David Anderson

[The Environment, March 18th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the various comments of the hon. member in the preamble to his question are simply untrue in terms of the process leading up to Kyoto and beyond.

The fact is we have a process with the provinces, the territories and the federal government. Fourteen governments are involved. We work together. We had a meeting of ministers of energy and environment, federal, provincial and territorial, last October in Manitoba. We had another the next month in Toronto. We had another just a few weeks ago in Victoria, and we will be having yet another in approximately two months. This is a continuous process and is federal, provincial and territorial.

[The Environment, March 18th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the work is being done by the federal-provincial-territorial group of officials, which by the way is chaired by Canada and Alberta. That information will be made available as I indicated in my response to the previous question.

However, if the hon. member is interested in some previous studies that have been done internationally, I will be happy to table a document following the conclusion of question period, which outlines some of the international studies that have been done and the figures that they have come up with. This is not official information of the Government of Canada; it is simply a survey of various think tanks and the views of other research institutes.

[The Environment, March 18th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, as I have indicated to the House on a number of occasions, there is currently a group of federal, provincial and territorial officials working on the costs of implementing Kyoto in light of the agreement of Marrakesh of last November.

When this work is completed, this joint federal, provincial and territorial group will report and I of course will make it available to the hon. member and other members of the House.

[Fisheries, March 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the minister and the government are very conscious of the extreme difficulty that the townspeople of Canso are facing at the present time. That said, we cannot revert to Tory policies of destroying the resource, as happened on the cod stocks of the east coast, simply for political reasons.

The hon. member should be ashamed of himself for suggesting that we should ignore the risk to the stock simply to satisfy the short term political considerations which his party and his government, and he supported, did consistently and which led to the complete collapse of the economy of most--

[The Environment, March 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the hon. member's offer of help and we will certainly be taking advantage of it. It is our intention to ratify. We wish to ratify. However the decision on ratification will depend upon consultation with the provinces, territories, industry and general public. That is one requirement. The second is to have a plan in place that prevents any unfair or uneven burden on the regions of the country.

That is our intention and the decision will be taken after the consultations in question and after the development of such a plan.

[The Environment, March 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, on the first question, there are a number of international studies that are available publicly and have been over the years. These have been put together in a listing. Just as soon as it is translated, I will make it available next week to the hon. member and other interested hon. members.

With respect to the second part of his question, there is no contradiction. The government's position is clear on this. We intend to have full consultation with the provinces, with interested Canadians and with industry prior to any decision on ratification and of course to have a plan that would make sure there is--

[The Environment, February 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of safety is foremost in our minds when we are dealing with climate and meteorological services. We are trying to establish the most efficient and effective system we can across the country.

I can assure the hon. member that no official has been authorized to make any statement with respect to changes at Gander because I have made no decision on whether there should be changes made in that or many other cities where we now have forecasting offices.

[The Environment, February 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question illustrates the problem the Alliance Party has with the Kyoto accord. We are dealing in the Kyoto accord with a global problem, but of course only a small part of one province is what he thinks about. He cannot see a global problem beyond a small part of one province.

Whatever might have happened in 1912, and the member might have been in the House at that time but I certainly was not, I can tell him now that the consensus of scientific opinion is that this century has been the warmest century of the millennium. The last decade was the warmest decade of the century, and 1999 and 2001 have been the warmest two years.

[The Environment, February 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will certainly look into the issue of the hon. Leader of the Opposition's car, but the trouble is they rotate through that chair so quickly it is extremely hard to keep track.

With respect to the natural gas that is being discussed on the other side, admitted on the other side, perhaps, I can tell the hon. member that in fact there are a number of greenhouse gases. I believe the generally accepted number is six of which CO

2

certainly is one.

Kyoto is designed to deal with basically CO

2

and other greenhouse gas emissions.

[The Environment, February 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised at the hon. Leader of the Opposition who follows the leader of the opposition who was first here in the Reform Party and who played such a hypocritical game with respect to government supplied vehicles, to raise the point that he too has a government car and it too is not a hybrid vehicle.