44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 17, 2022 10:00AM
- May/17/22 10:05:22 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the member for Winnipeg North often, but I agree with his point of order today. Certainly, as you are aware, we have seen repeated attempts to have these evening sessions. I will say that I regret enormously the conduct of the Conservative caucus yesterday, which I thought was simply not in keeping with the dignity required in the House of Commons.
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- May/17/22 11:50:03 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. As you know, when we speak in the House we have to have at least some connection with the truth, and the member is straying far from any semblance of relying on the truth here.
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- May/17/22 12:00:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is another muddled mess of an amendment from the Conservatives, so no I do not.
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- May/17/22 12:00:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I always enjoy listening to the member for Calgary Centre. This time, though, it was so unrelated to the facts that it was quite unbelievable. Here we have a situation where we know we are talking about $8.6 billion in subsidies last year alone. There were record profits in the oil and gas sector and at the same time, people were being gouged at the pumps. The Conservatives do not seem to recognize any of those realities.
I came out of the oil industry and worked at the Shellburn Oil Refinery in Burnaby, British Columbia. I also worked in social enterprise and won a number of business awards. I understand return on investment, but when Canadians are investing $8.6 billion in subsidies, and we are seeing the increasing cost of climate change now reaching billions of dollars a year that impact Canadians right across the country, why do the Conservatives continue to deny the reality of climate change? Why do they continue to deny the reality of subsidies? Why do they deny the reality of the important issue that is before the House today?
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- May/17/22 12:32:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech by my colleague from Mirabel.
It contrasts with what the Conservatives said earlier about the same motion. They denied that climate change is real. We lived it in British Columbia last year. We experienced the flooding. We experienced the heat—
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- May/17/22 12:33:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives denied that climate change is real, and they continue to deny it.
My colleague from Mirabel and the Bloc Québécois recognize that climate change is real. What can we say to members who systematically refuse to acknowledge reality? Canada and the entire planet are suffering the consequences of climate change.
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- May/17/22 12:38:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleagues from Victoria and Timmins—James Bay for bringing forward this important motion today. I would like to start off by saying I will be sharing my time with the terrific member of Parliament for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski.
I appreciate the opportunity to rise on this motion. This is an important motion because of what Canadians are living through and what the planet is living through. I would like to start with my personal experience, because I come from the oil and gas sector. I was a refinery worker in Burnaby, B.C., at the Shellburn oil refinery, so I understand the important role oil and gas play in our country's history and the important role they continue to play in our economy.
That being said, also as a British Columbian, I witnessed, as so many other people in British Columbia witnessed last year, the direct and tragic impacts of climate change. We are not talking about years from now; we are talking about a real danger that is manifesting itself now, today.
Last summer in my riding and across the Lower Mainland, for the first time ever, we had the heat dome that impacted our communities; 600 British Columbians died in that terrible wave of heat. These were seniors, people with disabilities and lower-income people who were in apartments, often with no access to air conditioning. As the heat rose, so did the death toll. Over the course of days, we heard ambulances constantly, throughout our city. In talking with ambulance technicians and paramedics, we know that they were simply overwhelmed by the death toll as the heat dome had a greater and greater impact. People died in their apartments; people died in their beds; people died struggling for air.
This heat dome had a catastrophic impact in the Lower Mainland. Firefighters were brought in because the paramedics were overwhelmed. In both Burnaby and New Westminster, firefighters do an extraordinary job of providing a remarkable service to people in our communities, and they said that if the heat dome had continued for another day or two, the entire emergency response services simply would have been overwhelmed and would have collapsed. That is how bad it was.
We lived through that heat dome, and there is anticipation that it is going to happen again this summer. Climate change is not something we can deny; climate change is not something we can simply set aside. Climate change is real, and it is killing people now in this country, let alone when we talk about around the world and the impacts of climate change. Coming right back to Canada, there is an impact on Canadians that is real and profound.
Following the heat dome, we also lived through a number of other catastrophic climate events, including atmospheric rivers that flooded massive parts of the Lower Mainland, as we well know, and high winds, as well. Terms like “heat domes” and “atmospheric rivers” were unknown to us prior to the climate crisis, but those impacts are felt now and they are felt profoundly.
We are no longer talking about something of which the impacts will be felt maybe in 10 or 20 years. Maybe that was an excuse for inaction, both from previous Conservative governments and the current Liberal government, but there is no excuse now. The impacts are real, and we are feeling them now. The impacts are on lives. The impacts are on crumbling infrastructure. The impacts are on our economy, and those impacts are growing.
There were over $5 billion in economic costs last year alone, and that number will continue to rise, so when we look at the motion today and the reality of today, with climate change having a profound impact right now and killing Canadians right now, what is the government's response? The response of the government has been to increase oil and gas subsidies to the tune of $8.6 billion. It does not even make sense, when we know the impact of climate change, to have a government that says this is business as usual and it is going to increase those subsidies.
I do not know what is worse, the climate denial of the Conservatives or the complete climate inaction of the Liberals. Both are bad, and both have had a profound impact. The government's refusal to act, either because it is in denial or because it simply does not want to act, has a profound impact on our country.
We talk about a situation in which there are massive subsidies to the industry. At the same time as there are massive subsidies to the industry, the kinds of actions that would help us contend with the climate crisis are not being taken. This is probably the key aspect of the motion that is before us today, that Canada spends 14 times more on financial support to the fossil fuel sector than it does for renewable energy.
Other countries around the world are making that transition now. As I have seen in the past as an energy worker, they are putting into place just transition strategies so that energy workers are trained for the clean energy jobs of tomorrow. That is not happening in Canada because of the massive subsidies going to the oil and gas sector, to the detriment of everything else. I have met with companies that are innovating in clean energy and workers who want to go into clean energy, and the big obstacle in Canada is that all of these sectors are starved for funding because 14 times more is going to oil and gas CEOs than is going to the clean energy sector. Companies have to move out of Canada; they are simply not getting the financing, because the current government, like the previous government, refuses to put just transition in place and refuses to adequately finance clean energy and the clean energy sector.
Therefore, we have a situation in which massive amounts of money, a firehose of money, $8.6 billion last year alone, are trained on oil and gas CEOs while the clean energy sector is literally starving for funds in the midst of a climate crisis that is killing Canadians, including my constituents. This makes absolutely no sense at all.
Let us add another element. At the same time as we are seeing these massive subsidies being given to the oil and gas sector and record levels of profit, we see the gouging of Canadians at the pump. We have seen this before. Every time there is an international crisis in the oil and gas sector, curiously all the prices rise. As the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has pointed out numerous times, in numerous credible and well-documented studies, what we see when there is an international crisis is that the price goes up at the pump even when the price per barrel has remained stable on old stock. Then, when the crisis is over, the prices come down and the new stock has a reduced barrel price, we still see the high level of gas prices and millions of dollars taken out of the pockets of Canadian consumers each and every year by gas price gouging. The NDP has spoken to this. The member for Windsor West has proposed a gas prices review board. There are numerous ways we can tackle this, but both the previous Conservative and current Liberal governments absolutely refuse to defend consumers against this gas price gouging that takes place.
All of these elements are in the motion today. What we are suggesting is that we end the subsidies. We have to provide supports for Canadians struggling with the high cost of living, including my constituents, and we need to put into place investments in renewable energy.
We need to stop subsidizing the oil sector. We need to implement and invest in clean energy. Canada lags far behind other countries in this respect.
We need to help Canadians who are fighting unjustified price hikes in a sector that is used to doing whatever it wants. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives really want to defend Canadian consumers.
That is why it is important to adopt this motion. I support it fully and I ask that all members of the House vote in favour of it. It is a major shift that will help consumers and our planet.
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- May/17/22 12:49:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is exactly the point. I am so pleased that the member asked the question. It is exactly the difference between having a piece of paper that says good things and actually doing what is required. It is the action, not the words. It is not about the Liberals having a great platform; it is about the reality. If Mr. Weaver had been told that after the election the Liberals would jack up those oil and gas subsidies and starve the clean energy sector to death, giving 14 times more to oil and gas than to clean energy, Mr. Weaver would not have been on that podium at that event.
It is not the words, but the action that counts, and we need action now because the planet is burning.
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- May/17/22 12:51:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let us talk about subsidies. Let us talk about TMX. The private sector was walking away from it, but the Liberals, with the support of the Conservatives, said that in 24 hours they would come up with $4.5 billion to buy the pipeline. It turns out, as the PBO said, that it was $1 billion more than it was even worth. Subsequent to that, we have seen tens of billions of dollars poured into TMX, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer again said this is simply not a project that will ever return on investment the money that has been poured in from the public sector. Now we have a loan guarantee of an additional $10 billion, so over $30 billion has been poured into TMX, which will never return that money to taxpayers. Why do the Conservatives not speak out against that abuse of public funds?
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- May/17/22 12:53:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is precisely the point. We have forced the government to introduce a just transition bill.
We are an opposition party, but we are forcing the government to act. That is why we have brought forward this motion today, to force the government to act. That is our role in this Parliament.
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Madam Speaker, I think never has the House leader of the official opposition spoken truer words than when, in referring to the Conservative Party, he talked about the decline of the democracy.
We have now seen over the past six months, ever since we passed unanimously the ban on conversion therapy and there was a revolt in the Conservative backbench, that Conservatives have blocked every single piece of legislation. In Bill C-9, teachers and farmers were looking for supports and Conservatives refused to let it through. They are now blocking Bill C-14.
The reality is as we saw it last night. The House leader of the official opposition referred to vigorous debate. What Conservatives wanted us to debate, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars last night, for hour after hour, was which Conservative MP would speak. We had vote—
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Madam Speaker, this is the overall decline of Conservative morals and scruples. The Conservatives were willing to have the entire Parliament of Canada subject to a debate within the Conservative Party on which Conservative MP should speak. This was a complete, colossal waste of the time of the House of Commons. Every single Conservative MP participated in what was a travesty. Instead of debating legislation, we were debating which member, which faction, in the Conservative Party would actually speak, and they held us up for hours on that absolutely irresponsible evening.
My question to my colleague is simply this: What has happened to the Conservative Party? Why do the members show such complete disrespect for the legislative process? Why do they waste taxpayers' money hour after hour with these procedural, childish games of having all members of Parliament decide which Conservative MP should speak?
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Madam Speaker, my colleague asked who among the Conservatives is a firefighter. The reality is that they are all pyromaniacs. We have seen over the course of the last few months how they have blocked systematically every single piece of legislation. We are talking about teachers and farmers asking members of Parliament to pass legislation like Bill C-8. The Conservatives never offered an explanation. They never said they were blocking it because there was a reason for it. They just blocked it for the sake of blocking.
What we see now, after last night's travesty, is a group that seems to have as its only goal anarchy and chaos in the House of Commons. My question for my colleague is this: Why?
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