Kyoto Protocol

Wednesday February 27, 2002

    Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg--Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the right hon. Prime Minister referred to the cost of not proceeding with the Kyoto accord. I wonder whether the government could tell us, because we in the NDP have often felt that the government could make a much more forceful case for Kyoto than it is doing: Is the government doing the cost studies of what it would cost to not ratify the Kyoto accord and could it produce these studies so that we could combat the Canadian Alliance fearmongering on this and light a fire under the Minister of the Environment so he might actually get this accord ratified one of these days?

    Hon. David Anderson (Minister of the Environment, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the studies that are currently being done are being done by a joint federal-provincial-territorial group with three private firms involved. The leadership of this group is the province of Alberta and the federal Government of Canada. The group expects to be able to provide us with substantial information in April. We certainly hope that is the case.

    However certainly by May we hope to be able to provide some of the figures from this joint federal-provincial-territorial group led by the province of Alberta and the federal government