44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 24, 2021 02:00PM
- Nov/24/21 2:59:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my province has been devastated by natural disasters over this past year. Between wildfires, landslides and flooding, my constituents and countless British Columbians are having their property and lives threatened, or even lost.
With the ever-worsening reality of climate change, we know these weather events are going to become more frequent and severe.
Can the Prime Minister please update this House on his critical work to address this issue?
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- Nov/24/21 11:04:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I first want to congratulate you on your reappointment to this role.
It is a privilege to rise once more in the chamber to join the debate for the first time in the 44th Parliament. I first want to start by thanking all the volunteers, dedicated staff, friends and family who worked tirelessly to get me here. I am also deeply indebted to my partner, Nicole, for standing by my side and giving me the strength to be the best representative and the best person I can be.
I am truly honoured that the people of West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country have placed their trust in me to serve as their representative in the House. I am here to make their voices heard and be their advocate. That is why I am here today to speak about the crisis that British Columbians are currently facing.
The last Parliament, while speaking about the landmark net-zero accountability act, I rose in the House to share about the increasing toll that climate change was having on British Columbia and the people of my community. That law now binds the Government of Canada to set ambitious targets and to report regularly on our progress to ensure that we are accountable to meeting them.
Even as we and, increasingly, the world works to reduce emissions, we will be grappling with ever-worsening impacts of climate change over the coming decades at best. We cannot solely focus on mitigation. The events of the past two weeks underline that we are long overdue with actions to adapt to an already and rapidly changing climate.
The year 2021 has been a watershed moment for the climate crisis in British Columbia. This summer, we suffered an unprecedented heat wave, or heat dome, and saw the town of Lytton become one of the hottest places in the world one day before being razed to the ground the next day. Almost the entire province set record-high temperatures, some places by 5°C or more, and 595 British Columbians lost their lives due to the extreme heat. The incredible heat wave sparked wildfires across the province that burned nearly 8,700 square kilometres of land and forced thousands of people out of their homes. People across B.C. had to breathe in some of the most polluted air on the planet as the sun was blotted out by wildfire smoke.
High heat levels caused rapid melting of mountain snow caps that sent torrents of rushing water into the rivers below. When the nighttime temperatures at the top of snow-capped Mount Currie hovered in the mid-thirties, the nearby village of Pemberton was put on evacuation alert as melt waters came centimetres away from flooding the village. It was fortunate the water was able to infiltrate the soil at that time.
The entirety of the coastal areas of my riding were affected as billions of marine organisms died, leaving an unmistakable stench throughout coastal B.C.
Less than six months later, we find ourselves in yet another unprecedented climate disaster. An atmospheric river brought more than a month's worth of rain in just two days, breaking more than 20 rainfall records. Places that just this summer were burning uncontrollably are now underwater. This time it is extreme flooding that has caused thousands of British Columbians to flee their homes. It has destroyed homes, infrastructure and businesses, including in my own riding, where flooding on the Sunshine Coast has left roads closed, shut residents off from water and put others under a boil water advisory. This is happening in the same year where these same homes were under stage four water restrictions.
While we do not have estimates on what the final cost of this disaster will be, we know that it will become the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history. It is easy to see why. Roughly $240 billion worth of goods travel through the Port of Vancouver every year, and the Lower Mainland has been cut off from the rest of the country. Every road and rail line was severed by floods and landslides or badly damaged.
The Coquihalla Highway facilitates the transportation of billions of dollars worth of goods, and many thousands of people have suffered multiple extensive wash-outs and bridge collapses. It will likely be out of commission for months to come. Some of Canada's most fertile farmland has been flooded and thousands of livestock have drowned or have been euthanized.
At this point, all orders of government are working together to respond to this crisis. We have seen heroic efforts of individuals to support those who have been impacted, by donating and transporting essential food, housing stranded people and donating generously to response efforts. The Government of Canada has revamped its El rules to rapidly get support to impacted British Columbians, negotiated with our American friends to ease border measures and deployed the military to build up damaged infrastructure to protect us from further incidence that is looming, with projected rainfall tomorrow being up to 80 millimetres.
These are just some of the examples. These are the real economic costs of climate change and they are happening today. Despite being the most environmentally disastrous year in B.C.'s history, this is a harbinger of what we can expect to see in the future.
This past summer, Oxfam conducted an analysis of research by the Swiss Re Institute that concluded Canada's economy could shrink by 6.9% by 2050 without ambitious climate action. These events will increase in both frequency and severity, and unless we are better prepared to be resilient, they will enact a heavy toll.
The Government of Canada has been taking action in this space, but we need to do more and we need to do it faster. Programs like the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund provide support for large-scale infrastructure projects to help communities better manage the risks of natural disasters.
Earlier this year, I was proud to announce funding to the Resort Municipality of Whistler to build firebreaks to mitigate forest fire risk for the area. We also launched a national infrastructure fund earlier this year that will allow us to focus on natural infrastructure solutions that are inherently more resilient to climate change for the reason Pemberton was spared from what I mentioned before.
Budget 2021 also provided billions in new money to the provinces and territories to do disaster mitigation. Earlier today the Prime Minister committed to move forward with a low-cost national flood insurance program, and we are going to work with the provinces and territories to update flood risk mapping. This is incredibly important because we know towns like Merritt were relying on flood risk mapping that was almost 40 years old.
Going forward, our government has also committed to work with first nations to mitigate wildfire risk, utilizing practices they have employed to great effect since time immemorial. It has also committed to introducing a national adaptation strategy within the next year and implementing a climate lens, including both adaptation and mitigation into all future government decision-making.
The saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is certainly true in this case, and these and other actions are urgent.
I want to end by mentioning the story of my friend Noah. Noah was driving home to Vancouver from near Merritt when he encountered a mudslide when going down the Coquihalla. He had to turn back and take an alternate route going down Duffy Lake Road. There were no warnings and no advisories on this road. Midway through his drive, he was stopped on the highway and before long he was unsuspectingly caught in a mudslide. His car flipped, rolled over multiple times and was totalled, but he and his passenger were miraculously able to make it out alive, if not bruised and very muddy.
This is in no small measure to fellow trapped drivers, including first responders who worked swiftly to pull them and others out of their cars, taking them in and keeping them warm until they could get a ride out of there. They were lucky to get out safely, but at least four people tragically were not.
We know events like this are going to be ever more commonplace, and we need to work with all orders of government to keep people safe. We need to ensure our infrastructure will be resilient to extreme weather events like these, that individuals understand the risk to themselves and to their property. We need to be adaptive to rapidly changing conditions we will see.
I hope that all members of this House will capture and nurture the urgency and drive we all feel today so we can work together to lower our emissions and reduce the risks our communities face from a rapidly changing climate.
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- Nov/24/21 11:14:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, indeed, all orders of government are working closely together, and cabinet ministers of different portfolios are working on and are seized with this issue. The army has been deployed. To my understanding, currently about 500 members of the Canadian Armed Forces have been deployed and are working to repair things like the levy and other areas that need to be repaired so that the coming rain will not put people who are already out of their homes at further risk.
I would like to also express my support for the government doing everything it can to help people in their time of need, just as our government has been there to support people through the COVID pandemic.
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- Nov/24/21 11:16:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we need to continue to do more and we need to do it faster. We need to ensure that we are mitigating our emissions as best we can now, which is why we have committed to setting a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector and have them steadily decline in five-year increments to ensure we can meet our greenhouse gas mitigation targets that we set and are now held accountable to with legislation passed just a few months ago.
As we are doing this, we need to be investing in the types of technologies that are going to allow us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel energy, as well as reduce emissions in other parts of our society. Over the last four or five years, we have invested about $100 billion in that space, but we will need to do more. We will also need to continue to invest in adaptation. We need to do even more in this space. Some of the events of the last couple of weeks, indeed of this entire year, really highlight that. Some of the things I mentioned—
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- Nov/24/21 11:18:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we need to make emissions cuts right now. It is not just about 2050. That is too far down the road. The emissions that we are able to cut now are that much more important. We have committed to an updated target of 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. The target of 45% below is what the Paris agreement committed to and we need to ensure we do our part to do that and more.
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