44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 22, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, it is my first opportunity to speak today on Bill C-31, so I want to put on the record that I support it and wish it would go further.
I want to ask my hon. colleague from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes this. He made the claim that health care is provincial. I wonder if he is familiar with the 1982 case, Schneider v. The Queen, in which the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that our Constitution does not say that health care is provincial. It does not speak to health care and it is one of those areas of mixed jurisdiction, federal and provincial. The criminal law power, which is federal, is the source and the derivation of many federal law and federal government decisions to protect our health.
Lastly, the Canada Health Act is the federal statute that governs our universal single-payer health care system, which we must fight to the death to protect, because without it a lot of people will die.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Joliette for his speech.
I completely agree with the member for Guelph. It is good to reflect with him on ideas that are slightly more complex and on a nuanced approach. These are not very simple issues and it is difficult because of the different challenges, which are complex. For example, we have the war in Ukraine, Canada's current situation, and issues related to the pandemic, as well as the impact of climate change and the climate emergency on our economy and economies around the world.
I want to ask my colleague from Joliette and the Bloc Québécois what they think of the idea of providing a universal guaranteed livable income to everyone to protect all Canadians from these complex problems.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the member's focus on the excess profits of the oil and gas sector.
I do not like using the term “excess profit” and I do not like using “windfall profit”. Let us be clear about what we are talking about: We are talking about immoral war profiteering. That is what we are seeing right now. If hon. members across the way want to laugh, let me refer to the business columnist in The Globe and Mail, Eric Reguly, who called this out in his August 8 column. He pointed out that the profits of oil and gas right now have nothing to do with business acumen and everything to do with war.
I would ask my hon. colleague if he agrees with the Parliamentary Budget Officer that by doubling from 15% to 30%, the additional $8 billion coming into the Canadian economy and the government coffers could help us take care of the poorest of the poor.
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- Sep/22/22 7:16:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in Adjournment Proceedings this evening to pursue a question I asked on World Oceans Day. World Oceans Day, June 8, is observed every single year within what is the United Nations' and Canada's Environment Week.
I asked about the impact of the climate crisis on our oceans and whether the government was prepared to take it seriously. Every single second, and I need to repeat that because when we ask questions in 30 seconds in question period it goes rather quickly, every single second of every single minute of every single hour of every single day, every second, the equivalent of seven Hiroshima nuclear bombs' worth of heating is absorbed by our oceans due to our burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests, the problem that gets referred to as the climate crisis.
I put forward that we are seeing changes in our ocean currents that are massively dangerous. We are seeing ocean levels rising; the acidity levels are rising in our ocean water, and the oxygen levels in many of our oceans are dropping.
One particular example is the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There are members in this place who have connections to Atlantic Canada. I am a member from British Columbia, but my family is still on Cape Breton Island. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is Canada's most productive marine ecosystem. It provides billions of dollars of wealth to the Atlantic region.
We still have a fishery, despite the collapse of the North Atlantic cod. There is a fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but the Gulf of St. Lawrence is experiencing rapid deoxygenation and acidification. Why? It is because the Gulf Stream is stalling and the Labrador Current is stalling. What happens is that whereas the Gulf of St. Lawrence used to be refreshed with the colder water from the Labrador Current, which was full of oxygen, the Gulf of St. Lawrence is now being recharged by a stalling, warmer, deoxygenated Gulf Stream.
All of this, of course, points to the fact that the climate crisis is not a manageable issue, like putting some kind of a filter at the end of a tailpipe and keeping on polluting. That is the approach the government has taken. Its so-called solution of net zero by 2050 is nothing but propaganda. As I pointed out to the parliamentary secretary in that debate, net zero by 2050 is not a goal; it is an epitaph.
It is true that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most eminent scientific and most rigorous process ever invented for any issue, has made it clear that, yes, by 2050 we must be at net zero and we must meet the commitments to hold to as far below 2°C as possible and, if possible, hold to 1.5°C. However, net zero by 2050 is a lie and propaganda, if that is all that is mentioned and it is not mentioned that in order to have it make any difference, the curve of that line starts with a rapid drop. In other words, we must ensure that before 2025, global emissions stop rising and start decreasing. We also must ensure that by 2030, that curve is dropped so fast that it is about half of what it was in 2010, and then it levels out.
I am afraid the human brain rather translates net zero by 2050 as if we have lots of time, but the line does not go gradually. The line must go down sharply, which means that when the government approves Bay du Nord and insists on completing Trans Mountain, it is foreclosing on any hope of holding to a livable world.
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- Sep/22/22 7:24:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is the tragedy we see before us. I know the parliamentary secretary cares about climate. I am sure the Prime Minister and the Minister of Environment care about climate. However, the totality of their efforts puts us on track to an unlivable world for our kids, as assessed by the science.
Global atmosphere is not interested in negotiating with the Liberal government. Liberals are not going to get any brownie points for good intentions. They have to meet what the science requires, and the science requires far more than they are committing to.
At the same time that they were making these incremental, feel-good measures towards climate action, they approved Baie du Nord for one billion more barrels of oil to be burned for more greenhouse gases, and they persist in the insanity, the obscenity of taking public money to build a Trans Mountain pipeline for diluted bitumen to further fuel the climate crisis. I say, shame.
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