Environment committee  So I would suggest it's probably a little rich for you to come here and criticize the government on climate change when you should probably be pointing the finger at your own party—or your previous party—the Liberal Party. I understand that one of the members registered as part of the youth delegation and Climate Action Network Canada, Sasha Pippenger—I think I have that correct—encouraged people to place prank calls to a member of the Canadian delegation in Bali.

Environment committee  What we don't need is a lot of fragmentation. I think you're absolutely right to link the energy and climate change issues together. I don't think you can decouple them.

Environment committee  He reinforced a very negative image of his commitment to youth--at the very least--and to climate change in general.

Environment committee  Of course there has been an evolution, most notably as a result of the science, the work of the International Panel on Climate Change. I think the level of intensity and of urgency has increased. A number of elements of the agreement, the protocol, are in a sense coming due. For example, the review under article 9 of the protocol is an issue that we faced this time for the first time.

Environment committee  This afternoon both the Ontario and Quebec premiers held a press conference saying that the government is not to be believed on its domestic climate change plan. Can I ask what kind of consensus there was in Bali with respect to the federal government and provincial and territorial governments and their respective positions?

Environment committee  Well, there have been discussions on climate change with the provinces. I'm not aware of a meeting convened with provinces specifically with reference to the Bali conference.

Environment committee  But there was no formal federal-provincial meeting convened on Bali per se, although there have been, of course, on climate change.

Environment committee  The Commissioner of the Environment personally said to me that it would be helpful if there were a comprehensive review of all climate change programs across government. That has never been done, but no program was cut without a review. That is why I've asked the President of the Treasury Board to take a look at and audit all of the program spending across government that was done in the climate change program.

Environment committee  On page 75 of the update, he says that any regulations regarding climate change would have to ensure that no industry would have to assume undue costs. When I read your statement of intent when Bill C-30 was tabled I was forced to notice that you chose to calculate emissions according to their intensity.

Environment committee  We all know that there's a plan to come, but at some point we will have collectively to see how my recommendations and your recommendations...you have to remember that you came with recommendations to address climate change not too long ago. It will be important to get a regular report from the bureaucrats on how much progress has been made towards those recommendations and where we're going with the whole climate change file.

Environment committee  A few pages further on, you state that energy production is under provincial jurisdiction. You clearly state that any effective attempt to curb climate change has to take into account this reality. In terms of fighting climate change, do you not think that a new approach encouraging cooperation with the provinces would be more effective than the essentially sector-based approach favoured by the government thus far?

Environment committee  The following thing has been mentioned twice, first by the Commissioner for the Environment, and then at the round table. In their opinion, a modern policy on energy and climate change should focus as much on energy use as on energy production. This is basically what Ms. Gélinas said when she pointed out that we cannot really fight climate change without also addressing how energy is produced, used and distributed.

Environment committee  That's just for background. Recent reports, including the one by Nicholas Stern, show that the long-term cost of climate change would be vastly greater than taking immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avoid cost. Immediately taking steps to address climate change is the pro-growth policy in the long term.

Environment committee  If there had been no Kyoto, would we have a climate change plan in the province of Quebec that, despite some shortcomings, has been lauded by experts? Would we even have a Clean Air Act? It wasn't more than a couple of years ago that members of the then opposition Conservative Party were still trying to debunk the fact that climate change was anthropogenic.

Environment committee  Chairman, if I may, it's going back to what we used to hear from this minister and others in his government. They said climate change wasn't really a problem, that the problem is smog. We all acknowledge that smog is a problem, but we're hearing more and more that the number one environmental challenge we face is in fact climate change.