During the next few years, a new parliamentary building will rise on
the slope of Parliament Hill and environment minister David Anderson
hopes it will be good news for prairie canola farmers.
No, it will not be a processing centre for oilseed industry support
cheques.
Anderson envisions a building that will be heated and cooled by biofuel
based on canola oil.
“Why not?” he asked during a Nov. 27 speech to the annual meeting of
the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association.
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Anderson said he would lobby within government, including public works
minister Ralph Goodale whose department will oversee the project, to
have the biofuel option considered.
When Germany rebuilt its legislative building in Berlin, it installed
furnaces that run on sunflower oil.
“Replace sunflower oil with canola oil and I don’t see why Canada can’t
be at the forefront of the renewable energy revolution,” he said.
Anderson was among friends at the CFRA and he used his speech to
promote the government’s commitment to ratifying the Kyoto protocol on
greenhouse gas emissions.
He said increased ethanol production and use is a key part of the
government’s Kyoto implementation plan, with a commitment to quadruple
production to one billion litres by 2010 and to require that 35 percent
of gasoline sold in Canada by 2010 contains at least 10 percent
ethanol.
Many critics and ethanol boosters, including Goodale, insist the goal
is too modest. They want all gasoline fuel to contain an ethanol mix.
Anderson said that to meet the goals, the ethanol industry must
determine how to expand to meet expected demand, reduce production
costs and convince more gasoline retailers to carry ethanol.
“We do not want to meet our targets with imported ethanol,” Anderson
said.
Expansion of the industry will be a boost for farmers and rural
communities that host the plants.
Even as Canadian Alliance MP and environment critic Bob Mills was in
the third day of a filibuster in the House of Commons to stop a
scheduled Kyoto debate from starting, the environment minister insisted
the deal will pass and the federal-provincial-industry tensions that
seem part of the debate will dissipate.
Even now, as media reports describe a federal-provincial war and a
breakdown of co-operation over the issue, Anderson said Ottawa and the
provinces continue to talk and negotiate.
