Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in the debate on what I think is one of the most important bills that has been presented to the House. It has to do with whether or not Canada should respect its international obligations, particularly as they relate to the future. Let me quote the hon. member for Honoré-Mercier who said in his opening speech when he first presented the bill to the House:
This bill speaks primarily about the future. It is designed to make possible concrete acts today that will improve living conditions for generations of tomorrow. I have always believed that political action should be motivated by a strong desire to make a positive difference in the world around us, a strong desire to prepare a better future for the generations to come.
That is precisely what Bill C-288 is all about. It is a bill which basically calls on Canada to meet its global climate change obligations under the Kyoto protocol. That is the bill.
Members are well familiar with that. They will know some aspects of it but maybe not all of the aspects, or maybe they will remember selectively the things that they would like to remember. It is important to put on the record some of the facts related to Kyoto.
It was a very long process. Back in 1997 the Kyoto protocol was first negotiated. The process went on because once the protocol was developed, countries then had a chance to sign on to the deal, to make a commitment that if and when it came into force that they would be there for the future of the planet. Canada put its name on that as a commitment in 2002, but it was not until 2005 that the final signatories were obtained and the Kyoto protocol as ratified was in fact in force. That was 2005, just a couple of years ago. It was not until then that the Kyoto protocol was in force. One hundred and sixty-eight countries around the world decided that global warming and climate change issues were real, that the science was right and that we, this generation, had to take the first steps to ensure the safety, the security and the well-being of the planet for generations to come.
We have all seen the evidence, even today, the slow evidence of warming, the aberrant weather and other indications that something is different. It can be seen up in the Arctic when big portions of icebergs fall into the ocean. We see the changes in wildlife migration patterns. We see the impact on the polar bear population. We see the impact on so many different aspects of life. This is the genesis of something terrible.
This is what the science says. It is the genesis. We, today's Canadians and today's people of the globe, are the ones who are making the most significant contribution to the warming of our world, the creation of greenhouse gases. We are the ones.
We must be successful in delivering, in terms of meeting the targets under the Kyoto protocol. There is a combination of measures under that protocol. Some we will be able to do domestically and some we will not, but there are measures in there which countries can use so that they can respect and in fact satisfy the terms and conditions of membership, of being a party to the Kyoto protocol.
The current Minister of the Environment and the former minister of the environment said that we cannot make them. Are they talking about meeting the obligations under Kyoto, or are they talking about meeting everything by doing one part of it?
We could just say, here are our domestic solutions and let us just solve things. The Prime Minister himself told the media just within the past week that we cannot reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by some 30% in just two years. It takes time. How much time does it take? Maybe the Prime Minister should tell Canadians how much time it would take.
Maybe we do not even have to ask him. Why do we not just look at clean air act? The so-called clean air act was dead on arrival. It was so bad and so panned by virtually anybody who has any basic knowledge that people said that that bill was not worth the paper it was written on, and in fact it was trashed by the House.
Usually when we refer a bill to committee, it is after second reading, after approval in principle. That bill was so bad that there was no way it was going to get past second reading. It was going to die in the House. The government admitted it and it agreed to have this bill go to a special legislative committee before second reading.
In other words, a bill that goes to committee after second reading has approval in principle. A committee can look at it and massage it a little bit, but it cannot change the substantive provisions of the bill. However, when a bill is sent to committee before second reading, it is totally different. I have seen it before. Bills can go to committee and the committee can delete everything after the title, and then change the title. In other words, it can trash the bill.
I have a feeling that once the responsible parliamentarians and the expert witnesses are finished with that clean air act, we will clean out the act, and find out that we better change the name because it is going to be the act to implement and meet our Kyoto commitments and to make our contribution as a signatory to Kyoto and for the future generations of Canadians. Maybe it should be called the Pablo bill.
We have had a lot of discussion, but what concerns Canadians is that the Prime Minister wants to say that the Liberals did nothing in 13 years, but knowing that in fact Kyoto did not come into force until 2005. There was no agreement in force prior to that; however, once the Kyoto protocol came into force, programs were immediately developed and in fact had been developed and were put into place.
There was the Canada 2005 climate change plan, phase one of project green. We followed that with the climate fund, the partnership fund, the one tonne challenge, the wind power incentive and renewable power production incentive, and the sustainable energy science and technology strategy. I look at the cap and trade system, which we could have had domestically, where businesses could work together to ensure that we meet our obligations.
When we think about it, where is the reality check in the rhetoric that comes from the Prime Minister that the former government did nothing? These are facts. They actually happened, and as a matter of fact, they are real. I know they are real because the Conservatives cancelled them all. Then what did they do? They took some of them and they reintroduced them in a watered down form to make absolutely sure that they were not going to be effective at all.
Canadians have made it very clear that climate change, global warming, the science supporting them and Kyoto are priorities, not only just for Canada but for the globe. We are just a small part of the globe, but we are party to an international agreement. We respect our international agreements and the Liberals will do everything they possibly can to ensure that we meet our obligations under the Kyoto protocol.