In fact they came to committee to warn us about what we were doing.
When we mention their names and present their evidence that there is really something wrong with the science, I hear members as well as the previous speaker, try to discount the opinions of these experts by somehow implying that their opinions are not valid because they are corrupted by the oil industry or the energy industry. That is simply not valid in any way.
Those people have no connection to the oil industry. I do not understand why their opinions, even if they did have some connection to the oil industry, would be any less valid than those of organizations such as the David Suzuki Foundation, the Sierra Club, or the Pembina Institute which receive a considerable amount of funding and not just from the Canadian government.
The Sierra Club received $213,000 from the British Columbia government when the New Democrats were in power in B.C. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities under the leadership of a current candidate for the NDP received a grant of $250 million to establish the green municipal program. Why does that funding from governments not somehow put the credibility of their opinions under suspicion any more than those scientists who have a huge list of credentials and years of experience in the field?
I think there is a problem. It makes me suspect that the government is cherry-picking opinions and actually paying organizations to promote its argument. That makes me very suspicious.
That having been said, the science certainly is questionable and should be questioned. The way for Parliament to have dealt with this issue should have been the same way the U.S. government dealt with it. It came to the conclusion that it would not support Kyoto.
We should hold parliamentary committee hearings, whether they be joint Senate and House of Commons hearings or standing committee hearings. We should have a thorough study done of this issue for parliamentarians, where parliamentarians could listen to the scientific opinion on both sides of the issue. We could see the evidence that the member for Lac-Saint-Louis talked about, the pictures of the ice melting and all the rest of it. Then we might be in a better position to understand the issue. We are not scientists or experts. There is this pulling back and forth trying to influence our opinions one way or the other and that is not fair.
There is something that concerns me even more than the questionable science on the issue. I read an article in the National Post yesterday under the byline of Terence Corcoran. It was quite shocking. There has been some reference to this agenda before.
This gentleman has brought forward some very credible experts in the field of economics. They have real concerns about the Kyoto accord and in fact have taken those concerns to the head of the IPCC which has promised to review them and get back to them. The article leads off by saying something that is very revealing. It states:
Anyone puzzled by the science behind Kyoto should take a look at the economics. In the words of one leading economic modeller [who is named later in the article] the central 100-year economic projections behind Kyoto and global warming policy making is “an insult to science” and “an insult to serious analysis”. And that is probably the good part of any criticism. It is also clear that the economic work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is driven by systemic ideological preferences for state intervention.
I think we heard the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis confirming, in his opinion at least, that is what this whole Kyoto thing and climate change is about.
John Reilly of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy Global Change is quoted in the article as saying:
At one point, the IPCC group attempted to find economists to “tweak” long-range models to get the desired emissions results. “They wanted our group [at MIT] to do this, but we just refused”.
Again, do we not get suspicious that there is something going on here that is less than truthful? I certainly do. Professor Reilly went on to say:
Not only did the modelling warp economics. The overall ideology of the operation appears to have been to create scenarios that would fulfill a larger objective. “The bigger issue,” says Professor Reilly, is the SRES [Special Report on Emission Scenarios] vision of an economic future of “equal incomes” among all regions of the globe. He calls it the “social justice” issue. “They are of the view that the future world is a matter of human choice. If we want a world where the United States stops growing, and developing countries grow and catch up, we can choose that world. It is not something you can project. You just choose that scenario and if it is a scenario we as a world like, we will create it. We will make it happen”.
That should really shock people. The article goes on at some length to describe how they worked in a backward direction to come up with the proposals. Between 2000 and 2050 they have third world countries growing at rates of 50% to 65% GDP, while by 2030 in the U.S. and other OECD countries, economic development grinds to an absolute halt. That goes against 300 years of history. It certainly goes against the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that drives the U.S. and Canadian economies.
Canadians should wake up and question what the real agenda is. This article is backed up by some pretty solid scientific opinion.
Let us look at the speech the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard made at the University of Toronto where he referred to Canada joining the world in a global effort to make the world a better place for everyone to live in. We listened to the Prime Minister's comments after September 11 about the problem of unequal distribution of wealth in poor and rich countries and how this disparity in income is driving the terrorists in the world to do their work. He said that we are greedy and selfish because we are wealthy and that we should share more of that wealth with the developing world.
In some sense I agree with much of that. It would be more credible if more people like the Prime Minister were taking their own wealth and creating trust funds to help people in the third world, instead of using Canadian taxpayers' money.
The $2,700 per family after tax income cost of Kyoto is a figure that has been arrived at by a number of different organizations. It may not mean much to the Prime Minister and probably not much to most of the cabinet or most members of the House, since $2,700 in after tax income would not create great hardship probably for us. However to a huge number of people, I would dare to say the majority of people in Canada, that $2,700 after tax income will have a dramatic effect on their lifestyle and will make life quite difficult for them.
My colleague from Red Deer mentioned many times that there was some reason to believe that there was some scientific validity to the issue of the greenhouse effect and that we, as inhabitants of this planet, should do everything we could to reduce our footprint on this planet. We should do what is prudent, what is possible and what we can to reduce that footprint, and we should go ahead with that.
I do not think that this government is serious about it, just as the Mulroney government before it. If this government really was serious about what it is promoting, we would see some real action on behalf of it. We really have not seen much but rhetoric. The various copies of the plan that we have seen are full of very fuzzy and warm stuff, but what we look for are real actions.
I remember debating in the House some years ago the federal plan to convert the federal transportation fleet to green fuels. I dare say precious little has been achieved in that direction. Not only has the fleet not been converted, but, as my Red Deer said over and again, a part of the fleet sits out in front of the House on the street, in winter and summer, running to create comfort for the ministers.
Look at the buildings on Parliament Hill. While all homeowners are being asked to retrofit their homes, upgrade their windows and all the rest of it, we do not see many double-pane gas filled windows on the buildings around Parliament Hill. We do not see any effort being made on that, although Canadians are supposed to do something.
If the government were really serious, it would be demonstrating its seriousness by having a real program of action and those things would be happening. We would see those cars outside being shut off. The chauffeurs who drive the ministers around could come into the lobby to keep warm. When the minister is ready to go, they could go out, get in their car and go. In the summertime they could roll the windows down to keep cool instead of sitting with the car running, the air conditioning going and water running down the street under the cars.
I do not think that it is really serious. If it were, the Minister of Natural Resources would not be driving a Cadillac Escalade. I would like to move a subamendment--
