Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this morning to speak to the Senate bill, which seeks to amend a statute, a law that was brought in to being by the Liberal Party of Canada in the last Parliament. In fact, my former colleague in the House, John Godfrey, brought to the floor the Federal Sustainable Development Act for the country, which this Senate bill seeks to amend.
It is important to take a few minutes to remind Canadians and to remind the House just what has been happening over the last 15 to 20 years. I am really proud to be the environment and energy critic of a party that did a number of things. First, it brought into being the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, a quasi-independent office, working with the Auditor General, which gave rise to the need for sustainable development strategies in the first place for most of our line departments and a number of agencies, for example, like the RCMP and others, who are obliged on a bi-annual basis to actually prepare a strategy showing how they would get from point A to point B over that two year period of time. I am very proud that our former government created the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
I am on record, and our party is on record, as wanting the location of that commissioner's office freed up from the Auditor General's office today. We really are in favour of a more independent Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development reporting directly to the House. In that sense, the bill brought forth by the other place is reinforcing of the need for more independence, more visibility of these reports, and more visibility for the work of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
I am also very proud to have been part of the government that brought in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which is the foundational statute. It is the architecture upon which we build most of our environmental protections in this country, our regulations. I am also particularly proud to have helped this party in its role as the previous government to bring in the Species at Risk Act, again, a major biodiversity protection initiative brought forward by our government in years past. These are the foundations of what we are doing now as a country, as we look to enhance ecological integrity, environmental integrity, while growing our economy.
Unlike the other side of the House, the Reform-Conservatives have always put forward the view that the environment and the economy are two competing interests. Unfortunately, they are very far behind in contemporary thinking, and in the last four years we have seen that Canada has been put behind, not only in contemporary thinking but in contemporary action.
We see south of the border in the United States in some instances a 15-fold advance, 15 times more investments going into things like renewable energy than we are doing here on a per capita basis. Even the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is investing more in renewable energy than Canada. We are in the unenviable position now of losing the North American competitive race toward a more energy efficient economy, and that of course is there and plain for all Canadians to see.
Nowhere is that more prominent than in the quintessential and difficult issue of climate change. We have had now four years of Reform-Conservative government. It is important to remind the House of a few things around this notion of climate change because it speaks directly to the bil. Climate change forms a huge part of the challenge we are facing in this country that will have to be addressed in any sustainable development strategy brought forward by a federal government.
The problem, of course, is that we come from a position on the other side, in the Reform-Conservative caucus led by the Prime Minister, that is ideologically opposed to a number of notions. First, it is ideologically opposed to the notion that Canada, as a comparatively rich citizen of the world, has an obligation to move first, as one of the annex one countries under climate change treaties, to show the way and to take action domestically to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When we do that, we actually enter the race more quickly than we would otherwise.
Now, because we have wasted four years of time under these Reform-Conservatives, the Canadian situation is that we are falling behind our competitors in Europe and falling behind, as I mentioned moments ago, the United States of America, our largest trading ally and perhaps our largest competitor.
What we have seen is an ideological opposition to annex one countries like Canada, wealthier countries, developed countries going first.
The second thing that Canadians are seeing and that we are bucking in the House of Commons is the Reform-Conservatives' ideology that rejects the notion that the world should come together in a multilateral way, that is through organizations like the United Nations where many countries come together. They reject this notion because our Prime Minister was schooled really at the heels of the Republican movement and party in the United States.
It is important factually and for the record to remind Canadians that the Prime Minister gave a keynote speech some nine years ago to the most right wing organization in the United States, the American council, and behind closed doors not knowing he was being caught on tape again said that this group, this council, this most right wing of all think tanks in the United States was his personal inspiration. He went on to say that not only was it his inspiration, not only was its ideology his inspiration but he wanted to import that ideology up here into Canada.
We have seen the systematic importation, infiltration, inculcation, the surreptitious insertion of this kind of ideology right here in the House through the climate change debate.
The reason why it is important for Canadians to know about this is because deep down the Prime Minister is not a multilateralist. He does not believe in the United Nations. I recall when he was leader of the opposition he attacked the Liberal government because we were even considering creating the G20 which it turns out is something he is now embracing. However, the reason he is so opposed is because deep down he is an isolationist. He is on record as saying that if it is not in favour of the United States, it is not something that he would endorse.
Should any Canadian have been surprised last week when the Prime Minister revealed publicly in a speech that he did not, according to him, watch Canadian newscasts but rather spent his time on CNN and Fox News where he has given more interviews than he has to domestic broadcasters?
What we are seeing in this bill is a strengthening of a law that was brought in by a Liberal member to force our country to be more coherent when it comes to dealing with the concept of sustainable development; that is, development that enhances ecological integrity while strengthening our economy and creating jobs, jobs for today, not speculative, fictitious jobs of tomorrow but jobs for today.
That is what the bill from the Senate seeks to do. It seeks to strengthen an existing law brought in by the Liberal Party of Canada.
In closing, it is very important for Canadians to use this opportunity to ask the Reform-Conservatives where their climate change plan is. We heard expert testimony in committee this week that the government has no plan; that it will first hide behind President Obama's skirt by alleging that there is some kind of dialogue while it undermines smog standards for fuels used in the Great Lakes. On the one hand the government is saying that it is pursuing a dialogue and on the other hand a dialogue for climate change on some kind of continental basis. It cannot have it both ways. It must clarify its position.
What the government really has to explain now is why it is not using this particular bill and the law that we gave the country to strengthen our climate change response, so we can win this energy efficient, clean economy competition that we are now involved in. We are falling so far behind after four years of Reform-Conservative rule, is it any wonder that we are losing so much investment to south of the border and other jurisdictions with respect to climate change technologies?