44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 24, 2021 02:00PM
- Nov/24/21 2:36:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are in a climate crisis and we need to act urgently. This climate crisis also presents an opportunity to create good jobs for workers, but not if we do not have a plan. This throne speech completely misses the opportunity to have a plan for workers.
Why did the Prime Minister abandon workers, without a plan to create good-paying jobs that would help us fight the climate crisis? Why is there no plan for workers in this throne speech to fight the climate crisis?
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- Nov/24/21 2:37:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are in a climate crisis, and we must act immediately.
One thing we can do is eliminate subsidies to the oil industry. The government has promised to do this, but at the moment it is investing 14 times more in fossil fuels than in renewable energy.
Will the Prime Minister commit to completely eliminating oil subsidies in order to invest the money in renewable energy to tackle the climate crisis?
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- Nov/24/21 2:57:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are in a housing crisis where people cannot find a home to call their own. It is impossible for people to find a home. They are seeing the forces of speculation driving up the cost of housing and this federal government and previous governments have not invested enough money in building homes that people can actually afford.
Given this crisis, why is the Prime Minister not responding to the seriousness of this crisis with the response necessary to help people find a home that they can actually afford?
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- Nov/24/21 2:58:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a housing crisis. It is impossible to find affordable housing right now, and this government does not know what “affordable” means. It thinks that $2,225 a month for rent in Montreal is affordable. That is crazy.
Why has the Prime Minister not taken the urgent action necessary to address the housing crisis and help Canadians?
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- Nov/24/21 3:21:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, right now the government is cutting the help that vulnerable seniors and families need. By cutting the GIS and cutting the child benefit, vulnerable seniors and families are struggling to put food on the table and they are struggling to keep their homes because they cannot afford the rent.
The Prime Minister can fix this today. Will the Prime Minister commit today to ending the clawbacks of GIS and the child benefit, and stop hurting vulnerable seniors and families?
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- Nov/24/21 8:42:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank everybody for being here for this emergency debate. I want to thank the member who spoke previously, a colleague of mine from the New Democrats who brought this motion forward, as well as others who brought it forward.
What is happening right now in British Columbia has laid bare the reality that the climate crisis is not a problem for the future. It is another example of how the climate crisis is a reality we face today. I am certain we have seen enough examples that we no longer believe this is just a question of making sure our children inherit a future and an environment that is safe. We have seen extreme weather and the forest fires in B.C. We have seen hotter and drier summers across the country, which have left many communities ravaged by forest fires.
Now the floods in B.C. are devastating communities. We have heard some of the examples of what is going on. We are seeing communities that are entirely washed out. There are parts of the Lower Mainland that were completely disconnected from other communities. We are seeing infrastructure completely destroyed. Homes have been destroyed. People are being displaced. Farms have been destroyed. This is the devastation of the climate crisis.
Sadly, the reality is that this is not an exception. This is becoming the norm. Right now our thoughts are with the communities that are impacted, and we are pushing for as much help as possible to be delivered; communities are working to get back to a place where they can continue to be connected and they can get the roads fixed. However, we need to start looking at what we can do if this is going to be normal, if this is going to be what we expect. As my colleague said, even if we tackle the climate crisis and we limit and reduce our emissions, there is some climate change that has already been baked in. We are going to see a rise in temperature. We are already seeing it, and that means extreme weather will become more common.
What do we do about it? First, let us look at the impacts. Actually, it is not just in B.C. Right now we are talking about the incredibly horrible impacts in B.C., but as we speak there are extreme weather patterns happening in Newfoundland and Labrador. The community of Channel-Port aux Basques in Newfoundland is completely cut off as well. The roads have been washed out. Trans-Canada highways have been washed out in Newfoundland. In Nova Scotia, Cape Breton has just right now, in the past couple of hours, been hit with an incredible weather pattern. They are saying it will take days or weeks for their communities to return to normal.
The entire country, the entire world is being gripped with extreme weather, which means more rainstorms and flooding, and drier and hotter summers. What we need to do is acknowledge that we have to take on this climate crisis with the urgency it demands.
We have not seen that urgency on the part of the Liberal government. The urgency of the need to respond to dire climate crisis means we need to start acting immediately. We need dramatic and bold steps to reduce our emissions. We need to invest in renewable energy. We need to invest in these communities.
My colleague laid this out, but I want to be very clear on this. We need three things to be enhanced. First is our emergency preparedness. We need the federal government to play a stronger role in this. We need to respond more quickly to these extreme weather circumstances and these disasters. We need disaster mitigation. We need to make investments ahead of time so that we are not just responding to a crisis but instead investing in communities to make sure they are more resilient and built in a way that they can withstand what is becoming more and more common. If extreme weather is more common, if extreme rainfall and flooding are going to be more common, then we need to build the infrastructure so these communities are more resilient.
We know there is aging infrastructure, and that aging infrastructure is being directly impacted by the extreme weather. I was just in Nunavut, and Nunavut has a water crisis. Right now, the early indications are, again, that it is a direct result of the climate crisis. Warming temperatures and permafrost that is no longer frozen, that is warming, have resulted in shifts in the water supply infrastructure, which has created a contamination of hydrocarbon in Nunavut. The water is poisoned in the largest community in Nunavut. Again, this is a direct result of the climate crisis.
We are being impacted across the country. We are being impacted across the world. We need to start acting.
One of our biggest pushes is that we need to see the federal government take a more active role, making those investments to build more resilient communities. B.C. needs help. We need to be there in solidarity, and I appreciate some of the comments in the chamber expressing solidarity with the people of B.C. That is greatly appreciated. We need to take care of our fellow Canadians and we need to make sure we are doing everything possible to prevent this from happening in the future.
I want to take a moment to talk about some of the incredible stories of support and solidarity. My colleague mentioned some folks in the Sikh community who stepped up and provided food and relief. We see, as Canadians, in difficult times, incredible stories of courage and incredible stories of support from folks who helped out those in need.
I want to acknowledge everyone who provided those supports. I want to acknowledge neighbours who looked out for their vulnerable community members, for vulnerable seniors. I want to acknowledge and thank people in the community who provided food and shelter to those in need.
I want to acknowledge the frontline workers, the workers who provided supports to those who needed to be evacuated and the workers who provided supports to those who needed health care supports. I also want to acknowledge all the communities that are right now housing evacuees from communities that cannot go back to their homes. There are countless people across the province who have been evacuated and are being housed in neighbouring communities; the generosity, open arms and warmth of those communities has to be acknowledged. I want to thank everyone across the country and everyone across the province who has provided that support and provided that help.
Our response to this crisis is important, so I am going to encourage the Liberal government to do everything possible to provide the support to rebuild the highways, the bridges and the infrastructure that have been damaged. Again, I want to make a strong push. What we have seen from the government when it comes to the climate has often been a lot of pretty words, and I hope this horrible disaster makes clear the price of nice words and the cost of inaction.
It is not good enough to talk about the climate crisis. It is not good enough to say one cares. It is not good enough to stand up in the House and say one had the best plan in the last election. Put it into action. Let us see some concrete action. Canadians are demanding it. People across this country are demanding action. They are witnessing the impact of a climate crisis in their lives right now, and they are saying, “Do something about it.”
Canadians are fed up. They are frustrated. They do not want to see more empty promises; they want to see concrete actions. We want to see the investments and a real plan so that we can tackle the climate crisis. We want to see an opportunity to use this recovery as we move forward past the pandemic, as an opportunity to create jobs in communities that need this infrastructure to be rebuilt, to create local jobs, to improve the infrastructure and to build jobs of today and of tomorrow.
While we are up against a horrible disaster, and in times of disaster we are focused on the tremendous loss, there is an opportunity here for us to do something that will build a brighter future. There is an opportunity for us to make investments in clean energy and in better infrastructure. There is an opportunity for us to take this horrible time and this disaster as motivation to do the right thing, to fight for the today and the tomorrow for our children, and to take every step possible to ensure that we protect our communities, our people and our future.
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- Nov/24/21 8:53:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what we need now is a two-pronged approach. We need to immediately invest in the infrastructure needed to make sure communities are resilient. We also need to make sure we are doing everything possible to fight the climate crisis.
We know that this is also a global problem, but if we do not do our part in Canada, if we do not end fossil fuel subsidies, if we do not invest in renewable energy and if we do not have a plan for workers, we are not in a position to then encourage countries around the world to provide support and leadership for other countries around the world to do their part. What we need to do right now is immediately invest in resilient community infrastructure that can help these communities deal with the extreme weather that is becoming more common more often. We also need to make sure we are investing in every solution possible to fight this climate crisis.
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- Nov/24/21 8:54:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we need to do everything possible while we are in this chamber to do our part as a country. We know there are billions of dollars of federal subsidies right now that continue to flow to the oil and gas sector. That is money that should go toward renewable energy. That is money that should go toward creating a plan for workers. That is money that should go toward fighting the climate crisis. We are going to do everything we can in this House and this chamber to ensure we are using all of our resources toward solving the problem, building a brighter future and protecting communities right now.
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- Nov/24/21 8:56:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, without a doubt this is a human-made problem. The climate crisis was created by human activity. It is going to take people coming together and the government investing in solutions to improve the infrastructure. Absolutely, we need to build more resilient communities. That is something we need to be aware of, and the federal government has to play a role in building those more resilient communities. The climate crisis has been caused by us and we have to do our part to stop it.
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