Carolyn Bennett

[Canada Elections Act, February 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the debate today is extraordinarily important because it is about democracy and about the confidence Canadians have in their electoral system. During the debate we perhaps should remind ourselves that our proximity to the United States makes us forget that we already have done the most important thing in terms of election financing rules in this country, which is to limit the amount that we can spend in election campaigns.

When I was at the Woodrow Wilson school in Washington and heard about the problems women were having in running for political office, I realized that they had to raise millions of dollars for one candidate to run. My immediate reaction was that they should just change the rules and put a ceiling on the amount that can be spent in an election campaign. That would give them an even playing field, allow real democracy to take place and allow people of all walks of life to run for political office.

If part of the bill does deal with the perception problem, that money does buy influence, then we must correct that impression. We need to make the system as good as it can be. Good governance to me and to one of my heroes, Ursula Franklin, is that it must be fair, transparent and take people seriously. Ursula has said that if we do not have transparency in our small organizations, whether it is on the boards of our day care or our church, how can people expect us to apply it to government? Obviously, as one of the organizations that is most important to democracy, we must have transparency in political parties.

I believe the democratic deficit in the country is evident in four ways. One is parliamentary reform and our ability to listen to citizens between elections in terms of democracy and in terms of the resources with which to do that. Another is party reform. The final one, which we are dealing with today, is electoral reform, the financing of elections.

I think it is a game to talk about our proximity to the United States when we actually have to remind ourselves that some of those congressmen and senators spend more than half of their time raising money every week just to keep afloat. We are hugely blessed in Canada that we actually get to do our job every day and that fundraising becomes a small part of our jobs.

People must remember that if I were only allowed to spend about $60,000 in an election campaign that would have little influence on the way I voted. I have to believe that if I were not able to raise the $60,000 from the people who gave it to me the last time that I could easily go out and raise the $60,000 from a new group of people who believed in the principles on which I stood.

However it is important for people to think so and that we are doing everything possible to make it happen. I think the idea of the ceiling is still the most important thing and that we must do everything to make sure it is always preserved.

The second most important thing would have to be transparency. We must ensure that the transparency provisions in the bill are not diminished. If George Bush can put his receipted donations on the web within 48 hours of them being received, then we should not be settling for anything less. People must know immediately who is contributing to our elected representatives.

The third issue has to be the sources of the money. We again must bear true vigilance to what is happening south of the border with the Bush political action committees. As we say, if we block the toothpaste coming out of the tube we need to know where all the little pin holes are. Therefore, before we stop something we need to make sure that we have anticipated how people will get around it in order to have the influence that they think they want to have.

I have some concerns, even though the bill is spectacular in what it does for all of us in getting rid of unreceipted money in the politics of Canada. Full disclosure is an important step to deal with all aspects of political financing.

For all donations over $200 to have to be disclosed, whether that is for riding associations, nomination races, candidates' elections or leadership races, this is a hugely important initiative that the women's caucus had felt very strongly about, indeed, back to the Lortie commission, where we understood that money and nomination fights were the most important barriers to women running for office. Having no unreceipted donations to political campaigns will deal extraordinarily well with the transparency issue and I think will serve to reduce the inequities. Women candidates have traditionally had much greater trouble raising unreceipted dollars. The idea that this then brings it in under the scrutiny of the chief electoral officer I think is extraordinarily important, and in terms of the enforcement of these rules, I think it is extraordinarily important too.

In regard to the bill proposing a limit on the amount of money that could be spent in a nomination fight, we have some concerns. We in the Liberal women's caucus have suggested that it should be about 10% to 15% of what could be spent on an election. The bill puts it at 50%. We think this is still too high, although we do have to acknowledge the fact that this now would be receipted dollars, which would help a little bit. However, it would mean that in my riding $30,000 would be spent on a nomination fight and I think that is still too high.

I think that the limits on individual donations up to $10,000 and corporations up to $1,000, only to ridings, even though there are strict anti-avoidance penalties, do not prevent executive and board members from giving as individuals. It just prevents them from being reimbursed from their unions, companies or associations. I am worried that this would lead to lesser transparency, as the Elections Canada donor list would then list only the individual names and not the companies they work for or the associations they belong to. I have heard certain concerns raised by some forensic accountants that this may create more problems than it would solve. I think it is important that we move to this way of more individual support for political parties, but I do think that blurring what used to be transparent political donations, and now burying them under business expenses, is very difficult for Revenue Canada or Elections Canada to trace.

What we want is real time transparency. We are concerned that other third party contributions are not capped, other than during elections, and now in terms of the issue at the Supreme Court.

We worry that this may mean that organizations and individuals can unduly advertise and have influence on behalf of a political party without the scrutiny of Elections Canada. In fact, last month there was a full page ad taken in The Globe and Mail by Tom Caldwell, whose son happens to have been an Alliance candidate in the last election. That full page ad criticizing one party and supporting another party is indeed $33,000 that does not show up anywhere in this particular legislation.

I think that in the greater public funding of elections the $1.50 per vote obtained in the election is a good idea. I think people certainly have recourse in terms of what some of my constituents have expressed in not wanting any of their money to go to the Alliance Party or the Bloc Québécois in particular, but they certainly can give up to $10,000 to remediate that problem, as was pointed out by the Prime Minister last week.

I think the process and the timing of these reforms are very important. If this indeed is a problem of perception of influence, we must hear from citizens about what they see as the problem and therefore be prepared to tailor the solutions. This is about government continuing to be relevant and responsive to their needs and concerns, and it is indeed about regaining the trust and confidence of Canadians in our electoral system and the way that our political parties are financed.

[Supply, December 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, if there is to be another speaker from the Bloc Québécois, maybe he or she could answer that. Maybe at that time he or she could also answer why, when Quebec was asking for so much more money, there was still a whole bunch of money in the Toronto-Dominion Bank in downtown Toronto.

[Supply, December 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, what is extraordinarily evident by the Romanow report is that whether we are squabbling about dividing 14¢ or 34¢, or whatever, 50% of doctors and hospitals, that is not what the deal was. What we need is a new deal and we have to move forward. The floor of 25% is one that Mr. Romanow, in his black and white striped shirt and a whistle, as a former premier, has said is the new deal. We have to go forward from there.

[Supply, December 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians have said that they want the federal government to have a real role, particularly in the sixth principle of accountability.

One thing that is very important is the billing and information technology system across the country. With the justice system, when a person is arrested the person's file can be pulled up to see if there have been any arrests anywhere in the country. It seems unfortunate that when a person is having crushing pain or a heart attack that we cannot pull up the file across the country.

When the railroad was built across the country, each province was not allowed to build it in a different gauge. We should not allow different language in the health informatics across the country because we cannot compare the outcomes and we cannot give optimal care to the people who need it. Whether they are in Hull or in Ottawa, if they are in trouble their health records need to be available. It is extraordinarily important.

Canadians get it. It was very clear to Judith Maxwell in those deliberative democracy exercises that Canadians understand that they want a real system, not a patchwork quilt of non-systems. There are many other areas in which the government must help. There is a role for government in the measurement of the outcomes and in the prevention and health promotion areas.

In fact the Canadian government is the fifth biggest direct provider of health care. If we look at the aboriginals, our military, correctional services and our veterans, it is bigger than six of the provinces. It is very important that they come together in a neutral space, the health council of Canada. It is important that they share their problems, share best practices and that everybody comes together with real accountability, just like in the social union framework agreement.

It is imperative that all levels of government report to Canadians on the performance of the system. This is not big brother checking on little brother. We have to be accountable to Canadians as the federal government. That is what Canadians have said. That is what 59% of Quebeckers have said

[Supply, December 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will split my time with the hon. member for Vancouver Centre.

Over the past 18 months, the Romanow commission has pursued an ambitious agenda based on extensive research and consultations that have allowed tens of thousands of Canadians, including Quebeckers, to express their views. The main message conveyed by these people is that the new federal money must be used to fund changes.

It was Einstein who said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”. Canadians agree.

Today the Pollara poll shows that Roy Romanow's prescription for medicare reform has the support of two-thirds of Canadians. Pollara found that 66% of Canadians approved of the work of the Romanow commission.

Don Guy said, “Basically, they've said this is the right prescription for medicare”. It is not surprising.

As many commentators have noted, we can hear the voices of Canadians coming from every page of the commission's report. The report is as a result of the most legitimate consultative process in the history of Canadian royal commissions. The insistence upon transparency of the submissions and commissioned research and the utilization of every possible modern tool of citizen engagement, traditional hearings, web based consultations, as well as genuine deliberative models, have ensured that ideological arguments from the left or the right have been confronted with a sound metanalysis of the evidence and underpinned by resounding consensus of the values of Canadians for the important double solidarity between the rich and the poor and the sick and the well.

Canadians are fed up with the federal-provincial gridlock that has wasted, among other things, 1.8 million provincial health care dollars for TV spots and full page newspaper ads squabbling about who pays. They know that it is all their dollars and that they could have a fabulous health care system with less than 10% of the GDP. They want us to get on with it.

How do we move forward? How do we create the unstoppable momentum that will put all levels of government on notice, that it will be at their political peril if the first ministers meeting in January looks anything like previous ones. Canadians have never been clearer: they want medicare to work and they understand the trade offs necessary to ensure its sustainability. They want to know where the health care dollars are going and the value they are getting for the money. They agree that all levels of government must report to Canadians on the performance of the health care system, how it compares within Canada and internationally.

Canadians have been suffering through a crisis of confidence and a crisis of governance in health care. They want this fixed. Importantly, they are prepared to come on board in their triple role as empowered patients, effective advocates and engaged citizens. They want to help make it work. Canadians are not, as they are sometimes unfairly characterized, greedy and wasteful. They do not intentionally clutter up emergency departments, have unnecessary surgery, tests and drugs that lead to the call for medical savings accounts and user fees to curb their cravings.

The polling data has shown that Canadians want a strong federal role in health care. However, Mr. Romanow understands that federal leadership is very different from federal dominance. He proposes two brilliant solutions that demonstrate his sensitivity to the difference.

First, he devised a haggle free formula for health care funding that clarifies the responsibility of the federal government in perpetuity.

Second, he wants an innovative, intergovernmental mechanism, the health council of Canada, to evaluate the performance of the system and provide strategic advice on emerging issues by using the methodologies pioneered by the commission and the ongoing advice of a permanent advisory committee. The council would have: seven government members, two federal and five provincial; and seven civil society members, three from the public and four provider-experts. With citizens at the table, the finger pointing should become impossible.

At issue at the first ministers meeting will be whether we can begin the process of new collaborative relationships. I believe every person with any responsibility for health care in Canada, every single person in the trenches of health care, understands the huge advantage of a cooperative approach that will begin to address the gaps, duplication and incentives that could provide optimal health care for Canadians. We must ensure that the negotiators from all levels of government at next month's meeting include those who have some knowledge of the health care file. Simply sending finance and intergovernmental affairs officials will never work. Canadians should insist that the turfmeisters are excluded from the meetings and only those interested in real solutions are included.

We have been in pan-Canadian gridlock. Everything we care about in this country resides in at least three levels of government and three government departments. If the enormous pressure to get health care right enables us to listen to Mr. Romanow and respond in a creative way, this may be the opportunity to not only solve medicare, but to begin the process of wrestling this country back from a technical federalism that has lost the confidence of Canadians. A successful response to Romanow can refocus all levels of government on the public good and on working together to achieve our common goals based on our shared values.

Monique Bégin always tells the story of going to Trudeau's desk here in the House of Commons just before medicare came in. She said that she was really worried that the 10 provinces and organized medicine were against her. Trudeau asked her where the public stood. She said that the public was for it. He said then it was a sure win. She said that she did not find that to be obvious so she went to Jean who was the senior in terms of negotiations. She asked him what it would take to make the provinces understand, what was the language the provinces would understand? He said very simply, “Money”. She said that he was dead on.

Here we are 20 years later and the former Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is now the Prime Minister and his friend, Roy Romanow, has just delivered the most important report of a royal commission since Monique Bégin supported the Royal Commission on the Status of Women.

The provinces still care about money and Canadians have never been clearer. They want medicare to work and they understand the trade-offs necessary to ensure sustainability.

This time we actually have four provinces in favour of it. Organized medicine is in favour of it and especially the young doctors are in favour of it. Two provinces, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, are in favour of it, with a but. Three provinces, Ontario, Alberta and Quebec, are against it. British Columbia is against it, with a but.

As we said before these provinces may be well at their peril to be against the Romanow report. In fact with the provincial governments that are against, their citizens are in favour. Quebec is polling at 59%. Ontario is polling at 70%. British Columbia is polling at 69%. Mr. Guy said, “It appears that Romanow and his group have struck a chord with the public in Quebec and perhaps have gone over the heads of some of the elite in that province”.

Second year medical resident, James Clarke says that the implementation of Romanow's prescription will strengthen medicare and that failure to do so will undermine it.

The truly wonderful Dr. Mikhael from the Ontario medical residents has said, “We are calling on the governments of Ontario and Canada to work together to ensure adoption and implementation of the report in 2003”.

Tomorrow I will meet with my wonderful Good Health Through Good Governance Working Group at the Munk Centre. We have isolated three things to talk about tomorrow: accountability; infrastructure; health promotion and disease prevention.

It is quite clear that none of these can be done without collaboration across the country. Tomorrow when the health ministers meet I know they will understand the changes that have to take place and that collaboration is imperative.

As Charles Darwin said, it is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change. Money will not fix this alone. Canadians know we need accountability and the ability to share best practices from sea to sea to sea.

As regards the motion presented by the Bloc Quebecois today, Canadians said that they expect the federal government to play a strong role in our health care system. They want leadership, not an automated banking machine.

[Violence against Women, December 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow will be the 13th anniversary of the massacre at École Polytechnique in Montreal where 14 women lost their lives just because they were women. Tomorrow all over the country Canadians will mark this tragic anniversary. At Toronto's Women's College Hospital it will be their 12th anniversary marking this day.

Every day, women are targets of violence. Could the Secretary of State responsible for the Status of Women tell the House what steps the federal government is taking to bring attention to this very important issue?

[Persons with Disabilities, December 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, today at one o'clock the disability community held a press conference expressing their concerns about the status of persons with disabilities in this country.

Could the Minister of Human Resources Development share with the House what the Government of Canada has done to recognize Canadians with disabilities on this International Day of Disabled Persons?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has an excellent point. What we are talking about is setting some targets. Most of the corporations that I have talked to, even people in the chemical industry, like the idea of setting some goals because it is with our innovation and creativity that we would find the kind of innovations that we can export to the world. The whole world has decided to get on with this.

One of the examples that was given to me was the Avro Arrow. When we decided not to do that, the Americans immediately picked up right after. We thought that we could not afford it or that they were not going to doing it. We must ensure that we are leading. There are so many fantastic corporations in Canada, from Shell to TransAlta to Iogen, but also the Ballard fuel cells, and the neat things that are happening in our country that could be sold to the world.

When we think of wind power we have this fantastic opportunity to be able to move power right into the grid and help many people, whether they are farmers or people in Atlantic Canada, to find a new resource whereby they can actually find revenue.

I remember talking to somebody five years ago who said to just get on and do it, because then the incentives will come into place that we can explain to our shareholders, and we can get on with this and stop discussing “whether” but just “how”.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the hon. member understood what I was talking about in terms of intellectual capacity, although I do not think that this is a theoretical issue any longer. One just has to go to our north to see what is already happening. This is not theory. It is actually in practice. It is what the people in our north are living. It is so important to the future of this planet that the younger people in this country be united on this.

We cannot not act and hand this huge problem on to our children and to our grandchildren. It is not theoretical. It is happening. There is absolutely a real feeling in this country that we are speaking to the flat earth society. This is science. The hundred Nobel laureates are clear this is happening. For people to continue to question whether it is happening is dishonest. They can debate the economic impact with me, but whether climate change is happening, they cannot debate that any longer, they must accept that it is happening.

We have an environmental commissioner in this country to evaluate the performance and internationally we have a good reputation on all of these. We are leading the world on POPs. It is an extraordinarily important thing. However, there is a saying that goes, “If you measure, it gets noticed; if it gets noticed, it gets done”.

We are not afraid of having people come and talk to us about performance. It is the reason that there needs to be an objective audit of performance on all of our files, particularly the environment. It is a special office similar to the auditor general. What we need in government and Parliament is a learning culture where we are not afraid of having a report card and then figuring out what we could do better. That is a good thing.

We must get away from the “gotcha” style of politics, where people are afraid to measure and are afraid to have report cards because they think that the opposition will come. Canadians have matured way beyond that. They want us to be measuring, they want us to be learning, and they want us to be feeding back the changes. We know that climate change is happening and that we must act on it now because failing to act would cause a huge price to be paid by those who follow after.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I rise to represent the people of St. Paul's in this very important debate.

St. Paul's is a pretty wonderful riding. It may not have the rocks and trees of other ridings but it has, without a doubt, the most educated population in Canada. Most important, when we talk about this debate, 50% of my riding is under the age of 35. These people have seriously thought about the future. It may be that 100 Nobel Laureates have decided that it is extraordinarily important that we ratify the Kyoto agreement but 80% of the people of St. Paul's have made it very clear that this is what they want us to do.

Democracy between elections in St. Paul's is a very special thing to me. We have everything from town hall meetings to neighbourhood checkups, online polling and the contact desk section on the website. The people of St. Paul's have thought a great deal about the issue of Kyoto.

I remember in 1997, my first time out on the street as a federal candidate, being accosted by many young people asking me what we were going to do about Kyoto and whether we were going to actually act on climate change.

In the year 2000 and even in the summer before the election, I remember being stopped by English tourists asking why our gas was so cheap in Canada and why were we not worried that people should be taking the bus.

I also remember a constituent coming to see me and showing me a lot of newspaper clippings about the new hybrid cars. He wanted to know if I thought that any company buying fleets of cars should have to be persuaded to buy fleets of hybrid cars. That goes to what we have seen here on the Hill, in terms of those fabulous little RCMP vehicles actually being hybrids. We also have our exemplary Minister of the Environment with his fantastic hybrid car.

I am proud to say that during the last election in 2000, for which we had to rent a car for the campaign, I was persuaded to drive one of the impressive hybrid vehicles. I have to say that I do not know quite why we would not convince Canadians to do so.

The next piece in this equation has to be what it means for Canada to take a leadership on this in the world. With our magnificent north, Canadians must understand what it means, and for those of us who were in Cambridge Bay last summer, to see all of a sudden a boat tied up at the dock in Cambridge Bay, a place where the Northwest Passage has always been frozen. For the first year, all of a sudden there was a yacht from Seattle there and then a 53 foot tin sailing ship from Ireland just tying up at the dock. What does this change in the country mean to our sovereignty and to our protection in terms of the way we see ourselves as a country in terms of sea to sea to sea? I think we want the third sea to be frozen as much as it used to be and we do not want to see palm trees.

It is extraordinarily important. It is like having a debate with the flat earth society. This is happening. The Inuit people know this is happening. We need to talk to them to understand what it means when the polar bears have no place to cross over, when their land has changed in a way that they could never have expected and for which we, as a society, have to take a huge responsibility on what we have done to date. We have to make sure that the damage we have done to date does not go forward for our children and their grandchildren.

Last spring I had a fantastic town hall meeting in my riding. We had the Toronto Renewable Energy Coalition as well as a past executive of Imperial Oil. We ended up having an amazing debate about our responsibilities as Canadians in Kyoto. Virtually everyone at that town hall meeting thought we should get on and ratify the accord.

What has been very interesting to me in this last little chapter, when the debate has become much more visible, is how even the letters coming from constituents have become very persuasive in terms of what they see as Canada's role in the world, where they want Canada to be in terms of leadership on this file and how impressed they are.

I think the most poignant letter that I received was from a young resident of St. Paul's. It states:

I am writing to encourage the Canadian government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and to stand up to the pressures to do otherwise. The Canadian government should not be influenced by the oil industries, Ralph Klein, the U.S. government and big business interests.

The claims that abiding by the Kyoto Protocol would hurt the economy are false. The claim that the deal with cost the economy $30-$40 billion is grossly exaggerated but is likely to cost closer to $300 million to $3.3 billion. Also, large amounts of taxpayers' money would be saved because lowering the level of pollution in the air would reduce illness and deaths. If Canada does not ratify the agreement, the economy could suffer because agricultural production and fisheries are affected and harmed by rising temperatures. These two areas could cost our country more money than the losses associated with committing to the agreement.

As a former doctor I hope you will understand the impact global warming will have on people's health and its cost to society. Once again, I am requesting that the Canadian government ratify the Kyoto Protocol for the well being of us all.

Sincerely,

Moe Luksenberg.

P.S. You delivered me in 1986 and three years later your office diagnosed me with asthma.

I think we have to understand from Moe' s point of view and all of the children his age that the effects of air pollution and climate change and the measures to reduce them both are not unrelated.

When I graduated from medical school the incidence of childhood asthma was at 2.5%. The incidence of childhood asthma is now at 12%. My young Moe is one of those people. We must understand that the things that we would do to reduce climate change will also have an extraordinarily positive effect on the quality of air in our lives and particularly for those of us who live in Toronto.

In the last householder in our riding we asked a question that, as everyone will see from some of the responses, perhaps was not the best worded question. It asked, “Do you think we should ratify Kyoto regardless of the economic impact?” It was an interesting question that we thought would separate the wheat from the chaff. I think it mainly created some concerns about the wording of the question. Nonetheless, even with that wording, 80% of the people of St. Paul's who responded to this poll were in favour of the ratification regardless of economic impacts.

I will give some examples of some of the answers. One person said:

Dear Dr. Bennett:

I am writing to express my complete support and appreciation for your position on ratifying the Kyoto protocol. The reality of global warming is the single most important issue--environmentally, politically and economically--confronting us today. The consequences of further inaction will almost certainly be catastrophic and certainly outweigh any short-term sacrifices that might be required.

Another person said:

As a resident of your constituency, I just wanted to express my satisfaction in your commitment to ratify the Kyoto Accord... From what I understand, there is nothing but positive environmental impacts coming from the Kyoto accord.

Another person said:

I am writing to support the ratification in Canada of the Kyoto Protocol before the end of the year.

Another person said:

My family and I truly feel that Canada should implement the Kyoto Protocol. Of course, there will be costs, but there will be greater costs if we do nothing, like the U.S. is doing.

One of the answers made me most uncomfortable. It read:

Hi, Carolyn. If you are concerned about Kyoto, I would be interested to know whether you have bought shares in the Windmill project that was discussed at your community meeting about the environment earlier this year.

I have to confess that I had thought many times that I was about to do that and have still not yet done that. Maybe it will be a Christmas gift for everyone I know.

There have been some concerns and I cannot say that there cannot be an 80:20 vote in the riding without understanding that some people do have some concerns.

One constituent wrote:

I am sorry but I happen not to agree with you on ratifying the Kyoto agreement. This requires a lot more study on what the impact will be on all Canadians, particularly those like me who are retired and depend on investment income from resource companies which will be impacted by the effects of this agreement.

Another constituent said:

It would have been a better idea to poll the constituents in your riding on this issue before jumping on the bandwagon with your 95 other Liberal colleagues.

I have to say to that constituent that there are some issues in which I feel obligated to lead and I am now thrilled that I am in the good company of 80% of the people who have talked to me.

Another person said:

We absolutely have to ratify Kyoto and go beyond it. We must look at the entire picture, which includes the health costs of bad air, the impact of global warming, the destruction of natural environment, etc. I am often embarrassed by our track record on environmental issues when talking to Europeans.

One of the things that was clear to some of the people who were unsure was that they did want to know the estimated costs of ratifying Kyoto and the impact on the Canadian economy. It was this constituent who wanted to know what the economic impact would be and would not support ratifying the accord.

One of the most articulate responses was again a criticism of the question that we posed on the householder. The constituent wrote:

I didn't feel entirely comfortable with the question you posed. Obviously if the economic impacts are too great, we will not ratify. But the point seems to be that we will not know what the impacts may be, although the odds are that they will not be very great. I became convinced about Kyoto when I read the hysterical nonsense generated by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, an utterly disgraceful position, bankrupt intellectually as well as morally. It seems to me that the arguments advanced by the opponents of Kyoto closely resemble those produced by the friends of Big Tobacco in the 1960s and 1970s. However, Carolyn,as a historian of our external policy, I have to say that the shadows of the Columbia River treaty affair of 1961-3 are ominous. Because of the bifurcated nature of jurisdiction over aspects of foreign relations, I have my doubts as to when this particular effort is going to make it to the statute books, or stay there if it does make it. I'm not happy about this, but I don't think we should kid ourselves about the ability of provincial governments, however misguided and dim-witted, to frustrate good public policy. I suspect you will agree with that proposition.

One of the others said:

As our MP, we urge you and the Government to support the Kyoto Protocol and put the planet's ecosystem on which we all depend ahead of short term economic goals.

It is without a doubt that these were the inflow of reports from the constituents like the one who wrote:

I urge the federal government to enforce fully the Kyoto agreement and environment protocols, and not to capitulate to industry pressure and right-wing reactionaries like Ralph Klein...It is the role of government to protect its citizens--it's time people realized that pollution costs everyone; through spiralling health care costs; through lost productivity due to pollution-induced illnesses, and so on.

Another constituent writes:

Ratify it already! The naysayers have known about it, as we all have, since 1997. To complain about the need for more consultation at this point is just silly.

It is impressive to hear the kind of thoughtful dialogue in terms of what we should be doing with the Toronto Transit Commission and what we should be doing on SUVs. It was in the year 2000, when we did our green householder, when we actually polled constituents on what they themselves were prepared to do in order to help us make our environment better.

In our green newsletter of 2000 it was interesting to see the number of constituents who agreed that they would be prepared to understand incentives that would affect their lifestyles, such as requiring an annual $25 licence to operate a gasoline powered lawnmower, or a separate fee for two stroke engines, or no licence for electric mowers.

In my riding last month the people in Wells Hill had a rake and bake sale where they were proposing to get rid of leaf blowers in their neighbourhood.

It leads to an important point. The Canadian government needs to show leadership by encouraging environmentally responsible activities through proper incentives. Brenda Zimmerman, a professor of management at the Schulich School says when she quotes an old paper, “The folly of rewarding A while hoping for B”. That is what we hope to see now. We need to align Canada's fiscal policies with our social, health and environmental policies. We should lower taxes on things that we agree we want and increase taxes on things we have decided we do not want to support.

Some new initiatives that we need to consider would include the elimination of taxes on renewable energy sources and lowering taxes on cleaner fuels such as natural gas and premium unleaded gasoline. Conversely we would raise taxes on the dirtier fuels such as coal and diesel fuel. It would be interesting for people to go to the gas pump and make a decision based on the cleaner fuel being cheaper in a revenue neutral way than the dirtier fuel. Even the provincial governments could help by perhaps putting the annual licence fee on an SUV at $1,000 a year and the fee on a hybrid at zero.

There are all kinds of other ways that corporate Canada would look at the issue. How can we, sector by sector, do things like the Dutch government has done by creating agreements with sectors called covenants? The Dutch covenant says that it is better for a company's facility to produce in the most efficient way possible in the Netherlands than elsewhere. We want each sector to decide that it can be as good as it can be in its own sector. It is sort of like best in class, and those people can actually move in that way.

Now is Canada's moment to show world leadership in the movement toward a less carbon intensive economy. Tony Marcil, one of my most engaged citizens in St. Paul's, the former president and CEO of the World Environment Centre, reminds us of the important point that the Kyoto protocol is providing us. It is an opportunity for future economic growth as well as environmental sustainability. He states that the Kyoto protocol represents a huge opportunity to strengthen Canada's economic future. He adds that judiciously setting new greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for all Canadians, accompanied by rational fiscal and other incentives, would serve as new challenges to the ingenuity of Canadians in the areas of technology and management.

The fact is that Canada is up to the task. We are well positioned to build on our expertise and the results would be more energy efficient industries, cities and households.

Canada must not pass on this opportunity to gain ground in the field of international economic efficiency. Canada's industry leaders should be lobbying intensely for Kyoto because in the end it would keep them in the international trade race. Without it they would continue to lose ground to Asian and European firms that have lowered the energy intensity of their products due to higher energy costs and are now doing so, again due to Kyoto goals.

Ninety-five colleagues and I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister encouraging that we ratify Kyoto without the clean energy credits. We feel that there should not be any asterisk on the deal. Let us just do it. We cannot afford not to.