Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Lac-Saint-Louis.
For the past four years, the Conservative government has been saying all kinds of nice things and making all kinds of promises about the environment, and for the past four years, the Liberal Party and the other opposition parties have been wondering what the Conservatives' plan is. Where is the plan?
Instead of a plan, we get inconsequential proposals, announcements that never materialize, fancy words and promises to cooperate internationally, but no action. That is why today's discussion could yield some very good results.
This motion we are debating is excellent. We are not talking about the environment in general. We are not even talking about Bill C-311 in general. The motion very simply separates out from the body of Bill C-311 the clause that addresses the requirement of the government to set targets and to say where we want to be in our reduction of greenhouse gases in 2015, 2020 and 2025 so that we know what the plan is going to deliver.
This is not overly rigorous, because under the mandate, the plan will be reviewed, updated and reassessed every five years. We will ask if we made it, if it is the right thing and if we are going in the right direction. Right now, we are looking at a concrete plan. The Government of Canada should be pleased with this motion and pleased with the opportunity to share with the House and the people of Canada its plan on where we are going.
The Conservative government makes a lot of hay out of its supposedly ambitious target of a 20% reduction by 2020 from 2006 levels. We can debate whether that is actually an ambitious target or not, but at least there is a target and it intends to get there. We need the government to tell us where we are going to be halfway, too. We need the government to tell us where we are going to be in 2015 and how we are going to get to the targets that exist for 2050.
The idea that we need to respond aggressively to the realities of climate change is no longer up for debate. The only question is, with what clarity will we do that and within what framework?
I am very pleased today that the NDP demonstrated that it has been listening to the Liberal Party in the environment committee, on which I have the honour of sitting. As we have said, we need to talk about where we are going. We need to get a plan. We need to hear what the plan is from the Conservative government. We need to hear about the issues around what we are going to be negotiating in Copenhagen and what the position of the government is going to be. Yes, we need to hear that.
The NDP, the Liberals and the other parties may disagree on what exactly that position should be or which binding targets should be imposed upon the negotiators at Copenhagen, but to remove the non-contentious part of Bill C-311 and simply say that the government is proud of its plan, the government must bring forward that plan.
I would really like the Conservatives to give us some straight answers about where we are headed. What steps do they plan to take between now and 2050? What will Canada do to ensure that we take responsibility and fulfill our commitments to the international community?
Our industries need clear direction. They need to know what will be expected of them in the years to come. As a member of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, I often talk to representatives of the oil and manufacturing industries. They want us—the Liberal Party—to tell them what our plan for them will be if we form the government one day. So I ask these industry representatives what the Conservative government has told them.
How has the Conservative government reached out to industry and said specifically, “This is where we need to go”? The answer time and time again is, the government has not.
What we are discussing today is an opportunity for the Conservatives to stand up and show us how strong their plan is, how great it is, where they want to go, and to give us targets that we can all aspire to and try to reach: industry, individuals, communities.
This is a good thing that we are talking about here. For the life of me, and perhaps I am still overly naive, I cannot understand why these Conservatives are opposing it. There is no question on the issue of climate change. We are all aware of the challenges. We just have not been able to get a sense from these Conservatives of how they are going to respond to those challenges.
Time and time again the opposition parties have tried to get those answers, first by bringing forward bills such as Bill C-311 that are demanding action. Now, by more modestly pulling out a piece of this bill, we are saying, “Okay, if the government does not want to give us action, at least give us an idea of the actions that it wants to take and where we are going to go. Give us something to reassure Canadians and to show Canadians that this Parliament is capable of addressing the grand issue of our time”.
How we get this right on the environment is going to direct the success or failure of us as a species in the 21st century. Still I hear lines like I heard about 10 minutes ago from the member opposite, where addressing the environment runs the risk of destroying our economy. I would like to think and to hope that in 2009 there is no longer any rhetoric around the fact that there has to be a choice between the environment and economy.
For so long now, the Conservatives and the Republicans have been saying that they cannot do anything about the environment because they have to deal with the economy, income and jobs. But we know that the critical thing is to combine these elements, to plan for both, to acknowledge that a healthy environment will support a strong economy and that a strong economy can and should contribute to a healthy environment. It is not magic. It is about investing intelligently in renewable energy and efficiency, about investing in the research, science, development and innovation that have always been Canada's strengths.
Unfortunately, we once again find ourselves in the position of having to beg the government to tell us its plan, to share its ideas with us, to tell us about its vision for the decades to come. That is not too much to ask.
We are asking for a little bit of clarity. We are asking the government to say, “This is what we want to reduce by 2015. This is where we want to be in 2020 and this is how we would like to get there by 2025”. We want to know if these targets can be adjusted if they are not ambitious enough or if they need to be more ambitious, if we need to deliver in a better sense.
That is the question we are talking about today. Will the government, that is so proud of its plan, so proud of the actions that it is supposedly bringing forward, share with us how those actions are going to result in targets for 2015 and so forth? Where is the plan? What is the plan? Can somebody please tell us?