Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak about this very important issue.
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Northumberland—Quinte West.
As a Canadian, I am very proud and always will be proud to be Canadian. I believe, unlike the member from the NDP seems to indicate, that we live in the greatest country in the world and I am very proud of that and have never been ashamed of my country, nor my flag.
The motion presented by the member for Toronto—Danforth calls into question the House's confidence in the government on the environment. Let me reassure the House, however, that the government is committed on delivering real results, real solutions to protect the health of Canadians and the environment, which is so important to Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Climate change is, indeed, one of the biggest threats to our environment, to our people and to the future of our earth. This reality is clearer today than it has ever been and it is a threat that this Conservative government and this Prime Minister takes very seriously.
Here at home, unlike previous Liberal governments, we have taken real action and we are proud of these first steps. With our turning the corner plan, we will, for the first time ever, require industry to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution by implementing the toughest mandatory targets in Canadian history. I am proud of that.
The end result is that our national strategy will reduce in absolute terms Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 and 60% to 70% by 2050. What is significant to note is that our plan is not only effective, it is responsible. Our plan marks a new era in Canadian environmental responsibility. Our approach takes our economy into account. It goes to great lengths to protect the standard of living of Canadians no matter where they live and it goes beyond any other plan to ensure it takes real action to protect our environment.
Our government also recognizes that Canada's north is one of the areas that will most quickly bear the burden of climate change. We have committed more than $80 million for science research on adaptation that will help the north deal with climate change. I have seen these changes first-hand and I assure Canadians that they are taking place. This will be of great help to the rest of the world as well because, in the Canadian attitude we share, we share the world's responsibility and we will help the rest of the world in understanding how to adjust to the new reality that we are all facing.
However, we admit that it has been an uphill battle to move Canada forward. We have been here for two years and we have had our work cut out for us. Thirteen years of complacency and mismanagement by successive Liberal governments crippled our environment, set us far back and it crippled our international environmental standing. We inherited a huge mess from the previous Liberal government. We inherited a landscape of patchwork environmental programs that did little, if nothing, to minimize Canada's carbon footprint in the world.
In fact, by the end of 2005, emissions had climbed to 33% above the target levels set in the Kyoto protocol. One of the toughest issues we have faced is how to meet the 2012 targets, given the situation Canada has been put in by the previous Liberal government.
Had that government not left us in such a precarious position, perhaps we would have been able to do that by the 2012 deadline. However, we have had to deal with 10 years that has been lost due to inaction. This fact has already been debated in the House repeatedly. In fact, all parties agree, even members from the Liberal party, including the leader himself, have said that they did nothing.
Our position on the subject was very clearly stated in the Speech from the Throne that was put before the House for a vote. I am glad to see that the Liberal Party supports our environmental policies and I want to thank the Liberals today again for supporting the government on a continuous basis through the budget.
They supported the Speech from the Throne, the mini-budget and, now, I am proud to say, this budget, which all contained great things to clean up the environment. It is clear that the Liberals support our government, our responsible position and our realistic approach to environmental protection. Again, I thank members of the Liberal Party.
I would like to also address the issue of Bill C-30, which is also mentioned in today's motion. The Conservative Party worked in good faith on the Bill C-30 committee to try to improve the clean air act. I know that for a fact because I was there. I was in every meeting and I saw what took place. All members of the Conservative Party worked earnestly and in good faith trying to get real positive results for Canadians.
Our government is committed to improving the environment on behalf of all Canadians. This includes bringing forward concrete and realistic industrial targets to reduce greenhouse gases and improve the air we breathe and improve the health of Canadians.
In committee last year, the government supported amendments brought forward by every party to improve and strengthen Canada's clean air act, and brought forward others of our own. We worked or tried to work cooperatively. We took politics out, unlike the other parties. Sadly, in most cases, we were opposed by both the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois.
We brought forward a reasonable amendment to achieve tough vehicle emission standards based on the North American market, the integrated market in which we live, standards that would be supported by labour. What did the Liberals do in return? They voted it down and knowingly played politics by imposing standards that would have been impossible for industry to meet without shutting down the Ontario auto industry.
The Liberals also played politics by writing Kyoto targets into the bills with no conceivable plan to achieve them, again, playing politics. It was hard for Canadians to believe that the Liberals had ever put in place a plan to achieve Kyoto five years ago. Today it is even harder. As the Liberal member for Halton said:
I heard [the Prime Minister] yesterday in a speech say, in one breath, that action must be taken, while in the next he added that reaching Kyoto targets would be “fantasy”.
Is he right? Technically, yeah. We’re so far behind now that catch-up is impossible, without shutting the country down.
Indeed, even when the Liberals were in government, it was easy for them to offer the moon with no hope of ever delivering it. We know how they governed the country and Canadians certainly do not want to go back to that. Now that the Liberals are no longer in government, it is even easier for them to tell Canadians that they want to achieve Kyoto emission targets.
The opposition also gutted parts of the clean air act, Bill C-30. We told the opposition not to mess with the health of Canadian children and not to mess with the health and the quality of life of Canadians, the elderly and those suffering from respiratory illness. What did it do? It gutted those important sections of the clean air act. The opposition members should be ashamed of themselves.
What did Canadians lose in the rush to gut the clean air act, led by the Liberals and the environment critic, the member for Ottawa South? Canadians should know that the opposition removed many new regulations that would have helped to better protect the health of Canadians and our environment. We lost, for example, mandatory national air quality standards, mandatory annual public reporting on air quality and actions to achieve national air quality standards, increased research and monitoring of air pollutants, and tougher enforcement rules for compliance to air quality regulations. Shame on the opposition.
The government put forward 15 pages of concise new regulation making authority to protect Canadians' health and our environment, and the opposition just ripped them up. What did the Liberals add instead? They inserted clauses to delay action by implementing and requiring six months of consultation around a new investment bank before we could move forward on tough new regulations for industry. This was a delay tactic. The Liberals inserted complex and unworkable requirements that made it harder, not easier, for the government to act on air pollution.
Even worse, the Liberals inserted a clause that would have allowed political interference into air quality standards. For instance, the Liberals wanted the Minister of the Environment to exempt “economically depressed areas” from air quality standards for three years. Would this allow the Liberals to buy votes? Was it their intent in this particular section to exempt certain Liberal rich voting areas of the country from air quality regulations while punishing those areas that were not Liberal? We do not know what they thought but they were thinking the wrong thing.
The Liberals imposed the Liberal leader's carbon tax plan into the bill, a plan that would lead to zero greenhouse gas reductions. The health and the prosperity of Canadians depends on the quality of the air we breath, the quality of life. The integrity of our environment is tied so uniquely to that. It is very clear that only the Conservative government members were prepared to put the environment before politics.
However, all is not lost. Our government committed to bringing back the parts of Bill C-30 that had all party support. Unlike the Liberals, the government is serious about tackling climate change and protecting the air we breath and the health of Canadians. Our actions speak louder than words. We are getting the job done. We will take no lessons from the Liberals or members of the NDP who cannot get it done for Canadians.
