SoVote

Mr. John Williamson (New Brunswick Southwest, CPC)

May/17/22 10:54:21 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's honesty in saying that he opposes affordable gasoline for Canadians. He wants high gas prices. My question to the member is this: Why will his partners in the Liberal government not also claim victory on this? The Liberals brought in the carbon tax with the stated purpose of raising gas taxes at the pump. That is what happened. Now they are running for cover and blaming it on Russia. I will give members one example. In my riding, a litre of gasoline is $2.00 a litre. Across the border, 10 minutes away in Maine, it is $1.50. That is a 50¢ difference. Now, all that gasoline comes from the same place, which is the refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. Maine does not have a more efficient refinery with harder workers or lower input costs. It is coming from the same place. That difference is all tax. I would say it is mission accomplished, as they are driving up the price of energy in this country. Why will the Liberals not also claim credit on this and say, “Mission accomplished”?

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Context: House Hansard - 73 - May/17/22

Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

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?

188 words

Context: House Hansard - 73 - May/17/22

Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

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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