Mr. Speaker, I certainly was enjoying the comments of the member for Ottawa South and I congratulate him on his words today.
As Canadians, what do we spend an awful lot of time doing? Talking about the weather. We get in an elevator with complete strangers and we say, “Is it hot enough for you?”, or, “Is it cold enough for you?”, or, “How about that snowstorm?”, or, “What is tomorrow's forecast?” We are used to that.
This year especially we have been talking a lot about the weather because it has been an extraordinarily mild winter. It is not the first time we have had a mild winter, but this one has been especially so. Although I remember last year during the election, one particular Friday when I was campaigning in my riding of Halifax West in Nova Scotia, I was wearing a light fall jacket because it was 13° Celsius. I had never heard of a day in January in Halifax when it was 13° Celsius. My hon. colleague from West Nova would say that down in his part of the province, which is a little more south and people sometimes play golf there on New Year's Day, it is a bit milder, but I do not think it would be very often 13° on a day in January. That is extraordinary.
We are seeing more and more reasons to be concerned about our weather and about our climate. We know from scientists who measure these things that the 10 hottest years on record since human beings started keeping records of the temperature back in the middle of the 19th century have all been since 1990. We should be concerned about that.
I have a friend who is a meteorologist and who is very knowledgeable and interested in issues of weather and also science generally. He was telling me last fall, and I believe he was talking about last winter, that there was a point at which the gulf stream was actually interrupted briefly.
Tomorrow the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be released. I saw reports earlier this week about that report and about things being said by the scientists at their meeting, which I believe is in Paris. They are concerned about whether the gulf stream will slow down.
Obviously, whether it is interrupted, slows down or whatever, any change in the gulf stream could have a dramatic effect on weather patterns in the northern hemisphere, particularly around the Atlantic. If we consider how much northern Europe depends on the gulf stream for its relatively warm climate, it could be devastated by that kind of change. It is not just Europe that could be affected. People who live in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, or any of the Atlantic provinces have to be concerned because the gulf stream has a very important impact on them.
I learned a year or so ago, when I had the pleasure as minister of fisheries of visiting Sable Island, that the gulf stream is only about 50 miles, which I suppose is about 80 kilometres, from Sable Island. I could see how close it is to my province and my region and what an impact it obviously has. To see the gulf stream being interrupted is very worrisome.
We are very concerned about the changes that are taking place in our north. For example, roads and buildings constructed on permafrost are all at risk today. Even the migration routes of the caribou now appear to be in danger.
The caribou encounter problems because there is not enough ice. That represents a danger for them and forces them to change their route. Based on the way ice is formed in the north we know that polar bears are also at risk. All of this is very unsettling.
We know already that the report we are going to see tomorrow from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is going to be bleak and sobering news. It causes us great concern, and it should cause us great concern. But it is not the first time we have heard this. We have seen in recent years an increase in what scientists and meteorologists call extreme weather events, things like hurricanes, cyclones and large winter storms. In fact, within 12 months we have had in my province both hurricane Juan and what we called white Juan, a huge winter storm which dumped a metre of snow in 24 hours. I certainly had never seen that in my lifetime. It was pretty dramatic.
Hurricane Juan was devastating for a big swath of Nova Scotia. The impact was dramatic. I remember a few days afterward the defence minister at that time and I had the opportunity to fly over Halifax in a helicopter and to see the impact on Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, a beautiful park full of wonderful trees, many of which were downed like matchsticks. It was a dramatic and very troubling sight to see from the air.
We are also seeing rising sea levels. They are already impacting some countries. There are island countries in the Pacific that have already been inundated where people have had to be evacuated. They are the first examples of ecological refugees that we have seen.
I heard a scientist just last week talk about climate change and global warming. He explained that if one has a glass of water, as the temperature in the room rises, the water actually expands and fills up more of the glass. He was pointing out the concern we should have about our ocean levels. The rise in sea levels is not just because of glaciers and ice caps melting, which we should be very concerned about as well, but if there is a one degree increase in water temperature worldwide, it means that the water is going to expand and sea levels will rise for that reason alone. We also have to be concerned about the effect of the ice caps, both north and south, as a radiator for our climate, as a way of cooling off our climate.
It is encouraging that a lot of Canadians, a lot of people in the U.S. and hopefully elsewhere have seen the movie that Al Gore produced and starred in, An Inconvenient Truth. It certainly had an impact on me when I saw it last year. It was one of the reasons that my wife and I decided to buy a hybrid vehicle. The fact is it has been a benefit. With a hybrid vehicle the maintenance costs actually go down. Over a five year period it has been shown that hybrid vehicles have much lower maintenance costs, and obviously, one is going to pay less for gas. We are certainly paying less for gas even though there was a little more initial capital cost and that is a concern.
There is a report in the Globe and Mail today that refers to a survey by Maritz Research in Canada. It said that when buying a vehicle the consideration of whether it is environmentally friendly ranked 23rd among 26 reasons for buying a vehicle. The top three considerations were value for money, fuel economy and reliability. It is good that fuel economy is one of those considerations because clearly, with a hybrid vehicle one will benefit from the fuel economy.
The point I am making is that we all have to get engaged in this issue. We all have to find ways to do better. I certainly want to keep doing better. We have done something but we have to do more things it seems to me in my home and in all homes across the country to help combat climate change. The government has to do more in terms of the variety of measures that it can take to improve the situation and to combat climate change.
There is as we know a very narrow range of conditions in which human life can exist. We see that when it gets cold. When we go outside on a day when it is -15° or -20° we realize that we cannot stay out very long without being warmly dressed. It is amazing how quickly it goes from a temperature that is reasonable, livable and comfortable to one where it is not comfortable. It is a pretty small range. Once we go outside that range, things become unlivable if we go to extremely low temperatures, unless we are in the Antarctic and we are really prepared for it, but in reality, for most people we cannot survive in those extreme low temperatures or in extreme hot temperatures if they are above 140° or 150° for example.
What has been the response of the Conservatives? After a year in power, they are still blaming the Liberals for everything. The Conservatives continue to tell us that we did not do enough; but in the past they opposed every action to fight global warming. They are still displaying signs of that attitude.
Yesterday, journalists asked Conservative members whether they believed that increased greenhouse gases have caused global warming. Most of those members refused to answer the question.
The Conservative member for Wetaskiwin, Alberta, a member for the Conservatives on the environment committee, was asked if he believed in the science of global warming. What did he say? He said, “I am going to have to defer on that one”. When asked if he believed in the science of global warming, he said he would have to defer and he would not answer the question. That is unimaginable.
