Okay then, Madam Speaker, let us compare the two plans: the Obama plan and the Prime Minister's plan. How do the two stack up against each other?
The Obama plan is to invest six times more money per person in the fight against climate change, in renewable energy and in energy efficiency than the plan put forward by the Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance. The government will probably say that it is proposing a continental plan and harmonization. On the contrary, for the past few decades, the government has decided to provide lots of support to the oil industry at the expense of value-added renewable energies that would create green jobs and make a historic contribution to the global fight against climate change.
But the government decided to keep supporting the oil industry. It decided to support the industry while our neighbours to the south give significant tax breaks to the renewable energy sector. Recently, just last week in fact, I met with representatives of wind energy companies who told me they were about to leave Canada and set up shop in Michigan because the United States understands that renewable energy is a value-added proposition.
What should we do about this? We have to turn things upside down and quit giving tax breaks to the oil industry, which pockets huge profits year after year at the expense of our citizens and pollutes our planet. We have to stop giving tax breaks to the oil industry and transfer those incentives to wind energy, geothermal energy, solar power and energy efficiency.
Home renovation is a wonderful thing, but not if all it means is new and bigger decks and patios. We would like to see home renovations improve home energy efficiency. We would like to see a proper building code, and we would like to put people to work on the ground to improve the environment and contribute to economic development.
The United States gets it, and so does China. Even though China is one of the biggest polluters on the planet, they get it, and they have put forward a recovery plan that focuses on investing in renewable energy.
How is it that these countries understand the need to invest in the future while we are still bound to a stone-age economy, a “Flintstone” economy. What we have here is a “Flintstone” economy based on old technology with no added value and no real job creation.
Consequently, the government has to get its act together. The government must show leadership and adopt a model with the means to achieve Canada's international targets. As I said earlier, I went to Kyoto in 1997 and I saw the 15 member nations of the European Union at the time arrive in Kyoto prepared. The EU members had agreed on a common target, but they had also agreed on a differentiated target. Such flexibility is key to this territorial approach, whereby Canada negotiates a greenhouse gas reduction target. But if a target that is both common and differentiated is good for Canada on the international scene, it should be just as good here at home.
This differentiated target should help companies that, since 1990, have decided to change their industrial processes and invest in sustainable development plans and that have succeeded in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 15%. I am thinking of the manufacturing industry in Quebec, the forestry industry and the aluminum industry.
Today, these industries would be told that they are on an equal footing with the oil industry and that they must make the same efforts. The government's model is not based on the polluter pays principle, but the polluter paid principle. In summary, we must support this bill and base our model and our approach on the scientific evidence.
Second, Canada must find ways to meet the deadline set for us by the scientific community, which requires that Canada reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% relative to 1990 levels by 2020. Third, Canada must adopt a territorial approach comparable to the one adopted in Europe, whose record will be much better than Canada's.
Lastly, developing countries must be given the means to adapt better to climate change. It is the least that industrialized countries like ours can do, given that we are responsible for the climate change occurring now. We need to make technology transfers and use the mechanisms in the Kyoto protocol so that these emerging economies can contribute to the global effort. At the same time, we need to make sure that these countries are economically sustainable in the future.