44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 17, 2022 10:00AM
- May/17/22 1:36:32 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay.
I would like to start by thanking the member for Victoria for bringing forward this motion and the member for Timmins—James Bay for the incredible work he has done on fossil fuel subsidies.
Canadians spend more tax dollars propping up the fossil fuel industry than any other country in the developed world, with an average of around $14 billion per year in subsidies before the massive COVID-19 orphan well bailout. The question is why. What do we as Canadian taxpayers get for all of this money? Where does this money go?
From 2014-21, corporate profits in the oil and gas sector in Canada rose steadily, seeing an all-time high of $445 billion in 2021. Public subsidies were a significant factor in those record high profits, adding nearly $100 billion over this time to these multinational corporations' bottom lines.
In March 2022, Topaz Energy announced an 8% increase to its quarterly dividend, the company's third such increase since launching its dividend program in 2020. In October 2021, Suncor doubled its quarterly dividend for shareholders, and just last week the oil sands company announced a more than threefold increase in profits in the first three months of this year.
While this is great news for the Americans, the Chinese and other shareholders who own these companies, it is not good news for Albertans. It is not good news for Canadians. While Canadian taxpayers are underwriting these corporation dividends to shareholders, they are laying off workers. During this same period of time, while these massive multinational corporations were soaking up Canadian taxpayers' largesse, the fossil fuel sector was laying off 53,000 Canadian workers. That is 53,000 families, most of them in Alberta, who are facing the worst of times, while their former employers are relishing in the best of times.
What are Canadians getting for this unprecedented public investment? Surely we are at least getting some environmental protection, or some environmental mitigation from emission reductions. The answer is no.
In 2020, the government provided $1.7 billion to the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia to fund the cleanup of inactive oil and gas wells as part of the COVID-19 economic response. The member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay and I wrote to the minister at the time and begged him to attach strings to that money so we would know that it would go to workers, and that it would not just go to corporations that would then not clean up their wells. Can members guess what happened? The money went to the corporations, and the wells have not been cleaned up. In short, this $1.7 billion handout to the oil and gas industry did nothing to create jobs or mitigate pollution. It merely allowed these companies to replace the costs they were obligated to cover with government money.
At the same time that these companies were reaping billions in subsidies, recording record high profits and asking for public dollars to underwrite their own obligations to reduce emissions, they are refusing to pay their local and municipal taxes. In Alberta, rural municipalities are now facing $253 million in unpaid taxes owed by delinquent oil and gas companies. These taxes pay for the roads and the water systems that the companies are relying upon. These taxes support the communities who own the resources, yet the companies are pocketing the profits, walking away from their local tax obligations, just like they walked away from their emissions obligations and their orphan well obligations.
It does not have to be this way. We know what we get with billions in fossil fuel subsidies. We get layoffs. We get devastated communities. We get pollution, and we get climate change. We get to prop up a sunsetting industry whose days are numbered, whether we as taxpayers like it or not, and oil and gas companies get massive profits.
Why would we continue this cycle? There are much better things we could be spending these public dollars on. In Alberta, we have lived through the boom and bust cycles of an economy that is chained to the fossil fuel industry. We need to break this chain. We need to make sure that Albertans, the people in my province, have a future. We need to diversify the economy before it is too late.
For Alberta, the climate crisis is an existential crisis, just like it is for the rest of Canada and the rest of the world. We see an increase in devastation from wildfires, and an increase in droughts and floods. We feel the impacts on our agriculture and forestry sectors. However, for Alberta, it is different.
A transition from fossil fuels is also a matter of economic survival. Instead of $100 billion in public dollars padding fossil fuel's bottom line, and instead of throwing this money at foreign investors, the government should be investing in Alberta, and elsewhere in Canada, to help workers and to create jobs of the future.
More than 50,000 Canadian oil and gas workers have lost their jobs to automation over the past decade, and experts expect layoffs to continue. Why are we not investing to help these workers and apply their skills to other sectors? Why are we not investing to create the jobs they need now, and that their children will need in the future?
Today, approximately 140,000 Albertans work directly in the sector, and hundreds of thousands more rely on jobs from it, but we know that subsidizing the industry is not going to save those jobs. We have decades upon decades of experience demonstrating that. How much longer are we going to keep doing this?
Alberta is uniquely positioned to be a global leader in renewable energy. My province has abundant solar, wind and geothermal resources, and it would have abundant jobs in these areas, if only there were substantial investments in the means necessary, and if only we were not pouring those billions of dollars into subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.
However, there are also opportunities outside of energy, opportunities that develop sectors of our economy based on strategic advantage, such as biomedical research, engineering or artificial intelligence, just to name a few, but these require investment. These opportunities require investment from the federal government. The government should be leading the way when it comes to diversifying Alberta's economy.
Canada has benefited for decades from the oil and gas development in Alberta. I am proud of that. I am proud that Alberta helped build this country. Now, it would be to every Canadian's advantage to help Alberta out of its reliance on oil and gas, and the government has the means to do this. It just needs the will.
I have said this before in the House, but I will finish by saying that I come from an oil and gas family. My grandfather worked in oil and gas. My father was a trucker in the oil and gas sector. My brother washes trucks in the oil and gas sector, and my husband works in the pipeline sector. Members would be hard pressed to find anyone in Alberta who does not have a link to the oil and gas sector. It is our history, and it is a history I am proud of.
I am proud of being Albertan, and I want to make it very clear that Albertans know climate change is real, and we know our future cannot depend on fossil fuels. We do not love our children any less, and we do not want any less for our communities, but unlike other provinces, and unlike folks in other areas of this country, Albertans have so much more to lose if we do not get this right. It is our families and our livelihoods we will lose, if we do not get the just transition right.
We know we cannot depend on the fossil fuel sector. We simply cannot continue along this path of losing jobs, polluting our province and destroying our planet any longer. Whether we want to or not, we know we must change, but we need the government to reverse course, live up to its climate commitments and invest in diversifying our economy before it is too late.
1399 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/17/22 1:47:29 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, if I were a worker in Alberta, I would have zero trust that the government has any interest in supporting me, because it has not shown any interest in supporting Alberta workers. I mentioned in my speech that we asked the government to tie a string so that workers were supported, not big business, and it refused to do it.
In terms of carbon capture, here is my question for the member. Why would taxpayers need to subsidize carbon capture? Why can industry not pay for the carbon capture that it is so proud of and would like to see happen? It should be responsible for funding it.
110 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/17/22 1:49:04 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I would like to give my colleague my deep sympathies, because the Flames are going to lose the next round in the playoffs.
To answer that particular question, I would say there are many things that have contributed to the layoff of Alberta workers. One of the things that I pointed out in my speech is the automation of the oil and gas sector. Even if the oil and gas sector was not causing climate damage and was something that we could continue to go gangbusters with, it does not have the jobs. They are not there. Talk to any worker in the oil and gas sector and they know that. They know the jobs are not staying. There has to be something else.
The longer the Conservatives fail to take that action, the more coverage they give to the Liberals doing nothing. They are helping the Liberals do nothing.
152 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/17/22 1:50:53 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I have worked very well with the member on committee and enjoy his interventions a great deal.
This ability to take these dollars and investing them in communities is very important. One of the areas that I would love to see better investment in is infrastructure for first nation and Métis communities in Alberta.
Right now, we are looking at a situation in northern Alberta where communities have to make a very difficult choice of whether or not to allow the release of tailings ponds into their ecosystem, because they have not been dealt with. There are communities that do not have the resources they need for clean drinking water and for schools. I would love to see those resources going into—
127 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
