Mr. Speaker, the member touched on a number of significant issues and some of them deal with the directions the government is taking on energy.
What have we seen so far? We have seen a $2.2 billion investment in ethanol, in biofuels, which, in many respects, internationally is not considered to be a very good investment at all. If it does not have conditions attached to it, we may end up importing corn ethanol from the United States at a higher greenhouse gas emission rate than if we had just left gasoline in the tank. That is one of the things that the Conservative government has done.
The second is that it just put a quarter of a billion dollars into clean coal technology in Saskatchewan. The Conservative government in Saskatchewan is throwing in three-quarters of a billion dollars and industry is topping it up with $300 million. They are creating a 100-megawatt plant for $1.3 billion. This will never be cost effective.
The budget has $300 million in it for nuclear, once again subsidizing an industry that has been around for 50 years, to keep it on its feet and to try to make it work. We see the same thing with the MAPLE reactors. Big dollars have gone into it, with no results.
Perhaps my colleague could speak to this a bit. What is it about the Conservatives, supported, in most cases, by the Liberals, in their inability to look at energy in terms of all the options and really come up with answers for Canadians that will work?
Instead, we see this “I'll fund this project in your riding if you fund this project in my riding” approach that is going on right now in Parliament, with no cohesive plan. It is not being done on the best advice of our scientists. As BIOCAP Canada quite clearly said in its reports to us with regard to biofuels, that we are taking these actions without thinking them through.
Does my hon. colleague know why do the Conservatives and Liberals continue to do things in such an ad hoc, piecemeal fashion?