44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 17, 2022 10:00AM
- May/17/22 10:42:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to rise today as the member for Timmins—James Bay on this very important issue. We are dealing with two major crises right now. One is the question of affordability and the massive prices that people are paying at the pumps, at a time when we see big oil racking up record profits and gouging consumers at the pumps.
The fact is that Imperial Oil announced its best opening quarter in 30 years, with $1.17 billion in profits. Canadian Natural Resources doubled its year-over-year first-quarter results with a profit of $3.1 billion, and Suncor brought home $2.95 billion in quarter one, quadrupling last year's results of $800 million.
Where is all that money coming from? It is coming from Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average who go to work every day and are getting gouged at the pumps. We will never hear the Conservatives talking about price gouging. They have all kinds of theories about how unfair it is for big oil to make record profits while people cannot afford to go to work. It is the same as how the Conservatives are trying to talk about high grocery prices as some kind of Bank of Canada conspiracy on inflation, when, in fact, we learned that Loblaws made record profits this year. They are making money gouging Canadians.
At the same time, of course, big oil continues to get free money from the Canadian taxpayer. It refused to pay $256 million in taxes to municipalities in rural Alberta. It left an abandoned oil well cleanup of over a billion dollars: abandoned wells are leaking planet killers such as methane. It expects the public to pay for that. It is calling on the government to change the basic environmental regulations that protect the Athabasca River system, a fragile ecosystem, so that it can dump the toxic waters from tailings ponds. It never talks about the huge damage that it does from every barrel taken out of the oil sands or the amount of water that is contaminated and held in these tailings ponds, which are larger than the city of Vancouver, but it expects the public to assume those costs.
Of course, we see the $570 million for the methane cleanup. Methane is a planet killer. We all know that. This is something that big oil, with its record profits, could easily have handled, but no: It asked the public to pay to stop the leaking methane. What we saw from the Environment Commissioner's report was that this was used as a subsidy to increase production.
The issue of affordability is one factor, but there is a much bigger factor facing us. We are the first generation in history to actually be in a position to decide whether our children have a future or whether we are going to continue to have cheap gas.
We talk about a climate emergency. It does not even come close to talking about the situation we are in. The UN has released its latest statement calling “a code red for humanity”. It claims “a damning indictment of failed global leadership” on the climate crisis. UN Secretary-General Guterres says that what we are looking at is “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”
He says:
Nearly half of humanity is living in the danger zone—now. Many ecosystems are at the point of no return—now. Unchecked carbon pollution is forcing the world’s most vulnerable on a frog march to destruction—now.
There is nothing theoretical about this. The Economist, which is hardly a left-wing journal, says that we have to act quickly before time runs out. It gives us until 2025 to deal with peak oil. The International Energy Agency, another industry voice, says that given the emergency of the climate crisis, there cannot be any more new fossil fuel projects, yet what we see in the House, and what the Canadian people see, is that climate change denial is the fundamental cornerstone of Canadian economic policy and it is the fundamental cornerstone of the government.
We know that the Conservatives will ridicule any efforts on climate change. We hear them laughing when it is talked about. The issue is with the Liberals, though. The Liberals have made promises because Canadians want someone to do the right thing on the climate crisis. We are not seeing that.
We want to talk about a number of things that we need to break apart on the Liberals' arguments because they are perpetrating a scam on the Canadian people. The idea of net zero by 2050 is an absolute scam.
They went to COP26, where the Prime Minister and the environment minister claimed they would cap emissions. That certainly shocked everyone in Canada because they had not talked to anybody about this emissions cap. We are never going to see that emissions cap. It is not going to happen. Why is it not going to happen? The emissions cap is not going to happen because the Liberals are telling Canadians that they can increase oil production while getting to net zero.
It is a ridiculous proposition, and it is all based on the idea that they were somehow going to decarbonize the oil, but the problem with that is that it is not possible because what is coming out of the oil sands has one of the the highest carbon emissions prints on the planet. Year in and year out, despite all the promises to lower those emissions, it has not happened. A headline in The Wall Street Journal refers to it as among the “Dirtiest Oil” on the planet. Those are the facts.
We can look at the environment minister's latest big green plan, which he said was planned out based on the Canadian Energy Regulator's information. The Canadian Energy Regulator predicts that, under the government's plan, in 2050 the amount of oil that will be produced and burned will be the same as the amount of oil burned and produced in 2019.
Liberals are not moving off the carbon economy. In fact, as the Canadian Energy Regulator says, they are planning a massive increase of up to 1.2 million barrels a day. We have already seen this. We have seen Bay du Nord, with an extra 300,000 barrels a day. We see the money they are pumping into TMX for an extra 800,000 barrels a day.
This is not going to help Canadians at the pumps. This is for export. The Deputy Prime Minister made it clear that the primary objective of the government is the supremacy of the market, and the market is exporting Canada's oil and increasing exports to the world market, yet the Liberals claim they are going to get to net zero.
Here is the other part of the scam: Every barrel of oil exported does not count toward Canada's emissions. They are going to come up with some hoodoo numbers to say there are no emissions costs here, but right now, even without the increase of 1.2 million barrels per day, Canada's offshore oil export emissions are more than all of the emissions in every sector in Canada today.
The government says it is not efficient to actually target the full amount of emissions. The fact is that the planet does not care who burns the oil or where it gets burned. The government is committed to driving the oil agenda and giving big oil whatever they ask for to make that happen.
This leads me to the other issue I am very concerned about, which is the so-called “just transition”. It has been very depressing to sit at the hearings on the just transition and see where the government is going on this.
I come from in Northern Ontario where we have lived through unjust transitions. When 4,000 workers lost their jobs in the uranium mines, there was not an alternative. When we lost the entire silver and iron mining economy in Temiskaming, there was not an alternative. The transition then was brutal.
We have seen the economic possibilities. We have Calgary Economic Development and Edmonton Global talking about thousands of new jobs. We also have clean energy tech talking about a 50% increase in clean energy jobs. The problem is that, to get those jobs, we need investment, and the government continues to deliberately underinvest in the new economy, so it is leaving workers high and dry, and it is making vague promises about a transition, but that is not happening.
The clock is ticking. The government, Parliament, leaders in the provinces and our federal leaders are responsible to the next generation as we look at a situation of the planet overheating. The red lines are there, and we have the opportunity and the possibility to transform, but we just do not see the political will. That needs to be challenged.
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- May/17/22 2:43:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as gas prices soar across the country, the government's response is tone deaf and even at times condescending. It shrugs off astronomical gas prices, even though federal taxes contribute to inflation. It says the carbon tax rebate outweighs the cost, but we know that is just not true. The majority of Ontario families are worse off, businesses that ship goods are worse off and farmers do not get a rebate. They are worse off by thousands of dollars a month.
As we listen to the government talk about how good high gas prices are, the question is simple: How high does it want them to go?
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- May/17/22 2:45:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Vancouver has the highest gas prices in all of North America. The gas station at the Vancouver airport is advertising regular gas at $2.34 a litre. The Minister of Finance keeps saying that inflation is a global phenomenon, yet we know it is the current government's policy to actually drive up gasoline prices through its taxation policy.
When will it quit blaming others, take responsibility and give us a break at the gas pumps?
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- May/17/22 2:47:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will tell the House exactly which tax we lowered: on the middle class, twice. The Conservatives voted against it. We raised taxes on the wealthiest 1%. We created the Canada child benefit indexed to inflation. Now, a single mother with two children will receive up to $13,666. We increased the OAS by 10%, which is also indexed to inflation. That is the work we are doing in the House. The Conservatives are playing politics.
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- May/17/22 4:49:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have some important questions related to what the member said. We have heard from the Conservatives, for example, that the government is spending too much money, raising the cost of inflation. Simultaneously, the Conservatives talk about how the government spends too much. The member is talking about how the government is going to continue these subsidies. Which is it? Are Liberals going to spend too much raising the cost for Canadians there, or are they going to truly put that money back into the pockets of families that really need it?
The people in my community do not have two or three cars to be spending that money on, like the member opposite. Will they give Canadians their money back?
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