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.