John Godfrey

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in response to that intervention, I think the facts speak for themselves. We had Project Green in place, a project that had a large number of elements that were moving us toward a regulatory regime. This project was not totally dissimilar from the weak version that was subsequently proposed by the government. Had that been put forward, those regulations would be in place now.

If we did nothing, why is that the government then cancelled a bunch of programs that were great in value and then reintroduced them but in such a feeble form and losing a year of time to bring back things and relabel what we had already put forward?

It is a kind of tribute to our action that we saw this cancellation and then revival of programs. The Conservatives just failed to recognize what they were doing.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 18th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

When Canadians are asked about the greatest threat facing Canada today, they list one concern above all others: the climate change crisis. Climate change is seen by Canadians as a far greater threat to their future well-being than problems with the health care system, terrorism, crime or the war in Afghanistan.

With climate change, we face an unprecedented planetary crisis. Last week, the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 was awarded to Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world has understood the gravity of this crisis. Does the government?

As a historian, I can only find one parallel in our history where human activity has threatened the very future existence of the earth itself and that is all-out nuclear war. However, the difference between nuclear war and the climate change crisis is also great; in one case nuclear war and the actions of a few states and a few world leaders that would produce an instant irreversible catastrophe.

The climate change crisis, however, has been building over decades of industrial activity in the developed countries like Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. All of us in the developed world are implicated as consumers, as users of energy and as people whose advanced living standards have depended on burning the fossil fuel which produces the CO₂ which contributes to climate change.

As politicians with limited time horizons facing, in our case, the possibility of elections at any time, it is hard to imagine a crisis which demands a global solution, a global effort requiring constant, dedicated work over decades and generations, country by country, industry by industry, citizen by citizen, and yet that is our challenge. History will judge our generation of politicians severely if, knowing what we know today about the causes and effects of climate change, we fail to act decisively in our time in the face of this great threat to the planet's very survival.

How does the Speech from the Throne respond to this mighty challenge? Given the minimal references to climate change in the first Speech from the Throne, there has been something of a deathbed conversion in the latest effort. There is a grudging recognition of the reality of climate change but no sense of urgency, indeed, no real conviction.

Who, after all, wrote the words in the Speech from the Throne? A Prime Minister who called the United Nations action on climate change a “socialist money sucking scheme”? A Prime Minister who only last December referred to “so-called greenhouse gases” as if calling the science itself into question? A Prime Minister who said that ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what Kyoto will do to their economy and lifestyle when the benefits are negligible? We are talking about the survival of the planet and the benefits are negligible?

What have the Conservatives done as a government? Next to nothing. In fact, worse than nothing. We are now travelling in reverse. The Conservative government is trying to use its own failure to meet Kyoto targets as a political wedge. Canada will likely not meet its Kyoto target because the Prime Minister scrapped all climate change programs upon coming into office and then implemented weak substitutes that ignore our obligations.

The Conservatives have admitted that their so-called plan will result in absolutely no reductions in Canada's total greenhouse gas pollution during the first phase of Kyoto and will not even be in place before 2010.

According to the C.D. Howe Institute, the Deutsche Bank, the Pembina Institute and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the Conservatives will not meet their own far too modest targets and will allow this country's carbon emissions to increase until 2050 and beyond.

Last month, even the government's own advisory board, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, expressed serious doubts as to the likelihood of any of the government's own targets being met.

Under two consecutive Conservative environment ministers, there has been no attempt to move forward seriously, not even an honest and full effort to curb greenhouse gas pollution. In fact, one of the Prime Minister's first acts in office was to scrap the previous government's plan, spend a year doing nothing and then arbitrarily reintroduce pieces of it to feign their commitment but with far less funding, less vigour, no coherence and altogether incompetent implementation. Consider the cockamamie auto rebate scheme that has infuriated manufacturers, auto workers and consumers who have yet to receive a penny.

The government's plan has no hope of meeting its own overly modest targets. It is nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing and, if we are to believe Tom Flanagan, so is the Prime Minister.

The government fails to understand that we need to do everything we can to reduce greenhouse gases while strengthening our economy. Instead of action and leadership, we have inaction and denial.

In many ways, Canada does serve as a guide to other nations, much like the North Star invoked in yesterday's throne speech, but the Prime Minister needs to open his eyes the next time he visits our far north and understand the scope of devastation from climate change facing entire communities and an entire way of life. The Prime Minister cannot choose to defend our northern sovereignty without also fighting climate change in a way that protects the very people who live there.

The Speech from the Throne made a curious claim about Canada's role on the international stage: “Canada is back”. When it comes to Canada's leadership role in the world on climate change, we are back all right, way back, back of the pack, back out the door, down the street, out of town and hiding in the bush.

What Canada needs to do is treat the climate change crisis as seriously as we did the threat of Fascism in the 1930s. Our leader has been described as obsessed and single-minded on the subject of climate change. That is right. Winston Churchill was described as obsessed and single-minded in his day. That is the leadership we need.

As in 1939, we need a total mobilization of our society and economy with the single purpose of winning the war against climate change. This means putting a price on carbon emissions. This means examining every aspect of our economy and society, from large, heavy industry to fossil-fueled electrical generation, to upstream oil and gas, to all aspects of transportation, to all our buildings, from housing to commercial, to all the energy-consuming appliances and heating and cooling machinery inside our buildings, to agriculture, forestry and the management of urban waste.

We need a tremendous national effort to reorient our economy and society to the 21st century, so we get energy, the environment and the economy, the three Es, pulling in the right direction.

As with World War II, Canada faces a crisis and an opportunity. Let us ignore the naysayers, the minimalists and those who have passed from denial to despair without an intervening period of hope. Let us mobilize ourselves and dedicate ourselves as Canadians in responding to the greatest challenge of our generation, the climate change crisis.

[The Environment, June 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the plan is a fraud. The numbers are not realistic. It is full of flaws. It offers subsidies to companies that reach their meaningless objectives, and their greenhouse gas emissions will continue to climb until 2050. This government refuses to bring the climate change bill back to the House.

After yesterday, should Canadians expect the Conservatives to try to silence anyone who does not agree with them?

[Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, June 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the committee is trying to hear independent analysis from witnesses on the government's so-called climate change plan.

Not a single independent report has substantiated the minister's numbers. The Pembina Institute, Deutsche Bank, the Tyndall Centre and now the C.D. Howe Institute have all concluded that emissions will rise each and every year for the next 50 years with his plan.

Why will the government not let the committee hear what needs to be fixed now instead of trying to put a broken plan into action?

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I take as our primary duty as legislators to consider pieces of legislation that have actually been put together through the work of people like the member for Edmonton Centre as the chair of that committee which logged all of those long hours.

It seems to me that our first duty as parliamentarians is to consider government bills that the government has asked us to rewrite after second reading. I acknowledge once more the skilful work of the member for Edmonton Centre. It seems to me that ought to be our top priority, to bring back Bill C-30.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, one piece of legislation which should be certainly the concern of this House is the private member's Bill C-293, which deals with Canada's official aid position and CIDA, and which is also in the Senate. It would guide the work of CIDA in the future in ways which would pick up on the themes of fighting poverty, which have been so important to everybody in this House.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, let me do two things.

First of all, let me respond to the hon. member. I heard no members present in Berlin, from other legislatures, say anything of the sort about the Canadian plan. First of all they did not understand it. Second, they did not ask. Third, everybody who has looked at it and has understood it says it is a fraud, so we got no such international endorsement from other legislatures at all. I think what we got was disappointment that Canada has not been more ambitious.

Second, let me take advantage of this moment to ask the House for unanimous consent to put forward a motion that in view of the interest in Bill C-30, that within the hours that will be extended, the House consider Bill C-30.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite inspired by the speech by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment. We support extending the hours of Parliament, because that will give us an opportunity to consider Bill C-30, Canada's Clean Air Act. I want to pick up on what the member for Wascana said. The time has come to consider the debacle of the Prime Minister's speech at the G-8 meeting last week in Heiligendamm. Extending the hours will give us an opportunity to correct the situation. Now we may finally have time to study Bill C-30.

In the wake of the G-8 meeting, Canada's problem is the lack of consistency between the Prime Minister's international statements on climate change and the reality of the domestic regulations on industry proposed by the government about six weeks ago to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Bill C-30 has had a curious history. It was originally proposed by the government in October, with a series of regulations. Then, it was attacked from all sides: by NGOs, the media, economists and all three opposition parties. The government withdrew the bill. Then it was sent after first reading to a legislative committee chaired by the member for Edmonton Centre.

To everyone's astonishment, the process worked very well in the case of BIll C-30 and produced an extensively amended bill that was stronger, more coherent and more ambitious. What has happened? Once again, the government is refusing to present Bill C-30 and is instead substituting weak, empty regulations under the existing legislation, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

The parliamentary secretary has spoken several times today about the importance of taking the work of parliamentarians seriously. He was suggesting that one of the arguments in support of prolonging the hours of Parliament was to allow a report to be made concerning the activities of a group of parliamentarians, of which I was one, when they took part in a meeting before Heilingendam in Berlin of legislators from the G-8 plus five countries.

However, as I indicated in a previous intervention, while that is important work and while the results of that visit are worth knowing and those discussions should be referenced, how can that compare with the work which many of us, including the parliamentary secretary, put in on Bill C-30?

The hours and hours of debate, the hearings, the extra sitting hours into the evening and all of the work which went into it with the highly successful result under the skilful leadership of the member for Edmonton Centre, to whom we must give credit for helping to get this much improved clean air and climate change bill through.

Surely, the member for Edmonton Centre, even though he is on the government side, would love to see the fruit of his work honoured after putting all that effort into it.

This is a good reason to extend the House sitting hours. The government has now twice failed to bring forward a meaningful climate change plan. The regulations that were proposed instead under CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, are a complete ecofraud. There are, as the Pembina Institute has pointed out in a very thoughtful piece of analysis, at least 20 loopholes in the entire package that undermine any claim that can be made about greenhouse gas reductions. Until these loopholes are plugged, I can give but a brief example. Pembina says:

In reality, the regulatory framework’s effect on emissions cannot be known with any certainty, because (i) its targets are expressed in terms of emissions intensity, not actual emissions; (ii) we do not yet know how targets will be defined for new facilities; (iii) “fixed process emissions” are exempted but have not been fully defined; and (iv) some of the “compliance options” that companies can use to meet targets will not result in immediate emission reductions, and some may not result in any real emission reductions at all.

That is simply an example of some of the 20 loopholes. The government has misrepresented to Canadians about what this plan will actually achieve. There will be and can be no absolute reductions by 2012 and no absolute reductions by 2020. Not a single government official, when summoned before the environment committee, could guarantee that the so-called plan's claims could be met and it is clear that little analysis has been done. The analysis that has been done was shrouded in secrecy and not a single, independent expert has been called in to verify the so-called plans claims.

Indeed, a leading German investment bank, Deutsche Bank, has produced an extensive report on the subject and it comes to exactly the same conclusion. It says in plain language:

We do not think the Government's alternative plan will succeed. Setting aside the Kyoto target of an absolute reduction of 6% in emissions over 2008-12 against the base year of 1990, the Canadian Government has published a plan that re-defines its GHG emissions-reduction targets.

The turning the corner plan takes 2006 as the base year instead of 1990 and imposes reductions in the intensity of Canadian industry's emissions rather than reductions in the absolute level of emissions.

That means that the redefined targets are much less ambitious than the Kyoto targets. Yet, because the turning the corner plan allows for the offsetting of emissions at what we think is too low in price to incentify investments in new low carbon technologies, we think that even these much less ambitious targets will probably not be achieved. In short, under current policies we would expect Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions to continue rising over 2006 to 2020.

The point is further reinforced by a document from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research entitled “Climate Change Policy and Canada's Oil Sand Resources: An Update and Appraisal of Canada's New Regulatory Framework for Air Emissions”, with the same conclusions. Tomorrow, just to put the final and fourth nail in the coffin, the C.D. Howe Institute will be releasing a detailed and critical analysis of the turning the corner plan.

In other words, four major studies continually make the same point that the plan that is on the table now will not do the job and that we need to get back to Bill C-30.

What do we have after 16 months? We have something that is worse than nothing at all, because we have created tremendous uncertainty that will prevent industry from making the rational, long term investments that are necessary for deep greenhouse gas reductions. After 16 months, all we have on the table is a shell, not a single regulation and no promise of regulations for up to 18 months for greenhouse gas reductions, and nothing until sometime in 2010 for smog.

The former government's project green, as has been noted by the Deutsche Bank, not only would have created certainty for industry, but it would have produced almost seven times the reductions proposed by the current government's plan.

Certainly, we need a better plan in place before we break for the summer. Therefore, government should bring Bill C-30 back to the House, so that we can get on with it.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 11th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, further to the question by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment, I want to ask the hon. member the question.

As far as extending sitting hours is concerned, given the choice between discussing the trip to Berlin by the legislative group—which I was a part of with other members—and discussing Bill C-30, which would take an incredible amount of parliamentary work and countless hours of sessions, how would he prioritize these two choices?

[The Environment, June 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have bad news for the parliamentary secretary. Yesterday, a Deutsche bank report concluded that the government's climate change plan would lead directly to increased GHG emissions and that its numbers are fundamentally flawed.

Now President Bush is talking about huge delays, weak targets and abandoning the Kyoto framework.

The Prime Minister continues to hide his agenda, hide the fact that he is supporting Bush behind the scenes and is hoping no one will notice. Everyone is noticing. When will he show some backbone and at least be honest with Canadians about his collusion with Bush at the G-8?