From the Prime Minister's Web Site (http://www.pm.gc.ca/)
PRIME MINISTER ADDRESSES THE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY TRADE SHOW AND CONFERENCE AMERICANA 2007
March 22, 2007
Ottawa, Ontario
Thank you Mr. Izzi,
Mr. Sergerie, President of RÉSEAU Environnement,
Madam President Lajoie
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for your warm welcome.
I would like to introduce some of my colleagues who are here with me today.
Let's welcome the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and the Minister responsible for Greater Montreal, Michael Fortier, and the Member for Lévis-Bellechasse, Stephen Blaney.
I am very honoured to serve as Honorary President of Americana 2007.
I have been looking forward to addressing this gathering for many weeks.
I believe the combined environmental and entrepreneurial talent assembled here will be a driving force of the global economy in the years ahead.
Because many of the solutions to the environmental challenges we face today will be inspired by the natural energy, creativity and entrepreneurial wisdom of the private sector.
Governments, to be sure, have a role to play.
The same role that good governments always have:
Defend the public interest;
Devise fair and balanced rules and apply them in an equitable manner; and
Show leadership in scientific research and public education so that our discourse and policy decisions are always guided by the very latest knowledge and public opinion that is well-informed.
But business and government can only do so much. In the long run, Canada will be as green as Canadians want it to be.
In other words, you won't be able to offer your environmental products and services, and we won't be able to implement our environmental policies, without broad public support.
Fortunately, the general public the world over is ahead of us on this issue. And that's been the case for a long time.
The modern environmental movement can trace its roots back to the time of the industrial revolution.
Maybe earlier. In 13th-century London complaints about smog prompted King Edward the First to ban the burning of coal.
The penalties for breaking the law included torture and execution. Now those were tough regulations!
But maybe not entirely effective, because things got a lot worse in London before they got better.
As late as 1952, the city was smothered in a lethal smog that lasted four days and killed some 4,000 people.
So people demanded action, government and industry responded, and the air in London today is probably cleaner than it's been in at least two centuries.
In North America, the realization that we were causing our own misfortune began to dawn on us about fifty years ago.
US President Lyndon Johnson, whose name hardly springs to mind when one thinks of environmentalists, once said, and I quote:
"Either we stop poisoning our air or we become a nation in gas masks groping our way through dying cities."
Johnson was right.
And the United States like Canada has adopted new and tougher regulations on industrial and automobile emissions.
The result? Automobile emissions responsible for pollution have dropped to below 2% of what they were in the 1970s.
All over the continent, smog-causing pollution has plummeted by at least 50%.
And what's most surprising is that car prices have stayed the same in relative terms.
One of the big environmental challenges of the last 50 years was chlorofluorocarbons used in refrigeration; they were destroying the earth's protective ozone layer.
So we banned them. And what happened?
Our beer's still cold, our fridges cost about the same, and the ozone layer is making a comeback.
Let me give you another example: acid rain.
In 1990 my predecessor, Brian Mulroney, convinced the US government to sign a treaty requiring industry to drastically cut sulphur and nitrogen oxide emissions.
The alarmists said this would bring about a terrible recession.
Quite the contrary, the North American economy thrived, posting one of the longest and strongest periods of growth in history.
Our precious Canadian lakes were saved, and the moonscape around Sudbury turned green again!
No wonder they named Mr. Mulroney Canada's greenest Prime Minister.
But that was nearly 20 years ago.
Although some aspects of our environment are in much better shape today thanks to the measures we've taken, others are much worse.
For about a year, environmental issues have topped the public agenda, not only in Canada but in a number of other Western countries.
Growing concerns regarding climate change and pollution have acted as a catalyst.
I believe that public demand for a cleaner and safer environment represents positive, necessary and inevitable social progress.
Because consumption without conservation is not a formula for sustainable economic growth.
Consumption must be balanced with conservation to achieve a sustainable economy.
It is all about balance.
Balancing the roles of the public and private sectors.
Balancing the responsibilities of the various levels of government.
And balancing economic growth with environmental protection - because we will not have one unless we have the other.
Over time, an economy financed by environmental degradation will destroy itself and the planet as well.
Yet no population of any country will support an environmental plan that robs them of their jobs and lowers their living standards, even in the short term.
I am of course preaching to the converted, because all your activities are based on the hypothesis that economic growth and environmental progress must go hand in hand.
I'd like to devote most of my remarks today to explaining how Canada's New Government is taking this balanced approach to the major environmental challenges of our time, climate change and air pollution.
All of us as individuals, as families, as neighbours and as communities want the necessities of healthy living.
Clean water.
Clean land.
And clean air.
But all of us are not getting what we want.
In 2005, over half of Canadians lived in areas where air quality did not always meet the objectives.
That same year, 2005, a record number of smog warnings were issued in Ontario and Quebec.
Canada has become one of the top three emitters per capita among OECD countries in terms of the pollutants threatening our lakes, fouling our air and changing our climate.
And since our predecessors set unrealistic objectives that they didn't even try to achieve, Canada has recorded the worst greenhouse gas results among the Kyoto signatories.
By the end of their mandate, emissions were almost 35% above the targets and their rhetoric.
That's why Canada's Clean Air Act was one of the key initiatives of our first year in power.
The intention of the Clean Air Act is not yet fully understood.
Canada will, for the first time ever, create mandatory emissions targets for greenhouse gases and air pollution across major industrial sectors.
The details will be unveiled in the next couple of weeks.
The days of voluntary measures are over.
Just as the days of crass politics and meaningless rhetoric are over.
We're going to set binding objectives on air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions for the key industrial sectors.
This plan, applied evenly across the country, will set targets and key deadlines that will let industry know exactly what they must do, and when.
And this plan will propose how to get there by encouraging the development and use of Canadian technologies.
In other words, we will make progress not by sending money overseas to pay for higher emissions here but by selling know-how overseas to reduce emissions everywhere.
That is what it means to balance environmental action with economic growth.
Ultimately, we can maximize our environmental results best through leadership and cooperation with other levels of government, the private sector and the public.
That is why we have consulted so closely with industry in developing programs like our three ecoEnergy initiatives.
The first the EcoEnergy Efficiency Initiative will support improvements to energy efficiency in homes, small businesses and large industries.
The second, the ecoEnergy Technology Initiative, will support activities that people like you are already doing: research, development and demonstration of clean energy technologies.
And the third the eco-Energy Renewable Initiative will help scientists and entrepreneurs harness the power of nature including the wind, sun and tides.
Transport Canada is also operating a series of programs to improve the energy efficiency of transportation.
The ecoMobility, ecoTechnology for Vehicles, ecoEnergy for Personal Vehicles and ecoFreight programs are investments made through cooperation and partnership.
Balance and co-operation are also the guiding principles of our intergovernmental actions on the environment.
Because the environment is an issue that transcends our jurisdictions, our borders and our political philosophies.
The Canada ecoTrust for clean air and climate change is a $1.5 billion fund that will support projects developed by the provinces and territories to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases.
In the past few weeks I've crisscrossed the country with Environment Minister John Baird and Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, meeting with the premiers to determine which projects will be funded by ecoTrust.
In Quebec, the plan calls for a number of initiatives that should help cut greenhouse gas emissions by 14 million tonnes in five years.
Ontario's share of ecoTrust will help that province phase out its coal fired electrical plants and import clean hydro power from Manitoba.
Our partnership with British Columbia will help develop the province's cutting-edge hydrogen fuel cell technology.
If everything goes according to plan, you'll be driving on the "Hydrogen Highway" from Vancouver to Whistler if you're going to the Winter Olympics in 2010.
And in my home province of Alberta, ecoTrust will fund further, large-scale development of carbon capture and storage,
A potentially historic and potentially lucrative technological breakthrough designed to bury carbon emissions deep underground.
Intergovernmental cooperation does not stop at our national borders.
Canada is continuing to participate in the Kyoto process, in an effort to determine the best way to move forward.
And Canada has also been closely following the Asia-Pacific six, which includes the United States, China and India, because a truly effective international regime cannot be achieved without the participation of these major emitters.
In all this talk of government and intergovernmental initiatives, I have neglected to talk about some of the exciting things Canadian communities are doing to protect and improve their local environments.
Not far from my hometown of Calgary, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, there is a beautiful little town called Okotoks.
About ten years ago, the folks there decided they were going to live within their local environmental means.
Today Okotoks can fairly call itself the greenest community in Canada, maybe the world.
Here's just a few of Okotoks' achievements:
60% of the municipality's power comes from renewable sources.
greenhouse gas emissions have been cut by 1 million tonnes.
Water from the Sheep River that's used by the town is returned to the river cleaner than when it came out.
the town's recreation centre, including the hockey rink and swimming pool, runs almost entirely on solar power.
all the sludge from the sewage treatment plant is composted.
and in a new subdivision that is nearing completion, all 52 homes will be heated by solar power.
Another example of a Canadian community that has decided to go green can be found right here in Montreal, in the suburb of Mont-Saint-Hilaire.
The town's local authorities have designed one of the few North American applications of a concept called transit-oriented development.
This urban village looks like those of yesteryear, in that most of the town's facilities are nearby, allowing people to get around by foot.
A few thousand housing units will be built on a former industrial site that has been entirely rehabilitated. No one will live more than a ten-minute walk from the commuter station.
Figures on mass transit are already showing a significant decline in automobile trips to get to work.
And here's the icing on the cake: Mont-Saint-Hilaire real estate prices have steadily increased since the development of the village.
Okotoks and Mont-Saint-Hilaire are leading the way toward a cleaner, greener, healthier lifestyle for all Canadians.
They're showing us what can be done, what needs to be done.
We applaud local initiatives like these.
More important, we need to take measures to deal with national environmental issues that do not come under the responsibilities of local communities.
The 2007 federal budget, which is now before Parliament, includes measures which are critical for the environment, like:
new programs to spur the production and use of renewable fuels;
replacing the general subsidies for oil sands development with green investments;
measures aimed at encouraging the use of fuel-efficient vehicles;
new investments in infrastructure, particularly mass transit;
dramatically increased support for the enforcement of environmental laws;
a Canadian strategy to clean up the Great Lakes;
a partnership with the not-for-profit organization Nature Conservancy of Canada to preserve a half-million acres of wildlife in Southern Canada;
an initiative to preserve the Great Bear Rain Forest in British Columbia; and, of course,
confirmation of funds for the ecoTrust partnerships with the provinces and territories.
Ladies and Gentlemen, some of you may have heard me talk about Canada as a new global energy superpower.
Thanks to our geological resources and our geography, we will be one of the world's largest producers of oil, gas, uranium and hydroelectric power for a very long time.
But with great energy power comes great environmental responsibility.
And Canada must demonstrate leadership when it comes to protecting and enhancing the environment.
Canada must be not merely an energy superpower, but a clean energy superpower.
If, for example, we succeed in establishing on a large scale the carbon sequestration technologies that are currently being tested in Alberta and Saskatchewan, we will export this technology to the rest of the world and make a huge difference in the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.
These are exciting and challenging times.
Inaction on the environment heralds consequences that are beyond contemplation. But action on the environment promises opportunities of limitless potential.
Are Canadians ready to mobilize in a national project of environmental protection for this generation and future generations?
I believe we are, and I can assure you, our government is ready to lead the way.
Toward real targets with realistic timeframes that will achieve real results.
Using a balanced approach that achieves environmental progress while preserving jobs and living standards.
It's leadership that Canadians want when it comes to air quality and climate change.
And it's leadership they'll get from Canada's New Government.
Thank you.
The Prime Minister's Office - Communications
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