44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 3, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/3/22 11:26:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not surprised the Liberals are coming out to support the Conservatives. They have had 6,800 backroom meetings with big oil, and there have been more oil subsidies under the Liberals than under the Stephen Harper government.
I want to ask my hon. colleague a quick question. I have seen the map of Canada. To get a pipeline from Alberta to the Atlantic it has to cross Quebec, which has just cancelled the Saguenay pipeline because it undermines our international Paris obligations. Does the hon. member think the Liberals and the Conservatives are going to force Quebec to put the new pipeline through?
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- Mar/3/22 11:59:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would tell my hon. colleague that if the truth hurts, too bad, so sad, because the Conservatives have taken the crisis in Ukraine, the humanitarian suffering, the deaths, the murder of innocent people, turned it around and said this is a great opportunity for them to take billions in taxpayers' money to promote the interests of oil and gas. If they do not like the mathematics of how bad that is, then they should not be in the chamber. Too bad, so sad, because this is their motion. We could have been debating anything of substance. Instead, we are debating Conservative mythologies.
As I was saying, over the last few years, 60 financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings plc, Hartford Financial, the Japan Petroleum Exploration, have all pulled out of Canada. Why? It is because of the lack of a plan to deal with the climate crisis.
Not only are the Conservatives misrepresenting the facts in terms of the horrific humanitarian crisis, but they are misrepresenting the facts to workers because the transition is here. We see the potential. Calgary Economic Development and Edmonton Global are saying that if we start to invest now in clean energy, we are looking at an additional $61 billion for the provincial Alberta economy. If they continue with business as usual, there will be only $4 billion. Year in, year out, we see drops in employment in the oil sector and that is not because people are being mean to them. It is because industry is cutting jobs and making more profits. That is the thing.
That leads me back to the Forbes comparison. Forbes says that having lost the debate in Canada on the climate crisis, oil and gas have shifted, like big tobacco, to the global south, where the number one plan is to make some claims about greenwashing, shift massive exports to the global south where it does not count and then only invest enough in clean tech so it looks like they are doing something. Meanwhile, the market has moved beyond, and it has moved beyond in a substantial way. What we have been given, time and time again, by the Conservative Party is a fake, failed mythology when, year in, year out, jobs in the oil patch have gone down and the opportunity for a clean-tech economy is staring us in the face. There is a huge potential, but if we do not meet that, then we are consigning our children to no future.
To get back to the motion at hand in a very clear way, I have seen a lot of ways the Conservatives and the Liberals will bend over backwards to give taxpayers' money to big oil, to excuse all manner of abuses of accountability and to go along with all manner of fake claims about dealing with the crisis, but emissions have continued to rise, year in, year out. We are talking about the future of our planet, but we are talking about it now, within the context of a global crisis, a humanitarian crisis where people are dying. They expect more from us than this gaudy attempt to claim that our best response to Ukraine is to spend billions of dollars on an unproven, unplanned, unidentified pipeline, when the Europeans are already moving toward clean energy alternatives. This is exploitative and crass.
I have enormous respect for my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills, so I will offer an amendment in order for us to come together and show a higher standard. I move that the motion be amended in paragraph (c) by deleting all the words after “Government of Canada to” and substituting the following, “greatly increase humanitarian aid for Ukraine and for countries bordering Ukraine that have already accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees and provide targeted supports to ethnic minorities who have faced discrimination in their attempt to flee Putin's war in Ukraine.”
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- Mar/3/22 1:29:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, since the start of the conflict, the Conservatives have been calling on the government to impose strong sanctions.
In this morning's edition of La Presse, we learned from a respected journalist that Roman Abramovitch controls 28% of Evraz, which is supplying most of the steel to build the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the Coastal GasLink pipeline. We also learned that another Russian oligarch, Igor Makarov, is the main shareholder in Alberta gas company Spartan Delta. These two individuals are on the United States' list of Vladimir Putin's allies.
Canada is not ruling out confiscating their assets, at this time. Does my colleague agree with the Liberals?
Should we continue to apply a double standard for these individuals or should we immediately impose sanctions on them?
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- Mar/3/22 2:59:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for two years, Canadians have been doing the hard work of getting themselves and each other through this pandemic. Saskatchewan and Alberta have done away with their mandates, with Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces doing the same this month. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister is doubling down on mandates and our allies around the world are moving on. There is no leadership and no plan.
When will the Prime Minister end the mandates?
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- Mar/3/22 3:05:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, “Justinflation” is hurting small businesses in my riding.
Chin Ridge Seeds is a birdseed producer in Taber, Alberta, that relies on imported ingredients for their production. The cost of a single truckload of these ingredients went from $6,000 to $19,000 in a few months. Irrigation pipes went up by 30% and they are critical. Don, the owner, told me that they do not need handouts from the government; they just need it to get out of the way.
Will the government stop its spending spree, get out of the way and let small businesses prosper in the Bow River riding?
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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 4:42:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a serious question for the member regarding my home province of Alberta. We have some of the largest oil reserves in Canada. From this motion, what I am hearing is that they wish to develop these sites and export some of this. However, China has a huge interest in many of the domestic companies here in Canada, particularly in Alberta, some companies with upwards of 50%. We can look back as far 2008 with the Nexen purchase of Canadian oil companies.
Does the member support the profits of these companies, largely owned by China?
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- Mar/3/22 6:27:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I respect my colleague. Anybody who can be an Olympic athlete deserves respect, and one who has represented our country I duly respect, so I respect my colleague across the way.
With respect to the mandates, one of the challenges we are having in the ag sector in southern Alberta is because of the mandates. I have heard from a lot of people in the ag sector that 200 families have left for either Texas or Mexico. We have incredible productivity in the irrigation area: 20% of the ag GDP is from irrigation in Alberta. The ag people in my riding, and other southern Albertans, are extremely upset that we have lost so many because these people chose not to be vaccinated and chose to oppose the mandates. This is going to be an incredible problem in the ag sector in southern Alberta this year.
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