Mr. Speaker, first I wish to inform you that I will be splitting my time with my distinguished colleague from Red Deer.
As the environment critic for the official opposition, he has considerable knowledge and experience in environmental matters, and a deep concern to see Canadians not only survive but flourish in the transition to the green economy.
I am Parliament's first auto worker by profession. I understand this industry in a way that is entirely unique. I understand by firsthand experience the human face of our decisions in Parliament. I know what it is like to live and work day after day, year after year, with the anxiety of job insecurity. I participated as a worker in helping DaimlerChrysler's Windsor assembly plant compete to secure product, not against other auto manufacturers but against its own sister assembly plant in St. Louis, Missouri.
I have survived the closure or the Pillette Road truck assembly plant. Sadly, several hundred of my brothers and sisters on the line are still on layoff, now going on nearly three years. I can tell everyone about the folks I left behind on the assembly line to come to Ottawa. I spend sleepless nights sometimes thinking about them. I see their faces, I know their families, and I take their future seriously. I vowed to fight for their jobs.
I think about the communities I serve, built with the tax dollars of auto workers. I think of the institutions that serve our communities, funded through agencies like the United Way, by the generous giving of auto workers. I think of the union members that work to build the community and preserve auto jobs, and how their political cousins in the NDP have ignored some of their most important advice on Kyoto. This motion before us today will hurt, not help, auto jobs and the communities they support in Canada.
The motion would regulate fuel efficiency improvements in all classes of light duty vehicles sold in Canada. I will give credit where credit is deserved. The fuel efficiency standard by weight class is a better standard than the Liberal government has been pursuing, a standard averaged across the fleet.
However, the motion before us today does not provide Canadians with the information they need to make a real informed choice on this matter. The NDP has left out a target, a timeline and a full accounting of all the costs. It is not just health costs that are talked about in this motion, but the costs of programs, industry costs, threats to jobs and the loss to community institutions if those high paying jobs leave our communities for foreign labour markets.
What the NDP should really tell Canadians is that it wants a 25% increase in fuel efficiency to make the 2010 averaging year under Kyoto. It hopes to achieve this without the U.S. and Mexico partnering in a common standard. It further hopes to achieve this while maintaining auto jobs and investing in a Canada that has lost virtually all of its comparative advantages against other global manufacturing jurisdictions, and without losing further market share to foreign auto manufacturers who have environmental cost comparative advantages on us. This is entirely unrealistic.
The NDP member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, who I have a lot of respect for and spoke earlier this morning in defence of this motion, said at the environment committee this week that in business he would never forget a target or timeline. It makes it impossible to get where one needs to go. In proposing the motion before us today, his party forgot both. We need a target and a timeline, but we need the right target and the right timeline.
The 25% fuel efficiency improvement by 2010 is a good target and timeline if we had started immediately in 1995. That is what Japan and the European Union did. It makes cost abatement for the industry easier and gave both Japan and Europe a comparative advantage against Canadian manufacturers in the move to a carbon constrained economy.
In all fairness, the NDP is not to blame for this. This is the fault of the Liberal government. It has dithered rather than delivered on significant tax measures and signals to industry and consumers to usher in the green economy. The Liberals have squandered five crucial years on negotiating a fuel efficiency standard to bring new technologies into current vehicle production and allow automakers to spread out their costs to do this.
To remedy this deficiency, I recommend that the government add the five years it has squandered to the 2010 timeline for lost opportunities. The NDP motion insists on compounding Liberal mistakes with the great mistake of adhering to a 2010 average timeline instead of a 2015 timeline. Further, the NDP motion insists on 25% improvement without telling Canadians what it will cost them to get there.
I suspect when it comes to the auto industry and fuel efficiency regulations for Kyoto commitments, the NDP is afraid of taxpayer sticker shock. There are additional and more hidden costs: more jobs lost, lower tax revenues to all levels of government to fund social programs, more strain on programs like EI, and fewer charitable dollars for community programs.
With 180,000 Canadians, including tens of thousands in my communities employed in auto manufacturing and parts jobs, and a further 350,000 in related sectors from dealerships to financial services to transport, we cannot gamble with people's lives over implementing Kyoto. We must get it right.
A further deficiency in the NDP motion is that it ignores the North American integrated market. The motion proposes fuel efficiency regulations for vehicles sold in Canada. Only 20% of vehicles built in Canada are sold in Canada; 80% are sold to the U.S. and Mexico. Canada imports most of the vehicle supplies from the U.S., so the NDP motion, if adopted, is a pyrrhic victory for the slayers of climate change because if acted upon it will have a negligible impact on reducing greenhouse gas levels toward Kyoto commitments.
To make a real impact across the Canadian fleet, U.S. automakers would need to incorporate the same fuel efficiency standards for vehicle exports to Canada. With the Canadian market so small for vehicle sales, there is no prospect for the redesign and retooling costs to accommodate such a standard being recouped by U.S. automakers. If my NDP colleagues do not believe me, perhaps they will consider this from Buzz Hargrove. I call it a Buzz word of wisdom: “It's unrealistic to think that automakers will engineer unique vehicles just for the Canadian market--”. The only other option is to restrict products to the Canadian market and consumers will not tolerate a lack of vehicle choice.
We already have tremendous disharmony with the United States, and Mexico too, on regulatory standards that hurt our competitiveness in attracting and retaining auto investment. Mexico has capitalized on this to become a serious export competitor to Canada by supplying U.S. markets. China will become the next serious export competitor. We need more regulatory harmony to keep and compete for auto jobs and investment in Canada.
Here is where the Liberal government has also failed the test. It has already squandered five years to negotiate a fuel efficiency standard to move new technologies into new vehicles. It has spent a marathon 21 days negotiating with Canadian auto manufacturers on a proposed fuel efficiency standard. Thankfully it has failed to deliver.
A sensible understanding of the integrated North American market means a fuel efficiency standard must be achieved commonly with the U.S. and Mexico. Sadly, the Liberal government has squandered so much credibility and clout with the U.S. President and congress by its toleration of anti-Americanism that it could not ensure the U.S. would join us in Kyoto to level the auto investment playing field.
I doubt whether it could bring them to the table to negotiate a common North American fuel efficiency standard that moves us to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, I recommend it does so immediately so our domestic producers can share Kyoto costs and reposition our North American market from slow integrators of environmental technologies to overcome the comparative disadvantage versus Japan in the EU in the move to a carbon-constrained economy.
Not only should the government add five years to the 2010 timeline for its slow start with domestic auto producers to bring technologies on stream, it must add the additional delay to negotiate a common North American fuel efficiency standard. It will be well worth it though when we move together to regain the global lead in auto technologies, and if the Liberal government cannot achieve it then the people will have to elect a Conservative government to get the job done right.
Our NDP colleagues across the way would do well to support collaboration with the U.S. and Mexico. Consider a further Buzz word of wisdom: “Our strategy for improving fuel efficiency must be implemented carefully and thoughtfully, with fuel efficiency standards set in concert with those of U.S. and Mexico”. The motion before us today should have recognized this. It does not.
Finally, the NDP motion before us today fails to account for the fragile position of Canadian auto manufacturers in a globally competitive industry or the opportunities that their environmental regulation creates for foreign labour markets and automakers to seize our markets and end our jobs.
Global auto production has become fiercely competitive for a myriad of reasons. Automakers in Asia and Europe have gained considerable market share and the traditional big three employers are in a financially precarious position heading into the new green economy. Auto investment decisions that affect Canadian jobs and communities are made in Stuttgart, Germany; Dearborn, Michigan; and Tokyo, Japan, not in Canada.
In the past six years Canada's cost advantages have virtually disappeared. Kyoto means additional cost pressures to auto production in Canada from higher energy costs, higher costs for steel, plastics and chemicals because they come from energy intensive sectors, and increased costs for trucking vehicles to markets and parts to assembly.
The NDP motion today proposes that vehicles sold in Canada should incorporate technologies for higher fuel efficiency. While Toyota and Honda are at or within reach of incorporating these technologies, the big three manufacturers will face higher costs to comply which they fund from the sale of trucks, minivans and SUVs. While the NDP motion will--
