Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House once again to talk about the fight against climate change.
As we know, the UN climate change conference is currently going on in Lima, Peru. On the weekend, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, admonished the Conservative government for its poor record on combatting climate change.
On December 2, I asked the Minister of the Environment about what is going on in Lima. As we know, Canada already has a bad reputation when it comes to international negotiations. It has received a number of fossil awards—not exactly something to be proud of.
Our partners are wondering whether the Conservatives will finally do something, now that China and the United States have come to an agreement about enforcing concrete measures to combat climate change. There have already been calls for more ambitious commitments on climate change. I asked the Conservatives whether they were finally going to come up with a credible plan to combat climate change.
As I said, this weekend Ban Ki-moon mentioned that Canada will fail to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions based on 2005 data. He was the one who told us. We knew it already, but Ban Ki-moon said it as well, as did the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, civil servants at Environment Canada and other stakeholders. Now, Ban Ki-moon is again telling us that we will fail to reduce our greenhouse gas emission by 17% in 2020, based on 2005 data. He is calling out the Conservative government, urging it to do much more. He said that oil producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, are moving away from the use of fossil fuels. He is calling on Canada to immediately do the same. Ban Ki-moon also said that the government needs to become ambitious and visionary when it comes to climate change. In addition, he said that the federal government needs to look beyond the country's borders to give more support to developing countries in their efforts to fight climate change.
We are also concerned about something really unfortunate going on in Canada: the Conservatives are still subsidizing fossil fuels—oil and gas—to the tune of more than $1.3 billion per year. Canada's subsidies to the fossil fuel industry are among the highest in the world, but we should be using that money to advance green energy and transition to those sources. However, despite all of the stakeholders who have appealed to the government and despite the fact that Canada promised to end those subsidies, the government is only taking baby steps. Those subsidies should be gone already. When the NDP is in power, it will put an end to that $1.3 billion in subsidies and spend that money on transitioning to green energy instead.
When will the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment announce his plan to eliminate fossil energy subsidies and transition to green energy?
