Madam Speaker, I would like to briefly make a few comments on speeches that have been made so far. I congratulate the Minister of the Environment for her thoughtful intervention, for her emphasizing the importance of harnessing innovation, and for bringing to the attention of members of the House the situation in the Mackenzie basin.
The Minister of Natural Resources made an intervention indicating to us what is the composition of the package that Canada will bring to Kyoto. Evidently, when it comes to dealing with distant deadlines, it is quite understandable that governments would want to make their position known when it is very close to the deadline of the event. Therefore it is not a question of Canada going empty handed to Kyoto. It is just doing its homework very thoroughly. The speech of the Minister of Natural Resources is an indication that the package will be a thoughtful and fairly comprehensive one.
For 45 minutes we were treated to the unique review of the issue by the Leader of the Official Opposition. It was unique for its sequence of asinine statements, the like of which we have not heard in the House for a long time. He trotted out all the cliches that have been heard over the last 10 years on the issue. Having mentioned a couple of U.S. scientists who have doubts about the question of whether or not there is a climate change in place or in action evolving on the face of the planet, he concluded that actually we had to be sceptical, that we could not accept the science.
As I just indicated to the Member for Nanaimo—Alberni, some 2,500 scientists, worldwide experts, participated in drafting and reviewing the second report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change of December 1995. Their conclusion in two lines is simply that the greenhouse gas concentrations have continued to increase and the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.
To prove that the Leader of the Official Opposition did not do his homework properly, he made the capital mistake of quoting a witness who appeared before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, Dr. Allyn Clarke, and did not quote his conclusion. He chose to quote the opening remarks but failed to tell the House that the very same person concluded on that occasion that climate change must be taken seriously.
Not only that, but he also asked the committee to pay attention to the work done by oceanographers and sought support for their work.
Evidently the basis of information and research on the part of the people who are advising the leader of the Reform Party is very thin, if not very shaky.
When he ran out of arguments about the question of the scientific validity of this issue, what did he do? He invoked the spectre of taxes, which is always done when arguments run out, when short of convincing themes. Then the flag of possible potential taxes is waved. This is totally absurd in this political debate tonight.
As the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party just said a few moments ago, we have plenty of carbon taxes already imposed on gasoline at the present time.
It is very difficult to deal with gladiators who are ignorant and we have too many in this House of Commons. Speakers after the leaders of the various parties have only 10 minutes to deal with uninformed, ignorant and distorted information as was done tonight, unfortunately, by the leader of the Reform Party, thus contributing really nothing to the substance, to the search for answers on this extremely complex issue that is engaging the minds of scientists, of politicians of course, of decision makers and of governments around the world. Enough said about the pathetic performance by the leader of the Reform Party. What a shame I must say.
This issue is posing to us a number of interesting conclusions. Let me put the first one. The conclusion that one inevitably comes to when analysing this issue is that here there is, in a very rare moment, a rather unique convergence of economic and environmental goals.
The economy can only benefit from energy efficiency. The economy can only benefit from energy innovation and the economy can only benefit from prolonging the life of the reserves we have in our country through more careful consumption now and in the near future.
This convergence is unique. It is good business to apply energy efficiency and innovation and it is also good environmental policy.
Second, this issue offers us a unique opportunity to switch, gradually of course, from the use of oil to the use of natural gas with which we are abundantly endowed and which is an ideal fuel for its high calorific value because it is also clean. It is efficient in use and available in large quantities, particularly in our western provinces.
Third, this issue is indicating the urgent need for us to examine tax expenditures, fiscal and taxation measures, either direct or indirect, subsidies, you name it, which presently are offered to the petroleum, the oil sands and the coal industries.
We have to ask ourselves do these particular measures make sense when we are trying to move in a direction whereby we want to discourage, gradually, the use of these fossil fuels.
Fourth, this issue offers us a unique opportunity to examine and change our transport policies. Our transport policies are in urgent need of being redesigned because we have to link them to the aim of reducing greenhouse gases, to their reduction, wherever possible, particularly with respect to the potential offered in this country which is far from being achieved, namely public transit.
Fifth, this brings to our attention, in a frustrating manner actually, the issue which can be witnessed by anyone who watches landfill sites which are emitting greenhouse gases, the burning away of waste gases, mostly methane, instead of being utilized for district heating purposes, as it is done in many other jurisdictions, particularly the highly populated jurisdictions of Europe.
Sixth, this issue brings to our attention with crystal clear evidence the necessity of giving momentum to and paying much more attention to renewable sources of energy. They were recognized in the last two budgets but we are far from having given them the favourable tax treatment which is presently being given to the non-renewable sources of energy.
Then the unique model comes to our attention when we are looking for answers to this particular issue, the unique model offered by the Toronto Atmospheric Fund whereby the municipality has adopted a number of energy efficiency and innovation measures in the public and private sectors which have now made Toronto the leader in this respect in the reduction of greenhouse gases.
To conclude, let me indicate that this issues also reminds us of the poverty issue in developing countries and of the necessity to improve, accelerate and strengthen the efforts of the developed countries in reducing poverty in order to come to grips with this very complex and far reaching issue.
