wide picture on spending and results they have requested.

She did not stop there. She went further, stating that:

On the whole, the government's response to climate change is not a good story. At a government-wide level, our audits revealed inadequate leadership, planning, and performance. To date, the approach has lacked foresight and direction and has created confusion and uncertainty for those trying to deal with it. Many of the weaknesses identified in our audits are of the government's own making. It has not been effective in leading and deciding on many of the key areas under its control. Change is needed.

The former commissioner was right when she said change was needed. Canadians were fed up with the Liberal scandals and broken promises, so what did Canadians do? They kicked the Liberals out of office and ushered in a new Conservative government to clean up the mess the Liberals left behind.

Not only did we clean up years of corruption, scandal, mismanagement and waste, we are now cleaning up the undeniable environmental disaster the Liberals left behind for Canadians. Today, we have record smog days in Toronto, and Canada ranks near the bottom of industrialized countries when it comes to air quality. We have to ask ourselves: what were the Liberals doing for 13 years? Why did they not get it done?

Canada's new Conservative government has taken action on the environment. As has already been mentioned, in the last two weeks alone, we have invested $230 million in the research, development and demonstration of clean energy technologies. Also, we announced more than $1.5 billion in funding for the ecoenergy renewable initiative to boost Canada's renewable energy supplies, and we unveiled our plan to invest approximately $300 million over four years to promote smarter energy use and reduce the amount of harmful emissions that affect the health of Canadians.

Last fall, we introduced Canada's first clean air act. By introducing the clean air act, we have put forward a number of tools that will help Canada address its air quality by reducing greenhouse gas and smog emissions simultaneously. This is the first time that Canada has regulated reductions in both air pollution and greenhouse gases. Internationally, we are the first country to regulate all sectors in an integrated and coherent manner.

We also introduced a clean air regulatory agenda that will regulate both indoor and outdoor air pollutants as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

We are providing stronger energy efficiency standards on consumer and commercial products.

We have already established new emission standards for on-road motorcycles.

We are setting the stage for mandatory fuel consumption standards on the vehicles Canadians buy.

But the Liberals do not want to see any progress on the environment. They are pulling every trick in the book to stall the special legislative committee looking at the clean air act. They want to drag out hearings for months, which is interesting in that it is coming from the former Liberal government that, when in power, said it had a plan to address the environment. But we never saw it. Consequently, what has Liberal inaction meant to Canadians?

In terms of temperature, the changes in Canada have generally been higher than the global average. This is particularly true in our northern regions. The “Arctic Climate Impact Assessment” was published not long ago and received wide media coverage and public attention, as it should. The report served to highlight the rapid changes occurring across the Arctic and concluded that the Arctic has been warming at about twice the rate of the rest of the world.

A whole suite of changes is evident across the Arctic, which has led many to consider the Arctic the canary in the coal mine, an early indicator of what may come to other regions of the world. In particular, the observed reductions in sea ice have been much commented on, since the implications of this trend, were it to continue, are very significant for Canada and for the globe.

For the Inuit, the reductions in sea ice put in jeopardy their traditional hunting and food sharing culture, as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline and become less accessible.

With reduced sea ice, shipping through key routes such as the Northwest Passage is likely to increase. This could bring new opportunities, but it is also an additional environmental concern.

We have also seen impacts of the changing climate in other parts of Canada. In B.C., infestations of the mountain pine beetle are wreaking havoc on the forest industry. In recent years, prairie drought has cost the agricultural economy billions of dollars. On the west coast, we have seen several extreme storm events in recent months. In eastern Canada, we have experienced an unusually warm early winter.

These events, while not individually traceable to climate change, are consistent with expectations of more extreme weather in the future. These impacts are a threat to our citizens and to our environment and have enormous economic impact.

In summary, Canada's new government is extremely concerned. That is why we are taking concrete actions to deal with climate change and air pollution to improve the health of Canadians.

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise on debate today and I am happy to talk about the environment.

First, everyone should be aware of the enormous opportunities for Canadians in this country. We are blessed with an enormous amount of natural resources. We have the second largest oil reserves of any country in the world. We have the largest amount of uranium. We produce an enormous amount of natural gas. We are one of the largest producers of hydroelectricity in the world.

With these opportunities also come responsibilities. It is our responsibility as a government to ensure that we look after all of these resources. They are the backbone of the Canadian economy, which is very important to our quality of life. We also need to put the economy in balance with the environment while ensuring that we have our energy security. That is why, in one year, our first year in office, our government came out with very decisive, focused leadership that is going to deliver concrete results.

Early in our term of office, we brought in new funding and new tax incentives to increase public transit ridership. We committed to increasing, for the first time in this country, to a 5% average for biofuels on fuels right across the country. It is good for the environment to ensure that we have this average. The biofuel industry is taking off. We will be there to support it.

One of my first actions as Minister of Natural Resources was to announce over half a billion dollars to clean up some of the nuclear legacy liabilities at Chalk River that have been there for decades, something on which the previous government refused to show leadership. It would not make the commitment on something that was urgent. It was one of our first actions.

Of course our government took a very bold approach to bringing in Canada's clean air act. When we move past all the partisanship and actually read the act, we can see what it will deliver. It is the first time that any government in Canadian history has undertaken to regulate every single sector, the oil and gas sector, the automotive sector, the industrial sector, and to reduce not only greenhouses gases but also pollutants that create smog and have a direct impact on our health. The previous government refused to do this. The previous government never mentioned it.

We also heard my colleague from Nova Scotia, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, make a very significant commitment to clean up the Sydney tar ponds.

Our government is taking concrete action that will deliver results.We want to engage all members of Parliament in this House to work with us.

I know that the new leader of the Liberal Party wants to pretend he is a great environmentalist. I noted yesterday that he and his entire caucus showed up in the House of Commons wearing green ribbons. Putting on green ribbons does not make us environmentalists. Putting on a green ribbon will not reduce greenhouse gases; it is going to take concrete action.

The previous old Liberal government had 13 years in office. In their dying days in office, the Liberals actually started to suggest that they cared about the environment. By that time, not only did the old Liberal government lose the confidence of the House, it went on to lose the confidence of the Canadian people because of a lack of leadership and a lack of action. We have done more in one year than the old Liberal government even came close to.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Members opposite are chuckling and laughing, but let us talk about the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. Let us look at some of her reports and see how the Liberals responded.

Let me read for members from the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development's report of 2000. She says about the Liberal government that “it continues to have difficulty turning commitment into action”.

Members are laughing and saying that I should not read from talking points. This is not a laughing matter, I would put respectfully to the Liberals across the way who are heckling. This is from the Commissioner of the Environment. Now they are now calling her reports a joke, but we have taken them very seriously. She went on to say in 2000 that there were:

--persistent problems with the federal government's management of key issues like climate change, toxic substances and biodiversity...As a result, commitments made to Canadians were not being met.

That was in the year 2000, but let us go on to her next report. She had many volumes. I met the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development numerous times. She is an individual who was very committed. She kept trying to make concrete, positive suggestions to the old Liberal government. She wrote another report on sustainable development in 2001. What did she have to say in that report? It reads as follows:

As evidenced by the continued upward trend in Canada's emissions, the government has not succeeded in transforming its promises into results.

Those are the words of the environment commissioner. I know that Liberal members do not like to hear this. They had a chance. Not only did they have a chance to show leadership, which they failed, but they had a lot of people telling them they were failing, getting an F, and not getting the job done. That was in 2001.

The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development wrote another report in 2002, desperate to get action and desperate to see some progress on this file. What was her first sentence? She stated that the federal government's “sustainable development deficit continues to grow”. That was according to Johanne Gélinas, Canada's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.

These are the actual documents I am reading from. This is the record. This not the opinion of a partisan. This is not the opinion of the Conservative Party. This is the opinion of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development. These are all documents of Parliament.

In 2004, she went on to write another report, in which she asked:

Why is progress so slow?...I am left to conclude that the reasons are lack of leadership, lack of priority, and lack of will.

Year after year, the environment commissioner was begging the old Liberal government for action. She was pleading with the Liberals. Their record was abysmal. Greenhouse gases in this country skyrocketed under their leadership.

They signed an international agreement, the Kyoto protocol, and then did nothing. The Liberals signed this protocol in 1997, 10 years ago, saying that in the next 15 years we would reduce greenhouse gases by 6%. That is what they said. They had to reduce greenhouse gases by roughly 1% a year.

Those greenhouse gas levels have skyrocketed year after year. They are 35% above the targets, so how does anyone with any credibility have the gall to come in sporting a green ribbon and thinking that suddenly they actually believe in the environment? The Liberals had 13 years to deliver results and all they want to engage in is partisan criticism, while our government is committed to delivering actual results.

The last audit of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, which came out shortly after we took office, again focused on the previous government's record. The results were the same. She stated that:

--funding was complex, leading to confusing targets. We found five Treasury Board decisions that authorized funds for the program and which did not clearly describe emission reduction results expected for this money....

There were no results, yet the Liberals want to stand up in question period and actually have people believe they are serious about this.

How can any Canadian take anyone from the Liberal Party seriously when the Liberals sat in power for 13 long years? The new leader of the Liberal Party was at the cabinet table for 10 years. He ended up at the cabinet table as the environment minister and his results were zero. He did not get the job done.