Environment committee  I'd like to actually get back to a point, forgive me. Mr. Cullen, you had a very interesting question, I thought, as far as what is it that Canada has in terms of leverage, what does it have in its quiver in the negotiations. I read the speech that the Prime Minister made at t

Environment committee  Yes. That's precisely the point. If it's going to be implemented domestically, it's a non-starter internationally.

Environment committee  Certainly the scenario reports--not the reference scenarios themselves--seem to indicate, again, depending on which one, that if you want a two degrees Celsius temperature change, then China is going to have to stabilize its emissions within the next 10 to 15 years. It's an enorm

Environment committee  Yes, like Aldyen, I have no issues whatsoever in using the marketplace, whether it's national or global, in supporting environmental attributes that are also commercially feasible. In fact, in my intervention, I made the point of just what's been happening on clean energy investm

Environment committee  To be absolutely honest, I'd have to say no, it's not, unfortunately. It's been a problem we've had to grapple with, I have to say, for an awfully long time, and it still doesn't seem to get adequately addressed. I have to be honest about this.

Environment committee  Far be it from me to try to read the mind or the motivation of the Prime Minister. There certainly is an aspect to this that is not unlike trade negotiations, in which you certainly cannot show all of your cards at one time, or in which you might in fact try to weigh your cards i

Environment committee  That certainly is one of the real, significant achievements. I would, respectfully, not share all the same conclusions as to why the Montreal Protocol was a success. I think the consumption part was more effectively addressed in the Montreal Protocol, but that's far and away not

Environment committee  It really depends on where the government and Canadians want us to be. If they want us to be at two degrees Celsius, we really have to talk about their getting engaged with serious commitments within the next 10 to 20 years. If we're talking about something a bit longer-term whe

Environment committee  If I might, just very quickly, I made--

Environment committee  To be strictly accurate, right now, under the terms of the Berlin mandate for the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries are expressly exempt from taking on additional commitments. There are commitments that are referred to under the convention, but those are the commitments that

Environment committee  If Canada specifically isn't willing to do it first, it wouldn't help the chances, that's for sure. But I think the bigger question, to be absolutely honest, if we're going to deal with the global real world of realpolitik is whether the United States is going to be willing to

Environment committee  I'd like to quickly respond to the first question. It's a very important point to keep in mind that when we're talking about further and more serious engagement on the part of developing countries, you need to look at what the Montreal Protocol accomplished with the multilatera

Environment committee  I completely agree with you. The fact that we, as a developed community, including Canada, haven't taken strong actions up to now has really hurt the prospects for being able to go constructively forward in further engaging major developing countries. There's no question that the

Environment committee  Yes, I agree that the rich countries should be going first and taking the lead. In fact, I really do wish that not only Canada but a number of other countries had been more aggressive in showing that leadership. The problem we face right now.... I don't want to get into sort of

Environment committee  We need to look at the strategies of the World Bank and other major aid agencies in how they're integrating climate change. One final word. Keep in mind the relatively modest objective of the Bali mandate. We are talking about setting in motion a negotiating process for post-20