SoVote

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Dec/1/21 3:24:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am still a bit emotional about that wonderful display of unity in this place. I stand to present a petition from petitioners in my community and elsewhere who remain concerned that the Government of Canada is not following the provisions of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. They are particularly troubled by the actions on Wet’suwet’en territory, where the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and other are standing to protect all of us by keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Also, parenthetically, concerns have elevated recently due to the militarized actions in arresting protectors of the land, as well as journalists. The petitioners call on the Government of Canada, the people of Canada and the House of Commons to ensure that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is respected across Canada, particularly on Wet’suwet’en territory.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Dec/1/21 3:38:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague from Repentigny for her speech, her work and her deep commitment to protecting our planet in this climate emergency. I am wondering if she is also concerned about the fact that the other promises made by the Liberals in other election campaigns are not found in the throne speech. For example, the throne speech says nothing about the just transition. In the last campaign, the former minister of environment and climate change promised to eliminate coal exports. That is also not in the throne speech. I would like the member to comment on that.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Dec/1/21 4:56:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know how sincerely my hon. colleague, the member for Newmarket—Aurora, is concerned about the climate crisis. However, I have to say that when we hear from Liberals that the government understands the science around climate, I am desperately afraid. I am genuinely afraid that the science has been misunderstood. We have a net-zero climate act that was passed in the 43rd Parliament. The rhetoric is all about net zero by 2050, yet our commitment in the Paris Agreement is to hold to a global average temperature increase of 1.5°C if possible. We will not get to a global average temperature increase of 1.5°C if the target is net zero by 2050. It gets to be too late too fast. We really have to do more in advance of even next year's climate meeting at COP27. I would ask my hon. colleague if he senses, within the ranks of his colleagues, an understanding that we are now on track for desperately worse and more dangerous climate conditions and potentially the loss of human civilization.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Dec/1/21 5:11:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is with particular joy that I welcome the member from London West to this place. We ran into each in the corridors earlier and remembered that I had met her when she was a young climate activist in 2010 at the Cancun Conference of the Parties. I did not intend to ask her this question, but I intend to answer the question from the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton, because I am considerably older than the hon. member for London West. I remember that a Liberal minister named Ken Dryden had signed agreements with every single province and territory to deliver universal child care, which had already been funded in the 2005 budget when Ralph Goodale was finance minister. I am afraid I have a terribly good memory. We lost Kyoto, the Kelowna accord and a universal child care plan when a minority government under Paul Martin was defeated by the Bloc, the Conservatives and the New Democrats. I do not blame them for that now. I know the cause of making a decision that was so desperately devastating to Kyoto, to child care and to Kelowna. The culprit is our voting system. It is first past the post that creates incentives for good parties to do bad things to get the advantage down the road. I did not ask my hon. colleague a question. I stand here as something of a relic that remembers things, and I am still angry.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Dec/1/21 10:53:11 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with the very hon. member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay. It is an honour to rise here tonight. It is a challenge, with five minutes, to try to dig into this issue, which combines two of my practically lifelong interests and passions: protecting Canada's forests and dealing with trade agreements that tend to be unfair. On this issue, we can all agree in this House, and I do hope we can adopt a team Canada approach, that the recent imposition by the U.S. of countervailing duties and anti-dumping rules that double the tariffs for Canadian softwood lumber are completely unfair and unjustified. Where do we go from there? I would like to suggest a novel approach, but first I want to say what we should be doing as Canadians to help the forest sector. As many members here have said, workers are losing out, communities are losing out and businesses are losing out. We should be able to do something about it domestically without the risk of creating more arguments that Canada is subsidizing its forest products. What could we do? We could try to ban, and I think we can ban, the export of raw logs so we can get logs to our mills for value added and keep people employed for use of the products not just in Canada or the United States but for export. If we look at the way the Swedish forest industry created itself, it created itself for maximum value added and high value export of smaller amounts of timber, whereas Canada organized it for massive amounts of volume for low value export and very little value added. We could flip that around and try to create more jobs and protect the workforce. We should look at doing more with mass timber wood construction of buildings. The bill that was put forward by the hon. member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay is now before the Senate. We supported it in this place and should continue to support it and get it done. We also need to be doing whatever we can to find ways to let forest communities know, after the devastation in our province from pine beetle, which caused a lot of loss of jobs at mills, that we will fight for them. This is where it gets more complicated, and I want to dive into it. The trade agreements are intractable. I remember when Art Eggleton, back in 1995, bought five years of peace in a softwood lumber agreement that lasted until 2000. I do not know how many will remember that. We had these stops and starts. I agree with trade lawyer Larry Herman on this. We need a long-term commitment and a deal that lasts long term, which will take political will from both Washington and Ottawa. However, the bigger picture here, which is new, is that the multilateral trading system is broken. We know it was Donald Trump who broke it, and for some reason, U.S. President Joe Biden has continued to keep it broken. When Canada wins, as we did in the summer of 2020 at the World Trade Organization when it was determined that our approach to forests was not unfair under the trade rules, the U.S. does not like it. It did not like the ruling, everyone complained about it and it appealed it. Guess what? It also said that this was further evidence that the WTO itself is not fair. It said that it kept losing, therefore it was not going to put judges on the WTO appellate bodies. There is a void, a broken system. How do we unstick a broken system? We used to be challenged by the U.S. because it said it was our stumpage rates that created a subsidy. This time around it is saying that a renewable energy program to encourage the forest industry in New Brunswick to produce renewable energy is a subsidy. Now, that gets interesting. We have the trade regimes all around the world interfering with climate action. We have rulings against India for doing solar energy. We have to make sure the trade regime stays out of measures to protect our climate. Maybe, just maybe, the hon. minister for trade and the hon. minister for environment and climate change might get the U.S. administration's attention by suggesting a new approach to really try to unstick the World Trade Organization and make it something that does not fight climate action but ensures that trade rules do not block climate action. We are way overdue for a rethink of our global trading regime. Forgive the word “logjam” in this context, but there is a logjam at WTO created by the U.S. administration that broke the system under Donald Trump and wants it to stay broken under President Biden. It may just be possible, and I do not know how likely it is, to maybe get the Biden administration's attention, through John Kerry and others, to rethink the way these rules are being used, to put judges on the appellate body and to have a long-term vision that includes the climate sequestration benefits of forests.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Ms. Elizabeth May

Dec/1/21 10:58:54 p.m.
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Madam Chair, there is a limited market when what we are selling are two-by-fours. If we were to do more in the value-added area, we could certainly imagine selling more of our wood products to Europe and Japan. Japan, in housing construction, has led the way in a lot of the wood construction housing. I think we have to be creative and expand our markets, but we also have to do more with wood within Canada. Through COVID we have learned a lot about supply chains. Let us do more locally.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Ms. Elizabeth May

Dec/1/21 10:59:56 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I thank my colleague from Jonquière. I completely agree with him that there are benefits to using our forests with the green vision of the bioeconomy. There are several other forestry products that protect the climate and forests, which sequester carbon. It is vital that we consider the value of forests. These forests are worth more than what is earned by clear-cutting them.

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Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

Ms. Elizabeth May

Dec/1/21 11:01:40 p.m.
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Madam Chair, not only have I been around here a long time, I have been around forest policy long enough to remember back to 1982 and shakes and shingles, which sound like something really bad we could get if we did not have a vaccine. We have been perennially dealing with what really boils down to U.S. protectionism, and the U.S. lumber industry has a lot of political clout. However, we have made changes. I mean, we used to be held up on the stumpage issue, and it was not wrong that there was an element of subsidy there, but that has changed dramatically. B.C., Quebec and the Maritimes have changed the stumpage policies to eliminate that notion of subsidy, but the U.S. is still able to play this game, even though it needs our lumber too. A long-term vision is based on fair rules to protect a good bilateral trading regime that helps both countries. We should be able to get to that. So much of it is U.S. politics. Looking at what is happening right now, we hear commentators say that it is likely not to get sorted out until maybe 2023 because of the U.S. midterms. That has nothing to do with our forest policy, and we cannot really blame the current administration as much as one likes to blame it for things. This is perennial, and it has bedevilled Conservative and Liberal governments, and provincial NDP governments, for decades. Finding a solution would be wonderful, but I think we need to open it up at a really high level to get action.

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