Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as the world comes together in Cancun to combat climate change, we learn more about the dinosaur tactics of the Conservatives.
Canadian embassy officials lobbied on behalf of the Conservatives to have American environmental standards remove all mention of the oil sands. The same diplomats dismissed Environment Canada’s position to clean up the oil sands as “simply nutty”, with the priority being “keeping the oil a-flowing”.
Why are the Conservatives trying to sabotage legislation in the U.S.? Have they not done enough damage here?
Mr. David Anderson (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and for the Canadian Wheat Board, CPC): Mr. Speaker, is the member opposite and her party taking the position that the oil sands are not a strategic resource for Canada for decades to come? We know full well that they are. That is one of the reasons that we are working with the industry and with the provinces to make sure that they are developed in an environmentally safe manner.
We will continue to do that and we will continue to look after the environment in that way.
Mme Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): Monsieur le Président, pendant ce temps au Canada, nous constatons encore plus de délais et plus de tromperies de la part du gouvernement. Les conservateurs prétendent qu’ils mettront en place des mesures équivalentes aux standards américains, mais le ministre veut forcer le Canada à attendre que chacun des États américains mette en place les nouveaux standards avant d’agir.
Pourquoi le gouvernement travaille-t-il avec le tea party américain pour prendre en otage la politique environnementale du Canada?
Hon. John Baird (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of the Environment, CPC): Mr. Speaker, we strongly support harmonization wherever that is possible. In the transportation sector we have done that with cars and we have done that with light trucks. We are going to move forward in other areas of transportation.
In the guidelines that are being published effective in January there will be phasing in over three years. They are just that, guidelines
We support strong regulation and we will bring in equivalent regulations to ensure that we produce greenhouse gases in concert with our American allies by the same 2017 absolute reduction.
