Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure once again of rising in the House to talk about climate change. As everyone knows, this is the hot topic this week. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Climate Summit 2014 was held last Tuesday in New York.
Barack Obama welcomed all heads of state. In fact, 120 heads of states from around the world were present, except for our Prime Minister. That was truly disappointing.
In the last session of Parliament, I pointed out that for the Conservative government, unfortunately, the environment and job creation are mutually exclusive. I asked the following question: When will the Conservatives take the steps necessary to live up to their Copenhagen commitment?
To make a long story short, I would say that when they withdrew from the Kyoto protocol the Conservatives set a low greenhouse gas reduction target of 17% below the 2005 level by 2020. Under the Conservatives, Canada is the only country in the world that decided to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol and to abandon its commitments under that protocol. People are really disappointed with the government's attitude. Canada gave itself lower targets, minuscule targets.
Everyone is up in arms. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development and even Environment Canada officials themselves have said in all the reports to the Conservative members over the past few years and this year that we will not reach the feeble targets of 17%. Of course, the Conservatives keep saying that all is well, but that is not the case. Everyone has sounded the alarm. However, the Conservatives are turning a deaf ear. They do not seem to understand what people are telling them.
Had the Prime Minister of Canada gone to New York for the Climate Summit 2014, he would have known that the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate released a report at the UN a few days before the summit. The report said that we must not pit the economy against the environment anymore, because it is a false dichotomy. The independent commission that released the report is co-chaired by former Mexican president Felipe Caldéron, who himself said, “The new climate economy report refutes the idea that we must choose between fighting climate change or growing the world's economy. That is a false dilemma.”
Actually, if we do not deal with climate change, the opposite will be true: we will have to spend billions of dollars to be able to respond to the disasters caused by climate change.
What are the Conservatives waiting for? When will they make regulations for Canada's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the oil and gas industry?