Mr. Speaker, I am certainly glad to hear that because I am sure, by the sound of it, it is a very polluting vehicle.
I am pleased to join in the debate today on the motion. I am particularly pleased because it is our motion, and yet it literally mirrors the words of the former finance minister who made a speech just the other night on the subject. It also very closely resembles the demands made by the health minister not very long ago in the province of Alberta. I am looking forward to the vote on the issue and seeing how that all shakes out.
I would like to go back a bit on this issue because it amazes me how the rhetoric has grown around the issue. I remember attending a federal-provincial ministers' conference in Regina just prior to Kyoto where the provinces and the federal government came to an agreement on Canada's position going into Kyoto.
From the Kyoto meeting onward, there has simply been one betrayal after another of the provinces by the federal government, yet the plan that was released this morning, which we have had just a little time to look at, quite clearly states in a number of places that this plan cannot work without the cooperation of the provinces and Canadians.
I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the government would expect cooperation from the provinces. Certainly that cooperation is not being demonstrated today. The vast majority of the provinces are against ratification. How do we go from there?
It is really something to hear how the arguments on both sides have evolved. I know that our side certainly will never convince the true believers, although I know there are a number of people who believe in it for political reasons, but there are true believers out there who believe that if we do not do something about Kyoto that it will be too dry where it is supposed to be wet and too wet where it is supposed to be dry, or we will have harsher winters or milder winters, or whatever, but we do not expect it would be caused by Kyoto. I am really surprised at that because I have not seen one shred of evidence, quite frankly, that would indicate that Kyoto, or climate change for that matter, has anything to do with more severe weather.
I have limited knowledge of meteorology but the experts I have spoken to have suggested that extreme weather is caused by warm weather in the tropics moving into more temperate areas further away from the tropics and the mixing of that air causes severe weather. In fact if it is warming more in the northern latitudes and southern latitudes than anywhere else, then that temperature should become equalized and there should be less severe weather, but who knows the rationale for that.
I know we do not want to get into a debate on the science of the whole thing but perhaps it would be a wise idea to go back and have another look at the science. However it is not science to say that at one time this planet was much warmer than it is today. In fact, the polar regions were tropical.
I spent a good part of my life drilling for oil and gas in Arctic regions and core samples consistently showed tropical plant and animal matter in those bit cuttings. That is not science, that is archeological fact. When we went to school I am sure all of us learned about a number of ice ages where glaciers moved across North America and across a good part of Canada and then retreated again when the weather and the climate warmed. So clearly there is a cycle that repeats itself.
Certainly that cycle has included some catastrophic weather changes that wiped out the dinosaurs. I will not go where Ralph Klein went with the dinosaurs, but before we suggest that it is being caused by man, someone out there should explain what caused that cycle in eons past. It certainly was not man who drove any of that.
Just for a moment I would like to look at the industry perspective on this issue. Industry has shown real responsibility on the Kyoto issue. It has been for some time since before Kyoto that many companies, municipalities and communities in Canada have been enrolled in the voluntary challenge program. They have done some wonderful things. I have attended a couple of awards nights where those achievements were recognized.
Certainly, in my own riding, Syncrude, one of the major producers of heavy oil and one of the bogeymen in the whole issue of carbon dioxide emissions, has won numerous awards. In fact a number of producers of heavy oil from the tar sands have done amazing things in the direction of reducing the intensity of their emissions, in other words, moving the emissions per barrel down well below the Kyoto target. However because the Prime Minister is in Washington promising George W. Bush that we are his answer to energy security and that we are developing the tar sands to be that secure energy source for the United States, the production of barrels is rising dramatically and the emissions are going up and up.
We cannot have it both ways. We either have economic development, growth, jobs and wealth creation, or if we go the Kyoto way, we will have stagnant economic growth, loss of jobs and loss of wealth creation. We simply cannot have it both ways.
Another thing has really bothered me, and I have been approached by a number of companies in the industrial sector on it. It is the issue that the government, early on and partly with the announcement of the voluntary challenge program, through repeated promises by the Prime Minister, the environment minister and the former natural resources minister spoke of credit for early action on emissions reductions.
A fair number of companies invested heavily in those early actions. Some others invested less heavily, but nevertheless did things. Suncor, for example, invested in wind power and invested with Niagara Mohawk in nuclear power with the understanding and belief that the government would live up to its promise to give credit for that action.
It seems that the government is reneging on that promise. In the plan released today there is no mention of credit for early action by those companies. If we treat people like that, how do we expect to get their cooperation? It just does not work.
I am running short of time. I have some ideas that perhaps we should look at. One would be to stop this process because there is not a catastrophic climate change event about to hit us in the face like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs. We have time. Let us step back. Let us go back and perhaps do what the U.S. did before it made its decision.
We should set up a joint parliamentary committee to look at the whole issue, the science and the economics. We should bring in the experts. Let us listen to them on both sides and then let us have the vote in the House that we are proposing to have so that we have a better basis than the rhetoric I have heard on which to make a decision. That would be wise to do. Certainly a number of experts across the country have suggested that it would be the right thing to do.
If we were to step back and take a deep breath, maybe we could put aside some of the extreme rhetoric, like the Prime Minister saying yesterday in the House that in 30 years people are going to be dying. In the booklet released this morning there is a reference to 600 people dying. I do not know where in the world the evidence came from for those remarks.
In response to my question the other day in the House, the environment minister denied that the government was looking at international emissions credit trading. Yet in a number of places in the plan that was released this morning, it was proposed not only for the government but for the private sector to engage in international emissions trading.
We need to step back from some of this extreme rhetoric, get real and take a good look at the issue. Maybe we could come to a consensus in the House and deal with it more sensibly.
