Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the work that the standing committee put in to examining these bills. The process was obviously very fraught. I don't want to go too far down that road, because it is well-documented in this report and by the remarks of my colleague. I just want to underline that the studies that are being reported in the media reveal a real urgency around this issue to begin taking action in order to slow warming and, if at all possible, to roll it back.
I hear a lot of messaging from the government that says, as a small jurisdiction with a small population, that somehow we need a bye on participating in the solution. I want to say that I don't agree with that. We need to be fully involved in action on the climate crisis. This is one possibility. There are many others. I spoke about some of them during the last session.
Just to quickly recap, I suggested that there be a whole-of-government approach to procurement that takes climate change into account so that the most energy-efficient ways of doing business are those that are favoured. I have talked about personal responsibility programs. I have talked about the need to increase money for retrofits. At the moment the uptake on retrofit programs is not very robust. More money could encourage more people to do it. There needs to be a suite of actions that would take action on the climate crisis. This is just the first one, as far as I am concerned. There will need to be more. They may need to be more aggressive than this is.
I am prepared to support this bill, but if I am fortunate enough to be re-elected, I will certainly be making a point of saying that this is just the start, that the government needs to stimulate action in many other areas to deal with the climate crisis. This is not a one-and-done solution. There is more than needs to be done. Thank you.