Mr. Speaker, I rise today and am pleased to give my first speech sitting on this side of the House. It is quite exciting to have the honour not only to represent the people of Saanich—Gulf Islands but also to serve in the cabinet of the government, something for which I am grateful.
I am pleased to talk about the Bloc motion and the importance of the issue that it has brought before the House. I want to talk about where we are going, the importance of the environment to this country and energy efficiency. The Government of Canada is committed to bringing forward solutions to these problems in the coming months and years ahead. That is exactly why, under the leadership of the Prime Minister, $2 billion was committed in the government's first budget to these issues. I want to ensure everybody is aware of that. We want to ensure that taxpayers get the very best value for the $2 billion.
The motion on the floor by my hon. friend from the Bloc calls for us to specifically achieve the Kyoto targets. The problem is that these targets, as everybody is becoming increasingly aware, are unwieldy. After 13 years of government action we must be realistic. That is what we are saying. Everybody here wants to turn the curve down, so we can have a far better record.
However the truth is, and I believe even my friend from Bloc who I have great respect for and have known for many years would agree, that greenhouse gases under the previous government have gone up each and every single year that the Liberals were in office. Nobody will dispute that. They signed on to a climate change program and set a target of minus 6%, but today Canada is 35% above the Liberal set targets. That is the Liberal record, make no mistake about it.
We want to do something about that. We want to see meaningful progress in this area. Has it been a priority of this government in its first 100 days in office? Absolutely, yes. The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Minister of Environment had discussions on how we can achieve it. We must work together. We must be like gears that are going to mesh if we are going to achieve results and that is what we are committed to doing.
It is not surprising, given the ad hoc approach by the previous government, that some of these programs have been in the headlines. One has to ask what the purpose was of the previous government's programs that it introduced. What was its intention? Let us call a spade a spade. The truth is that lot of those programs were designed to garner headlines. Let us be honest about that.
I go back to what was said by the hon. member. If some of the programs were doing everything they were supposed to, would greenhouse gases be at 35% above the targets? Is that where we would be today?
I can tell the House that in my department there were 115 or 116 programs when the Conservatives took office and 97 of them are intact and working. Yes, there were some programs that we looked at and felt were not in the taxpayers' interests. I will get into those a little more specifically. Were they achieving their goals? No.
Former Liberal aid Tom Axworthy himself said that a press release is not a policy. I would respectfully submit that is what taxpayers saw a lot of in the previous Liberal government. It is no secret that it was preoccupied with creating billion dollar programs, be it the gun registry or HRDC. We saw it over and over again. I would submit that it did not have respect for taxpayers' dollars. Taxpayers have spoken very clearly on this. We have a fiduciary obligation to ensure that taxpayers' dollars are spent wisely and they get value for their money. That is exactly what we are going to do.
Some people out there are trying to defend some of these programs and I admit there were parts of them that were probably on the positive side of the scale. I fully acknowledge that, but it is a little late. After 13 years in office, on their death bed, in their last year in office the Liberals said, “Well, we better get serious about this. Maybe this is a mainstream issue”. I accept that the environment is a mainstream issue. It is for me. It is for my colleagues and we are going to do something about it. We are focused on bringing results.
The previous government, in the last four or five years, spent $4 billion on some of its so-called programs. I ask my hon. friend, where are the results? It is not a record of which I would be proud. These are numbers that are indisputable. We will not hear the members opposite stand and discount that the GHGs are 35% above their own targets today. These are numbers set by professionals in the industry, people in departments, not by the people in the Conservative Party. These are absolute raw facts and we absolutely have to do better.
The other part that I struggle with, and I know my hon. colleague will be speaking later, is the spending of billions and billions of dollars to buy credits offshore. In many cases these countries that wanted to buy these credits did not have to do anything because places like Russia, that may have had a collapse in its economy, actually have excess to sell. It is important to note that not one iota of difference was made in the environment. Not one ounce of greenhouse gases would be reduced. We would give billions and billions of dollars to foreign countries. Is that what the taxpayers want us to do? I do not think so.
That is why we are working on biofuels. I know there are discussions right on the front end, a commitment by this Prime Minister that we can make a difference in this area. We want to see results. That is exactly why the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of the Environment are saying, “Let us make sure this works. Make sure we get it right”.
We have meetings coming up with the industries, stakeholders and provincial representatives. We want to hear from everybody and we want to move on it. We want to get our fundamentals right and we want to make a difference.
Moving forward, what is the vision? Where are we going? We are not going to shy away from the problem, but we are not going to play politics with it either. We are not going to worry about headlines. We are not going to play politics with environmental program spending. We want to spend tax dollars on programs that are going to increase energy efficiency.
I acknowledge that there are some people upset about EnerGuide, and yes, we will follow through on those commitments, but let us be honest. Let us be absolutely and painfully clear. This is a program where 50¢ of every dollar went to inspections, administration and overhead. Not a penny of that 50¢ did anything to clean up the environment. I do not think that is very efficient for an energy-efficient program.
Are there parts of that program that we could use? I am a builder. I am a journeyman carpenter. I just built a new home. I put in an energy-efficient heating system. I put in a heat exchanger because there is good value. I understand there are people doing that with some of this money. We will look at things like that where we can see a difference, but we have a fiduciary obligation, as I said earlier, to ensure that taxpayers are getting value and that we maximize the benefits.
The Prime Minister takes this very seriously. He has instructed every single person in his cabinet on how seriously he takes this. That is why we have to make these decisions and that is exactly what we are doing.
I talked about the record. Let us talk about the 2005 record. Do members know where Canada ranked out of the industrialized nations in environmental integrity? Canada was 28 out of 30. These are absolute facts.
The Liberal environmental critic ran for one party and now for another party. I am not sure where he is going. His record is the same on the environment. He is for Kyoto. He is against Kyoto. He voted against Kyoto. Now he is its champion. I remind all Canadians to look at the numbers and to look at the facts. They cannot be fooled. The record is very clear.
How can the government do better? How can we make a difference? Let us talk about the Asia-Pacific partnership. There are six countries there: the United States, Japan, Korea, India, China and Australia. Those six countries represent 50% of greenhouse gases globally. Where can the government get the greatest investment? Is it by sending billions of dollars off to places such as Russia where it will not make any difference? Or do we invest that money in technology? Should Canada develop things such as clean coal technology? Industry is on the cusp of developing technologies to provide very clean and efficient energy. Then, does Canada give that technology to places such as China and India, which would have an enormous impact on global greenhouse gases?
I submit that is a far better investment in dollars. We can become the leader in innovation and technology right here in Canada. That is what Canada needs to do.
I have said earlier that the government is committed to renewable fuels. One of the first things we will see pertains to biofuels. The government wants to set targets and then enforce those targets. The government will ensure that those targets are met. The government is working with the people in the industry and they tell us they can meet the targets. The government will work with the industries and it will happen. We will deliver.
The government will promote the technology side. Canada has the ability and the technologies developing that can capture from some of the large final emitters 100% of CO2 gases and then pump the gas back down into the ground where it came from. At the present time there is a project where they take back the CO2 gas that is trucked from the United States to a test facility in Saskatchewan and it is pumped back into the ground. This is working.
I have had discussions with industry. I am pushing industry and saying that we want to invest in this, but it must also. The government is pushing the industry hard, but industry must put a lot more money into the research and technology. If Canada is to win at this game, it will require the federal government, the provincial governments, and the industry to come together. It will require the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Natural Resources to get together and say, “How can we work together? How can we make this happen?”
This is not about us. It is not about them. It is about what is good for Canada. More importantly, if Canada succeeds it can share that with our global partners. I think everyone will win.
Canada wants to ensure that it cleans up the environment. Canada wants to clean up the air and the water. In this budget, on the environment, the government committed $500 million to clean up the nuclear waste liability at Chalk River. This is something that should have been done a long time ago. Did the previous government have the commitment to make that investment? No. Was it in the first budget of the new Conservative government? Absolutely. Why? It was there because it is the right thing to do and it had to be done.
The government must also change how Canadians think. I firmly believe that. The government needs to have an ongoing discussion on what is the best way to change how Canadians think. There is no question that Canadians are moving in the direction of a cleaner environment. SUV sales are falling and hybrid sales are increasing significantly. Hybrid sales rose 68% this month over the previous month. SUV sales have fallen dramatically over the past year. Why? It is because Canadians also want to do their part.
Do they have to be paid with their own money? I do not think so. Do we want to work with them? Do we want to encourage them to do that? Absolutely. Canadians cannot be fooled. They also want to ensure that we will succeed.
The tax deduction on transit passes announced in the budget is an enormous step forward in this regard. We should not minimize it. We are encouraging people to move forward, to get out of their cars in some of the most polluted air basins.
What about the previous government's record? We have seen the increase in smog days. We have heard about them in Toronto, Vancouver and some of the most polluted air basins. A huge part of that pollution comes from automobiles. Can we get people out of their cars? Are we moving in that direction? Absolutely.
We want to achieve results. I look forward to working with my hon. friend and with members of all parties. I know my hon. friend from the Bloc is very genuine. He wants to see us move forward.
It should be no surprise to my hon. friend who put the motion forward that every single program the Liberals created is not working. The Liberals are aware that they were the masters of creating billion dollar programs, whether they funnelled money into their own party as we have seen in the past or whether they put a billion dollars into the gun registry. We saw lots of that. We have seen the Auditor General's reports.
Mr. Speaker, you were probably in this chamber before I was born.