Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill S-216, a Senate bill. I note that the summary of the bill describes the bill as an enactment that “amends the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act to ensure the full participation of each House of Parliament”. Clearly there was a mistake made some time back when the original legislation was tabled, but which is now being corrected by this bill.
Bill S-216 is sponsored by the member for Kitchener Centre on the government side. It amends the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act. The former requires the government to produce and table a number of reports before the House; Bill S-216 proposes that the government table the same reports before the Senate. Therefore, the bill gives the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development greater flexibility regarding the timing of the tabling of some of the reports under the Federal Sustainable Development Act.
The bill also corrects an oversight that occurred, as I indicated before, during the development of the Federal Sustainable Development Act.
The act will establish a sustainable development advisory council, and there were a number of suggested groups from whom representatives would be drawn to sit on this advisory council.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment did speak to the bill, and I took the time to reread the first hour of debate, so I am aware what other members had to say regarding the bill. I must admit it was quite far-fetched. It was certainly way off the topic of the bill in many ways. Nevertheless, the parliamentary secretary did make reference to new regulations for tailpipe emissions and said, “We have reduced emissions through stringent tailpipe emissions standards” to begin in 2011.
I can recall the emissions standards in the United States under Jimmy Carter in 1980. They were in place to ensure that the Detroit big three built their cars in much more energy-efficient ways. Following the election of Ronald Reagan and the new Republican right, who were basically the forebears of the current Conservative Party, they took the emissions standards of President Jimmy Carter and basically gave the car companies a pass. They were supposed to bring in certain emissions standards by such and such a date over, say, a five year period, and Ronald Reagan changed that so the auto companies had 10 to 20 years to bring in the same emissions standards.
It is interesting after 38 years in political life and having seen many people change their positions over time to see the Conservatives talk the way they are right now, which I am not used to. Certainly in reading the speeches in Hansard, I have had some big surprises.
The parliamentary secretary has also said that 90% of Canada's electricity will come from clean sources by 2020. I applaud all of what he has to say, but what sort of studies does he have to show that this will in fact happen, because I do not know if the government actually has control of all the levers required to make certain it would?
I would like to get the information from him on that. For example, his colleague, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, who is a member from Winnipeg, as I am, has been pushing for an east-west power grid. We recognize that it is important in order to meet the Kyoto targets. In order to reduce the greenhouse gases, we want to have am east-west power grid, so that we can bring developed hydroelectric power from Manitoba.
Rather than shipping it all to the United States on a north-south basis, we want to be able to send it east-west. We want to be able to send the power into Saskatchewan and Alberta, but particularly into Saskatchewan, so it does not have to rely on coal-fired generation, so it does not have to do any further studies of the nuclear option which it is looking at right now.
We want to be able to construct that east-west power grid to Ontario. If we could do that, we could provide hydroelectric power, clean power, to southern Ontario, so that the coal-fired generators that are currently operating in southern Ontario could be retired. I forget the exact number, whether it is five or fifteen, but there is a number of them still operating and they are certainly heavy on the pollution side.
The fact of the matter is that this issue has been dealt with since about 1991 when Premier Gary Filmon who was a Conservative Premier was dealing with Bob Rae who was the Premier of Ontario at the time. The deal fell apart at that point in time. There was talk of starting to look at it again later on and things are just not happening.
It seems to me that with a recession in progress, and I notice that the Conservatives now are talking about their strong connections with the Obama White House. They are now taking a different sort of attitude, and if that is the case, why are the Conservatives not putting up the money, why are they not highlighting this east-west power grid as one of their major projects?
I assume they are heavily interested in re-election. If they want to do that, it is certainly not going to make them any less popular than they are right now if they were to announce that they were going to do an east-west power grid from Manitoba to Ontario, and that we are going to sell power into the Ontario market.
It is just such a no brainer. We are putting the money into the north-south routes. As a matter of fact, Manitoba Hydro is getting close now to building its Bipole III which will be the third bipole.
The debate in Manitoba is whether or not this thing should be built down the east side of Lake Winnipeg or whether it should go all the way out to the Saskatchewan border and come back. I think at some point over time, over the next say 100 years, the Bipole III is going to be built and then we are going to be looking at a Bipole IV at a certain point. There is some advantage to having them spread a wide distance apart. If we were to have an ice storm, for example, and the two bipoles were within 30, 40 or 50 miles of one another, they could both be taken down in an ice storm. Therefore, there is an advantage of having several of them and having them spread out.
We know what happened in Quebec during the ice storm a few years ago. It basically shut the whole province down for a certain amount of time.
Therefore, I see here absolutely nothing coming from the government side on this issue at any point in time. The Conservatives have gone through an election now. The only person on that side who gives us any encouragement is the Minister of State for Democratic Reform who on a couple of occasions has said some pretty good things in support of the east-west power grid, but he does not seem to be getting anywhere with the member for Portage—Lisgar or--