Mr. Speaker, I am so sorry that my dear friend the parliamentary secretary has to debate this after midnight when we started the day together at 7 a.m.
However, the reality is that although everything she said is true, none of it adds up to a plan to meet the Copenhagen target. The coal regs do not take effect until 2015 and are fully considered when Environment Canada projects that by 2020 we will have reduced by 3 megatonnes.
The statistic she just gave us of what the emissions were between 2005 and 2011 is also accurate. However, between 2011 and 2020, what she did not add is that Environment Canada projects that emissions will keep rising. They are rising to reach 734 megatonnes by 2020, not dropping.
It is not her fault, because it is repeated ad nauseam. The nonsense that this is 130 megatonnes less than what would have happened under the Liberals is their spin around a concept called business as usual, which is a hypothetical imagining of what would happen in some future if nothing happened anywhere, not counting Ontario's or B.C.'s reductions. In other words, business as usual as a figure is irrelevant to the Copenhagen target, which required absolute reductions by 17%. We need a plan.
