Hon. Grant Mitchell:

Honourable senators, I cannot say I am pleased to speak to the debate on this inquiry because we should not have to discuss the broken promises of the Government of Canada, but such is the situation we find ourselves in.

I will start by thanking Senator Cowan for presenting this inquiry. It is very important, especially with an upcoming election at the heart of which is an equally important issue with regard to this government, that of integrity, honesty and the government's ability to frequently say one thing and do another.

I cannot say that I am happy to be discussing this because one can only be disappointed when one sees how frequently this government made promises that they then went on to break, almost as though it was their default position.

Honourable senators, if ever we needed to change the rules in this chamber, the current context could provide a good incentive for changing time allocation rules. Fifteen or 20 minutes is not enough time to properly address all the times the government has broken its promises.

I want to discuss three broken promises. The first one is that the government actually promised that they would work with the provinces to establish a coordinated plan to deal with climate change. They have never said that they did not do that, but there are two profoundly poignant indications that they did not.

First, the Prime Minister has never met with the premiers of this country to discuss action on climate change. In fact, the Prime Minister has met with the premiers of this country only once, for about two and a half hours, about two or three years ago, on a Friday night in the middle of a hot summer. Who knows what they discussed over dinner at 24 Sussex Drive, but we do know they did not discuss climate change.

How do we know for sure that the Prime Minister and his government could not ever have coordinated a plan with the provinces? The answer is because they do not have a plan. We know that they have had five and a half ministers of the environment. They had five, one of whom was Minister Baird, and they appointed him as a part-time minister yet again, so I say five and a half. That is not bad in less than five and a half years. Since they took over, they have had less than one minister of the environment per year.

As an indicator of how they have neglected and diminished this important portfolio, it is interesting to note that the Prime Minister appointed a part-time minister of the environment for about two or three months. Can honourable senators imagine the Prime Minister of Canada appointing a part-time minister of finance for two or three months, a finance minister who would have had other high-pressure portfolios to deal with as well? Mr. Baird was house leader while he was the part-time minister of the environment. Clearly, the government did not have anyone in place to establish any kind of long-term, consistent plan.

Second, we know that on at least five separate occasions the government has announced new approaches to climate change. Which of those five approaches would they have discussed and coordinated with the provinces?

The first one was that they cancelled all of the climate change programs implemented by the former Liberal government. Those programs would have, even by the most rigorous of tests, established about two thirds of what Kyoto would have established and they would have stimulated the economy.

Honourable senators, the pressure then built. The government looked Neanderthal in not having a plan of any kind for climate change, so they changed again and adopted a "made-in-Canada" stance. Of course, once the U.S. began to become serious about climate change, the government said, "We will do whatever the U.S. does." When the U.S. said that they would apply a cap-and-trade system, the government said that we would do cap and trade as well.

Then, when the U.S. changed its mind because of the pressure from the extreme right of the Tea Party, the government turned around and said that it would not regulate like the U.S. would now have to regulate. Then they changed their minds yet again and said that it would regulate much the same as the U.S. would have to regulate.

With five or six plans in five years, with five and a half ministers of the environment, and with the Prime Minister meeting the premiers of this country once for two and a half hours, how could the government ever hope to fulfill a promise to coordinate with the provinces a plan of attack against climate change? Of course, the government could not.

I would wager that this government never for a moment really and truly believed that they would make any effort whatsoever to work with the provinces to establish a coordinated national plan of action to deal with climate change. If they had promised that and only said that, in truth, it would have been one promise they would have fulfilled. They could have said they had no intention whatsoever of ever dealing with climate change, and they would have fulfilled that promise because, as certain as we are all here in this chamber, they have not done anything of consequence for climate change.

The second broken promise is one that the government has made, perhaps not explicitly but certainly implicitly, that they were going to make Canadians feel safer with all its talk of being tough on crime and defending the borders, the tough talk about war and about being tough in that context, and the talk about crime and about being tough on those criminals. The irony is that Canadians are safer. They are much safer than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. With respect to crime, serious crime is reduced significantly. If it is, then one could argue that Canadians are, in fact, facing less crime — and they are — and objectively, therefore should feel safer.

The one reason Canadians are not feeling safer is that the government keeps talking about how frightened they should be about crime. That is what they are becoming afraid of. The government is continuously trying to justify a policy for which this is no justification. If one wants to make people feel safer about crime, then one should stop talking about it, except in the context of establishing that it is actually going down. If the government has not made people feel frightened enough with a lack in safety on the crime portfolio, it then must promote the "defend your borders" portfolio. We need to be frightened enough to spend billions of dollars on jets that are not priced properly, without a guaranteed price and that certainly are not even completed in their construction, to defend our borders.

The vivid image that the government projected across the country was of our jets having to meet these Russia bombers at the border. These Russian bombers were built in 1952. They have propellers; they have never crossed the border. We are carrying out exercises with the Russian military and the jets that we have now probably will not fly slow enough to stay beside these kinds of bombers without stalling. If it is not enough that we should be afraid of crime when it is going down, the government has tried to establish that we should be afraid of 20th century jets — that is, bombers that are 60 years old and are driven by propellers.

There is a wonderful movie called The American President. If honourable senators have not seen it, then they must. Near the end of it, Michael Douglas gives this remarkable, wonderful, liberal speech. Every time that film is on, I bring my sons over and say, "Get over here and look at this. This is a remarkable, wonderful, liberal speech, boys." They, of course, are motivated and inspired by that. At one point in that speech, he says, "You know what the right wing does? They find something to make you afraid of and then they find someone to blame for making you afraid of it."

In this case, the government found a bunch of things to make Canadians afraid of. The one group that they do not blame for making them afraid is themselves. Crime is going down, honourable senators. We do not need to be afraid of crime in the way that they portray it. We do not need to be afraid of bombers from Russia that are 60 years old in the way that this government is construing it with us being afraid of them.

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