Mr. Speaker, I had hoped to share my time today with the member for Thunder Bay—Superior North. As time will be tight, I would like to at least thank him for his tireless work on behalf of Canadians to finally seek action on climate change around the globe.
I wish to voice my support for the motion presented by the member for Ottawa South and hope that all members in the House see fit to support these measures, which are necessary and long overdue. Although I do concur with the hon. member who spoke previously that it would have been useful to include the short and medium term targets, those are fortunately included in my colleague's bill, Bill C-311.
I concur with the member that the government has the full constitutional authority to take expeditious action to fulfill our country's responsibilities and undertakings to address climate change. Action on addressing climate change has been delayed, first by the suggestion that we needed a new law, which was then amended, brought forward, enacted and ignored. Then, the government dragged on endless consultations, which had been going on for the previous 15 years.
The next excuse was the need to await action by all nations of the world at Copenhagen. The latest excuse is the need to wait for the United States to dictate our targets and actions on climate change. Yet, while the government claims to be waiting for U.S. actions, the Obama administration is leaving us in the dust. President Obama's 2009 budget invested 14 times per capita what this country invested in its budget. This year, Obama's budget is 18 times per capita the investment of Canada. So much for synchronicity in North America.
Obama's budget also set aside $85 million for green job training for about 14,000 workers and $75 million in the re-energize education effort. Now that is what I call an education investment for the future. What did the government invest? It invested nothing. The government has set aside nothing for green jobs and training, and it would have been welcomed as a constructive addition to this member's motion.
New Democrats believe that green jobs, training and just transition programs for workers are all vital to a strong, sustainable economic recovery. The U.S. law specifies improved energy efficiency for government buildings as a way to jump start job creation and long-term growth. There is a commitment to retrofit 75% of government buildings in two years, saving billions for taxpayers in the United States.
In Canada, in response to a request for information that I submitted last year, we were told by the federal government that only six out of 26,000 federal buildings were so much as in the process of beginning retrofitting. Where is the synchronicity? I concur that the legislative and fiscal authorities have long been in place to enable action by the government. Many of those laws have been intentionally ignored. This despite international obligations under the Kyoto accord and, most recently, the Copenhagen agreement.
The government continues to ignore the pleas of Canadians from across the country to take action on climate change. Even the government's own studies show the impacts on the Canadian Prairies, the Canadian Arctic, the pine beetle expansion and record flooding. Yet still, it fails to act.
Many are suffering the economic toll already. Canadians are now having to turn to the courts to make the government comply with legal duties to reduce greenhouse gases.
I will be looking to the member for Ottawa South and his colleagues to support Bill C-311, which prescribes science-based reduction targets and requires accountability to Parliament for actions taken to meet the targets. In his 2009 audit, the federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development reported serious flaws with the government's initiatives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including the transit tax credit and the climate trust fund.
I concur fully with the assertion that while the government has the necessary fiscal tools at its disposal, it has also failed miserably on their application. The 2010 government budget entitled “Leading the Way on Jobs and Growth” says it all. Gone is any semblance of adherence to the government's mantra of balancing economy and the environment.
The selfsame budget, where the government proclaims Canada to be a clean energy superpower, kills the only main programs to incent development and deployment of our once burgeoning renewable energy sector. It kills the eco-energy home retrofit program. It deals a severe blow to environmental impact assessments of major energy and infrastructure projects. The North American Insulation Manufacturers Association calls it “shortsighted” to cancel the energy retrofit program, which brought benefits to homeowners, the economy and the environment. So much for its affiliation with business in Canada.
The most perverse of all, though, is the budget grants a further tax reduction to the already profitable yet under regulated major energy corporations, while gifting hundreds of millions of dollars to those industries merely to test a technology. Why cut the very initiatives that are bringing reductions and, instead, putting the money into something we do not know will work?
This contradicts Canada's commitment made at the 2009 G20 in Pittsburgh to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. cut subsidies for oil and gas industry by 2020 to restore almost $37 billion U.S. to its government coffers.
Where is the action on the promised aid to address climate adaptation faced by many developing nations? Canada is disgraced by being the only G8 nation that has not committed a dollar figure, despite commitments at Copenhagen. Canadians are expressing grave concern that with the coming cutbacks to foreign aid next year, the new commitment will fall by the wayside.
Finance for action to address climate change must be new and additional to existing ODA commitments and it must be predictable. Funding must be substantial and adequate and meet the scale of needs identified for developing nations.
Financing and technology support for developing country mitigation and adaptations is the lynchpin to achieving a global agreement on climate change.
Overcoming past failures on both fronts will be essential to a strong climate agreement and must be at the table at the G8 meeting in June. If we are to put the world on a path to avoiding dangerous climate change, we need the assurance Canada will meet those commitments.
Finally, it has been the custom at all previous G8 meetings to host a meeting of environment ministers. Why is this expected—