Madam Speaker, climate change has been going on for a long time. In geological terms, it was not that long ago that we were under a mile of ice here. Of course, that has all melted. The landscape where I live was all once formed by glaciers. Lake Simcoe, which I talked about earlier, was once a much larger post-glacial lake that has shrunk. The climate has been changing and continues to change, and there is lots of evidence that there are human impacts on it.
The question is, how do we make a difference? When the Conservative government was in power, our government actually reduced greenhouse gases. Our approach was a regulatory approach, not one that taxed each and every Canadian. We did not tax people like my constituents, who have no choice and have very difficult lives. Instead, we told big emitters to find a way. We said that there was technology out there that they could use to reduce emissions from their manufacturing operations, automobiles, and so on. That regulatory approach was salutary and tremendously successful. It improved the fuel efficiency of automobiles.
Those things were done well, and guess what? They actually benefited families in my constituency. If the automobile they buy is more fuel efficient, that is a good thing for them. However, if they just have to pay more for gasoline, that is a bad thing for them because they do not have that choice. They can make the choice of buying the more fuel-efficient car perhaps, but they do not have a choice about paying for the fuel to go in the car.