44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 2, 2021 10:00AM
- Dec/2/21 4:17:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Parkdale—High Park from the bottom of my heart for his speech.
I can see that he is quite familiar with the health care system and its funding, as well as mental health.
I must make a confession today. The only time I read the Canadian Constitution was the French version, in which health is an exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces.
Could my colleague tell me what is written in the English version, please?
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- Dec/2/21 4:20:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Shefford.
I would like to take a moment to thank the volunteers at the Centre d'entraide Saint‑Colomban, the parish of Saint Francis of Assisi in Oka, and the Carrefour d'entraide Saint-Placide for organizing their charity drive. This was a tremendous act of selflessness, and I commend them.
In passing, I would also like to commend one of my constituents, Jasmine Bikarski-Lalande.
As a new member of Parliament, I was hoping to hear great things here, especially in the Speech from the Throne. To me, that speech was the ideal time for the government to set out its agenda and, without explaining each of its policies in detail, at least share its ambitions for the next four years. I say four years because I hope the Liberals realize that they cannot just call an election whenever they feel like it.
I had expectations when reading the Speech from the Throne, and this may have been the academic in me, but I was looking for footnotes because the speech was lacking in content, which bothered me. During the tough election campaign, I met with Mirabel residents who wanted to know why the election had been called and why they would have to go to the polling station in the middle of summer in the middle of a pandemic. These people, these families, these young people, including people from flood-stricken Sainte‑Marthe‑sur‑le‑lac, also talked to me about the environment and climate change.
I was expecting to find answers in the throne speech. The Bloc Québécois has been sounding the alarm for years now, saying that the government, whether current or previous, is not doing anything. We are told that we have it all wrong, so we respond that the government is not meeting its targets, and then we are told again that we have it all wrong and that the government is taking action.
Did the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development have it all wrong when he indicated in the report he released a few days ago that the government had not delivered? Canada is the laughingstock of the G7. It cannot even meet its own targets and it is using 2005 as the baseline year instead of 1990 so that it can conceal 15 years of unchecked exploitation of dirty oil. That is unacceptable. The other self-respecting countries, including Quebec and the 27 EU countries, use 1990 as the baseline year.
Being open-minded, I was curious to see how the minister would explain these facts. The minister told us that it was because of the Harper era. He said this even though the environment commissioner's report covered all the years under the current government.
As I said, however, I keep an open mind, so I kept listening. The government told us that the Liberals were taking action, but that the Harper government had been so terrible that we were still suffering the consequences. I decided to do a bit of research to see what this government has done for the climate, and I will admit that it has taken action: it went out west to buy a pipeline that cost $4.5 billion of taxpayers' money.
Not being very smart, I did not quite understand why the government did that. The explanation it gave was that the pipeline would be so profitable that the government could use the profits to fight climate change.
I am a good researcher, so I checked reports from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. I figured that the federal government must be making money on this, because every 15 minutes, the minister says that the government is taking action on climate change. However, the rate of return on the public money invested in the pipeline is 0.5%. In comparison, as the Conservatives keep saying, the inflation rate is 5%. As members can see, the environment is of virtually no importance to the government.
I wanted to make a joke. I wanted to calculate how many trees could be planted with the profits from this pipeline, but I realized that without Alberta's tax relief, the pipeline would be in the red. In order for my joke to work, I would have to go into the forest and tear down trees, which makes no sense.
I continued to think about this. I am a very calm and logical person. I told myself that there was surely something going on that I did not understand. There are so many intelligent people in this place who are helping to save the planet. It was at that point that I understood what comes next.
What comes next is that the pipeline has to be expanded. We did not figure it out, but Canada has to inject at least another $12 billion of public money into the pipeline. If we expand the pipeline, pump out more oil and increase production, what will happen? There will be more money to combat climate change.
This is the kind of thing that makes Quebeckers and Canadians cynical. However, if Canadians and Quebeckers do not fully understand the message that the government is sending, the financial markets do.
What message is the government sending the financial markets? It is the following. If you are a foreign company that decides to set up shop in western Canada and you make a bad investment in a pipeline, which, besides being unprofitable is not supported by civil society, the Liberal Party will be there to help you. If the company fails or is no good, the Liberal Party will be there to help. That is what is known as too big to fail.
Let us not then be surprised when there are problems and a big part of the country is trapped in this industry.
The Bloc Québécois is a party that makes proposals. What this situation shows us is that we must address the issue of the money going out to those provinces and this industry. The facts show that over the past five years, our own banks have invested $700 billion in this industry, money taken from savers, families, people who put money in the piggy bank.
We are therefore proposing a green finance platform. It is very simple: We believe that Canadian banks should be required to publicly declare how much they are investing in the oil and gas sector. It is a matter of transparency. They should have to disclose their investments. Nutritional information is disclosed, chemicals are disclosed, the content of feather pillows has to be disclosed, but when we deposit our money with a Canadian financial institution, we cannot find out if our money is brown or green. That is what we are asking for.
I know that the Conservatives will not like me. They believe in the free market, but as it happens, I am an economics professor. The first thing we teach CEGEP students is that a market economy only works when there is transparency, when people know where they are putting their money, when they know what they are doing. That is what we are asking for.
In conclusion, I just want to say one thing. We know the western provinces are victims. Jean Chrétien himself said that, if he had given as much money to Quebec as he did to Alberta, he would have won every seat in Quebec. I personally think Quebeckers have better judgment than that. Still, the message is there.
Western Canada's fossil fuel industry is essentially a state enterprise subsidized and supported by various levels of government. That is why we also want to propose green equalization, which is so important to us. This program, which will benefit provinces that do their utmost to reduce emissions, will take equalization and current oil subsidies into account.
We are reaching out and hoping for a little introspection on both sides of the House. I can guarantee that there are not a lot of fingerprints on the dictionary page with the word “introspection”. If we want to fix the problem, we have to admit there is a problem. We are a petrostate. Quebeckers are victims of the petrostate. Quebec's economy is a victim of the petrostate. We need to cap production and reduce it. We need to focus on the future. That is a fact.
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- Dec/2/21 4:31:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I could answer him with the words of Gilles Vigneault: One world ends, another beginsYou can take back your romanceI think I finally understandWe are no longer from the same land
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- Dec/2/21 4:32:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for raising this issue.
We have been very clear about our proposal over the past several days. We are asking the minister to create a joint task force immediately, because it is within his authority to do so. The fact that we have to keep asking for this clearly shows that the federal government is not doing its job and that there is a lot more to do. For once we are talking about an issue that falls under Ottawa's jurisdiction, so the federal government needs to assume responsibility and do its job.
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- Dec/2/21 4:33:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is a very emotional issue for us, and I thank the former leader of the Green Party for raising it.
At this time, it is difficult to know how much of the area in question is polluted. We expect that the Quebec and federal governments will team up and look into this situation and that by working together, they will stop playing ping-pong on this issue.
This is a critical issue for our region, in Oka, Saint‑Benoît, Saint‑Placide, Saint‑Joseph‑du‑Lac and Kanesatake, where the people are the first to suffer. This affects a large part of my riding, and I thank the hon. member for bringing it up in the House.
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- Dec/2/21 4:34:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are interested in finance that generates long-term investments. Long-term growth is generated by investments that are sustainable. Likewise, long-term pollution is generated by sustained investments in the most polluting markets.
We want to increase the banks' transparency because we believe that consumers will respond in an informed way. We also believe that greater use should be made of taxation to ultimately incentivize financial institutions and investment funds to invest in the technologies of the future, as well as to reduce the risks that—
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