Environment committee  Sorry. Yes, of course. The last comment is that the next thing is an investment strategy. The thing I'll leave you with is this: in 1994, eight of the 11 cleanest vehicle powertrains certified by the California Air Resources Board were manufactured entirely in Canada; today not one of the low-emission powertrains certified by the California emissions board is manufactured in Canada.

Environment committee  And are we passing out two pages or more?

Environment committee  Okay. Thank you. I just want to make a few remarks, and I hope they are constructive. When I'm asked the question of what would Bill C-377 mean, I do come at my response from a rather narrow perspective. The question I'm asking is, is there anything happening in this bill that I think might motivate the private sector to invest more in a carbon-free future than they are investing at this time?

Environment committee  Thank you. As a quick question, does the committee have my submission in front of them?

Environment committee  I'm forgetting. You got me there and I've forgotten what I wanted to say to your remark. Just to put the stock turnover situation in context, it's an unusual time in Canadian history, because we've shut down only two electricity generating facilities since 1990, while 35% of our existing electricity generation capacity was built subsequent to 1992.

Environment committee  No. You asked a question that I really wanted to.... I'm going to say something. I'm going to run the risk of everybody who already hates me, hating me more. I've been looking at the Nova Scotia inventory for four months, and the dilemma we have in Canada is this. If we implement the federal regulations as proposed, simply because of the structure of the economies, we're imposing a much larger per capita reduction obligation on the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick than on anybody else in Canada, by miles.

Environment committee  I can't give you any help without that LNG plant.

Environment committee  I guess I'm just waiting for the day we shift from rhetoric to reality. The reality is that in Canada, fewer than 350 plants account for 95% of industrial emissions, and fewer than 40 plants owned by fewer than 10 companies account for 50% of the industrial emissions. I'm kind of wondering how many more complex multi-stakeholder consultations need to take place before our finance, environment, and industry departments sit down with fewer than 10 CEOs to figure out what they're going to do together next.

Environment committee  Just to put that into context, though, in Buenos Aires in November 1998, the U.S. delegation said they would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol unless developing nations accepted caps. At that meeting, it was either Brazil or Argentina--I think it was Brazil--that proposed that key developing nations take on caps that were the equivalent of 40% above 1990 levels by the end of 2012, and China and India refused to buy into those caps.

Environment committee  I can't square the two- to fifteen-year circle. The point I'm trying to make is that any progress demands that Canada, almost more than any other nation, write off a bunch of capital that we haven't already paid for. Just to give you a point of comparison, 23% of all the electricity consumed in the United States originates at plants that are over 50 years old.

Environment committee  Ten product classes in greenhouse gases cover 85% of the global industry. It's a shorter list than the CFC list. If you break those 10 into subclasses, you have the 40.

Environment committee  By the way, I just described the AB 32, the California state legislation that was passed into law in December 2006. If you want to read how to do it, you can download the California state law.

Environment committee  We're not saying that. We're saying that if you sell cement here, if you sell aluminum here, if you sell iron and steel here, you account for your emissions, and they have to be below x per tonne. We don't tell them to do anything. We say, “We don't buy from you unless you account and you meet a test”.

Environment committee  That leads me to one recommendation I would bring to the Bali negotiating team, if they're open to suggestions. The aid budgets of the Japanese and three major European nations are tied to developing lower-cost and increasing offshore supplies of coal for them to burn in their own plants.

Environment committee  But the reality is that the treaty covered the operations of more than 17 corporations in the U.S. alone; seven separate corporations in India; four in South Korea; 11 in China; and five unrelated to the list I've already...in Japan; and four in the U.K.