Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley and commend him for his long work on the environmental file. He is respected among all members of this House and by the Canadian public for his diligent and long-standing effort on behalf of the environment.
It is worth reminding all Canadians that the New Democratic Party was the first party to use the words “climate change” in this House of Commons in the early 1980s. At that time, of course, many people on the other side of the House in the Liberal and Conservative Parties actually ridiculed us for that. They called us alarmists and tree-huggers. In fact, as late as 2002 the Prime Minister was still calling Kyoto a socialist plot.
I think all Canadians now know that this is no game. Climate change is here, it is real and it must be dealt with.
My hon. colleague asked about emission intensity versus hard caps. He raises an excellent point. Establishing a cap and trade system that is based on emission intensity is untried and untested. It is simply not accepted by the vast majority of respected scientists in this world. I do not even think it is accepted by the industries that are expected to implement it.
What we need in this country is a system of hard caps. If we are serious about combatting climate change and bringing down greenhouse gases, we need to set aggressive levels and bring them down in a studied and measured annual and five year allotted time zone so we can bring them down in a controlled fashion. This is the system that I understand was used successfully to deal with the acid rain problem that afflicted the Great Lakes. It was a cap and trade system that was used effectively by industry, by business and by joint cooperation between the United States and Canada to effectively tackle that problem.