Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to respond to my colleague's questions.
“We did not get it done”. This phrase was uttered with regard to climate change policy. Was it uttered by someone on the government side? No, it sure was not. It was uttered by one of the litany of previously failed Liberal leaders who we on the government side have seen come to power. Why did they not get the job done? Why did the Liberal government, a party that is purported to be a defender of Canada's environment, not get the job done?
First, it signed on to an international protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which my colleague, who just spoke in the House, has proudly called a symbol of social action, a symbol of something that only included less than 30% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions when the Liberal government signed on to it. Less than 30%. That is not good policy.
Since that time, our government has stated that Canada only produces 2% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Given that, we understand that climate change is a very important issue, and not just to our country. It is a global problem. Acknowledging that, how do we act as a world leader to ensure that there are real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions? An agreement that sees less than 30% of the world's emissions included in it is not going to achieve the results we need.
Therefore, we did two things. First, we acknowledged that and participated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in trying to get an international agreement with binding targets from all major emitters. That was step number one. This was when we agreed to the Copenhagen targets that my colleague mentioned and, yes, our government is on track to meet those targets, as evidenced by our emissions trends report, which I am going to speak to in a bit.
The second thing we said was we need to take real action at home. We need to have policy that sees reductions in each sector where major emissions come from. Therefore, we looked at the vehicle sector and implemented regulations there, but we did it in a way that would actually save Canadians money. For example, the light duty vehicle emission and heavy duty vehicle emission regulations were put in place in a way that Canadians would actually see fuel savings over the time of implementation while seeing a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Contrast this to the Liberals' approach. I have already talked about their failed international policy for greenhouse gas emissions. The second part is that they proposed a carbon tax. I have to say I do not subscribe to the belief that a carbon tax is the way to reduce greenhouse gases in a meaningful way. Why? Because it is not cognizant of the fact that this costs Canadian consumers significantly.
I am going to close with our action on Arctic climate change adaptation. It was this government that invested heavily in direct climate change adaptation and mitigation measures for the Arctic. We also invested heavily in the science behind ensuring that climate change is both mitigated and adapted to, not just here but abroad. We can look at the funding that has come through the tri-council agencies, which we have increased, and excellent research is happening in Canada, but we also have to look at the fast start climate change program in which we have invested over $1.2 billion to see real action internationally.
It has been under our government that we have seen a real stoppage in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions while the economy continued to grow. Under the Liberal government, there was a 30% increase in greenhouse gas emissions. This is the truth. We are working hard to achieve this and we are very proud of it.