Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise here today to speak to the budget. I will likely be less eloquent and impassioned that my hon. colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, but my comments are equally relevant. I am pleased to join the budget debate and add a few remarks concerning the environment.
I would remind the House that this government had a surplus of more than $10 billion in its coffers for the current year. Among the demands of the Bloc Québécois, as my colleagues have already pointed out, we were calling for significant assistance for the manufacturing and forestry industries. We also wanted our seniors to be reimbursed the money that the government literally stole from them by refusing to make the guaranteed income supplement fully retroactive. Furthermore, we think that it is essential that there be assistance for the environment. With this budget, we called on the government to make a 180-degree turn and invest $1 billion in the environment. After carefully reading this budget, however, we are left dissatisfied.
This budget leaves something to be desired. First of all, we would have expected this government to invest heavily in renewable energy. We would have liked to see the $1 billion we were calling for help make household appliances more energy efficient, for instance, thereby contributing to the fight against climate change, which must be approached from two angles. It must first be addressed by reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the source, but also by ensuring that we have energy efficiency programs in order to curb our oil dependency. These programs were therefore very important to us. Unfortunately, the government did not meet our expectations.
In terms of the environment, the government and the Minister of Finance first announced $66 million over two years to develop its regulatory framework. I am referring to the so-called plan to fight climate change that was announced by the Minister of the Environment. From our perspective, there is no way we can support a budget that allocates financial resources to a framework that we oppose. I would remind the House that this regulatory framework aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions uses 2006 as the reference year in establishing the reduction targets for industrial emitters. We believe, however, that the only valid reference is that used by the Kyoto protocol, namely, 1990.
Our businesses have made efforts in the past. They have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by more than 7% or 8%. This regulatory framework would not take into consideration improvements that have already been made to industrial processes to make the business more energy efficient and to contribute to the fight against greenhouse gases, nor the fact that these companies are more productive. The link between the environment and the economy will always be there. However, the government chose to ignore it by designating 2006 as the reference year.
Second, by adopting intensity targets for greenhouse gas emissions, we are telling companies that emission reductions will be considered with respect to each unit of production. That means that targets and greenhouse gas reductions will be imposed, but only per production unit. In view of the fact that oil sands production is expected to increase fourfold or fivefold by 2015, Canada will not achieve absolute reductions but instead will record considerable increases.
We cannot support a budget that allocates $66 million to a regulatory framework that is unfair and that will not contribute to Canada's effort and responsibility in the international fight against climate change.
In addition, we also cannot approve this budget because, in essence, it grants $300 million to Canada's nuclear industry. Imagine that. In recent weeks we have seen the difficulties—and witnessed the bickering—associated with the departure of the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Now the government is announcing that it is allocating $300 million to the nuclear industry, without any prior public debate on the issue. It is as though the government, in its budget, is telling us that it is beginning to change Canada's position on energy without even discussing it with Canadians.
We have to shed some light on the growth of this industry, which is continuing to create negative externalities. I will cite one: nuclear waste management, an issue we have not yet come to grips with. At present, the pools are overflowing with waste in the provinces, and we have not found any sustainable solution to that waste. And at the same time, our federal government is setting aside and increasing funding for an industry that creates externalities. We understand, of course, why the government is making this choice, because we know that there are projects in western Canada to expand oil sands production using nuclear energy.
We therefore cannot support a budget that gives the nuclear industry $300 million, when there has been no public debate and no debate in the House on this important issue.
There is another factor: $250 million has been allocated to carbon storage, for what is called “capture” and “sequestration” of carbon. That means that we are increasing and expanding our assistance to a polluting industry, an industry that makes enormous profits, by giving it $250 million for a pilot project in Saskatchewan to capture GHGs. Through absolute, mandatory targets and the establishment of a carbon exchange that would allow businesses to trade emissions credits freely, the oil industry and the oil sands industry in Canada could contribute to funding that project in Saskatchewan.
At the end of December 2008 the government also decided to cancel the ecoAUTO rebate program, that is designed to encourage the purchase of low energy consumption vehicles. It is a program that the public was expecting. Several months were put into implementing the program, and the government is now telling us that it is eliminating it.
To conclude, what this budget promotes is the polluter-paid principle rather than the polluter-pay principle. These are large figures. I mentioned the $300 million given to the nuclear industry and the $250 million given to the big industrial emitters for carbon capture. What this budget does is benefit oil companies and polluters, at the expense of a sustainable economy that has to be built on value added, which the renewable energy industry is.
We would have expected incentives for wind and solar energy production, but no, there is nothing. The choice made gives preference to friends in western Canada. There is nothing for Quebec. And there is $250 million in assistance going directly to the auto industry. In terms of the Canadian economy, the west is benefiting through assistance to the oil industry, central Ontario is getting incentives through aid to the auto industry, but there is nothing for Quebec.