Madam Speaker, with only five minutes, it will be hard for me to do justice to such an important issue, so I will concentrate on certain specific elements.
This bill deals with energy conservation and energy efficiency. People who live in a rural area as I do definitely understand the importance of energy efficiency. All members who live in rural areas do. We understand the importance of our wealth of natural resources. Often, people will tell themselves that it is just wood or mines or fish. In fact, a natural resource is a treasure. We understand that it is important to take care of our treasures. Sometimes, people who live in other areas may have a hard time understanding that. That is why this big country has representatives of urban and rural regions. That gives us an opportunity to explain our reality, the reality of the rural environment.
As for the issue of natural resources, as I said earlier, we often have to make sure we have good energy efficiency. We live in remote areas where we have to travel greater distances, which means much higher costs. These are also areas where people earn their living from the land and from nature's bounty.
In Madawaska—Restigouche, where I live, the forest provides an extremely strong economic base. People have to protect the environment so that the forest will still be there in the future and our children and grandchildren can continue working in forestry, which is their own natural resource. People often ask those of us who live in rural regions what the environment means to us. The environment is everything, because it is what enables us to create jobs where we live. If we take care of our environment, then we will also take care of our treasure, which is the natural resource.
Energy efficiency affects us every day. We therefore need to keep abreast of developments and give more thought to how we can improve the future of our environment, which surrounds us every day. In this connection, I had the chance just now to question one of my colleagues from the Halifax region of Nova Scotia. I asked him whether the Conservative government had made the right decision when it cancelled the financial assistance program for the purchase of more energy efficient vehicles. That program was working very well, though there were some shortcomings. The government was extremely slow in sending payments to people who made such purchases. We will put that aside, however, and not be too negative; the program itself was extremely positive. The government was negative, but not the program; it was positive.
After barely two years, however, it has suddenly been announced that the program is going to disappear because it is not important. In today's reality, with the importance of energy efficiency, we need to make sure our citizens are provided with tools, with incentives. That is done all the time, through tax credits and other means. We do these things to encourage people to take positive actions. In this case, it was to encourage the purchase of more energy efficient vehicles.
People in our rural regions have to travel long distances to get to work. This means they need to spend more than other people on gas, which makes energy efficient transportation extremely important. We know that energy efficient vehicles cost more as well. This is a parallel with what I was saying before: those of us in rural regions understand the importance of our environment and of taking care of it. Energy efficient vehicles combine those two aspects and that combination makes it possible for us to help people.
You are about to cut me off already, Madame Speaker, which is regrettable. I will certainly have the opportunity at some other time to revisit this matter.