Based on the debate we have had so far today and what I have been able to listen to and participate in, it would suggest to me that everyone has their own vision or view of what history might have been or what history was. I would like to take a brief moment to discuss some of that before moving into my comments, and I will make them relevant to the topic we are discussing.

I found it interesting that members opposite have presented Canadians with two different environmental packages over the last several years. They signed the Kyoto agreement, which they had no intention of doing. It was a last minute thought. Then, just to confirm what one of my hon. colleagues said, it was reported by a man who was very close to those discussions and to that debate, that in reality it was to present a signature of agreement to something they had actually no intention of following through with and no intention of implementing.

We only need to look back at the history to find out that is actually true. After signing the Kyoto accord, the government of that day did nothing to move the ball forward. The Liberals talk today about plans and directions. I recognize and our government recognizes that it takes a lot of discussion and a lot of understanding but what happened during that period was merely lip service paid to the public and to the environmentalists with actually no plan or no outcomes set to measure the success.

The Liberals also talked about plans that were presented. I can think of the Kelowna accord. They talked about an agreement they had with our aboriginal communities but there was no plan. They proposed it as a plan but it was only a news release at the last minute on the dying bed of the government of that day. We knew, and I believe the Canadian public knew, that there would be no plan or no direction following that agreement. It was just merely window dressing prior to an election call.

The member opposite talked about an environmental plan that the Liberals put forward in the last election, 2008. Again, the people of Canada rejected that plan. Why did they reject it? They rejected because they saw it purely as a tax on consumers at a time when consumers were starting to face an economic recession that the world was going through and that was moving its way slowly to Canada. It was rejected simply because it was merely an idea with no meat on the bones, no structure to what they were actually trying to do and it made it very difficult. I would challenge all the members opposite who were fortunate enough to be elected to stand up and say that they could actually explain it to the people they talked to when they were door knocking. That became their biggest issue as far as the campaign.

I do want to talk mostly today in relation to Canada's relationship with the United States. It is very easy to say that Canada can move forward on these types of international agreements without working closely with our neighbours. It needs to be understood that with over 80% of the trade that now takes place between Canada and the United States, everything that we do impacts another industry, another part of our country, just as when the Americans implement something to effect change in one area of their industry, it flows back to Canada and impacts us, not always negatively but in a lot of cases the implications are not what we anticipated or thought about. Therefore, at times we need to go back and review what was introduced, review how it was proposed and then massage it to make it work. It is important to have negotiations and it is important that we share the same economic space.

We are, in my mind, a North American economy. I have had the great pleasure of living within 20 minutes of the United States border. I grew up where the people in North Dakota were my neighbours and my friends. The only difference that we actually had was the difference in a dollar and a border that said this is where our country begins and the other one ends.

Therefore, I think it is very important that we pay attention. I think the members of the Bloc have raised the issue. We cannot move forward without the co-operation and participation of every province. That again takes time.

I think we have all come to the conclusion that it is important and necessary that we move on climate change, and that we accept the facts that we all have to pull in the same direction to make it move forward. If we do not do that, people may feel better about their achievements but the actual accomplishment by the collective group is just not there. That is why we need those negotiations to take place. That is why we have spent a lot of time participating in those negotiations.

The opposition talks about the new President of the United States. I think we are all prepared to give him the time that is required to put the people whom he needs in place to move the ball forward on this particular issue but also to create and establish that relationship with their neighbours.

I would suspect that this same type of discussion is taking place within their chambers, in the sense that, “What we do we have to do as an economic partnership with Canada. We share the same environmental spaces so what we do is going to impact their economy and their environment. So why would we not sit down, make some decisions together, make some decisions and a plan that we can move forward with, develop together, and present it when the time comes to the rest of the world”.

We know our dependence on each other for trade and financial markets. Again, it is something that we all have to be aware of. We have seen in this global economic recession where some economies are starting to move forward, although very slowly and very cautiously, but in the same breath, to impose something on any of these countries at this particular time, Canada along with the U.S. must be very careful about what those outcomes would bring.

Yes, we can stand up, as we have seen members opposite, and announce grandiose plans as to what we are going to do or what they would suggest we do with the environment. Even with a plan that they say they will bring forward at some point in time, we have to look at what the impacts are going to be on our economy and on our country at this particular point in time. If we do not do that we are wearing blinders and we are going to wake up a few years from now and wonder what decisions we actually took on this day and how it is impacting us into the future.

On the supply chains of food, of product and of manufactured goods back and forth with the American economy, no one knows better than I the difficulties we have with supply chains and getting them moving north and south. We have almost the same types of challenges moving them east and west in Canada with trade barriers set up by the provinces, but collectively they have started as individuals and now as groups of provinces. They have started to recognize that the benefits and the outcomes will be better simply because there is an agreement that they want to move forward with, not one moving forward and trying to drag the others through or one denying that they should not move forward and holding everyone back.

I think we have seen that very well, particularly in the western provinces. B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan have now eliminated the labour barriers for trade. People can now move from one province to the other without having any special provincial designation. I think that creates an opportunity in the economy for our workers who in certain parts of the country are under great duress through no fault of their own. It would allow them, if they choose, to move to an area where there is opportunity right now and a chance for other opportunities in their careers.

On regulation, there should be a balance in what we do to regulate Canadians and what our friends to the south do. There should be an agreement to work within certain parameters, so that one country's movements do not impact the other country's movements, particularly on environmental issues, in a negative way.

Within the climate change strategy, the economic reality is that we just simply cannot ignore our American neighbours. We must look at it as a North American economy, and we must ensure that it is integrated in many of the aspects of our communities, and particularly in the environmental issues that we are discussing today.

We must harmonize our principles. We all have to have a set of principles that we would agree to and work within. We would have to have a policy design that we can actually understand and have input in to changing and updating as things move together, but we cannot do that independent of the Americans, just as I suspect they are not trying to do it independent of us.

If members opposite choose to look at all of the discussions that have taken place on this issue, including the years before that were mentioned, the years of planning that I would say did not produce the results that Canadians wanted, we can see results starting to move froward. I think over time we are going to see a very unified position come forward under the North American banner. It will be Canada and U.S. leading the way, and being the example for other countries to follow.

Members opposite have criticized the government for choosing one area of the environment over the other. I do not believe that is true, but it certainly makes good fodder for the media and it certainly makes good politics. At the end of the day, the engine that drives our economy right now, although suffering as many industries are in the global economic recession, is still the engine that is driving our economy right now. We would be foolish to think that we could move forward strictly on an environmental policy that would impact it in the drastic way that the members opposite would suggest.

We must develop a policy of climate change that facilitates the move across every sector and every region. I think we are all in agreement that we are heading toward a low carbon economy. We have obviously seen that with the investments that many countries in the world, not just in North America, have moved to with more fuel efficient vehicles and more fuel efficient appliances. Everything we do now is geared to being more energy efficient and in the same breath that is the benefit for the economy.

Now, if we had a policy that was North American, it would broaden the ability of countries to become more energy efficient and more environmentally friendly in a very quick way.

I would like to point out that a comment was made about the homeowners tax plan in the sense that if an investment is made in the home, where would that fit into the environmental policy. In my communities many people are making their homes more efficient, therefore using less energy to heat them, less energy to light them. They are benefiting from it by putting value back into their homes, but they are also benefiting all of us here and I would say all Canadians.

We can talk about the big picture and all the great things that we could do but if we all did just a little bit, it might help move that ball forward quicker. When I think of growing up, the best environmentalists I can remember were my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. They used everything to the nth degree. We have kind of fallen away from that. We have become consumers as opposed to people who perhaps should look at what they are buying, how they are using it, and what they do with it when they are finished using it. Not so long ago, and I would suggest as little as 30 years ago, very little got thrown out. Most things got used for one purpose or another in the home until it had no value. I think we can only look back sometimes to find the real leaders in protecting our environment.

The calls for greenhouse gas emission reductions and related measures that weigh out evenly with economic growth and prosperity is what we are all trying to do. We want to balance opportunities for economic growth and I believe there is tremendous opportunity in the economic field on environmental issues. We have seen that. We have seen organizations and companies looking at Canada and the message they get or that we have to sell them is the fact that Canada believes and is moving forward on improving our environment, and the fact that it would be a great place for them to invest and a great place to move their businesses.

Our government believes that the harmonized policy between Canada and the United States offers us, and I say that selfishly, but I mean all Canadians, the best opportunity to meet, in a consolidated and uniform way, the economic environmental challenges of our times. We all know and we all recognize that these are not simple issues.

Where Canada is concerned, we are particularly challenged because of our size. Obviously, we have a vast amount of land to cover and, traditionally, our climate plays a big role. As they say in Manitoba, we have nine months of winter and three months of construction. It is close to the truth in a lot of cases.

We talk about things that work in other countries and things that other countries are doing. While I think that is admirable and I think that is something that we should always be doing and trying to measure our successes based on others, we must recognize that there are some obstacles in our place that do not allow us to move quite as quickly or in quite the same manner as other countries might. We must also realize that because of that, our reliance on energy production and natural resources is very great.

Members opposite had talked about an electrical hydro grid east and west. While I support that, I think that we have to look at the economics and the benefits of it, and all those have to be weighed into the outcome of what we should or should not do at a particular time.

We, in Canada, account for 2% of the global greenhouse gas emissions, yet we are also the seventh largest emitter. I think that is something that we have to always be aware of and always be working to lower that number. It is simply because we are a commodity-based economy and arguably the most energy consumptive of any society in the world. I think that is obviously an opportunity for us to do things better. It is not a knock; it is just simply a reality of where we live and the geographical circumstances that we live within. Canada is large and Canada is cold. Those are two things that we just cannot change.

However, what we can do is concentrate on what we can change; that is, the key link between Canada and the United States environmental and economic policies, the supply and the use of energy. We have made great strides in working with our neighbours to the south in coming to those solutions.

Again, it has been said by everyone here, and everyone would agree, that energy is the key driver of our economies, and our future prosperity and growth depends upon it. What that energy will be, I think, has to be debated, but nonetheless, because of our size, because of our climate, it is important that our integrated economies result in energy flows across Canada and the U.S. That fact alone means that having cleaner sources of energy is imperative when it comes to taming as complex an issue as climate change.

I have many more things to suggest, but I understand that my time is wrapping up. I would just like to end by pointing out a few that we have done.

We certainly support the renewable energy technologies. We are looking at all sorts of fuels, wind and water energies. I think it is important to always keep in mind, though, that things that we do in Canada only double or grow in size if we work collectively with our neighbours to the south in developing a policy that works for North America.