Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Calgary—Nose Hill.
It gives me great pleasure to speak on this budget. As environment and Senate critic for the official opposition, I will be addressing both of those issues in turn.
One of the new spending initiatives outlined in the budget includes new spending for climate change. Before 1997 the Liberals spent over $100 million in direct funding each year to address climate change. The last budget provided an additional $20 million per year over the next three years. We are now up to $120 million. This budget provides another $50 million per year over the next three years, bringing the budget for climate change up to $170 million a year.
The government is muddling through on this issue. First, it fails to address the real agreement. It knew that this issue was coming down the pipe. It had been coming for many years. Yet this government failed during Kyoto. It had the opportunity to set up consultations beforehand to go to Kyoto as other countries did with a plan in mind. It failed to do that. The government failed to do its homework and show Canadians the various implications of the targets that it was about to sign.
The provinces have to be onside for any global agreement on climate change within Canada. What did our government do? It consulted with the provinces beforehand and then immediately dismissed the provinces and settled for a level that was 6% more stringent than the provinces had agreed to. It is the provinces that are going to have to implement this deal. What a nifty way to start out on a deal; alienate one of the partners you are trying to work with.
To show where we are, the government agreed to levels 6% lower than the 1990 levels for climate change. Picture where we are now. We are already 13% above the 1990 levels. Now the government says we are going to go 6% below that target in the next 10 or 12 years. Collectively 13% plus 6%, we have to change 19% over the next 10 or 12 years.
This is not fearmongering, but to give people an idea of what that 19% means, to reach those levels we could take all Canadian light cars and trucks off the road. I do not think we want to do that. Or we could remove 90% of the commercial trucks and air, marine and rail transportation. Or we could eliminate the heating in all of our homes, all of our commercial buildings and all natural gas distribution. Or we could shut down three-quarters of our fossil fuel power generation.
That is the level this government agreed to in Kyoto. The problem is how we are going to get there. There is no plan. This government has not put forward a plan. Look at the players. It is every Canadian. It is the provinces. It is industry. It is all of us combined, yet there is no plan.
Throw $170 million at it. That is the answer. That simply will not wash.
Instead of consulting Canadians on the implications of the deal and working together to find common ground to develop a strategy, this government has a half-baked idea of getting 26 Order of Canada members together so that they can express their feelings. That is going to get us a long way.
Where is the plan? That is the bottom line. I would hope that with the $170 million we will see a plan from this government over the next few months. Then both sides of this House can see where we are going with it, work with the provinces, work with all Canadians so that we can solve this problem.
While I have the opportunity I would also like to touch on endangered species. Bill C-65 on endangered species died on the order paper at the last election.
There were a number of concerns with that legislation. I have had meetings with various provincial environment ministers, and industry and environmental groups. I would hope that the minister is doing the same thing. The legislation was so flawed that even many Liberals on the other side of the House would not have been able to vote for it.
I hope those concerns will be addressed in a new bill dealing with endangered species that would come forward probably at the earliest next fall. We all want to work together to have good endangered species legislation which protects the species but also works well for Canadians.
One of the major flaws with Bill C-65 was the lack of private property rights. There has to be a mechanism to deal with private property rights. There has to be a compensation mechanism so that if people have something on their land they are not basically thrown off their land, they can be compensated and move forward.
There is another issue which comes very much to the fore. It has come from a number of groups I have met with. The legislation has to be at arm's length from politicians. We cannot get at it. The example I will use comes from the last election when the cod fishery was opened up on the east coast just before the election. It was an issue that was just there to catch votes. Any endangered species legislation has to be at arm's length so that we as politicians cannot do that. I am not sure what the mechanism is but there has to be a mechanism that allows a relationship so that any political party cannot get at it to play with or manipulate the system.
There also has to be clear federal-provincial guidelines. The old legislation basically went into provincial jurisdiction. This was a major problem with most of the provinces. With the citizen's right to sue, this was a concern where third parties had the ability to sue. There were major concerns with the legislation.
I would hope legislation that is possibly going to be introduced in the fall will address these issues and that it will be legislation we can all support.
Finally in my portfolio I deal with the Senate. Some members opposite may say that is the other house and we cannot deal with it. There is one way we can. Our very first vote, vote one of the estimates is the Senate. It is the Senate appropriation. It is the Senate's money. This year the Senate has asked for $44,691,000 which is $4 million more than it had last year, a 10% raise. I would challenge anyone to look at the budget and justify why other departments would require a 10% increase. I do not think they do. A few departments would have that. I am not on a witch hunt. I am simply looking for accountability.
Something happened for the first time in the history of Canada during the last Parliament. Through the public works committee this House passed a resolution to send a letter to the Senate that requested the Senate finance committee to come before the House of Commons to explain its expenses. The Senate refused to do that. We have another House that is unaccountable. That is the point we should be dealing with. We appropriate the Senate's funds so we should have the ability to scrutinize the Senate's budget.
I hope this government in its budget will not only just throw money at issues like climate change, I hope it will involve Canadians and the provinces, and that we have legislation we could all support at the end of the day.
