Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to revisit a question I asked a few weeks ago regarding the Conservatives' habit of being satisfied with half-measures when it comes to climate change. To call them half-measures is being generous.
At the time, I referred to a heartfelt plea from a scallop producer from British Columbia. He lost nearly 10 million scallops and had to lay off dozens of employees after what happened.
It is important to point out that, for years now, we have been calling on the common sense of Conservatives—this goes back to the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s—but they do not appear to have much common sense, since they do not seem to understand the urgency.
I will talk about IPCC's latest report, which was released last week. Many articles were written on the basis of that report and several of them were devastating. They were devastating because, unfortunately, people like the Conservatives are not doing anything to fight climate change. I am generally quite optimistic and like many of us who have children, we want to take care of our future generations. That is why I think there is still time to take action and even act urgently, despite the devastating headlines we have before us.
IPCC's recent study mentions that the Conservatives' inability to take action will result in problems with food security. It is also reported that a number of essential food crops such as rice, wheat and corn will be increasingly hard hit in the coming years, and that this threatens food security not only in Canada, but around the world.
The fisheries are mentioned as well. One article says:
Global fisheries are also at risk of significant decline. In the more southern regions, in particular, a number of species will completely disappear. The United Nations environment program projects that it will not be possible to commercially fish the oceans by 2050.
That is not so long from now. Can you imagine?
That is from an article in Le Devoir entitled “Climate: catastrophe on the horizon. Changes are already having a major impact on all continents”. And then there are all the studies, even the secret reports by government officials, prepared by Environment Canada, which tell the government that if it does not take action it will not even reach its low Copenhagen goals. We know that it is even an insult to human intelligence to consider that the Copenhagen goals are high. Despite that, instead of cutting emissions to 17% below 2005 levels, we are headed towards the same results as in 2005, which represents no reductions. Reductions are even lower when compared to 1990 levels. Those are scientific figures.
What I would like from my honourable colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment, are some figures other than the government's own figures. I would like him to give me some scientific figures that were not produced by the government. In fact, all scientists are saying that the Conservative government is going to hit a wall. I want some figures other than the ones the Prime Minister gave him.