Nathan Cullen

[Create Your Canada, May 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague from Windsor on winning the Most Knowledgeable MP in the House award for the second year running, which is very nice.

Last night three New Democrat bills were passed and sent to committee, two of which would help protect consumers and one which would stop the unfair clawbacks on the pensions of our military and police officers.

On June 1 I will be hosting four young Canadians from the northwest of British Columbia who are the first winners of my contest called, “Create Your Canada”.

New Democrats believe that no one has a lock on the solutions that we need for the future and that we must show in action our commitment to our youth.

I ask the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Natural Resources to meet with these young people and listen to their hopes for future generations.

New Democrats support the aspirations of our youth. Let us hope the government is willing to do the same.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, May 13th, 2009]

With regard to the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation: (a) what is the financial commitment for the current fiscal year to combat the spread of the Mountain Pine Beetle, and what department is responsible for the expenditure; and (b) from the $200 million invested by the government in the Mountain Pine Beetle Program, what is the breakdown of the money spent by (i) the Department of Natural Resources, (ii) the Department of Transport, (iii) the Department of Western Economic Diversification?

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from London—Fanshawe is a champion on the environment in her community and her province.

Government can speak about transparency. The NDP requested that all these fines, warnings and issuances be made public because that might be something shareholders would want to know. If they are dealing with an energy company, if they are dealing with any kind of a corporation, one would think Canadians might want to know if it has a whole litany of penalties weighed against it. There is an element of ethical investment. This is a sector of the investment market that is growing in leaps and bounds and has been since the early nineties. Canadians and investors around the world want to invest in companies that are doing well. They want to make investments in companies that are working the local community, protecting the environment and all the rest.

What happens with these exemptions, which the government knowingly puts in, is they exclude sometimes some very vital information from investors and shareholders already in the company. The company might have a bunch of violations for spills, leaks, all sorts of contaminations and then behind closed doors, it works it out with government. Only if they fall into a very narrow category under this legislation will those penalties be made public. Otherwise who knows what they are?

This has to be the full cost accounting, the triple bottom line. These are the things we have talked about, where the environment and the economy come in harmony together. Once in harmony, it makes sense to invest in companies that do not pollute the environment. It makes sense to invest in companies that produce less greenhouse gases than their competitors. That will make the Canadian economy more proficient, productive and efficient. The Canadian economy desperately needs right now.

We have advocated for a green recovery, for a recovery that uses the investment of hard-earned dollars Canadians so we can make a more efficient and proficient economy. The government has said that it is stripping out environmental regulations and assessments. It is doing more harm and future generations will curse the government for that. They will ask themselves how the government could have taken out environmental considerations when it had an opportunity and the money to spend some money on it. It seems insane that in 2009 we are still talking about this, but lo and behold, the knuckles drag and it goes on.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if there is some kind of channeling going on within Manitoba politicians, but there seems to be some inquiry from the member for Saint Boniface. She was able to do much comment during my speech, but so little when we are on the record. She is new and it takes time to get comfortable here.

The problem with the piece around the penalties is twofold. First, the quadrupling of fines for individuals, but the status quo for companies is of interest. I mentioned in my speech how this could simply be the cost of doing business for some of the more profitable, and ExxonMobile certainly is one of those companies making some $477 billion in 2008. It is doing okay. To present a $1 million fine to a company of that size and stature, it might not even notice. It would be a lot cheaper than cleaning up its act in some cases.

The problem with the way the government has gone about this is it has set a limit on the minimum and maximum, without any actual logic or rationale behind that. If it had come forward and said that other countries were doing this and this was what their limits and their maximum minimums were, then we could have some sort of discussion on this. However, I feel as if the penalties were picked arbitrarily off a shelf. All of this is of no value if the government does not intend to enforce any of it.

Auditors' reports and history showed that the current government and the previous one had zero interest until the ducks that died in the tar sand ponds showed up on the evening news. Suddenly the government is like cops. This happens time and time again. It will negotiate the fine down as it did with the Valdez. The company got it to a tenth of its original summation, but that was the Americans. I am sure the Canadian government would never imagine doing such a thing, but it has time and time again.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I will assure my hon. colleague of that it was not a typo.

If the government came forward and said that specifically in the law it would exempt platforms, and this law deals with the unfortunate consequence of pollution, of a spill, Canadians would be left to inquire as to why.

The government does not create loopholes in its law for no reason at all. We have seen this time and again. It simply has exemptions. It is true in this place, as it is anywhere else, that the devil is in the details and there is a lot of devil in this place when the government draws up environmental regulation. It puts in details to exempt things which it does not want us to look at. We have seen consistently an exemption when it gets anywhere near the carbon economy, when it gets anywhere near the oil and gas producers in Canada, and I go back to this.

I met with the oil and gas producers of Canada two weeks ago. They said two things to me, which struck me. They said that they needed a hard cap and they needed it in law.

Lo and behold, who thought we would see the day where oil and gas companies were repeating back, almost word for word, a New Democrat mantra on how to deal with pollution and greenhouse gas emissions? They have decided a carbon price is coming. We have seen leadership in the Obama administration and for many years in the European Union. They know Canada's time has finally come, yet the government is moving slower than oil and gas companies.

Who could imagine this state of affairs? It needs to be corrected. My colleague is right. We need to check for the details in this thing. It is not solid.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is of great interest to be entering this afternoon's debate. I think it is precipitous also for the timing. Just this afternoon, Canadians saw the Auditor General of this country and the Commissioner of the Environment release their extensive report, which turns into a condemnation of the government's own ability and willingness to enforce the laws, their own laws, that are on the books.

Here in Bill C-16, which is substantial in size, one must be given over to the question of whether this is actually going to take place. These rules and regulations, this set of fines and penalties that the government has little or no intention of actually enforcing, are no laws at all.

There are number of themes that are recurrent in Bill C-16, which is, in a sense, a housekeeping bill that tries to gather together a number of environmental penalties and set minimums and maximums for those infringements on the environment.

I myself represent Skeena—Bulkley Valley, which is the northwest quarter of British Columbia. It is absolutely rich in resources but also a conduit for some of the most volatile and dangerous goods in Canada and a place where some of the most dangerous projects are being pushed by the government, and hopefully the former government in British Columbia, such projects as coal bed methane and offshore oil and gas.

While the government promotes these projects, what is relevant to Bill C-16 is that they say Canadians should rest assured that if we are going to roll the dice on this oil and gas project in a sensitive ecosystem, in the Hecate Strait, which is the windiest, waviest place in Canada, it is okay to put the rigs up because we have strong environmental laws.

That is what has been proposed and Canadians can sleep well and rest assured, but lo and behold, when the auditor of the country comes forward and takes a look at the enforcement of those laws, the measurement of the pollution, the accountability and transparency of government, the laws do not become worth the paper they are written on. This is what calls into question the efforts of the government in Bill C-16.

There was good work done by my colleague, the member for Edmonton—Strathcona, on the bill at committee in trying to augment the penalties, because we see a rise in penalties to individuals who pollute the environment but we do not see the same concurrent rise in penalties for corporations.

We see that businesses, in a sense, are meant to keep the status quo, while individual Canadians, heaven forbid if they were to do the same thing, would see an increase of four times and more in the penalties.

The enforcement of any of these rules is absolutely essential and critical, because again, the government could give a wink and a nod to industry in saying it will put out a bunch of regulations.

I do not know if members of the House or the public remember when the minister announced the bill. It was quite a flashy display. He spent tens of thousands of Canadians' hard-earned dollars, taxpayers' dollars, to walk down the street some several hundred metres to a five-star hotel to announce that this bill was coming up.

He could not do it here in Parliament, which was sitting that day. We have many nice rooms in which to announce bills. The minister thought it was very important to show the seriousness of the government's intention. He actually had enforcement officers. I always feel sorry for these men and women of the force, because they have to do it. They have to stand there as props for the government, to show how tough the minister was going to be on environmental polluters, meanwhile in full knowledge of the audit going on in his own department showing that there was no enforcement intention from the government. It was not going to bring these penalties or any such penalties.

Whether it is straight out pollution we are talking about, oil spills, toxic spills, leaks, sewage and all the rest, we see the government stripping environmental regulation after regulation. It includes the loopholes for assessments, saying more and more projects of greater size and potential impact are going to be exempt from assessments.

We saw the absolute travesty that was in the budget. There were many, but there was one in particular with respect to the environment. The government used the budget as a Trojan horse. It wheeled the thing in here saying it was all about the economy, and it slipped inside it a little piece about the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

In the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the government stripped out a whole lot of regulations. Conservation groups have been coming to me and other members of the House with serious and deep concerns, not only about the effect that this stripping of the Navigable Waters Protection Act will have on our environment and the conservation of our environment but the fact that there was no debate and discourse whatsoever.

This is a government claiming transparency and accountability, and it slides into a bill about the budget a piece about the environment and navigable waters and the protection of our streams and rivers in this country. Conservation groups such as the B.C. Wildlife Federation got involved, and Mountain Equipment Co-op, for goodness sake. All these groups raised a concern in a coalition scrambled together at the last minute, because they never thought a government would do this kind of thing and strip out a 100-year-old act.

It was one of the first acts put forward and brought to full comprehension in this country to protect navigable waters, the waterways that Canadians relied on for trade and commerce and now rely on for a whole assortment of reasons. The government chose a budget, in which to fundamentally change the act.

The government claims, and it goes to Bill C-16 again, that there was too much red tape and it was holding up all those shovel-ready projects that we now know the government has hardly spent $1 on. I asked the government, if this was so important and there were so many projects being held up, to provide Canadians and members of Parliament with a list of all the projects, of all the jobs that were not being created because of the terrible Navigable Waters Protection Act, to show us the proof and evidence as to why it had to strip out this bill.

Of course, the government provided nothing, not a single project anywhere in the country that condoned this. Then one begins to question the philosophy and to suspect what the government is truly about when it comes to protecting our environment.

This bill has a whole series of thoughtful comments and amendments to eight other acts in Canada. As I said, it is quite a hefty tome and quite complicated, but is it worth the paper it is written on if the government does not actually intend to enforce it?

We see this again in the auditor's report. A private member's bill was brought forward by the official opposition and was worked on by all members of the House in the last Parliament. The government is just choosing not to abide by a Canadian law.

It is here, in the government's own words and text, where Environment Canada says it does not need to actually monitor greenhouse gas emissions, but here is the irony. It can measure the emissions that it is going to count on in the government's own plan in the future, but it cannot take account of anything that has happened in the past. How are Canadians meant to have confidence in the government's ability to negotiate anything, what to order for lunch, never mind a serious agreement like what will happen in Copenhagen?

According to the Auditor General, and I will quote in order to get it right, “In the plans prepared to date, the department has not explained why expected emissions reductions can be estimated”, so those are the estimated reductions in the government's own plans, “in advance but actual reductions”, meaning what is actually happening in the environment, “cannot be measured after the fact”.

The government feels totally confident in saying to Canadians that it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by such-and-such by such-and-such a date. It can measure that and get that accurate, but it cannot measure the things that have already happened because it is too complicated and not cost-effective to measure.

Going back to the idea of enforcement and penalties, this comes from a party that has prided itself on being tough on crime and on pushing every criminal to the letter of the law. It campaigns on it every time, but it only means it for certain types of criminals, not ones who pollute our environment. Those ones get off the hook. For those ones, it will not press the letter of the law. It has been shown time and time again.

This is a government that picks what criminals it will go after. Some are truly criminal, while there are others who, say, tip over a railcar and dump it into a lake and pollute the rivers or put out greenhouse gases that endanger future generations, who break the government's own regulations and laws, and the government may or may not enforce those penalties. Those criminals, the government is not planning to get tough on.

One cannot help but wonder about the collusion at the moment of the crime, when the government puts forward Bill C-16 and other such bills and says it will quadruple the fines for individuals but it will leave the fines for corporations the same. Then the Auditor General says, with regard to the few regulations that exist for pollutants under the greenhouse gas emission acts that exist as law in this place, the government is unable to enforce them, unable to account and does not provide the penalties. How can Canadians have confidence in the government when it cannot follow through on such simple measures?

The very industries that are doing this polluting, or those that are suspected to, have asked the present government and the previous government for certainty. They want to know what the rules are.

Industry wants to know what the actual carbon emissions limits and pollution costs will be, because it can put that into its actual budgets. Industry can figure out what the cost of doing business will be.

Instead, the government slipstreams in behind the United States and is just waiting, forming a talk shop with the Obama administration.

The actual regulations are two years late in terms of the government's own promised commitments to bring them forward to industry and to Canadians. They are two years late by the government's own fault and admission. Nobody here is holding them up. These regulations are done in-house. They do not even have to be brought to Parliament.

For two years, industry and Canadians have been waiting and have received nothing. There is no excuse for the government. There is no logistical problem. There is no problem with the data. There is no problem with knowing what regulations to put in place, because all the other industrialized nations in the world have gone ahead of Canada and put the rules in place.

The fact of the matter is that the government is still stuck in a place where it is either the environment or the economy; it has to be one or the other. This is where the government is going to have to give itself a shake and wake up.

These are the same characters who would look at a GDP result and say it is the only measurement and number they need in order to know how the economy is doing.We in northwestern British Columbia know that after the Exxon Valdez spill, which occurred just north of where I live, the GDP went through the roof. It did fantastic that year for Alaska. Business was booming. According to the government's systemic failure to manage the economy, that was seen as successful.

The regulations that the government proposes in Bill C-16, which is now before the House on its third and final reading, take small steps. However, at the basis of the philosophy of whether Canadians can feel confident about the government's sincerity and ability to actually enforce its own laws, it is found wanting time and again.

When the government sets the limits and the penalties so low, as it did in Bill C-16, it allows business to slide them in as a cost of doing business. I do not see the government proposing such penalties in other areas of criminal law. With a $5 fine for a break and enter, a criminal could sit back and say, “Well, if that is the penalty to break into a house, that seems worth it.” The government understands in that case that it must present a penalty that is a deterrent, so that perhaps the criminal will not break into Canadians' homes and will not steal things.

Yet when it comes to the environment, the government provides paltry fines that a lot of the biggest and most profitable companies will look at as a cost of doing business. If the cost of making their production safe is x, as opposed y, which is the cost, maybe, of a fine, then if y is smaller than x, they will just not do it and will let the pollution run forth.

Industry knows that fines are not coming from the government, that enforcement is not coming. How do they know this? It is evidenced by the Auditor General of Canada, a non-partisan and unbiased officer of Parliament who looked at the government's own laws. It applied the test of those laws to the government and found it wanting yet again.

The only reason the government thinks it can get away with this is because it thinks there is no political consequence. The government thinks that presenting these laws with press announcements at the five-star hotel down the road will somehow replace actual effect, spending thousands of Canadian taxpayers' dollars to rent the place and send the whole press corps down the road so the minister can look tough standing in front of a bunch of enforcement officers, for what? Could it not have done the same thing 50 feet down the hall?

This reminds me of the previous environment minister who spent $85,000 to announce a plan in Toronto that he could have announced right here. He held three different press conferences: one for business in one part of the city, one for the media in another part of the city, and another one for the environmental groups. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent on this little charade. What was announced? It was the Turning the Corner plan.

What a fantastic plan, which was actually talked about in the auditor's report today, which the government cannot account for. The government has had three plans, three ministers, three years, and all have failed to get the job done.

So the government comes forward with Bill C-16, an amalgamation of old acts and old bills that it wants to combine. It tells us to rest assured that it is going to get serious about the environment, finally. It is going to go after the polluters. The Conservatives shake their heads and rattle their sabres, but unfortunately, nothing changes.

I will go back to the point around certainty because it is important for Canadians to understand that this is the actual intersect between business and the environment.

Businesses consistently said to us that they were frustrated with the Liberal Party and the Liberal government because it announced Kyoto. The Liberals went to Kyoto, signed onto Kyoto, ratified Kyoto and promised rules. A great number of businesses, in good faith and good intention, went forward and made some of the changes that would be required under a carbon-constrained economy, which is in Kyoto and which other countries have actually done. They would make the change and the government would come up with another plan and say that it would get to the regulations later. They would make more changes, spend more money, make their businesses less polluting, hoping to get some credit for it and the government would say “later”.

Then the Conservatives came in and the same movie started again. They said that they would get serious, that this was their climate change plan. Because the first two failed, now they would turn the corner, and they called the document “Turning the Corner“. The Conservatives are turning the corner so many times they are walking in circles.

The fact is when we look for regulations, when we look for the hard evidence of what businesses can count on and account for in their own ledgers as to where they spend the money, what the price of carbon will be, how they trade on the carbon markets with the U.S. and the international community, there are none. There are promises that are now two years old, and industry is still waiting.

The minister pretended today, during the question and answer period, that he would somehow show up in Copenhagen with some ability to negotiate. How can the we negotiate without credibility? The other countries know Canada's record. They know the government's intensity-based plan is used by no one else. Not one country in the world uses intensity to measure its carbon emissions.

Does that not give Canadians pause? Have we stumbled upon some unique solution to climate change with which the other countries will jump on board? No one else uses it because it does not work. It is not effective. We cannot measure, we cannot manage, we cannot control under an intensity regime. We told the Conservatives, when they first came to government, that it was a farce.

Finally, two weeks ago the Minister of the Environment stood and said that maybe the intensity regime would not work, that maybe the government needed an actual hard limit. Two years were wasted again. Why? Because the government is interested in only taking policy, not making it.

When it comes to protecting our environment, when it comes to being responsible on greenhouse gas emissions, the Conservatives are found wanting, not simply by New Democrats, who proposed a comprehensive bill. The government asked for policy. We proposed Bill C-311, which passed through the last Parliament, which the government killed by proroguing Parliament again. The Conservatives are addicted to this. How democratic and accountable is it when the government of the day, because it does not like what is going on, Parliament, shuts Parliament down and locks the doors.

It is getting to be a habit of the Conservative government. Three times it has done that. Three times it has killed its own legislation. The members will scream out “coalition”. Twice the Conservatives did it with no threat of anything other than laws that were in this place, put forward by elected people meant to represent the people of Canada, not the will of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Time and time again, Canadians have sent parliamentarians forward to do something about climate change, to bring legitimate legislation forward. It is no longer good enough for the Conservatives to sit on their moral high ground talking about transparency and accountability when the auditor of the country says that it is a lie, that it is otherwise, that it is a mistruth.

This cannot continue. The government has to own up to its responsibilities. It is the Government of Canada, not the government of the Conservative Party of Canada. When the Conservatives get that through their heads, they will finally start to bring legislation forward that matters, that makes a difference and that Canadians can start to believe in this place again and know this place can fix a problem that we all created.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague raised a point that I would like to take up with him. Bill C-16 deals with the enforcement of essentially many environmental laws in Canada, the government's ability to apply fines, what those fines will be and the nature of them. The government needs these tools to enforce and apply its own laws, which is what some laws are guided by and how they are presented.

On the environmental side of things, my colleague mentioned the bill we proposed on climate change. Today, the Auditor General dealt with Bill C-288, a bill out of the previous Parliament. We now have Bill C-311, and the two are meant to join together and take us through the Kyoto period into what is now being called the Copenhagen round of climate change.

However, around all of these laws and prescriptions that we are giving to the government and to the economy around climate change and, in this case, the pollution of greenhouse gases, if the government is unwilling to enforce its own laws and apply the penalties that are contained within those laws, acts and measures, is it not up to conscientious, thoughtful members in this place to find a way to force the government to abide by its own laws? Are there any clauses in Bill C-16 that we can encourage and augment? It is a principle of Canadian democracy that we pass laws in this place and then the government enforces them. Have we lost it all with the government? Does it have any credibility left when it comes to the environment or climate change?

[The Environment, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government's record on climate change has been three years in denial, three delaying ministers and three disastrous plans. According to the Environment Commissioner today, the government has no accountability, no chance to meet its own targets, and no clue as to what the emissions actually are in Canada.

Conservatives are flouting international and Canadian law. How does the government expect to be taken seriously in Copenhagen when it is not obeying its own law here in Canada?

[Canadian Agricultural Loans Act, May 11th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have a co-operative abattoir that is set up in my region. The experience that it has had over the last couple of years in setting up is that the federal government puts a lot of regulations in place but does not actually show up to support the cost that is incurred by those regulations.

I wonder if Bill C-29 would actually help address the shortfall in money that happens for a lot of these smaller abattoirs that are co-operatively run, farmer-owned, and assist them in getting the product out the door and help sustain our farming community?

[Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System for North America, April 30th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise here today to take part in this debate.

Basically, this debate about climate change is one that is vital to everyone. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone.

For the members of the NDP, it is incredible that we are now having a debate on a greenhouse gas emissions trading system, while the rest of the world continues to make major investments and create a market that works.

The motion moved by my colleague from Beauharnois—Salaberry is an excellent motion, because, even though it is very short, it contains the basic principles needed to establish an absolute limit that respects targets and to finally have a goal for the country. It establishes a concrete goal and concrete targets with respect to climate change.

Under this Conservative government and the previous Liberal government, it has been a disaster. To this day it remains a political disaster for this country. A carbon exchange is crucial. First it should be integrated with the United States and eventually, with the rest of the world. Otherwise, it will be practically impossible for Canada to fight climate change on its own.

The motion fits well with what the NDP has proposed in a bill that now sits before the Standing Committee on the Environment, which says a target must be finally put into law.

The reason we have suggested this in law is because we have seen successive governments present targets and plans, after plans, after plans, that do not come to fruition. I do not essentially blame only the Conservatives because they have learned well from previous Liberal governments who presented so many plans we began to lose count. Nevertheless, greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise at an unprecedented level, faster than our neighbours to the south, and faster than virtually any other country on the planet.

There was this connection. I remember the former Liberal leader saying it and then repeated by the next Liberal leader that it was impossible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while having an economy grow so we had to choose one or the other. I have heard the current environment minister and the current Prime Minister misrepresent the issue time and again that these things are intertwined, that if greenhouse gas emissions rise, then our economy must rise.

This is the most false concept that has been presented in the debate around climate change to this point. It must be brought out into the light to show that a carbon market, for example, is an enabler for new technologies and new growth industries that Canadians have been wanting.

This morning I had some heads of corporations in my office describing and listing off the number of Canadian companies that have either been bought by American firms and moved south, or have simply picked up shop and moved south. These are significant companies from Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec that have simply said that without a price on carbon, it is impossible for them to imagine a future in this country in order to develop their products. We are talking about wind, solar, and hydrogen economy. These companies have picked up and left, and are continuing to leave not because they want to but because they feel they must because they have seen where the action is and it is not here in Canada.

As a good example, in the last two federal budgets, both American and Canadian, when the support for renewable energies is pulled out, for example, and we look at what each of our countries is doing on a per capita basis, that is per person, for every $1 we are spending the Americans are spending $14. That is coming from the general accounting office in the United States. It is coming from the World Bank. It is establishing all the countries in the world and how much they are actually supporting, not through words, but through dollars.

A 14:1 ratio for Canada is an embarrassment. There is no doubt and it is with good conviction that these companies are leaving Canada because when they look south of the border and see the support levels for wind, solar, tidal, energies that do not pollute, they realize that the cap and trade system that the administration there is developing will be a concrete one.

We brought forward Bill C-311 that finally puts into law these targets because these governments will not be held to account themselves. They need it inscribed in law. It has to be put there firmly with an ability to adjust targets and plans as we go along. That will establish a firm market.

At the natural resource committee we heard from industrial groups, from all sectors, including those in the fossil fuel sector that have said we must have a price on carbon, we must be able to trade in that market, because without that we cannot compete. We have argued this with the present government and the one before that, that their inaction on climate change would eventually lead to a crippling of the Canadian economy and the energy economy, including projects like the tar sands because we knew a world market was coming.

The concept of putting a price on pollution, of having the polluter pay, is one that Canadians agree with. It is one that Canadians overwhelmingly support and over a number of years industry has quietly been saying “yes, in fact we need some certainty because we cannot do these large investments, these large projects, without knowing that one of our major cost line items which was, eventually and now must be, a price on carbon”. We have even moved the Conservatives to admit to that notion.

I am amazed by the parliamentary secretary's views on this and by extension the Conservatives' views. The notion that negotiating with the White House and that talking about a carbon market, mutually shared across our borders, would be an anathema to the government is spitting in the eye of the very industries that are going to need to trade on this market. These are the very industries that the Conservative government purports to support, such as the tar sands in Alberta and the electricity sector across the country. They will need access to a continent-wide market because the price, as has been mentioned before, of just a domestic-only Canadian market would be discouraging, difficult and harder than it needs to be for Canadian firms.

The government is very fond of talking about the costs of doing this for the environment or the costs of doing that. It has also been noted time and time again by Mr. Stern, formally from the World Bank, and others that the cost of inaction is extraordinary. In the very week that we see more of the Antarctic ice shelves peeling off, in the week that we see a further report by the IPCC, which has been monitoring the greenhouse gas emissions around the world and the intensity of greenhouse gas on the environment, we still see, in form if not in word, denial from the Government of Canada. It is offline with Canadians.

The enabling of the green economy can only happen if we establish a price on carbon. This needs to be noted time and time again for the government to see that it is not one or the other and to stop making the false posit for Canadians that they must choose between a clean environment and stable atmosphere or their jobs.

We have seen now the taking over of Chrysler. It sounds like Canada is going to have a member on that board. One of the key points in the restructuring of that part of the auto industry is to make more efficient cars, to make cars that pollute less. We have argued with previous Liberal administrations and the current Conservative administration that when we were handing money out to the big three automakers, which we have been doing for years for research and development, for technology and to support particular plants, to tie a little string to that. Ask them, as they are receiving public funds for this private enterprise, to include plans for more efficient cars and make more efficient cars.

New Democrats have been arguing this since 2000, saying that this only makes sense because that is where the puck is going to be. Do not pass it where it was, pass it where it will be.

In fact, here we are today with the big three in near meltdown status, all of them scrambling to keep themselves alive. Part of their revival plan is to actually do what New Democrats suggested back in 2000 and presented to the then Liberal government, a coalition among the unions, the environment and the auto sector itself saying, “We can come together on this. We can find ways that we can make the economy and the environment work together”.

Bill C-311 would allow Canada to finally get on track, stop the games with the intensity, and all the mess that the Conservatives have made of this file. Their plan has been supported by no one. Not in industry, not in the environment, not anywhere around the world is there a viable plan. We will have one in Bill C-311.

These motions put forward and put on the table again are about the need for a carbon market, to finally realize and understand the full potential of this country's green economy, a more sustainable economy, an economy that provides jobs that we feel more secure with and that are for the sustainable, long-term viability of our economy and environment.