Mr. Speaker, the government supports an approach to climate change that achieves real environmental and economic benefits for all Canadians. Given the level of integration of the North American economy, it makes absolutely no sense to proceed without aligning a range of principles, policies, regulations and standards.
Some of the steps we have taken as we continue to pursue work towards our target on a sector by sector basis have been noted.
We are moving forward with common North American standards for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, which accounts for about approximately one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.
Environment Canada published the final Passenger Automobile and Light Truck Greenhouse Gas Emission Regulations in the Canada Gazette part II on October 13, 2010. These will establish progressively tighter GHG emission standards for new cars and light trucks over the 2011 to 2016 model years in alignment with U.S. national standards. We are also working on common North American standards for the post-2016 period.
We are also developing regulations to reduce GHG emissions from heavy-duty vehicles; a consultation document outlining the proposed elements of the future regulations was released on October 25, 2010. Regulations will be developed in 2011 for the 2014 and later model years.
The government is also working through its renewable fuels strategy to promote expanded production and use of cleaner, renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. As part of this strategy, the government has finalized regulations requiring an average renewable fuel content 5% in gasoline which came into effect on December 15, 2010. We have also announced that we will implement a requirement for 2% renewable content in diesel fuel and heating oil, subject to successful demonstration of technical feasibility.
The Government is taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired electricity generation through the application of a stringent performance standard. The gradual phase-out of old and dirty coal-units is expected to have a significant impact on reducing emissions from the electricity generation sector and improve air quality for all Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Going forward, we will continue to develop and implement climate change polices that make sense for Canada and that are aligned, as appropriate, with those of our largest trading partner, the United States.
Budget 2010 includes new measures totaling $190 million to support a cleaner, more sustainable environment and to help meet Canada's climate change objectives. It includes new measures to promote energy investments and help develop and deploy clean energy technologies such as the $100 million Investments in forest industry transformation initiative which supports the development, commercialization and implementation of advanced clean energy technologies in the forestry sector. This builds on the important investments made under Canada’s economic action plan, which includes $795 million over five years for the clean energy fund in support of clean energy research and $1 billion over five years for the green infrastructure fund for priorities such as green energy generation and transmission, carbon transmissions and storage infrastructure. To further ambitious national goals, the government has also invested $4.2 billion in the eco-energy initiatives to encourage the production of cleaner energy and cleaner fuels and increase energy efficiency.
Furthermore, we are taking important steps through the Canada-U.S. clean energy dialogue, CED. The CED has led to enhanced collaboration on the development of clean energy science and technology to reduce greenhouse gases and combat climate change. In addition, as announced at the North American leaders’ summit in August 2009, Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are collaborating in a wide range of areas to advance real action on climate change and clean energy, in North America and internationally.