SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 129 - Nov/17/22

Nov/17/22 6:31:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, indeed, we are looking at all solutions for reducing fertilizer emissions. Over the next decade, the government will invest over $1.5 billion to help Canadian farmers adopt sustainable practices and technologies. That includes $12.8 million to support two living labs in Saskatchewan, which bring farmers and researchers in the field together to develop sustainable practices that work in real farm conditions. Our first-ever indigenous-led living lab will bring together Saskatchewan producers and first nations to explore practices such as crop diversification for pesticide management and landscape diversification.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Nov/17/22 6:32:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am raising tonight a question I initially asked in June of this year. I was basing my question on a written question on the Order Paper relating to the ongoing costs to the Canadian taxpayer of the reckless and pointless Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. In the question on the Order Paper, I pointed out that the Minister of Finance had said earlier that year that, with the rising costs of the Trans Mountain pipeline, as demonstrated by the reports from the corporation itself, which is a crown corporation owned by us, she was going to ensure that no more public money went into this crown corporation. However, a question on the Order Paper pointed out that the assessment of the ongoing debt of the project was reviewed by the TD Bank and described as confidential for commercial reasons. Therefore, we were not going to get to find out. An independent economist within British Columbia, one of our leading economists Robyn Allen, pointed out that, no, we have ongoing costs for the tariffs and we have debt from the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and that those debts are likely to be written off, leaving Canadians holding the bag once again. As disturbing as the analysis about the ongoing debt of the Trans Mountain pipeline is, it was the outrageous response of the member for Edmonton Centre, who is also the Minister of Tourism and also a deputy finance minister, that forced me to say that this better come forward at Adjournment Proceedings. In the short space of his 30-second response, he made three statements that were not true factually. He probably believes they are factual. I am not saying he is in any way dishonest; most people seem to believe this rot. First, he said, “Canadians know how important it is to get our product to market and to tidewater.” There are two mistakes there. There is no market for dilbit. Nobody in Asia is clamouring for dilbit. This is demonstrable and empirically true and, if we have another chance in late show, I will bring forward all the statistics of how few tankers have left Vancouver with available dilbit. There is no market. Second in the ridiculous statement is just misleading. It is that this project has led to 12,700 jobs, once completed. That suggests this is a job creator. The job creation is only the construction. It creates fewer than 100 permanent jobs. There will be many jobs if they ever have the horror of a seven-fold expansion of tankers carrying dilbit, because dilbit is a material that cannot be cleaned up in the marine environment. Therefore, there will be many thousands of people going to shorelines in a futile attempt to restore the ecosystem if we allow this horror to happen. Third in his statement is that, if we do this, “Canadians will enjoy full price for our oil on the world market.” This is another big whopper that is just impossible to be true. Dilbit is diluted bitumen. Bitumen is solid, like tar. They add the diluent, not to process it to make it more viable but to get something solid to move through a pipeline. Guess what. It has a very low value, inherently low. It does not become more profitable or get to world price because it gets to tidewater. It is just a low-value product that is very expensive to produce and that produces more greenhouse gases than nearly any other fossil fuel. Last, the member suggested that it is going to be derisked. The Minister of Finance says this too. It is nonsense. It is a risky project financially and it is a fatal project environmentally.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Nov/17/22 6:36:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on many points I disagree with the former leader, and possibly the future leader, of the Green Party. We may need to be a little more transparent on the issue. The Green Party, the member in particular, on many occasions in the House has given her opinions on pipelines. To her credit, she has been very articulate in believing that there really is no justification whatsoever for Canada to develop pipelines or put them in place. If we were to further explore her thinking on it, it is more about getting rid of the pipelines that are currently in place. At least that is what I recollect offhand. When we think of the Trans Mountain pipeline, I would argue it was indeed in Canada's national interest that we did what we did when we acquired it, because there was a great deal of interest and a great deal at stake. At some point in time, it will be divested. That is when the member will be able to ensure that there is a higher sense of accountability in terms of how it is divested and where we come out on the balance sheet on that divestiture. The member referenced jobs, and there were well over 10,000 jobs, even during its construction. She might say there will be a relatively low number of jobs once it has been constructed, but the resource is there and it is important, as I said, in the national interest. She did not talk about that aspect of it. I can appreciate why, because she does not believe we should be tapping into resources of that nature. Suffice it to say that when we talk about the Trans Mountain pipeline, one of the things we need to recognize is that there is a difference in political approaches or philosophy on the issue. We constantly get targeted by members from the Green Party and, to a certain degree, the New Democrats and the Bloc, saying we are doing too much to support our resource industries. Virtually every day we are criticized by the Conservative Party of Canada, which says we are not doing enough and we need to get more pipelines built. One of the first things we did, members will recall, back in 2016, was to establish a process to ensure that stakeholders are brought into it, that our environment is of the most significant concern, that it is part of the process and it has to be clearly demonstrated that we will not damage our environment. It also takes into consideration the economic factor, or the national interest. The Trans Mountain pipeline is the reason we are moving forward, because those things have been safeguarded and we very much want to do this in the name of the national interest. At the end of the day, once it is divested, many of the potential answers the member would like with regard to the feasibility of it will also—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/17/22 6:40:25 p.m.
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The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Nov/17/22 6:40:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my heavens, I need to say a few things. I intervened in the National Energy Board process. I read all 23,000 pages of its so-called evidence, and I can swear on a stack of Bibles that nowhere in there was there a cost-benefit analysis. In fact, the National Energy Board blocked the evidence from Unifor, the largest union in the oil sands, when its representatives testified and had expert evidence that the pipeline project would cost Canadian jobs and that Unifor was against it. The National Energy Board said that jobs and the economy were not in its mandate and then magically ruled that, yes, there would be a lot of environmental damage if this went ahead, but it was in the national interest. I think the national interest is in a viable planet. I think the national interest is in making sure we try to stabilize at 1.5°C, and we know that every international body is saying no new fossil fuel infrastructure if we have an interest in human civilization surviving to when my daughter, now 31, is my age. By God, this must be stopped.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Nov/17/22 6:41:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member makes reference to how I started off the comment, saying that the member would ultimately argue that it is never in the national interest to build an inch of pipeline. That is the essence of what she is saying. Some, but not all, New Democrats might agree with that assessment, but all one needs to do is look at the LNG project, where the provincial NDP, working with the federal Liberals, recognized the natural resource and saw the national interest. I like to think that is where we will see a bit of a difference between the Greens and the New Democrats, that under no circumstances whatsoever will the Greens ultimately see and acknowledge that any pipeline whatsoever would be in the national interest, and that is where we would have to disagree.

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron (Nanaimo—Ladysmith, NDP)

Nov/17/22 6:42:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to ask for further clarification on a question I brought up earlier on youth and children's access to mental health supports and the backlog of these supports as a result of Liberal inaction. This seems particularly timely as National Child Day here in Canada is coming up on November 20. I want to start by expressing that I am a parent of two, and many in this chamber are also parents. I worked directly with children and youth in our school systems. I worked directly with youth and families in addictions. I saw the implications for children and youth directly of a lack of appropriate, accessible, timely and adequate mental health supports for children and youth. We are talking about the accessibility and location specifically and having it somewhere nearby and having barrier-free access to mental health supports. The costs are a huge barrier. I am looking at free or appropriately priced mental health care, which should be free, and having it be appropriate. When it comes to availability and consistency, often youth struggle to build relationships with a service provider without that consistency, and of course, it should be culturally appropriate. The wait-lists and backlogs, as we all know, are often months and sometimes years long. These youth and children were not only not accessing the support in relation to the immediate symptoms they were experiencing, but also those symptoms were compounded because they were not getting access to the supports. The illnesses they were experiencing often increased. I saw youth whose medication was either under-prescribed, overprescribed or inappropriately prescribed due to a lack of access to care. When mental health supports are consistently unavailable and inappropriately funded, it reinforces the stigma attached to mental health supports. It reinforces the narrative that mental health supports are not important. We know that mental health and physical health are inextricably interconnected. We cannot disconnect one from the other. This is not only having a direct impact on youth and children, but it also has an impact on their loved ones. It has an impact on our capacity to support one another in the community. We need to have federal leadership today. The stats do not lie. In 2020, one-quarter of the hospitalizations across Canada for those five to 24 years of age were around mental health, yet we are still seeing inaction. There was $4.5 billion promised by the Liberal government over five years, and to date none of that has been delivered. This is money, much-needed support, that has been promised and committed that is not being used to support children and youth with mental health. Some $250 million from 2021-22 and $625 million from 2022-23 has not been allocated. I think of my colleague, the member for Courtenay—Alberni, who put forward Motion No. 67, pushing the government to establish the Canada mental health transfer. I see I am running close to my four minutes, so I will ask the government when it will be sending this much-needed mental health transfer to the provinces and territories.

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Mrs. Élisabeth Brière (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health, Lib.)

Nov/17/22 6:46:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to provide my hon. colleague with more details. We all agree that we want to give young people access to mental health services when and where they need it most. Supporting mental health also helps to prevent suicide, and that is vitally important. In 2020, suicide was the second leading cause of death among those aged 15 to 34. The government recognizes the devastating effects of suicide on families and communities. We also recognize that wait times and problems getting access to services are having a negative impact on people with mental health issues. More people need more services. We all know about the lack of system capacity to meet needs, and the persistent and ongoing barriers to care have been exacerbated by the pandemic. One such barrier is long wait times. This is unacceptable, and we are working to address this situation through a suite of measures. We have responded to these needs by working with provinces, territories and stakeholders to help spread and scale integrated youth services, or IYS, models of care. This measure builds on the work we have done to increase young people's access to mental health and addiction services, which includes transferring $600 million to the provinces every year until 2027, as per budget 2017. All 13 provinces and territories have developed or are developing an IYS network in their regions. Additionally, there is an indigenous IYS network in progress. These hubs are easily accessible, community-based one-stop shops that provide an integrated suite of services, which can include peer support, mental health and primary care support, and employment counselling, as well as support for navigating these systems of care. This demonstrates how the federal government can work constructively with provinces and territories to spread and scale evidence-based practices in the mental health and substance-use space. In addition, in response to the pandemic, we quickly launched Wellness Together Canada, an online portal offering mental health and substance use support. Budget 2022 committed an additional $140 million over two years for the portal so it can continue to provide this support to Canadians. Through the portal, people aged five to 29 can access a wide range of resources free of charge, including Kids Help Phone. Kids Help Phone offers support via chat, call and text. Once again, the government has recognized the need for this support and is providing more than $14.8 million so that Kids Help Phone can support kids and teens in mental health crisis at this unique time. In addition to investments in suicide crisis services, in the 2020 fall economic statement, the government announced a $50‑million investment to bolster distress centres across the country. It has supported over 61 such centres to date. Furthermore, we are investing in the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, CAMH, to implement and sustain a fully operational pan-Canadian suicide prevention service with its partners. Talk Suicide Canada currently provides suicide crisis support via the phone in English and French, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and by text, in—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/17/22 6:50:59 p.m.
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The hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron

Nov/17/22 6:51:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, provinces and territories are asking when they will see the mental health transfer and the increase to our health care transfer as well. The Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, for example, sent an open letter along with 65 organizations from health and allied sectors indicating that the development of the standards of the mental health transfer should not be a reason to delay the establishment of the Canada mental health transfer. It is also calling for parity in legislation, so the federal government will value mental and physical health equitably, which is something that we do not currently see. Mental health stakeholders are calling for a target of at least 12% of health care spending to be directed toward mental health. There are so many asks right now, but the bottom line is that provinces and territories need more funding to adequately staff our health care, for both mental health and physical health. When will we see the money transferred—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/17/22 6:52:04 p.m.
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The hon. parliamentary secretary.

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Secretary

Mrs. Élisabeth Brière

Nov/17/22 6:52:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as we look to the future, we know that more needs to be done. As the first Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, the minister is dedicated to ensuring that mental health is treated as a full and equal part of our universal health care system. Achieving this requires building on our current investments. Over the past year, we have had the opportunity, as has the minister, to travel across Canada reaching out to stakeholders and hearing about solutions to meet mental health and addiction needs. There is more sound evidence on the models of care that work and on those that do not. We recognize that more needs to be done, and we are determined to support mental health and addiction services so that Canadians, especially youth and teenagers, receive quality care at the right time.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/17/22 6:53:06 p.m.
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The motion that the House do now adjourn is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1). (The House adjourned at 6:53 p.m.)

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