Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I want to commend my hon. colleague for his initiative in putting this motion forward.
Having listened to the hon. member from Vegreville, I feel as though I am living in some parallel universe. I do not know if you are a fan of Harry Potter, Mr. Speaker, but Lord Voldemort is the arch-enemy of Harry Potter. Lord Voldemort's name cannot actually be mentioned. He is referred to as “he who must not be named”. Similarly, with this government climate change is the phrase that must not be named under any circumstances. We will never hear that phrase pass from the lips of the Prime Minister or a minister or a member of the Conservative caucus, because they are in full-bore denial. That has had huge consequences for us.
May I suggest the hon. members read Mr. Waldie's article in The Globe and Mail, headed “Canada dead last in ranking for environmental protection”?
CBC news says, “Canada's reputation worsens: global poll”. As well, there is “Canada receives a “C” grade in environmental performance and ranks 15th out of 17 peer countries”.
The Canadian Press says, “Canada ranks worst on climate policy among industrialized countries: reports”. Another headline says, “Canada's Climate Policy Worst in Developed World”.
What is next, Ezra Levant in Sun Media? Even he might actually recognize that climate change is a very significant issue.
I just came from the environment committee, where one of the hon. members on the Conservative side was basically saying that we are only 2% of the problem, so why do anything? That is, frankly, the government's attitude: why bother with anything, because we are only a small part. It is kind of beggar your neighbour: I am not going to do anything, so he is not going to do anything, and as a consequence nothing gets done.
The consequence of the consequence is that we sit in a kind of stunned silence while climate change descends upon us.
The insurance industry, on the other hand, has figured it out and is actually re-pricing insurance products based upon the reality of climate change, the reality that the government wishes to deny.
Interestingly, Conservatives are still in full denial mode, even though they shelled out $2.6 billion last year in order to cover off the climate-induced catastrophic weather events in Calgary, Toronto, and other places.
If we look at the trend line put forward by the insurance companies, we will see that it is just going straight up, yet rather than actually dealing with mitigation and adaptation measures, the Conservatives would rather be shelling into the disaster relief fund and paying out that way. This is going to keep on keeping on until the taxpayers just get so weary of these guys that they give them the heave-ho.
One of the reasons the government was not able to balance its budget last year, and it should have been able to, was that it had to shell out $2.6 billion, which ended up as a $2 billion hit on the fiscal framework.
Going back to the motion, what I like about it is that it is an encouragement for us all to reduce our carbon footprint.
Climate change is a bit difficult for people to get their heads around. These great honking chunks of ice in Antarctica and the Arctic are dropping into the sea, and it is difficult to understand what that actually means. One would have thought that the Minister of the Environment would figure it out, since her riding is in a low area and one of the consequences of rising sea levels, which NASA, National Geographic, and pretty well any learned scientist say are going to be in the order of four metres, is that the low coastline areas will be flooded.
I congratulate the minister on her creation of parks, but she will discover fairly shortly that a lot of those parks will become marine parks. That will be a consequence of not in any meaningful way addressing climate change, which is upon us regardless of what the Prime Minister and the ministers of the Conservative caucus actually believe.
I particularly like the emphasis on the lowering of energy bills for Canadians. When there was a program, my wife and I took advantage of it. We did some replacement of windows and some extra insulation. I think we either got a tax credit or a significant sum of money to compensate for that initiative. We did see a change the quantity of heat that we used over the course of the year. I suppose the quantity of energy is a better way of putting it.
In this past year we also did more insulation of another property that we own by installing sliding doors and things of that nature. Of course, there is no grant program available. The hon. member said that the government put all this money into a grant program, but he neglected to mention that government killed the program in 2010. Here we are in 2014, and there is no program available. The consequence is that Canadians are largely on their own in trying to improve energy efficiency.
The other interesting aspect of this motion is with respect to creating jobs and stimulating the economy. I had the good fortune recently to be in Prince Edward County, which is just near the Trenton-Belleville area. I did a tour there, and members would be interested to know that there is a half a billion dollars' worth of installation of solar panels in that county alone. It is half a billion dollars' worth, and it feeds into the grid.
The Conservatives in Ontario get all bent out of shape because of the cost of hydro. Of course it is escalating. There is no denying it. Trying to pull out of coal-fired energy generation costs money. One of the ways of getting that energy replaced is through solar. In order to be able to make it a viable program, it has to be paid for, and here we have half a billion dollars' worth of installation of solar panels that will feed into Ontario's energy tariff. That would be one of the areas where I would see this motion could be helpful and useful.
Once we get past the motion, the real issue is the will and the design of the program, whether it is writing a cheque or creating tax credits or things of that nature. That gets us into the nitty-gritty of proper policy design. The hon. member was quite candid in saying that what he wants to do is encourage the House and the government to set up a realistic program that will encourage and incent taxpayers, homeowners, and business owners to do something about their carbon footprint.
All of that is to be lauded and encouraged. I like the idea of a retrofit program. I see that we are carrying one on here in the parliamentary precinct, and my guess is that it is costing more than a million dollars. We are taking energy-wasteful buildings and turning them into energy-efficient buildings. I am assuming that the design of the program here on Parliament Hill will ultimately save the Parliament of Canada significant sums of money in energy.
I like this motion. I encourage hon. members to support the motion. It does get climate change out of the dirty little closet that the government wishes to put it in. It may change the dialogue from the silliness about a carbon tax and all that nonsense that the Conservatives regularly spout. It may help reduce the carbon footprint of Canadians, and it certainly will create jobs. Prince Edward County is a classic example.