Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on an issue that now more than ever needs immediate action if we wish our children and our grandchildren to have a healthy planet and healthy lives.
Plus, rising carbon pollution is threatening our prosperity. I say pollution, because that is what it is. If a pollutant is anything that has harmful effects when introduced into air or water, then greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, are pollutants, if there ever were any.
Instead of reducing this pollution, Environment Canada's own numbers show that we are on track to blow way past our 2020 emissions target of a 20% reduction and will release 734 megatonnes of greenhouse gas pollution in that year. That is a far cry from the government's own watered down target of 612 megatonnes. Much of that increase will be from the oil and gas sector, which the government first promised to regulate in, wait for it, 2009. Four environment ministers and five years later, industry is still waiting for rules that would give us carbon reduction and the energy companies certainty.
Today science is telling us that we have only a couple of years left to turn things around. The answer is not complicated. Most agree that a polluter pay approach is the fairest and most effective way to lower emissions. We pollute, we pay. It is simple. Implementing it is simple too. We just put a price on carbon emissions, as many other countries are already doing.
Putting an upstream fee on emissions as they come out of the ground will mean that only a handful of sources need to be regulated, and we will avoid the need for a huge bureaucracy measuring emissions from every smokestack and tailpipe in Canada.
Yes, this rising fee will mean carbon-intensive energy will cost more, and that is the entire point. Because of this price signal, the market would use less and would turn to less carbon-intensive alternatives. Conservatives claim to believe in market forces. This is the most efficient, market friendly way to reduce emissions.
We can eliminate the impact on most families by making it completely revenue neutral so that every dime collected from the fee is returned directly to Canadians to do with whatever they choose. If they use less energy, they will actually make money. If they do not, they will not. It is up to them.
The system is called fee and dividend, and I hope members will recognize that it is a much better option than cap and trade or a carbon tax. I know what some will say: putting a price on carbon by any method is a carbon tax, and that will kill jobs. No, fee and dividend would create new jobs. Let us not forget that under this definition, the government's own regulatory approach is a carbon tax.
Let us admit up front that no party wants a policy that kills jobs. However, do revenue neutral policies to internalize the price of emissions cause economic harm? We have one of the world's best answers to that question right here in Canada. B.C. implemented a carbon tax, and the sky did not fall.
In contrast to taxes, under revenue neutral fee and dividend, the government keeps none of the fee. Fee and dividend has the greatest potential to reduce emissions, being simpler and business friendly, and it would provide the best incentive of all for renewable energy alternatives: price. That is why the Citizens Climate Lobby is pushing hard for it.
