Mr. Speaker, we will find out one day the Bloc's position on liquefied natural gas imports into its region, but perhaps not today.
It is today that we are addressing the debate that has been put forward by the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, the leader of the official opposition. It is a topic and a debate that I engage in with great interest and passion.
This chamber can be seized with many different topics. Members from all sides can get quite excited and brought into the consequences of the decisions that we take in this place. Perhaps no other issue and no other topic facing the country, facing all of our individual communities and, indeed, facing the international community, than the topic of climate change and the pollution that we allow into our atmosphere and our environment has seized us more.
Certainly, this past week for me and other members in this place who work on the issue of the environment has been quite a busy week. There have been many suggestions and proposals put forward, and a constant challenge for members of Parliament to rise above partisan interests, and to rise above the rhetoric of daily question period that plays to specific partisan interests. Our challenge is to grasp the ideas, the concepts and the actions that are required for our country to once again be proud of our standing in the international community, for our economy to change course, and for our communities to develop in such a way that we work within the context of this environment and this planet.
I think it may have been Mr. Suzuki himself who said we must understand that conventional economics, as it is understood, is a form of brain damage. The reason he said this is because of the concept that we can continually grow exponentially within a finite structure is not sane; it is counterintuitive and makes no sense.
The motion that has been brought forward by the Leader of the Opposition is a motion and a topic which I believe sincerely the future generations will judge us. They will judge all of us as leaders in this country, not in the strict definition of the word politician or act thereof but as leaders in this country, to make decisions, make pronouncements, and to take action at long last that Canadians so desperately want to see.
It is important to take a small walk through history.
There were some discrepancies between the member for Ottawa South and the Minister of the Environment, so we will clarify the numbers, just to ensure we are all on the same page.
The Earth Summit at Rio in 1992, and some members in this place were there, brought together the world leaders. With great conviction, they produced much rhetoric and pronouncements, and announcements and press conferences. However, one of the substantive things that came from that debate, that crisis that the world was seeing with respect to our environment, was the decision to go on and negotiate an international pact, a treaty that would be binding, that would connect the countries of the world into a common cause, and that cause was to reduce the effects of climate change.
At that time, some of the more progressive climatologists and scientists in the world were saying that this is a serious matter, but the skeptics and the naysayers were far and wide. Yet over time, the debate has gained momentum and with the exception of some backward-looking members in this place and a few narrow pockets of self-interest in this country, the debate has been settled that human-caused anthropogenic climate change is a fact and a reality, and is having an effect on our world.
I know the minister will be going to Europe later this week and will hear directly from the more than 2,000 leading scientists on this issue. They will claim the debate is over as to whether the effects are happening; the only question now is how much hotter is the world getting, and how much of a great change is facing us in our environment?
Kyoto was negotiated by a former Liberal government in December 1997. Parliament ratified that decision, under a Liberal government, in 2002. One would think with all that history behind it that when it was ratified in February 2005, after Russia ratified it in 2004, the government would have had plans in place. One would think that the government would have taken action, would have been making the systemic changes that are required in the way that we produce and use energy primarily in this country to allow us to fall into compliance to the agreements that we made, but there was more cynicism at play than that.
We have heard from Conservative members that protestations were made to executives in Calgary by the former leader of the Liberal Party to not worry, that Kyoto was more of a protocol and an exercise in public relations, but that it was not serious. The oil and gas sector in Alberta would face no hard times or no encumbering of its business.
Lo and behold, the surprise came upon us and the protocol was ratified. Now we look to the record. The record is important to establish including the numbers and the comments that I am using here, none of which are under dispute.
For eight of the nine years since this protocol was ratified the Liberals were in power. They negotiated the targets. The Leader of the Opposition was the environment minister for 18 months of those eight of nine years. Plans were delayed and it was the Commissioner of the Environment herself, Johanne Gélinas, who said that “--the measures are not up to the task of meeting our Kyoto obligations”. That is a direct quote. She also said:
When it comes to protecting the environment, bold announcements are made and then often forgotten as soon as the confetti hits the ground. The federal government seems to have trouble crossing the finish line.
This again was stated by Johanne Gélinas, someone who members of the Liberal benches, the Bloc, and the NDP, all opposition parties praised her work as a true fighter for the environment and auditor of this country.
Under the Liberals and Conservatives, the most recent numbers we have, and these are not disputed, say that we are almost 35% above the targets that we set for ourselves. For Canadians watching this that is a staggering number. It is a staggering condemnation of inaction and dithering that has gone on too long.
The time for action is now. That action has been decided through agreement by all four parties in this place to take place in a legislative committee set up to redo, rewrite, and redraft Bill C-30, a bill that was misnamed as the clean air act. When the details were looked at by members of the opposition, environment groups and Canadians, it was found seriously lacking.
Lo and behold, the New Democrats made a suggestion. I remember the day we made the suggestion. The NDP leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth, stood in this place and asked whether the Prime Minister would give this bill to a special legislative committee and allow it to be redrafted from top to bottom. Some of my Conservative colleagues guffawed, laughed, chuckled, and said things I could not repeat on the record which were directed toward the NDP leader. It is true. It was incredible. The guffaws were loud.
Yet the Prime Minister, in a state of desperation, reminded us of similar times when the Liberals were in power and needed to have a budget rewritten because there was a massive corporate tax cut included that was not campaigned upon and the budget was redrafted. The NDP, pushing to redraft a flawed piece of legislation, got agreement from all the parties to do this. How quickly the parties have forgotten.
We need to go through the record because it is important. The Liberal leader voted with the Conservatives against mandatory fuel efficiency standards for cars in February 2005. This is not distant history. This is recent. He voted against an NDP proposal for mandatory fuel efficiency standards. He was absent from the vote in fact on Bill C-288, the bill we will be debating tomorrow to implement the Kyoto accord. He was busy with other things.
He voted against the NDP proposal to include the precautionary principle in CEPA in November 1999, a strange thing to do, the precautionary principle being something that is known and understood. I know the member for Ottawa South is a great champion of such a cause and concept. His own leader voted against it recently. He voted in favour of allowing oil and gas companies to deduct an even greater portion of their royalties. He did that in October 2003.
We are going in the wrong direction. Science warns us that a rise in the average global temperature of 2° by 2050 or sooner will have catastrophic impacts. That is the record from the one who cast a green scarf around his neck and claimed to be champion of the environment. He may wish to rename his dog at some point in this debate.
The riding experience is something that is important to me. I come from the northwest of British Columbia and we all need to take this experience back to our homes and understand what it means for our constituents. We in the northwest of British Columbia have seen the devastating impacts of climate change.
The forestry councils of British Columbia and Canada have said direct causal links between the change in climate created by human activity has caused the pine beetle infestation to spread right across B.C. It is now headed over the Rockies. The foresters, and no tree huggers by their own admission, have said this is what is going on.
We have seen a change in the temperature of our rivers and our waters. The salmon migration has changed and the quality of life enjoyed by first nations people from time immemorial in our region and by the people who have since moved there like myself has changed.
There was a suggestion by one of my staff some months ago that we may wish to screen An Inconvenient Truth, a film by the defeated former presidential candidate in the United States. I said it has been out for months, no one will come, but let us try it anyway. We showed it in five different small communities in my riding and there was standing room only in every single community. The most interesting thing was not that more than 500 people came out to watch it, but they stayed afterward because they wanted to talk about these issues. They wanted to talk about what was happening not only in our communities but at the federal level.
When I would explain the process that the NDP had negotiated for Bill C-30, they were encouraged and told me to go back there and get it done and make the proposals. For months the NDP has had front and centre on our website, ndp.ca for those viewing at home with access to the Internet, those proposals out in the public domain so that the other parties can critique them or add to them. What have the other parties done? They brought forward nothing except an extensive witness list, more than 100 witnesses for something we have been studying for more than two and a half years. Let us bring more witnesses to discuss climate change. Let us talk about the nuance of the debate.
Every party in this place, every platform will claim to have the answers to climate change, and yet when we ask for those answers to be brought forward in amendments and suggestions, in concrete ideas, they are found wanting. Not a single party has brought forward an amendment other than the New Democrats. Not a single party has made a constructive suggestion of how to make this bill better. They have just said it is no good and that is not good enough.
I remember when Bill C-30 was being tabled, the ministers of the Crown, one by one, it seemed there was a roll call, approached me and said this bill is going to knock our socks off, this clean air thing is going to be so good the NDP will have to support it. It was so disappointing to see the eventual reality for that bill was dead on arrival.
The Liberals and Conservatives have decided to stall on this. The sincerity of their action on this is found seriously wanting. The Conservatives delayed debating it in Parliament in December. The Liberals did not even name the members to sit on the committee until the 11th hour, the last possible moment. Only then did they slip in their member list. They were confused. They were not sure anyone wanted to be there and then they all wanted to be there. They got themselves in a snit.
Both parties refused to meet during the winter break as the NDP suggested. They were busy. At committee the Liberals refused to agree to a quick process. As the member from the Bloc has pointed out, members of the Conservatives and Liberals are interested in extensive debate. To their credit there is one thing the Liberals have been very good at throughout the entire environment debate and that is the ability to seek consultation and more consultation, and more meetings and further consultations.
When the Leader of the Opposition was minister of the environment, I would sit with him and say we need to get such-and-such done. He would shake his head and say, “I have a real struggle at cabinet with this, I cannot get that done. I cannot get mandatory fuel efficiencies. I cannot get any connection between research and development connected to the environment. I cannot get it done. The cabinet is resisting.”
Yet, the Liberals will stand in this place and I am sure members will say it again, that we have the ability to do it right now, we could make these changes right now. That is incorrect. We have had that ability for more than five years, four of those years under the Liberals. They had that ability if they claim it to be true for all of those years and they could not get it done. The reason is they needed to return to the cabinet table. They needed to enter back into the political fray behind those closed doors to make the types of progressive changes for the environment that were needed and they could not get it done.
They could not do it, whether it was the minister of the environment, now the Leader of the Opposition, or other ministers of the environment. I know Mr. Anderson from Victoria has made public statements about his inability to get it through cabinet. We have said join with us, have the courage of the convictions to put this into legislation, to draft this in such a way that it can no longer be done behind the closed doors of cabinet. It must be done in this place.
Parliament and the public must see what parliamentarians are up to when it comes to climate change and the environment. If there is no other issue that must be in the public discourse, it is this one, but instead we have had delay and dithering.
I will read an important letter, which was sent on January 22 and signed by seven of the largest and most important environmental groups in the country. It is an important quote and it states:
We believe that all parties understand the need for urgent action on climate change and clean air, so the committee should have no need for lengthy debates. A time period on the order of four weeks should be enough to debate the wording of any amendments and to consider C-30 clause by clause.
This was the very motion the NDP brought forward at committee and members of the House from the other three parties voted 11 to 1 against us for such a suggestion. They said that we should take our time. We do not have the luxury of time. Of all the things at our disposal right now, time is not one of them.
The letter also said:
As you know, we are interested in the most efficient possible Committee process with respect to C-30. The issues involved with this piece of legislation have already been studied extensively, and it is our view that the Committee needs to hear from a minimum of witnesses in order to gather the necessary information for its report.
Canada needs aggressive action on these issues.
More than 100 witnesses were proposed.
I am not sure Liberal members would know aggressive action on the environment if it came up and smacked them on the head.
The rush is on. Every day we ponder, consider, navel-gaze and have speculative conversations about the impact of climate change, but greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the case becomes impossible. In fact, the Liberal Party might even be in collusion with the Conservative Party to ensure that nothing happens. Maybe they want to roll it all in to the debate around the budget. Maybe the Liberals want to roll it into confidence debates and perhaps at some point in some future imagined and wishful thinking, they will regain power, get it to cabinet and delay more.
The record is absolutely solid in this respect. The very member who was elected a short time ago to lead the Liberal Party claims a new conviction to the environment. I remember the green scarves fondly. My goodness, look at what he named his dog. It seems the solutions are found wanting. When his members show up at committee, they have absolutely no solutions as to how to reach the Kyoto targets or how to reset Canada back on the track. They come wanting. They come lacking.
We must understand that we will be judged by future generations about our actions now. We have proposed a course of action to which all parties in this place agreed. All parties recognized it as a way forward and chose to involve themselves in the committee process. We must act beyond narrow partisan interests. We must act in a responsible way, in a way of leadership. We must take command and have the courage to seize the opportunity in front of us.
At committee, Liberal members said that they needed to hear more plans from the government. They needed to understand the greater context of the plan. That is incredible. Waiting for a Conservative plan on the environment might even take longer than the time we waited for the Liberal plan on the environment. They need to put those partisan interests aside. They need to come forward with serious and honourable recommendations, solutions they all claim to have.
We are all intelligent members in the place. We have studied this issue for quite a number of years. We need to get tough. We need to make the hard decisions. We can make those decisions. The people in northwest British Columbia demand that we start to make changes. As Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist from the World Bank and who we have all quoted in this place, has said that the cost of inaction is significant, perhaps as much as 20% of the world's GDP. Perhaps worse in terms of economic catastrophes in the first world war and the Great Depression combined, he has called what has happened with pollution perhaps the world's greatest market failure.
It is important that we take a progressive stance. It is important that we move to a place where this issue no longer gains interest for one party or another.
Therefore, I would like to suggest that the motion be amended by adding immediately after the word “action”: (f) understanding the importance and urgency of this matter, this House calls on the legislative committee currently dealing with Bill C-30, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, the Energy Efficiency Act and the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act (Canada's Clean Air Act) to complete its work and report back to this House on or before March 2, 2007, in line with the recommendation of leading environmental organizations.
