Mr. Speaker, I was just reading an article in iPolitics from a couple of years ago. It talked about Preston Manning distributing a Fraser Institute report among Conservative colleagues, urging them to adopt a carbon tax because it was a market-based mechanism. I am wondering how the Conservative opinion has shifted from Mr. Manning's.
That aside, I agree with the member for Calgary Nose Hill. A carbon tax is going to be ineffective if it is only selectively applied. If we are to put a price on pollution, it has to apply to everyone equally. I am worried that this debate is concentrating too much on the here and now, the costs of this and that and so on and so forth. I want to look 20 to 40 years into the future and what the costs of climate change will put on our economy.
For example, in my province of British Columbia, the forest fire budget is putting a big dent in our coffers. We know what the costs will be mitigating floods and so on.
With the economic costs of climate change in mind, I wonder if we can find some common ground. Could the member for Calgary Nose Hill give her opinion and her thoughts on some of the opportunities that exist in the renewable energy economy of the future, how organizations like Iron&Earth, which are oil sands workers, want to take their skill set and transition to the renewable energy economy of the future so we are providing that just transition?
This change is going to be forced upon us one way or the other. We are either going to react to it or we are going to be proactive toward it.