John Reynolds

[Kyoto Protocol, October 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the chaos within the government is obvious. The natural resources minister has stated that nuclear generated electricity requires a serious look in the fight on climate change. The environment minister has said nuclear energy will not be considered.

Which minister's position is the Prime Minister supporting?

[Kyoto Protocol, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that is what he said about the national energy program and that is what he said about a lot of other things. It is not fair on Canada.

Let me quote to this minister what the environment minister of Alberta has stated:

Until the federal government tells us what they expect of us, there's no way we can sign or not sign any document--

Why is the government asking the provinces to sign a blank cheque on Kyoto without revealing the true costs to the provinces?

[Kyoto Protocol, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of the Environment is so concerned about the environment that he has millions of gallons of raw sewage going into the ocean right in his own constituency.

The Premier of British Columbia has stated that his province has grave concerns over the government's failure to produce any kind of specifics on Kyoto. There is no limitation plan and no targets have been set. We have gross generalities and nothing in terms of what the real true economic impacts are going to be.

Is it the government's position to push through an accord that will damage British Columbia's economy?

[Queen's Jubilee Medal, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and recognize individuals from my constituency who, as a result of their distinguished contribution to their communities, have been awarded the Queen's Jubilee Medal.

They are: Geoffrey Ballard, Geraldine Braak, Jack Warren Cameron, Owen Carney, Terence Rae Fellows, Gwen Harry, Shirley Henry, Rosemary Hoare, Wendy Holm, Betty Keller, Laverne Kindree, Frank Kurucz, Agnes Labonte, Kay Meek, Kenneth Moore, Charles Seton Parsons, Geraldine May Parsons, David Roberts, Peter Speck, Frederick Titcomb, Kathy Weiss, Roy Weiss and Allan Williams.

I wish to extend congratulations on behalf of all parliamentarians to these very deserving Canadians and British Columbians.

[Points of Order, October 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, following up on other comments we have had about ministers, this morning in Toronto the Minister of National Defence made a major address to the Toronto Board of Trade reporting the state of Canada's military. This is the minister's first major address and, like many other government announcements, it was made outside of the House.

As all hon. members know, the report of the modernization committee recommended that these announcements be made inside the House. The report was adopted unanimously by the House. It seems to mean nothing to the government.

Yesterday, at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, the Chief Government Whip flanked by a gang of parliamentary secretaries filibustered a motion to allow for secret ballot elections in committees. They argued that the secret ballot process would produce inferior results. I took offence to that remark, as maybe the Speaker should also.

The leadership over there is not interested in reforming Parliament. It cannot even follow through on its previous commitments to make announcements in the House.

So far the government leadership has been successful at beating down the efforts of those members who want to reform Parliament in a meaningful way, but now after nine years it appears there may be more of us than there is of them.

[Kyoto Protocol, October 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons the ministers and the premiers across Canada do not understand this minister is that even in his own riding he has a million gallons a day of raw sewage going into the ocean, including that from his own home, yet he is trying to tell us he now wants to clean up the air. It is the same kind of situation. It is hard to understand what the Liberals are really talking about. Canadians are worried sick that the Liberals are going to put them through the wringer with this accord. They are understandably worried about soaring heating costs and fuel prices.

How does the government intend to force consumers to shoulder the responsibility for 20% of the emission reductions?

[Kyoto Protocol, October 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that is quite interesting. Yes, they wanted to do it but after two years of the government messing up they got nowhere and they want to cancel it.

The Premier of Ontario says that the Prime Minister has no intention of implementing Kyoto because he knows it is unworkable and would throw hundreds of thousands of Canadians onto the unemployment lines. That is the Premier of Ontario saying that today and he has seen the two year plan. All we got yesterday were gross generalities and nothing in terms of what the real true economic impacts will be. Instead of blowing smoke in the faces of Canadians, when will the government release the true cost estimates of Kyoto?

[Kyoto Protocol, October 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, six out of ten provinces are on record as opposing the Kyoto accord. That number will grow as it becomes clear how ruinous this scheme will be to their economies.

There was a time when the Liberals boasted that they were a national consensus party. That was forgotten in 1993 when consensus building was seen as less efficient and more time consuming than prime ministerial rule.

My question is for the Prime Minister. How can he justify proceeding with this ill-conceived and economically dangerous accord when 60% of the provinces are opposed to it?

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that question because it shows me that the member does not understand what he is talking about with regard to Kyoto. That is exactly what we are talking about. We are talking about finding more efficient buses in Canada, not signing some phony international document that is going to do nothing for Canadians.

When I was minister of the environment in British Columbia an order in council was signed indicating that no more buses would be run by diesel fuel. They would all be run by natural gas to improve our environment. Who changed that? The NDP when it got in. The NDP said it would be too expensive so the buses went back to using diesel fuel and polluting the air.

The member talked about Ralph Klein and B.C. Yes, what we did was tough on industry, but what we did was force industry to bring in lower emissions. It worked very well. The Kyoto accord does not do that.

The effort we are putting into Kyoto should be put into working with industry in Canada to have better functioning plants. We should be looking at helping people insulate their homes in a better way so we do not get greenhouse gas emissions.

We do not have to sign this phony agreement. Why are the Americans not signing this agreement? Those members from central Canada do not understand that they are going to pay dearly when they cannot compete with the Americans across the border. They are going to pay dearly when the Americans drill their oil and gas wells right across the border from Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario because they will not have the same rules we will be under. That is what some of those members do not understand.

I agree with them with regard to cars. There are a lot of companies, not just Ballard, that do great work on cars. Why do Liberal backbenchers not tell their ministers to stop driving their big limousines and get into some environmentally friendly cars? Only two ministers out of 30 are driving environmentally friendly cars. What kind of government is that? It is trying to sell Kyoto to the Canadian people and its own ministers will not get into something environmentally friendly.

We talk about new and improved technology. We must encourage people in industry to look at technology. A company in Canada was making a product that could be put in garages so that people could drive their cars and fill them up with natural gas overnight. It was sold back to the Americans because there was no control help at all from any of the provincial or federal governments. The company did not want any financial help. It wanted regulatory help. That is not happening in this country.

Where is the government in providing assistance and making sure we can get hydrogen into gas stations and other areas across Canada? It is all part of the oil and gas industry. It will not hurt any of them. All of that technology is good.

Kyoto does just the opposite. It allows us to kick money outside the country to Russia and other countries which is stupid, phony and dumb. Let us start acting as smart Canadians with our smart industries and make sure the environment is a lot better. Let us get some leadership from a government whose members still like to drive limousines instead of cars that will not pollute the environment.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join in this debate. It is a pleasure to have listened to the Minister of the Environment. I noticed at the start of his speech he talked about our motion as being borrowed from the former minister of finance. I want to say to him that we agree with those comments made by the former minister of finance.

Members on this side, members of conservative-minded thinking, are not afraid to work with other parties in the House of Commons or across Canada when they have good ideas. I might mention to the Minister of the Environment that it is not unlike when I was the minister of the environment in British Columbia. I hired the present Minister of the Environment to write a report for our department because it was something in which he was a specialist. He did a good job but certainly if I were Minister of the Environment of Canada, I would not be hiring him on this file because I think he has gotten carried away on an international issue that is not going to do a good job for Canada.

It is our fervent hope that Canadians will soon realize the government is leading them down the path to national financial ruin. The Kyoto accord will go down in Canadian history as the ruinous legacy of the Liberal Prime Minister and his party if the Liberals use their majority to push this accord on Canadians. When Canadians recognize the danger in this reckless and ill-conceived scheme, they will make it clear to all members of Parliament that supporting the Kyoto accord will end their political careers. They will have a wide selection of politicians to choose from because only the Alliance Party stands in opposition to this abomination.

This is bad legislation. It is bad for Canada, bad for families, bad for seniors living on fixed incomes and bad for our economic future. It is bad as well for British Columbia. That is the province on which I want to focus today, not only as a member of Parliament from British Columbia but as a member who was a former minister of the environment in the province of British Columbia.

The member for Victoria will have some explaining to do if he has the courage to campaign for election again. He will have to explain why he pushed the Kyoto accord, knowing that the cost of heating the average home will rise by $50 or more a month. He will have to explain why people on fixed incomes will be forced to choose between heat and food. The member for Vancouver Centre will have to answer the same question when she faces angry voters. Will she give them advice on how to eat less or live colder? The minister says that is alarmist but it is not. It is a fact.

I want to mention an incident in my own past to indicate our own deep concern over the environment in western Canada. When Ralph Klein was the environment minister in Alberta, he introduced the toughest legislation regulating pulp mill emissions ever seen in Canada, if not in North America. Not many eastern or central Canadians remember that, but I do because I was minister of the environment of British Columbia.

I was so impressed by that legislation that as environment minister for British Columbia I attempted to adopt it word for word. Tragically, the premier of British Columbia refused to agree to let me take that legislation and make it law. It did pass cabinet but after cabinet approval, the premier refused to sign the order in council. I did the honourable thing and resigned as minister of the environment.

The Liberals should pay heed. Sometimes cabinet ministers leave because they are honourable, not because they did something dishonourable.

I think too that all members who support Kyoto should be prepared to explain to British Columbians why they are in such haste to support something that will do so much damage. They should tell parents in the suburbs why they will have to get out of bed two hours earlier in the morning to get their hockey and soccer players to the rinks and fields on public transit. The simple fact is there are no feasible or cost effective alternatives to the use of motor vehicles for passenger transportation and the movement of goods in many parts of British Columbia.

The NDP and the Liberals want to shut down British Columbia and that is not acceptable to British Columbians. Canadians should understand they are being sold down the river of no return on Kyoto.

Let me explain it in the words of the member for Sarnia--Lambton, a very good Liberal colleague in the House and an outspoken one on issues of importance. He said that he regrets supporting the firearms registry. Expert testimony said that the registry would cost only $85 million and check the flow of weapons to criminals. The cost is now over $1 billion and the ones being checked are innocent and law-abiding Canadian sports people. That is from a Liberal member.

Canadians should keep in mind as they call their members of Parliament to express outrage and opposition to the Kyoto accord that the Liberals say it will not cost much at all. We just heard the minister say that, but that is what the Liberals said about firearms registration and they were out in their estimates by over 1,000%.

That is what we have to realize in this House when we hear the Minister of the Environment talk about dollars. There are experts from universities across Canada talking about what this will do to Canada. We just cannot take the government's word.

Look what happened with the firearms registration. Whether one likes it or dislikes it, the fact is the costs are $900 million more than the government thought it would cost and it is still going up, and it is still not registering all the guns. In reality when we look at what is happening across Canada, we are not any better off than when the government started the whole thing.

All members in this place should heed the words of the member for Sarnia—Lambton. What guarantee is there that Kyoto will not run into the tens of billions with all the lost investment, the higher taxes, higher consumer prices, higher food costs when all the hidden expenses are totalled up?

I have some advice for Canadians. Invest in horses. If the majority across the way forces passage of the Kyoto accord, people will need horses to pull their cars and plows because of the cost of gasoline. I would only suggest that they stockpile what the horses leave behind. They could use it as ammunition when the Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives come looking for votes and brag about supporting Kyoto.

The Alliance Party is the only party that stands in opposition to this flawed and dangerous scheme. In British Columbia our devastated logging industry will suffer even more and what do the Liberals and New Democrats do? They support Kyoto no matter what the impact would be on the lives of the people who live in my beautiful province.

The fishing industry will suffer from skyrocketing fuel prices and fuel taxes, and Liberals and Democrats do not care. Our fruit growers, dairy farmers and ranchers will suffer, yet the Liberals and New Democrats laugh and shrug. There will be no offshore oil and gas industry. That would be a tragedy because it might have helped offset the losses suffered because of the bungling by the government on the softwood lumber issue.

It is true. Liberals and New Democrats do not care how much people will be hurt. I hope every voter in British Columbia whoever wasted a vote on those parties will learn from Kyoto and say never, never again.

One hundred years ago we had politicians who had national dreams. Today we have Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives who support international schemes. The Kyoto accord is an international scheme to transfer the wealth from Canada to third world countries that will not sign the Kyoto accord. It is a cruel fraud the government perpetrates under the guise of reversing climate change.

Canadians should make it clear that they will not accept this dangerous effect to their economic well-being.

I speak with as much sarcasm as I can muster to those Liberals, New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives for watching and laughing as Kyoto destroys my home province of British Columbia, and whatever the Liberals, New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives support, they certainly will be punished by the voters in the next election.