Pat Martin

[Canada Foundation For Sustainable Development Technology Act, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think we are looking at a jurisdictional dispute in this matter. The International Institute of Sustainable Development in my riding is in fact a federal program, a federally funded institute.

I will certainly raise the alarm in my riding that we, in the riding of Winnipeg Centre, stand to lose an important contribution to our community and a well respected international institute that has a reputation far and wide for doing wonderful work in this field.

We do feel threatened by Bill C-4 in that it could further diminish the important role that the institute plays in the riding of Winnipeg Centre.

[Canada Foundation For Sustainable Development Technology Act, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I think we have made it quite clear. If the original mandate was not so fuzzy and more clear, the reason for which the foundation was developed, if the composition of the board was free and clear of any possibility of patronage or being used as a holding pen for Liberal hacks or failed candidates and if the funding and accountability issues were more transparent and more to our liking, then we would have no problem with the federal government allocating $100 million to the topic of sustainable development. In fact, we would welcome that.

[Canada Foundation For Sustainable Development Technology Act, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have the opportunity to join in the debate on Bill C-4. As I mentioned earlier, I believe it is probably the most timely and topical thing that the House of Commons could be dealing with. It speaks to the very future of the human race on this planet. All else really pales in comparison when we view what other subjects we could be debating in the House of Commons.

Bill C-4 is a disappointing reference to the very pressing, timely and topical issue of sustainable development. The NDP opposes the bill in its current format in that we believe, as I pointed out earlier, its mandate is vague and its funding has no real specifics attached to it. We consider it a gesture to the subject, but it has no real and specific plan.

I would also point out that in regard to the idea of creating a new foundation of this sort, the government does not really talk about where it would be based or what centre it would work out of. It actually puts in question the future of an institution in my own riding, the International Institute for Sustainable Development. This institute was created years ago and has had its funding reduced year after year, to where it is really a shadow of its former self. There was a time when it had a staff of 140 people and its own building. Art Hanson was the CEO. It now occupies a very small office, with maybe a handful of people, on the third floor of an nondescript office building in the centre of downtown Winnipeg.

I wonder about the logic and the sense of it. It makes me wonder if the government has completely forgotten it already has an institute of sustainable development in my riding. Maybe the government members do not get outside the city limits of Ottawa often enough to remember that such a place exists. There is a growing feeling in Winnipeg that there is a real reluctance to decentralize the activities of Ottawa to any real degree. There was a possible exception to that when the government could not find any other place to put a level 4 virology lab and plunked it down in the middle of Winnipeg. It took away the CF-18 contract and gave it to Montreal and then gave us the virology lab so that the Ebola virus and every unsavoury thing that comes into the country is going to wind up in our backyard.

I really do resent any steps that might threaten the viability of what is left of the International Institute for Sustainable Development in my riding. I am certainly not entirely thrilled about the idea of the creation of a new foundation which might put the institute in jeopardy.

One of the reasons this whole subject is so timely and so topical is that it is a top of mind issue with most Canadians given the soaring and skyrocketing energy costs that we are all witnessing. That has brought the issue home to the kitchen tables of the nation instead of it being an academic exercise.

Again, look at the funding of $100 million to try to change the very way we live on this planet in terms of challenging the very foundation of our economy, which is the burning of fossil fuels, and compare that with the $1.3 billion the government threw into a wasteful program to try to mitigate the impact of the rising costs of fuel.

Surely that $1.3 billion would take us a lot further down the road of sustainable development and would address in a permanent way the problem we have with access to fossil fuels.

We have come to a day of reckoning in terms of energy. We have come to the growing realization that we simply cannot run an economy based on oil any longer. A number of things will not tolerate it anymore, not the least of which is the fact that we cannot continue to soil our own nest to this degree and continue to move forward and prosper.

Everyone on the planet cannot use the amount of energy that Canadians use. It simply is not possible. If the 1.3 billion people in China had two vehicles in the garage, an SUV and an outboard motor, and if all people in the world consumed the same level of energy as Canadians, we would need six more planets. There simply is not enough fossil fuel in the world for that kind of energy use.

There could not be a more pressing and more topical issue than to revisit the way we view our precious natural resources. We must try to wean human beings away from burning hydrocarbons because it will not work.

What are we faced with? The one upside of skyrocketing energy costs is that it has forced people to revisit energy conservation. When we are hit in the pocketbook we get motivated to do something.

The oil crisis of 1973 was the reason people switched from V-8 to four cylinder engines. They realized a four cylinder engine could push a car almost as well. The fact that oil prices went through the ceiling is what pushed the new technology. It had the shock effect of forcing people to find solutions.

We are at a point now where we must to conserve energy or find alternative energy sources. The $1.3 billion that was thrown in a scattergun approach toward energy rebates should have perhaps gone toward the research of hydrogen as a fuel. We are very close to a breakthrough where cars will burn hydrogen and not gasoline. The only byproduct would be water dripping from the exhaust pipe. That, frankly, would do the country and the world an enormous favour.

The $1.3 billion could be spent in any number of positive ways. Instead, the government essentially rolled down the window and threw it out, hoping some of it would fall on people who would benefit. That was wasteful.

Now we are hearing a figure of $100 million to cover the huge pluralistic issue of sustainable development, and yet the government put $1.3 billion into a very narrow and fixed program, a one time payment to offset energy costs for Canadians. It really does make one wonder.

It also makes one wonder why, if the government was serious about sustainable development, it would not follow through on one of its own programs, the federal building initiative. The federal government owns 68,000 buildings, most of which are absolute energy pigs. They were built in an era when energy was not expensive. It was cheap and plentiful.

The government did undertake a token effort to energy retrofit those buildings, to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce operating costs and to make indoor ambient air quality better so that federal public servants did not turn green when they tried to work eight hours at their desks. They are being slowly poisoned in many ways in a bunch of sick buildings.

All those things are now possible. The empirical evidence now shows we can reduce operating costs by as much as 40%. It would be such a positive measure. It would be revenue generating. However the federal building initiative, under the auspices of the Minister of Natural Resources, has renovated only a couple of hundred buildings. At that rate it will be 150 years before all federal buildings are energy retrofitted.

It makes one wonder what the government is waiting for. The energy savings from its buildings alone could pay for the development of new technologies that would allow Canada to become a world leader. We would be a centre of excellence in energy conservation and sustainable development technology with just the energy savings from the 68,000 federal buildings.

I have been riding this hobby horse for years and to no avail. In 1993 I came to Ottawa, long before I was a member of parliament, to appeal to the Minister of the Environment at the time. I was given an energy innovator's award by NRCan, the federal department of energy, for the innovative idea of retrofitting publicly owned buildings as a pilot project, as an example to the private sector of what could be done. However eight or nine years later in its own federal building initiative program the government has only done a couple of hundred buildings.

I question its commitment. It is willing to throw $100 million at a new foundation that should blah, blah, blah, but it has a unique opportunity to show the world how it can be done. We live in a harsh northern climate. We have massive geographical challenges. We could show the world how to use energy in the smartest possible way. We could show the world how to live comfortably and in a healthy environment without being the largest consumers of energy in the world, which Canadians find themselves being today.

I am the first to admit that Canadians and people all around the globe need to embrace the concept of energy conservation and sustainable development in everything they do. It should be the common thread through any program the government undertakes. I do not believe the creation of a new foundation, which may jeopardize the institute that is already in existence in my riding, will in any way move us closer to that admirable goal.

If there were $100 million to spend, why would the government not restore the institute to its former stature, that of a world leader, research centre and source library for anyone interested in the whole concept of energy conservation or sustainable development? Why not start a centre of excellence right in the centre of Canada and become world leaders so we can export the technology?

It does not have to be jobs versus the environment any more. To speak this way does not mean we have to shut down industries and put people out of work. We now know that it is jobs and the environment: jobs with the environment, jobs for the environment.

There are unbelievable entrepreneurial opportunities in the field of energy retrofitting or sustainable development. There are now smart thermostats or boiler systems or heat pumps that harvest units of energy even if it is 20 below. There is a difference between 20 below and 30 below. The other 10 degrees of air can be harvested. There is warmth and energy in there and that energy can be used.

We have not been thinking outside the box. It is far too easy to start another oil well in Alberta than it is to set up an institute and research alternatives that will give our children a future.

I sometimes think the worst thing that happened in western Canada was Leduc No. 1 in 1947 when they struck oil in Leduc, Alberta. It was regressive. I almost wish the world would run out of oil more quickly so that we still have some air left to breathe by the time we find alternative fuel and energy sources. That would be my first wish.

Ban the internal combustion engine is a radical idea, but we could still move around if were burning hydrogen. The Ballard fuel cell, which is being developed in B.C., is close to marketability. It needs one little nudge before it replaces forever the internal combustion engine. The $1.3 billion the government flushed down the toilet in the failed energy rebate program may have moved us one step closer to finding a true alternative and a true solution for the planet.

The jig is up in terms of our wasteful energy use. We can no longer carry on as we are carrying on. As I said, for all people on the planet to live as Canadians do, we would need six more planets. There are not enough resources in the world for everyone to be as wasteful as Canadians.

We can go one of two roads. We can be head in the sand ostriches and carry on until it is an absolute crisis, or we can change direction. We can voluntarily simplify and use less energy and, I argue, without a reduction in the quality of life. People do not have to freeze in the dark to use less energy if they are smart.

We have done a great deal of research in this regard. The best example and most graphic illustration the federal government could point to is its own buildings.

The most beautiful thing about the concept, to expand on the federal building initiative and its potential windfall for demonstrating the whole concept, is that all of the above could be done at no cost to the taxpayer. There are private sector companies willing to pay upfront for renovation of federal government buildings and be paid back slowly out of the energy savings. They are called ESCOs, energy services contractors.

Why not do that? What if such a company offered to renovate a big federal government building with operating costs of $1 million a year by putting in state of the art mechanical equipment, insulating the exterior and putting in new windows and doors at no cost? What if it were paid out of the energy savings and after over four years when the total renovation costs were paid the government could keep the energy savings from there on ever after? Would that not be smart?

It would stimulate a whole industry and put thousands of trades people to work. It could use materials and mechanical equipment, smart thermostats and boilers that could be produced locally. Then we would be able to point to our federally owned buildings as a showcase to the world. We could show the world how it could be done. We would have the smartest, best run and best operated buildings in the world.

They could be shown to the private sector too. Many property owners and building managers face increased fuel costs but cannot raise rents to their tenants. The only way they can show a profit is by reducing their operating costs. They would be very interested in such a concept. If the government were a little more progressive or a little more action oriented instead of being academic about its commitment to sustainable development, we would see it moving on that front. It is absolutely natural.

We have reservations about Bill C-4. We believe the government's mandate is far too soft and fuzzy. We do not know what it is being challenged to do or what responsibilities it is being charged with. The government talks about promoting technologies to address climate change. Frankly we would like to know more. There are also air quality issues.

As is often the case, members of the NDP are frustrated at the composition of the board. We are not comfortable with the way the foundation's board will be struck, who will be appointed and how, and for what terms. The specifics of how the board will be structured will be the success or failure of it. We do not want it to be another dumping or patronage ground for failed Liberal candidates. We do not want it to be a patronage holding pattern type of place. We were always frustrated by that in the past and would certainly speak out against any move in that direction again.

It is very much an open ended funding arrangement. The government is saying it will be $100 million to start. What is it for? How will it apply for further funding? Will it be part of an annual report to parliament? All these are unknown commodities and things that make the NDP very uncomfortable.

If there is $100 million to be spent on sustainable development, a very worthy subject, it should be put into the International Institute for Sustainable Development on Portage Avenue in the riding of Winnipeg Centre in my province of Manitoba. Let us rebuild the institute for sustainable development to what it once was. That is where Canada could be proud.

I have a feeling the newly struck foundation will be located somewhere within the capital region of Ottawa. Instead of decentralizing this innovative technology, we have every reason to believe the architects of the bill could not find the province of Manitoba with both hands and a flashlight.

We are always frustrated, in terms of western alienation, that the government does not consider such things. We feel we often get the raw end of the deal. Instead of the CF-18 contract we get a virology lab. Instead of getting an institute of sustainable development with reasonable funding, we get an announcement that there will be a new foundation to study sustainable development. Does that mean the lights will be turned off once and for all in what was once a well respected international institution in the riding of Winnipeg Centre?

We are very critical of that. At this point we will oppose Bill C-4 and will be voting against it.

[Canada Foundation For Sustainable Development Technology Act, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member says he is not fully in favour of the idea of an institute or a foundation like this being created, that he has reservations about the amount of money being used. We are all concerned when we hear figures like $100 million, which is being allocated with a sketchy sort of mandate that we are not really certain about.

However, putting it in the context of other programs, when we look at the EI fund, for instance, it is showing a surplus of $600 million a month. With the relative importance of the issue of sustainable development, would he not agree that $100 million toward such a necessary, timely and topical subject is money well spent?

Would he not also agree that his own province of Alberta should welcome the whole movement toward the true and genuine study of the issue of sustainable development as we, as a planet, try to wean ourselves off fossil fuels for our own future? For many people there is a growing realization that we cannot exist simply in an economy based on oil, that there is no future in it and that we are soiling our own nest to the point we cannot live in it any longer.

My question is whether he feels that $100 million would be well spent with a tighter mandate, a real objective or assignment, given to this new foundation, which would ultimately result in weaning our population off the burning of fossil fuels and toward alternative energy. Would he be more satisfied if it had that kind of rigid mandate?

[Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, what has actually failed Canadians is the free market in terms of not being able to ensure a regular supply of affordable energy. Some level of state intervention is necessary to regulate that market.

I think the hon. member, in his history lesson about the former premiers of the two provinces, should keep in mind that the most significant difference between those two provinces was the fact that in 1947 Leduc No. 1 struck oil. It is not rocket science to start showing a more balanced budget when there is gold coming out of the ground in Leduc, Alberta.

Tommy Douglas was elected premier in 1944. There were a number of things that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was known for, one of which was medicare. He was elected on a promise to create socialized medicine. Sometimes people forget that he was not able to do that until he had enough money. It took about 20 years to implement that promise. He did it to our collective benefit. It is inarguable that Canadians should thank Tommy Douglas for the single thing that we are most proud of.

[Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to enter the debate on Bill C-3. Most of the country is seized with the issue of energy as we speak. Many homeowners and small businesses are reeling with the shock and the horror of the rising, out of control, skyrocketing fuel prices, so it is timely that we are having this debate now.

It is timely but maybe not fitting, given the content of the bill. We see Bill C-3 as the death rattle of a national dream. There was a time when Canadians believed that the federal government had some role to play in looking after the interests of ordinary Canadians in terms of access to energy.

In 1975, the minority Trudeau government, held up by the David Lewis NDP, saw fit to enter into the energy industry with some presence, whether it was as a watchdog or a producer. It saw that the whole oil and gas industry was owned by offshore interests.

We really did not know if Canadians were getting gouged. We did not know if we were paying a fair market price or a grossly inflated price. Given that Canada is, first, geographically challenged in that it is huge and, second, that it has a cold northern climate, this was no small issue.

However, in 1975 people had the vision and forethought to try to do something about it. They still believed in the nation state of Canada that we could do something to control our own future and destiny.

When we raise the subject, people look at us as if it is heresy to even recommend that the federal government might be able to do something to help Canadians. Government shrugs its shoulders and says that it actually traded that away in the last free trade agreement it signed, that it used to be able to influence and dictate domestic market prices for our energy resources but it traded that away and cannot help us any more.

Frankly that is why I think it is sad today that we are dealing with the death rattle of a national dream, when people with vision actually had some idea and some awareness of how critical access to reasonably priced energy resources would be to the economic stability of the country.

It is even more galling to Canadians when they realize that our energy resources are part of our common wealth. There is that old term. We used to use that word that in the name of our party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Our natural resources are part of our birthright as Canadians. They are in the ground. They are under our feet. They are something we all need and we all should be able to share.

We believe some things should be regulated. We all know that capital has no conscience as such, so it is government's role to introduce regulation on the free market to make sure that it meets ordinary people's needs. We could certainly argue that the absence of any national energy strategy is not serving Canadians well. We could ask any homeowner in this country what he or she thinks about the way the free market has served the interests of Canadians when it comes to energy supply. We could ask any small business person or any trucking company representative how he or she likes waking up in the morning not knowing if the price of fuel has arbitrarily fluctuated by six, seven or ten cents.

What really annoys Canadians most is this seemingly arbitrary nature of the wild price fluctuations. That is what really galls people. That is why, when we did have Petro-Canada, when we did actually own a piece of the action, we knew what the real cost of production was. Then we could tell if we were paying the real cost or if we were being gouged like most Canadians feel they are being gouged now.

I am not at all impressed with Bill C-3. It is a huge step backward. It is the end of an era in terms of the nation state of Canada being able to dictate its own domestic price for energy strategy.

There is a growing interest, of course, in the whole issue of energy resources. As prices skyrocket there is a growing realization that we have to do something about energy conservation. We have to get more involved in the demand side of our resources rather than the supply side.

I am a carpenter by trade. I used to build hydro dams and oil refineries. I worked on megaprojects of that nature. It used to be heresy for a tradesperson to advocate demand side management because we wanted the jobs. We wanted to build hydro dams to put people to work.

In actual fact, the more people dig into the subject, we are pleased to be able to say that there are far more job opportunities in demand side management in terms of energy retrofitting buildings like schools and hospitals than there are in building a hydro dam. We have to start considering that a unit of energy harvested from the existing system by demand side management measures is indistinguishable from a unit of energy generated at a generating station except for a number of key things: it is available at about one-quarter of the cost; it creates as much as seven times the number of person years or jobs; it is available and online immediately instead of the 10 year lag time there is to build a new generating station; and it does not degrade the environment, but in fact rehabilitates the environment by reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

That is the type of message we should be getting from our federal government as we enter into an era of energy supply crisis. Instead of throwing money at it with a dysfunctional rebate system, why are we not hearing about a progressive approach to serving the needs of Canadians by demand side management energy conservation? If I heard the government say that even once, it would be of some comfort. Instead we have a token gesture.

Let us start with the federal government itself as a demonstration pilot project. The federal government owns 68,000 buildings in Canada, many of which are absolute energy pigs because they were built in an era when people did not worry about energy conservation. These buildings waste energy like crazy.

All the empirical evidence now shows that we can reduce the operating costs of those 68,000 buildings by as much as 40% by working on the building envelope. I am talking about new insulation, smart thermostat controls, basic caulking and sealing of windows, and smart lighting systems that dim and light up as the day brightens and darkens. All of these measures are easily done and would serve as a demonstration project to the private sector that it too can reduce its fuel consumption and operating costs. We all have to realize that our energy resources are extremely finite and that Canada is the most wasteful country in the world when it comes to energy consumption.

David Suzuki was quoted recently as saying that for the rest of the world to live in the same manner we do or use the same level of energy we do, seven more plants would be required to provide the raw resources. There are not enough energy resources in the world for every man, woman and child in developing nations to live the lifestyle that we enjoy with our energy use.

Let us face it. Essentially the jig is up as far as our cheap access to unlimited energy use is concerned. Conservation is going to be the key and will ultimately save the planet. Sooner or later we are going to have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels altogether.

In regard to the demand side management I described, possibly there would be some optimism and hope on the part of Canadians if they heard our government make visionary statements like that. Frankly, we could show the world how to do it. We could be a centre of excellence for energy retrofitting technology because we are a harsh northern climate and we have challenges in terms of energy supply now. We could develop and export the technology and become world leaders in the sensible use of energy resources instead of showing the world just how wasteful we can be, which is our practice, frankly.

I started by saying that there was a time within living memory when Canadians still believed that we were not impotent as a government, but now as we sign more and more trade agreements we are locking ourselves in deeper and deeper, to the point where we can no longer dictate our own domestic energy strategy. We cannot give preferential pricing to our own customers, our own citizens, our own kids. We are not allowed to because somebody traded it all away. I call it economic treason to trade away our birthright and our ability.

In the 1980s and 1990s in the private sector, in the Business Council on National Issues and the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, everybody wanted to deregulate everything. The idea was to let the free market prevail and get government out of business because it was tying up the free hand of the marketplace. The government sold Petro-Canada. It sold the goose that laid the golden egg. Why did we want to get out of the energy sector just at a time when world prices were going through the ceiling? We sold it off.

Last year, $800 million in profit would have been in the coffers of the federal government, but no, we had to let the free market handle things: all things private, good, and all things public, bad, and the public sector could not organize a peanut stand. Although frankly, with the way the government has managed its energy rebate system there is not much room for confidence in its ability to run anything else.

However, the really galling thing is that we used to own it. We used to have a piece of it. It was called Petro-Canada. Bill C-3 puts to bed any idea of ever getting involved in that kind of thing again because the powers that be simply will not tolerate it.

We are not being served well. Ask Californians with their energy problems how much they like deregulation. They are trying to re-regulate as fast as they can to save their bacon, to save their industries, to save their economic base. Ask Albertans how much they like deregulation. They always say they do, until the price of natural gas goes up 125% in one year. Thanks a million. The free market is really servicing them well. These outrageous gouging costs have to be offset by energy rebates to Albertans every month.

However, we never get to the root of the problem. Rebates are just offsetting the profits of the oil companies. If we are in fact being gouged—and we do not know if we are being gouged or not—rather than the government intervening to try to put some semblance of order into the industry, it is telling us that if we are being charged too much it will help us by giving us a little bit of money, a $125 lump sum payment.

That does not even heat one house for a week in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. I had phone calls from people in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut—I spoke about it in question period today—who were complaining that the fuel oil delivery guy will not deliver now unless customers have cash up front. Many people are defaulting on their monthly bills. They have to pay cash in advance to get oil to heat their homes. That is a desperate situation when it is 40 degrees below zero or worse in Nunavut.

We are not being well served with what is our common wealth, with what we used to consider our birthright and our property. We are not being well served when we cannot even afford to heat our homes or we are paying $500 or $600 a month for an 800 square foot house in Nunavut. The $125 rebate will not even heat that house for a week. One cannot be without heat for more than an hour in that part of the world.

Deregulation has hurt ordinary people. The previous speaker from the Bloc Quebecois was saying that the average joe, the little guy, the working person, has suffered in all of this. People who own shares in the oil companies have benefited while the rest of us have suffered. Who will stand up for us? Who will be our champion, our advocate? Who will say on behalf of the Canadian people that enough is enough?

Who will say that they will find a way to produce and distribute energy resources in a way that is fair and equitable so that all Canadians can share in the benefit of what is ours, not theirs but ours collectively? That was the dream of Petro-Canada. The government is putting the final stake through the heart of that dream as we deal with Bill C-3. That is nothing to celebrate. I have heard other speakers saying it is great that we are moving forward with a whole new way of dealing with our energy resources. We are not. We are moving backward.

People cannot survive without energy. It is one of the fundamental basics. It gets to be an economic development issue because he who has the energy can attract the business. This is why in all the free trade agreements the Americans have been quite up front. They are after our energy resources and our water because without those two resources no country will move forward. They are two resources that we used to have in great abundance.

Now, frankly, that natural gas might as well be in the United States because we have to sell it to our own domestic customers at the same price we sell it to our export partners south of the border, who have an insatiable appetite for our resources. Even if we run short and are freezing in the dark, we are not allowed to turn off the tap once it is turned on. That is the miracle of NAFTA.

This is the frustration that Canadians are feeling. They feel that we are no longer in control and that their freely elected representatives, like us in the House of Commons, cannot even help them. They are right, because in my opinion somebody committed economic treason by signing away our economic sovereignty and giving it away for next to nothing in a trade agreement that we neither wanted nor voted for. It does not serve ordinary Canadians. It only serves the powerful and the elite or maybe those who have shares in oil companies.

We are worried that we have lost the ability to have any kind of national energy strategy. That is why I recently introduced a private member's bill calling on the government to create a national energy price commission. On energy issues the commission would at least be an advocate on behalf of ordinary Canadians. It would champion their issues, so that if the oil companies wanted to raise the price of gas or home heating fuel or whatever, they would have to come before this independent tribunal and justify why the increase is warranted. What is so wrong with that?

Granted, it would be a regulation, and maybe it would be the first tentative step toward a new national energy policy that would in fact set policy which would provide for ordinary Canadians. Maybe that same energy price commission would say that charging the GST on home heating fuel is not only wrong but amoral and fundamentally antithetical to anything Canadians should be standing for.

Maybe that energy price commission would say that we need to start investigating more sources of alternative energy. Maybe it would be the think tank that would actually set some energy policy. Perhaps it would say that the real value of a barrel of oil is not $25 or $27 but that the whole cost of a barrel of oil is about $150, because we have to factor in the price of the American military to keep supertankers in the Persian Gulf to get the oil out of there and then we have to factor in the environmental degradation and the cleanup afterward.

If we look at the whole cost of burning fossil fuels, all other sources of energy seem cheap in comparison. Even if solar energy and wind energy need some investment before we are ready for them, that seems like a bargain when we start really viewing what burning fossil fuels does to our planet and our environment and what the whole cost of that is.

We are ready to move on. We would hope that most Canadians are also ready to move on and into an era of progress and new maturity about our energy resources. That includes taking the bull by the horns and not saying that we cannot do it. We are always making excuses about why we cannot shape our domestic policy. There is a saying I heard that “there are no more prizes for predicting rain, that from now on we are only giving prizes for building arks”. There should be no more excuses.

The government should not tell us that it cannot help us. It must get creative and find a way to make sure there is a reliable supply of affordable energy so that Canadians can heat their homes without breaking the bank.

We do not want more repeat situations like Cambridge Bay where people have to go down to the fuel dealer with five gallon jerry cans and pay in advance to get ten gallons of fuel oil to heat their homes. That is a disgrace.

It is a complete abdication of responsibility by the federal government in not representing the interests of Canadians in this way. Bill C-3 takes us one step further from the complete abdication of responsibility by the government. It simply does not think it has a role in any kind of a national energy strategy, and we think that is wrong.

I look back fondly on the days when David Lewis had the official balance of power in a minority government. He could influence government and demand that government exercise its sovereign right to manage the affairs of the country in terms of energy supply. That was 1975. This is 2001. Bill C-3 will drive a stake through the heart of any national dream we might have in taking care of our own interests.

[Heating Fuel Rebate, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there is a growing outrage out there that people who do not even pay heating bills are getting the rebate, and people who need help desperately are not getting anything at all.

The government has thrown $1.3 billion away in a rebate program that does not work, and winter is not over yet. What if anything can the government say now to all those people who did not qualify for any rebate. What is the national energy strategy of this government, wait for spring?

[Heating Fuel Rebate, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the overnight temperature in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut was minus 38, minus 68 with the wind chill. Yet the price of home heating oil is so high people are having their fuel delivery cut off because they cannot pay their bills. People are having to pay cash up front to get oil to heat their homes.

Short of throwing money away in a home heating rebate program that does not work, what is the government's plan to give some relief to all those Canadians going broke trying to heat their homes?

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Innu of Labrador are not registered as Indians under the Indian Act and consequently are not allowed access to the range of programs and other services generally afforded first nations.

In September 2000 the minister agreed to seek cabinet approval for the registration of the Innu under the Indian Act.

The minister's colleague, the former premier of Newfoundland, now the minister of everything, actually called upon the federal government to grant the Innu status. He said:

The Innu communities of Labrador need the tools that can only be made available to them if they have First Nations status.

The failure of the Government of Canada to recognize the constitutional status of the Innu constitutes a breach of its fiduciary obligation to the Innu as an aboriginal people. The Innu have been waiting for equal treatment since 1949. How much longer must they wait?

I take this opportunity to call upon the government to move quickly to grant the Innu of Labrador first nation status as an integral important first step in healing these troubled communities.

[Supply, February 15th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I agree with many of the remarks made by my hon. colleague from the Bloc Quebecois. I know he comes from a legal background and has been involved with many rounds of bargaining and negotiations.

I think this is what he and I share. We both find it quite galling that the players at the table of the FTAA do not want freely elected governments involved at this stage. They clearly will not allow it. They are barring it. In fact it goes further than that. The former head of the WTO, Ruggiero, made this startling comment. He said “There is a surplus of democracy in the world which is interfering with the free movement of capital and investment”.

There are people out there in the world who actually believe there is a surplus of democracy, and that freely elected governments and freely elected representatives like those of us in this room have no business at a high level table where they are bargaining trade deals. That is offensive to all Canadians. Surely, all people in Quebec and everywhere in the country should be offended by that.

I would like the hon. member to talk a bit about this. We are facing a home heating fuel crisis in this country as we speak. When Canadians came to their government to ask for some relief and begging their elected representatives to do something to provide some relief for them, they were told “Gee, sorry we cannot help you”. We traded away any ability to influence pricing in the last trade agreement with NAFTA. Some idiot on our behalf gave it away, sold the farm and sold away our economic sovereignty and our ability to dictate a domestic market pricing for home heating fuel.

I ask the hon. member to expand on the impact that that may have in the province of Quebec and elsewhere.