James Lunney

[Christmas, December 13th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, 700 years before the birth, the prophet Isaiah declared the virgin birth and said, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace”.

Five hundred years before the birth, the prophet Zechariah told of his death, how much his betrayer would be paid and that he would come riding on a donkey. He was born in Bethlehem, which means in Hebrew the house of bread. He said, “I am the bread of life...I am the way, the truth and the life...I am the resurrection and the Life and his life showed he was the Son of God”.

That is what Christians believe. That is what they celebrate at this time of year. He is the reason for the season.

May it truly be a very merry Christmas for you, Mr. Speaker, for all members of the House, for all Canadians, and a wonderful new year for Canada and for the world.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 12th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we wish to acknowledge the member opposite for her hard work on this file as parliamentary secretary. She has taken it to heart, however we do have ideological differences on the issue of Kyoto.

I also know Kitchener having lived there for some 15 years. From Kitchener it is about a three hour drive down the road to Windsor and to Port Huron. We have a large and cold country. It is also very hot in the summer, as the member mentioned, and that means air conditioning. It is energy intensive if we want to live comfortably. We have huge transportation costs.

Kitchener has a large industrial base, with the auto parts industry, Lear Siegler, tire manufacturers and so on. Many of our businesses though are at least owned in part by the U.S. If we put the burden of Kyoto on our businesses on this side of the border, is the member not concerned that industry and jobs would flow south of the 49th? We have seen this happen in British Columbia. In consequence, the emissions from the industry moving south of the 49th would continue to blow across the border into our neck of the woods.

What will the government do to fence out emissions from south of the border? It seems to me that Kyoto is a good plan for developing the northern United States. Is the member not concerned about job losses in her own community?

[Prebudget Consultations, December 12th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned that health care in Canada was one of the best systems in the world. The Romanow report requests up to $15 billion in new spending and Romanow suggests we take it out of the surplus. There are increased costs coming with Kyoto. Mr. Kirby on the other hand is saying that we should increase the GST or increase the personal income taxes to pay for increased health care costs.

On health care in Canada where there is a single payer and a single service monopoly, there are no incentives for efficiency. I want to ask the member a question about that.

In Toronto, the cancer services at Sunnybrook Hospital could not get people to work in the evening. Finally the dreaded private sector stepped in. It used the same equipment and the same services and treated 1,000 patients for the same cost that 600 could be treated, but the patients got in within a week instead of waiting for six to eight weeks.

I wonder if the hon. member would not suggest there are efficiencies that can be captured by looking at how we deliver services.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 12th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the comments made by our colleague opposite, particularly when he talked about paying down the debt. We have not heard about that lately and we appreciate that on our side of the House.

He mentioned that the debt is currently around $536 billion, with the estimated surplus in coming years being about $14 billion. However Mr. Romanow, if all of his recommendations were implemented, has asked for about $15 billion of increased spending on home care, pharmacare and diagnostic services, all of which there is a perceived need for.

The failed long gun registry program was estimated to cost $2 million and is now up to about $1 billion. With Kyoto coming up who knows what liability will be put on the taxpayer? The Kirby report recommended increasing the GST as a dedicated tax, as if there was such a thing. The Romanow report recommended gobbling up what surplus there was. Which of the recommendations from the two recent reports would the member favour?

I noticed that the member mentioned efficiencies in health care. The member before him spoke about disease prevention rather than treatment. A doctor in my riding while speaking to a rotary club mentioned that doctors were tired of being accused of not being more proactive in treating wellness and prevention. He said they were not trained for that. However, there is an abundance of research indicating, for example, that mechanical low back pain alone could be treated by chiropractors. Health care economists tell us that would save up to $2 billion. Drugs and surgery are a last resort in this area of care.

About 6,000 chiropractors are out there who are quite able to help and about a third of the cases are going to physicians for this type of treatment, which they are not as qualified to deliver. Does the hon. member think that there are health care efficiencies to be found in the system if we could find a better way to administer primary health care? There are about 1,200 naturopathic doctors as well who would be very glad and able to contribute if the public had better access.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 12th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member in addressing the prebudget debate has chosen to talk about Kyoto. We certainly respect his concern for the environment and we share many of his concerns. I wonder if we might ask him about his estimates of what this program will cost to implement.

There are no estimates on the cost to industry. There are no estimates on the cost to consumers. Some of the estimates say that it could cost consumers up to $2,700 a home to comply, and my riding in British Columbia has been very hard hit by a downturn in the economy. We do not know what the costs will be.

My concern is with job losses, because of the huge border we share with the United States and because 85% of our trade is going south of the border. The estimates are that maybe it will be $10 a tonne for carbon reductions, but the government admits it could be $15 or $30 a tonne. What will the costs be in agriculture and in human resources? What are the costs going to be in jobs lost to the United States? I wonder if the hon. member would like to comment.

[Petitions, December 12th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from over 400 people on the west coast of British Columbia. The petitioners are concerned that the government has not funded the Coast Guard adequately. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans chronic underfunding and lack of resources has resulted potentially in the loss of several lives.

They call upon the government to remove the Coast Guard from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and a separate department be adequately funded so lives can be saved. They also call upon the government to ensure that a new and adequate hovercraft is available for lifesaving purposes.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned the United States in his response. In Sumas, Washington, there is a plant being built, just across the 49th. We already have one plant pulling out of B.C. to move to this new location just south of the 49th. A little community with 780 people will get 56 jobs from a formerly Canadian plant. It will get all the hundreds of construction jobs. There is a 600 megawatt power plant going in there, just south of the 49th, to serve this little community. Presumably that power is destined for Seattle and California, but it is not legal for them to build the plant near Seattle or in California because of the pollution concerns there. Yet it is being built just south of the 49th.

Does the hon. member really not think that with our dependence on the U.S. for our exports and our energy products a lot of our industry will just go south of the 49th? Canada will still receive as much emissions or more and it will be at the expense of the Canadian economy and Canadian jobs.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his intervention. We do get a little enthusiastic about some of our discussions around here and there is quite an ideological debate going on about how we should proceed to address some very important issues.

The hon. member mentioned that jobs would be created to offset the losses in industry. Jobs would be created by innovation and by advancing energy alternatives. Is the member implying that the only way to achieve these job gains in energy alternatives is by signing on to the Kyoto accord, which is outside of Canada?

He mentioned alternatives, and some good ideas came forward, such as wind, hydro, hydrogen, solar energy, geothermal, ethanol and bio-fuels. He mentioned someone in his own riding who used solar panels to greatly increase the efficiency of his home. But that was done, might I suggest, without Kyoto. It has been done already.

We have talked about what happened in California, where great strides are being made in this area toward energy alternatives, but that was done without Kyoto.

There are great penalties associated with Kyoto if Canada does not reach these unachievable or unrealistic targets. They are very difficult targets. We do not know how we are going to get out there without a plan. If we do not reach them, there are very severe penalties to our economy and that will require emissions trading abroad and transfers of great sums of money from our country to other countries. Therefore, would it not be better to spend that money by investing in this country, advancing the concerns and alternatives that we are all interested in?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, what are the costs? First, we do not have figures as to what it will cost the country as a whole. However it has been estimated that the government wants us to go to R-2000 homes, insulate our homes more. It wants us to go to smaller cars. It wants us to abandon clothes dryer and go back to the clothesline.

The accord is almost certainly to bring us increased costs for energy and for gasoline. The estimate is that it will cost an average of $2,700 per Canadian family. I have had questions from people in my riding about how much it will cost them.

I had a contractor ask me recently what it would cost him for the cost of building a home and how it would cut in to his ability to survive and keep his income and livelihood. In fact we have heard that up to 450,000 jobs are potentially in jeopardy.

This is an ideological debate. With so much of our industry concentrated along the border with so little potential gain to the environment, as industry moves south of the border to take advantage of economic energy opportunity there, really will we have achieved the goals that we want in reducing pollution or will we have just moved it a little a bit south of the 49th where it will continue to blow into Canada and continue to cause problems for us? Is it not better to pursue our own energy efficient policies, wind power, energy alternatives like hydrogen and expand our hydro electric capacity?

Could my colleague comment on that?

[Kyoto Protocol, December 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I also listened to the member's speech with interest. We of course have a lot of respect for the member and the community she represents.

She mentioned that hunters cannot rely on their traditional knowledge because of changes in climate. We certainly appreciate that. Climate change is affecting everybody.

The question really is about the fact of Kyoto dealing with CO

2

when only 5% of it is man-made and 95% is natural. The contaminants that the member mentioned, like the POPs that arrive in cold communities, come down in the snowpack all over the world. In the Alps, in the Arctic and in the Rocky Mountains, we are seeing that contaminants come from hundreds of miles away. Sadly, Kyoto is not going to address these issues.

The member surely should be aware, more than anybody, that Canada has a large land mass. We have a very cold country. We have heating costs for our homes. We are an underdeveloped country. We expect to see our population grow. How can we realistically expect to go back to levels below 1990's when we have huge transportation costs and huge heating costs for our homes?

Really, the question is this: Is this Kyoto agreement going to help us with the objectives we are trying to achieve?

The member who spoke previously mentioned that there are 33 million people in California and they have low transportation costs. There are as many people jammed into California as we have in the whole country. They can afford to have lower transportation costs and shared transportation costs, like public transit. That is very difficult to achieve in Canada with our numbers so spread out.

Is this effort actually going to achieve the objectives that we all want to see? We want to see a reduction. Surely it should be a made in Canada approach that does not bind us into buying credits in other countries and sending money out of the country in order to achieve unrealistic objectives. Would that not be a more reasoned approach for Canadians, to find our own plan and deal with this in a responsible way?