Environment committee  I'll do that first. It's a semantics issue. I've gotten irritated over the years by governments talking about targets. In fact, politicians do that often. They get up and talk about a target, but there is no means of achieving it. I notice that in certain policies where people r

Environment committee  Yes, because the way capital stock turns over, people are making decisions all the time, right now, on a new electricity generating plant, or a lot of other smaller decisions, such as what kind of vehicle they're going to buy. The government is doing advertisements with Rick Merc

Environment committee  Yes. The distinction I need to always make, and this was even in the national climate change process, is that people confuse actions--the things individuals and businesses do to reduce greenhouse gases--with policies. The policies need to be immediate--there are some delays, wh

Environment committee  Yes, and I've laid them out quite clearly, for example, in The Morning After. I believe you only need four or five policies. The policies I've seen so far seem wrong-headed to me. On the public transit subsidy, we're just simulating that right now. I may come out with something f

Environment committee  I guess I can't comment on that because I haven't read the bill. My only point will be—and these are the comments I made earlier—is that when people talk about moving towards achieving Kyoto or part of Kyoto, and so on, in the four- to six-year timeframe we're talking about, I

Environment committee  This is not something I think about as much, but I was at an international meeting in England just a couple of weeks ago in which a Japanese delegate referred to Canada's shame in terms of all of this. And I end up coming...first of all, I really don't like the word “targets”,

Environment committee  Once again, it's linked to the growth curve. When we look back, 20 or 40 years ago, we see that, since energy has a cost, businesses and even household appliances should become increasingly efficient. That's a natural phenomenon. But at the same time, with economic growth and gr

Environment committee  Briefly, the experience I've had was when I was part of an expert panel that was asked to advise the Chinese government in 1990. During the first seven years, we suggested a reduction in subsidies to coal-fired plants, a renewable electricity policy and a greenhouse gas emissions

Environment committee  May I add something? At the international level, based on the technological changes already made by other governments, we can say — and virtually everyone agrees — that we have the technology. We wonder whether we'll be using nuclear energy, renewable energy or fossil fuels to c

Environment committee  As Mr. Page said, it would take two years. We're currently making the investments.

Environment committee  Very briefly, I often hear this point that any kind of constraint on your domestic economy, a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system--and I don't say tradeable, it has to be a cap, otherwise nothing is going on--will lead to flight of capital. I think it's too late now to be making

Environment committee  Yes, it is. That's because there was a lot of very good expert advice around, and it was being used by other countries, about the kinds of policies that you actually needed. When someone said, “This is a good bill for 1999”, I would say, “No, it still doesn't give you enough time

Environment committee  Before saying no, I just want to say that the next time you come to Simon Fraser University with a cheque, let me know and I'll meet you. That wouldn't influence my answer to this question, which is no.

Environment committee  I don't understand your calculation.

Environment committee  I didn't do the calculation, but, in the book, I calculated the change in energy prices. That's often easier for people to understand. In the calculations that we did for the national process, we saw that the price of gasoline had virtually doubled and that the price of electrici