Mr. Speaker, we were in Rio to represent Canada in 1992 when Mr. Mulroney signed on to the concept of the Kyoto protocol.
Climate change remains a political problem today and a solution will require political will, but Brian Mulroney is not there anymore.
We need to take action, but what kind of action? A good number of the proposed solutions are inadequate or ill-conceived. We are now in the unfortunate situation where the Conservatives are giving us an inaccurate economic message at odds with what the public wants.
Because of their poor policy analysis of the role of economy, environment and social responsibility, the famous mandatory and egalitarian treaty of sustainable development, they cancelled all existing policies and programs. Because of that and their immature behaviour, they lost a year and a half. They do not even fully understand now the need for absolute targets, fixed amounts, for the reduction of greenhouse gases for a particular region or industry. Without absolute targets, it will be impossible to achieve any fixed target.
Bush managed to convince the public that he could successfully reduce greenhouse gases with relative targets. The Conservatives, however, will not be able to fool Canadians like this and especially not Quebeckers, because the game of deception played by Bush and, unfortunately, by his spiritual son, our Prime Minister, will not pull the same rabbit out of the hat a second time.
Let us look at what the Americans did. When Bush became President, the Kyoto denigration and procrastination strategists realized that, given that they were opposed to real climate change action, they had better find a way of looking as though they were doing something. The result was to set relative targets while trumpeting the new technologies. It was all meant to be better, more effective and less restrictive than joining the other countries and moving ahead with Kyoto. That was the sham.
So the American “conservatives” decided to campaign with the emphasis on individual voluntary action and environmental progress, much like our Minister of the Environment, who makes his point loudly, as do all the powerless people of this world.
In February 2002, after a year of non-stop criticism by the Democrats and the informed members of the public, Bush responded by setting a relative target for his nation, that is, to reduce the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions by 18% by 2012, in other words, in 10 years. The word “intensity” comes back often in the United States because it is based on a complex concept, unlike the Kyoto protocol, and this fools people. But without the words “absolute and mandatory targets,” the Bush administration deceived the public, who actually got the impression that Bush wanted to reduce emissions, not let them increase.
The subterfuge was linked to the absence of the word “absolute,” by sector and by region. The subterfuge was the quantity of emissions per unit of economic activity measured on the basis of the gross national product.
As our Prime Minister is getting ready to do, Bush used two different lines to confuse the public, and the result of this was that, instead of falling by 18%, as promised, emissions in the United States will have increased by 14% over a 10-year period, given that the projected total increase was 32% for this period.
This shows how an illusion can be created. When someone cries wolf as loudly as our Minister of the Environment, it is because he is feeling weak and powerless among his pack of wolves.
The Kyoto protocol, with its absolute objectives, and its moderate, realistic and thus achievable goals, is what Canada and Quebec have committed to. It is not by rejecting Kyoto as a solution botched by the Liberals that the government will fulfil the obligations expected of it by the public. The Bush model revisited by the Conservatives and supported by the Canadian oil companies with foreign capital so as to supply the United States—how very convenient—allows the government to take the short view. I would like to debate something like that in an election campaign in Quebec.
Twenty-five thousand people marched in the streets to show how much support there is for Kyoto.
I would like to conclude with a word on the carbon exchange. Projections of American utilities are that the cost of a tonne of carbon should not exceed US $55 in 2020. This is the price that is actually accepted. There is a consensus on this in the American business community in January 2007. This cost represents 1.5¢ a kilowatt-hour for a coal-fired power plant, according to Joseph Room, whom I met personally in Atlanta a few years ago.
This is a far cry from the outlandish $195 a tonne figures that came out. These are figures the Conservatives are using to scare people. Unless I am mistaken, the increase will simply be one that promotes energy efficiency.
As a matter of fact, this new government, with its ideology and lack of experience, wants to use health and pollution as a diversion to try to hide the most important problem that will affect all of us, and that is climate change. In its diversion tactics, how is it going to deal with the mercury emissions of coal-fired power plants, 90% of the effects of which affect our children? Conservatives may not have children, but I have a seven and a half month old daughter, and I wonder what kind of air there will be for her to breath and on what kind of planet she will live.
A carbon exchange, or the setting of a market price for a tonne of carbon in the exchange, is after all a conservative and capitalist concept. The new government should buy into this old concept that everyone should pay the price they want to. This would promote energy efficiency, cogeneration, renewable energies, the sequestration of enormous amounts of CO2 released by the production of oil from tar sands, and the sequestration of CO2 in coal-fired power plants.
Conservatives try to make believe they do not understand what the real solution is. I have this to say to them. Their grandchildren, for those of them who will have some, will tell them one day, “Hey, grandpa, it was really stupid of you to consider just the financial side of things”.