44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 3, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/3/22 4:16:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this opposition motion. I am sure nobody will be surprised by this, but I regret to inform the House so early on that I will not be supporting this opposition motion.
This motion we have before us has nothing to do with Ukraine. This is a motion about pipelines. It is extremely unfortunate the Conservative Party of Canada would bring a motion to this House about pipelines under the guise of trying to be supportive of Ukraine.
This is so glaringly obvious to me, because nobody would every disagree with the first two clauses of this motion. I do not think there is a Canadian out there who does not realize the vast majority of Canadians stand with Ukraine right now. There is no one who follows politics closely, or even remotely follows politics, who does not realize that every party in this House supports the Ukrainian people, supports what they are fighting for and condemns Vladimir Putin.
The first two clauses in this motion are moot because we already passed unanimous consent motions of this support. We already talked about the different things we can be doing in Ukraine to make the situation there better and to properly support Ukraine as it is going through this extremely difficult time.
It all comes down to the third clause in this motion, which is a clause about pipelines. It would have been much more genuine had the Conservatives just shown up here today and said that they had a motion about pipelines, presented their motion saying that they want more pipelines, like they do so often in this House, and just called it for what it was.
Instead, Conservatives come in with this motion with these two additional clauses in it to somehow suggest that this has to do with Ukraine. This is just wedge politics they are doing right now. It is feeding to their base, which is so dead set on oil being the only solution.
We listened to what the Conservatives said today about energy security. They talk about energy as though oil is the only option for energy. They use the terms energy and oil interchangeably because they see oil as being the only option when it comes to energy.
I will talk about this motion in the context of it being a motion about pipelines. Let us just assume for a second that that was genuinely what the Conservatives wanted, that they came in here to talk about pipelines. It does not make any sense even from a pipeline perspective. The Conservatives keep talking about these new pipelines and the eastern European countries, and the other countries, that will supposedly be saved by them, but why is it that Conservatives think Europe wants to transfer its dependency from one third country to another third country? They do not want to do that.
As a matter of fact, the European commissioner for energy, Kadri Simson, said that the Russian invasion made their vulnerability painfully clear. She stated, “We cannot let any third country destabilize our energy markets or influence our energy choices.”
We have the energy commissioner for the European Union saying they do not want to be dependent on any third country for their energy sources, but then we have the Conservatives coming in here and saying that we need to build pipelines so we can make them dependent on us. The same commissioner for energy for the European Union said that they had to be “boosting renewables and energy efficiency as fast as technically possible.”
Even if the European Union was looking to diversify and get some of this oil, even though the commissioner said it is not, it is not interested in oil as a source of energy. It is interested in renewables. That is what it is saying. Even if the Conservatives are coming from a well-intentioned place on this and really thought that these pipelines were about the security of Europe, those in Europe are telling us that they are not interested in them. They do not want to be dependent on another country and they are very much interested in looking for a very fast transition to renewables. That is not to mention the fact that building these pipelines will cost billions of dollars and will take years to complete.
Europe has made it clear that it is comfortable with its current reserve situation for this winter, but has to start looking toward next winter. It has also made it clear that it is not interested in being dependent on another country, and that it is interested in renewables as a form of energy as quickly as possible. Most of the western world is on board with this and understands it, the European energy commissioner knows this, four parties in the House know this and I would say the vast majority of Canadians know this, yet somehow the Conservatives come in here and are completely unaware of it. I am left wondering why they are doing this. Why do they think they need to put this forward? Do they genuinely think this is plausible? Let us remember that the European Union has said it is not interested and this will take years to build and a lot of money. Why are they doing this? Is it just to shore up their base and prove to their base that they are fighting for oil and gas? That is the only thing I can conclude as the motivation for bringing forward such a motion today.
In conclusion, I will say that I am more than willing to tell my Conservative colleagues across the way, all members of the House and all Canadians that I am not interested in pipelines. I am certainly not interested in the government subsidizing pipelines. I do not think there is a role anymore in this day and age for the Government of Canada to be subsidizing pipelines. Does that mean I am completely naive to the amount of oil we use? No, I am not. I am fully aware that to make the vast majority of the products in this room, if not all, we used oil, whether directly or indirectly. I am also aware that the technologies we need to be investing in and subsidizing are those that provide options to make these products differently so we can put different things into the various products we are currently making out of oil.
This is the default reaction from the Conservatives all the time. They always say that we need oil and that we will not be getting off oil tomorrow. I get that, I agree with that, I understand that and I am not dismissing it at all. However, I am saying that my personal opinion is that oil is not the solution long term. When we talk about building pipelines, we are talking long term. We are interested in 20, 30 or 40 years down the road. There will always be a dependency on some form of oil or gas and I get that, but hopefully not the degree of dependency we have today. We need to move away from this.
I surely do not support this motion, and I think it is shameful that the Conservatives are using a crisis on the other side of the world to promote their agenda.
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- Mar/3/22 4:26:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was not aware that NATO was going to do that, but if, as the member is saying, NATO is going to talk about energy security as it relates to each individual NATO country, I think it is an incredibly important conversation to have. We know that what has motivated so much of the invasion that is going on right now is oil: the consumption of oil and the need for it. That has also limited, in many regards, the response from certain countries, because they do not have full autonomy.
If NATO is going to go down the lane of having those discussions about energy security for independent nations or NATO nations, I think it is an incredibly important conversation to have, and if the minister was seeking my input on it, I would certainly encourage her to have those conversations.
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- Mar/3/22 4:28:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree 100% that this is what we should be doing. Do members know where some of the real leadership is in Canada with respect to renewable energies? It is in Alberta. Alberta's renewable energy sector has outpaced the fossil fuel industry for almost a decade now, or at least seven or eight years, but some people do not want that to happen.
I totally agree with the member from the Bloc that this is the way of the future. If we really want to help Europe, we will need to help contribute to that energy security conversation that the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke brought up, because at the end of the day, I think that is where we are going to go with this. We can be leaders in renewable energy. We can be leaders in developing and building the technology. We can export that knowledge and can export that leadership if we seize it now. Otherwise, we will just be taking it from other countries as they develop it.
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- Mar/3/22 4:30:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I totally agree that we have no time to waste and that we need to do this as quickly as possible. To the member's other comment, I think Vladimir Putin knows that too, and I think he realizes that every day, every week and every year that goes by, as we get closer and closer to a permanent shift away, he loses that power. I think he has seized his opportunity now because he still retains some of that power. In 10, 15 or 20 years from now, that might not exist and he will be a lot less powerful.
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- Mar/3/22 5:16:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would request a recorded division, please.
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