44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 21, 2022 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
As I said in my speech, with regard to the money the government spends, we want to ensure that no money is wasted, and that the goods and services we buy are paid for at fair value. We want to avoid what happened with the ventilators, for example. Their purchase price was $403 million too high. We cannot find anyone to give them to or sell them to. Does that seem right?
It is vitally important that Canadian families are able to work and that they have money left in their pockets so they can support themselves. Unfortunately, I cannot say any more because my time is running out, but we could debate this issue for a very long time.
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Mr. Speaker, the NDP and the Liberals are patting themselves on the back for this fall economic update. They should not. This is a fall update. Canadians are falling, and the NDP-Liberal government is failing. Canadians are seeing their standards of living erode and the cost of living skyrocket because of inflation.
If one wants to get depressed, they should go grocery shopping. Basic food costs are way up: bread, apples, cereal up 17%; lettuce is up 21%; chicken, 11%; cheese and bacon, 10%; pasta is up 22%. For those who want to cook from scratch because they think they are going to save, flour is up 24%.
The Abacus poll that came out earlier this month said that 50% of Canadians are finding it a lot more difficult and 38% a little more difficult. That means almost nine out of 10 Canadians are feeling the impact of inflation at the grocery store. One in five Canadians are saying they are having to reduce meal sizes or meals altogether in order to save money. This is Canada.
More people are going to the food banks now than in history, 1.5 million in October alone. I know this has been repeated by a number of speakers, but I think we cannot just accept it as just another statistic. These are Canadians who are facing tremendous difficulty. I talked with the local food bank where I live, in Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, and they said they have never seen anything like it.
The Liberals just shrug their shoulders and do not take responsibility for this mess. They blame it on Ukraine, on COVID, on anything but themselves. Going back to the polls, 56% say the Liberal policies on inflation are making things worse, while only 7% say it has helped. The summary of the Abacus poll is this, right here: Inflation is making life difficult for millions and is the number one political issue in Canada. The biggest impacts are felt in food, but millions are finding it difficult to cope with their energy and housing costs.
On the issue of inflation, Liberals are like a deer caught in the headlights, stunned and dangerous. I have seen deer sometimes in traffic. They can bounce around anywhere. What we are seeing are the Liberals making poor decisions that are causing a serious accident in Canada.
I wish I could just say it was an accident. Let me explain. They have printed hundreds of billions of dollars that they put into the economy over the past three years. Nearly half of that money that they have pumped into the economy has had nothing to do with COVID. The money supply has increased by 25%. What does that mean? It means there is a lot more money around for the same goods than there was a few years ago. That just makes everything more expensive. It is like Canadians have had a big pay cut. They may not have seen the number of dollars on their paycheques go down. As a matter of fact, it may have even gone up a little, but because the dollars do not go as far, it is essentially a significant pay cut.
It seems that the Liberals have seen this pandemic as a time to be silly with Canada's economy. That is a nice way of saying stupid. The finance minister said it was no big deal to print money or to borrow money. She said, listen, it is half a percent. It is at only half a percent. Let us just borrow, borrow and borrow and spend, spend and spend. They said it was going to be like this for years to come. In the past few months it has gone up 750%. Yikes. That is how much interest rates have gone up: 750%.
Now there is trouble. The cost of interest rates on the deficit is going to be as much as what the government is spending on health care. In this very dangerous time, when we are seeing war in Ukraine and threats elsewhere, it is going to cost more than the government spends on National Defence, which, I will say, is not a priority for the Liberals at all. This is very significant.
Canadians are very concerned about energy costs to heat their homes and keep fuel in their cars so they can go to work, go to the supermarket and take their kids to sports. Seventy-five per cent of Canadians say this is an important issue. The Liberals are absolutely oblivious to our call to axe the carbon tax, which is making everything more expensive, from transportation and food costs to everything else.
I must admit it is very challenging for me, and I am sure for my colleagues, to listen to the Liberals brag and pontificate about their plan to save the world by tripling home heating costs. They have a tax plan, but not a climate change plan. The Liberals' plan is just to promote. We are number 50 out of 63 countries on the greenhouse gas reduction target. The Liberals have not met any of their targets. What they are doing is ridiculous and, yes, full steam ahead toward the iceberg.
I live in the Vancouver area where there are the highest gas costs in North America. It has been up to $2.50 a litre. Something has to give, but the Liberals are basically saying to have no fear, the Liberal government is here, and it has bags full of money to scatter. The Liberals have tremendous causes, each one of them. They put those causes in there for talking points to say they are helping these people and these people for the bad policy they brought in.
The Liberals have lit an inflationary fire, and they are pretending they are trying to put it out. They have doubled the national debt. They recognized that inflation is not great for them politically, so what did they do? They said, “How can we take care of inflation? Let us ramp up interest rates.” That is causing real problems for people who are renewing their mortgages. In the Vancouver area, people having $500,000, $600,000 and $700,000 mortgages are quite common. People are now going to be paying hundreds and thousands of dollars more each month and each year.
The Liberals are just saying that they are going to invest. They keep on talking about investing in this and in that, and that they are going to put money in here and in there. I always hear this word “invest”. First of all, it is not the Liberals' money to invest; it is taxpayers' money. Second, it is not just how much they spend, but how effective they are when they are spending. It should not just go to more bureaucracy. We have a lot bigger bureaucracy with worse results. It should not be there just to pad their friends' wallets, whether it be former MP Frank Baylis with a $250-million contract for ventilators, who charged twice the amount, or the ArriveCAN app.
The finance minister wrote a letter and said that they had a meeting with Chancellor Scholz to get Germany to buy hydrogen. The Liberals did not say anything about Scholz's asking if they could get LNG to Germany. There is a war happening. The Prime Minister said there is no business case.
They are now producing this in Germany. They are now building these LNG plants and they are getting the LNG from other countries. Those could have been Canadian jobs. That could have been money to go towards health care. It could have helped National Defence and in other ways. The Liberals talk about a war on climate change. It is actually a war on the resource sector, which means that our Canadian dollar is not as strong and Canadians cannot purchase as much as they used to be able to.
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Mr. Speaker, for the last 10 minutes my colleague was talking about the economy. I have to say that I have been listening all day. In one breath the Conservatives are saying we are investing too much in Canadians, and in another they are saying we are not spending enough.
They are saying they are the party of compassion. Let us look at which side is compassionate. When we brought forward the child care investment, the Conservatives voted against it. When we brought forward dental, they voted against it. When we wanted a top-up for housing, they voted against it. When we talk about removing the interest from student loans, they are against that. They were against the doubling of the GST for six months, but finally saw the light and backed off.
I would like the member to explain why, if the Conservatives are so compassionate, they are voting against all of these bills to help Canadians with affordability.
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Mr. Speaker, I would say it is the Liberals' policies that have caused the problems in the first place and that they should go back to the source, to the root, and take care of their spending. It is fine to help, but they should find some savings in other places. They have not. They still have a $37-billion deficit and it is accumulating.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to start by thanking Climate Action Network International for its work on the climate change performance index that was referenced by the member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, which ranks Canada 58 out of 63. It is a deplorable record. One reason that is the case is that we continue to add new subsidies to the fossil fuel sector. One example is the new $8.6-billion tax credit for carbon capture and storage at a time when oil and gas companies are making record-breaking profits.
I wonder if the member could comment on whether he is similarly concerned with the wholesale margins in the oil and gas industry right now. The reason why Canadians are feeling the pinch at the pumps is that those margins are up 18¢ a litre. Is he concerned about that and would he support a windfall tax on those profits so we can do more with respect to taking action on the crisis we are in?
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Mr. Speaker, I agree that companies need to be paying their fair share. I will make note that this year the Alberta government is seeing a massive amount of revenue coming in, and a lot of that is because of the incentives to help in Fort McMurray. That is now going to the government and making a tremendous difference.
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Mr. Speaker, I think that my colleague from Mirabel asked the question earlier. We have entered a new era of magical thinking by the Conservatives who imagine that an exact amount of money will be taken from somewhere and invested elsewhere, as though this can be done with a snap of the fingers. Where do they suggest these revenues be collected?
I mentioned the issue of taxing GAFAM, as did my colleague from Drummond. There is also the issue of tax evasion and tax avoidance. Could the money that is being invested in the oil companies not be invested elsewhere to help other sectors that will be more economically vulnerable in the tough year ahead, such as seniors and health transfers? Where could the government collect this money to be reinvested?
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Mr. Speaker, it is not up to the government to decide where investments will be made. For resource or other projects, it is up to the companies and investors to make that decision. What is happening now is that there are no investments because projects are not getting approved in Canada to our detriment.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my constituents once again for giving me the opportunity to be here and represent them.
One of the things I heard a lot about this past summer was not so much about the billions of dollars being spent, although people do talk about that, but the level of competence of the government. That is one of the things we should focus on here. The government loves to talk about all the money it is spending everywhere on all kinds of things, usually not getting value for money. My colleagues have mentioned that already. As we see a number of different initiatives, what a lot of my constituents realized this summer was that the government is broken. Conservatives have talked before about getting some of the most basic services, such as a passport, which used to be received in a few days and is now taking literally weeks and months. Some people were waiting six months. It was unbelievable.
We talk about this lofty immigration goal of 500,000 people, but what we are not talking about are the two and a half million people who are waiting to get into this country. We need workers in a big way. The Liberal government likes to talk about things, but not look at what is being delivered. That is one of the things we should be focusing on. What are the deliverables? What has happened? We have all heard stories from people who have called us about visitor visas, immigration issues, work issues and people trying to get workers in this country. We know we have a major labour shortage, yet the government has been incompetent or does not have the ability to deliver the most basic goods and services for Canadians.
This economic statement promises to deliver more money. It is going to deliver another $40 billion. One thing my colleagues have mentioned over and over again is that this has been driving inflation. If we look at what is happening with a number of things, we see that, as we continue to have too few goods being chased by too much money, it is a major issue.
We also know that the Prime Minister has added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined. I want everyone to think about that for one second. I will repeat that. The Liberal Prime Minister has added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined. If we think about that, the money spent in the last 100-plus years has now been spent very quickly. The government will talk about how all these things were so important. The Auditor General and the Parliamentary Budget Officer have said, as a matter of fact, 40% of all this new spending actually had nothing to do with COVID. Once again, the high-level story is that we had to spend all this money on COVID, but then we find out that only 40% of it had anything to do with COVID. That is absolutely a challenge.
We know that our country's debt interest is going to double this year. We are going to see interest payments go up and more money spent on interest payments than the Canada health transfer. That is somewhat troubling. As interest rates continue to climb, people's mortgage payments are going to double, some up to $7,000 a year. The Bank of Canada has basically said that it is going to continue to hike interest rates as it tries to deal with inflation.
There is a major housing crisis in this country. We have seen what has happened in major markets like Vancouver and Toronto, some of the most overpriced markets, not only here in Canada but in the world. We have seen the money spent on the homelessness initiative, and it is pretty timely. We see that in the Auditor General's report that just came out in the last little while. I will read part of the summary, which states:
As the lead for Reaching Home, a program within the National Housing Strategy, Infrastructure Canada spent about $1.36 billion between 2019 and 2021—about 40% of total funding committed to the program—on preventing and reducing homelessness. However, the department did not know whether chronic homelessness and homelessness had increased or decreased since 2019 as a result of this investment.
That is a direct quote from the Auditor General. I will read one more paragraph, as follows:
For its part, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, as the lead for the National Housing Strategy, spent about $4.5 billion and committed about $9 billion but did not know who was benefiting from its initiatives. This was because the corporation did not measure the changes in housing outcomes for priority vulnerable groups, including people experiencing homelessness. We also found that rental housing units approved under the National Housing Co-Investment Fund that the corporation considered affordable were often unaffordable for low-income households, many of which belong to vulnerable groups prioritized by the strategy.
Let us think about this. The government wants to brag about how much money it has spent on homelessness, yet we have no way of knowing if it has gone to the people who need it the most. That is one of the things we need to look at and have a conversation about.
We have talked about the cost of what has gone up. We have many Canadians within $200 of insolvency, not being able to pay their bills because of the high amount of inflation. Thirty-one per cent of Canadians say they do not make enough money to pay their bills and debts. This is certainly worrisome. We know that paycheques do not go as far as they used to. We also have Canadians cutting their diets, and seniors who have to choose between heat and food. Winter is coming. We live in a northern country and have to deal with that very issue.
We can look at food bank usage. We have seen the Canadian record of 1.5 million visits, with an increase of 35%, and we know that 33% of those using food banks are children. That is somewhat troubling given that children normally make up 18% to 19% of the population.
We keep talking about the tripling of the carbon tax because it is causing everything to go up in price. We can look at what is going on with that. Those who in live in cities have the option of public transit. Although I do represent a rural riding, it is not the most rural in Canada. I would say a lot of places in northern B.C., northern Alberta, northern Ontario or northern Quebec are more rural.
We have limited public transportation in my riding, but I can assure members that the moms, dads and families there need to drive everywhere. They need to drive to take their kids to school. They need to drive to take their kids to sports like hockey. They have to drive their car just about everywhere, so when they are told they have to pay more money in a carbon tax, it is not an option for them because of their way of life. We do not have the option of being able to use public transit all the time in every situation.
My friends talked about the availability of day care. I will not hit that again, but as we look at these things, we also have to consider the fact that we live in a northern climate. We do not have the option of whether we heat our homes or not. It is something we have to do. The Liberal-NDP coalition fails to recognize the fact that individuals have to heat their homes. This is not a luxury good.
We could talk about farming next. One of the things about farming that I find troubling is the tariff on fertilizer coming from Russia. What a tariff means is that farmers will have to pay more. However, the tariff was not to punish Russia in any way, shape or form. I have had farmers reach out to me and say they could not believe it. They pre-ordered their fertilizer, the government decided to put a tariff on the fertilizer and it has done nothing but drive the cost of our food up.
Let us think about that for one second. A tariff means that Canadians are going to pay more for something they had no control over. Farmers were not given six months or a year to try to change where to get it from. It is problematic when we look at those kinds of things.
Here is a government telling Canadians how much it cares about them. Here is a government telling them to look at all the money it is spending. Here is a government telling them that the carbon tax is good for them and that they need to pay it because it will make all things better. However, the reality is that it is costing everyone more money and food prices have gone up.
I could talk about restaurants that have reached out to me. Chicken has gone up almost 100%, and the oil they cook in has gone up over 100%. That is not 8%, 9% or 10%. Those are major numbers.
When governments are talking about how much money they are spending, I would ask this: Are people's lives better off? Do people have access to more services? Do they feel like the government is more competent? Do they feel that as a result of the money and taxes they are paying, their life is better?
I guarantee that if asked these questions, Canadians would realize the government is not delivering on what it is talking about. It is not delivering on what it is promising. I will leave it at that.
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- Nov/21/22 6:45:30 p.m.
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It being 6:45 p.m., pursuant to an order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the second reading stage of the bill now before the House.
The question is on the amendment.
If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the amendment be carried or carried on division, or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
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- Nov/21/22 6:46:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, the division stands deferred until Tuesday, November 22, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.
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- Nov/21/22 6:46:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I suspect if you were to canvass the House you might find leave to call it seven o'clock so we could begin Adjournment Proceedings.
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- Nov/21/22 6:47:00 p.m.
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Is it agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- Nov/21/22 6:47:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to come back to my question to the Prime Minister about the need to address the subsidies being given to the oil and gas industry.
I will start by sharing why this is important. The UN Secretary General recently shared with the world, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” He then said, “We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing...And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.” He went on to say, “The global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade – on our watch.”
We also heard from the co-chair of climate scientists making up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Jim Skea, who said, “It's now or never, if we want to limit global warning to 1.5°C. Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”
While we have those global calls being made, profits in the oil and gas industry are off the rails. Imperial Oil is one example I mentioned to the PM in my question. Its profits are up and now totalling $6.2 billion in the first nine months of 2022. That is compared to $1.7 billion the same period in 2021. It is four times higher. Why is that? It is obvious they are gouging Canadians at the pumps. In the same period of time, we know wholesale margins, or profits, are up 18¢ a litre.
I will turn to promises that are being made. The PM was in Glasgow last year at COP26, where he promised to end international financing of oil and gas. That has not happened yet. It is also promised in the supply and confidence agreement between the Liberals and the NDP, which provides them the confidence of the House, to phase out public financing of the fossil fuel sector, including early moves in 2022.
This would be a great time for those early moves. Instead, what we are seeing are new subsidies being added. One example is $8.6 billion more in a tax credit for so-called carbon capture and storage. This is a false solution being peddled by the oil and gas industry, study after study shows. In fact, in 32 out of 40 times this has been tried around the world, emissions have gone up and not down. It is the number one item in the so-called emissions reduction plan.
We could also turn to the $10-billion loan guarantee for the Trans Mountain pipeline. We know there are solutions. Number one is to end the subsidies now, all of them. Next is to introduce a windfall profits tax on these excess profits, as I asked the Prime Minister to do in my question, and use the funds to invest in proven climate solutions. The Green Budget Coalition, for example, points to deep energy retrofits in residential buildings that would return $2 to $5 in taxes to the public coffers for every dollar spent. For a just transition for workers, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is calling for a just transition benefit.
The fact is that our kids' futures are at stake. This is about the world they are going to grow up in. I understand the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance is with us tonight. I would love to hear him share more about when the government will stop dragging its heels on ending these subsidies.
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Mr. Speaker, I will start by sharing the sentiment of my friend from Kitchener Centre with regard to the urgency of this issue and with regard to making sure that we get this right, for the sake of our children and all children across Canada and around the world.
Canada remains committed to phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. We have already taken action to phase out nine tax measures supporting the fossil fuel sector. We have also pledged to undertake a peer review of inefficient fossil fuel subsides under the G20 process. The reality is that Canada fought hard at COP27 so that the world did not backslide on the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies. We reiterated our commitment to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies by 2023, two years earlier than the G20 commitment.
Some have argued, including the member who just spoke, that our recent measures to support the emerging carbon capture, use and storage sector amount to an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy. This is not true. The fact is that CCUS is one of many tools in our tool box to meet our climate commitments. I would note that many respected global organizations support CCUS development. This includes the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
In fact, the agency estimates that this technology could be responsible for about 15% of global emission reductions. It is part of the plan. It also gives us a tool to lower emissions outside of the oil and gas sector. Steel production, cement and other emission-intensive industries can benefit from this technology. This, in fact, builds on our world-leading climate plan, one that approaches reducing emissions and developing clean technology in all facets of our economy, and one that we further expanded on in the fall economic statement tabled earlier this month.
While we are removing tax credits from flow-through shares on oil, gas and coal, we are also creating new investment tax credits for clean tech and for clean hydrogen. We are also creating a sustainable jobs training centre that will prepare our workers for the high-paying sustainable jobs that will be created as new economic opportunities emerge as part of our climate plan. In addition, we are investing in a world-leading innovation and investment agency and a $15-billion clean growth fund that will help Canada further tap into the economic opportunities that the clean transition provides.
That being said, our government's priority, beyond fighting climate change and growing an economy that works for everyone, is to make life more affordable for Canadians who are currently struggling with global inflation.
Indeed, we are now moving forward with targeted measures, including new ones introduced in the fall economic statement. For example, Bill C-32 would make the federal portion of all Canada student loans and Canada apprenticeship loans permanently interest-free, including those currently being repaid.
We are expanding our efforts with regard to affordable housing and we are making sure that every child in Canada, no matter how wealthy their parents are, has access to affordable dental care. This is in addition to our investments that have lifted millions of children and seniors out of poverty, including an early learning and child care agreement that will make our kids smarter and allow hundreds of thousands of parents to rejoin the workforce, if they choose to do so.
Finally, we have doubled the GST benefit to help 11 million Canadian households, including more than 50% of seniors, better handle the impacts of global inflation.
Any responsible plan must tackle climate change in a way so that no one is left behind in our economy, and that is exactly what our government is doing.
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- Nov/21/22 6:55:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will pause just to say that, with regard to this word “inefficient”, I hope that the parliamentary secretary might move away from it. It is completely undefined. It lacks credibility when we are talking about these subsidies because it really does not mean anything at all. In fact, all of these subsidies are not helping us make progress at a time when we need to act urgently and immediately.
In terms of carbon capture and storage, I think the best analogy I can give the parliamentary secretary is that there are measures being taken, some of which he has mentioned, and those measures are kind of like after the snow has fallen and we start shovelling one bit at a time and we are making a little bit of progress here and there. The $8.6 billion to carbon capture is like when the snowplow then comes by and undoes all of our work.
As for that $8.6 billion, not one environmental group in the country has called for those funds. Do we know who has? The oil and gas lobbyists who were at COP27, unfortunately. Those are the ones calling for carbon capture.
When will the parliamentary secretary understand that we have to move away from exactly that?
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- Nov/21/22 6:56:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. While my colleague may not like the definition around that particular word “inefficient”, that is a longer debate that I cannot explain in one minute. However, we are committed to undergoing a peer review of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies under the G20 process and we will build on the actions we have already taken.
There is a process that is under the G20. While that definition may not meet his standards today, there is a process under which this is specifically reviewed. If Canadians want to know more, I suggest that they read our emissions reduction plan, which lays out, in detail, how Canada will hit its targets right across every sector of the economy.
They can also tap into my own reports that I write at terrybeechmp.ca/reports. There is not just a report on climate change. There is one on affordability, seniors, housing, the economy and local projects that are important to all Canadians, but particularly those projects that have been delivered in both Burnaby and in North Vancouver.
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- Nov/21/22 6:57:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a real honour to take this moment to review a question I asked back in June.
Particularly and unusually for Adjournment Proceedings, I am following my colleague, the hon. member for Kitchener Centre, who in debate just pointed out to the hon. parliamentary secretary the inadequacies of the current government's plan. At this point, I am taking up on a similar theme, but based on a different question, and I think I will be discussing and debating this matter with a different parliamentary secretary.
We are now days from the end of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, which was disappointing. In fact, at this stage in the planet's trajectory towards what Secretary-General of the United Nations calls the “highway to climate hell”, when we fail to do what is needed, it is not just disappointing; it is criminal.
We are standing here on the very edge of “too late”, as we know. Back in June, the question I put to the Prime Minister was in relation to the most recent report we have from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which should be understood as the largest peer-reviewed system of science that humanity has ever constructed. It is a very cumbersome process. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reviews massive amounts of peer-reviewed science and reports roughly on a full assessment every six to seven years.
Inevitably, with a cumbersome process of that nature, its reports always overestimate how much time we have and underestimate the level of risk and danger in which we find ourselves. Therefore, it makes me particularly alarmed that on April 4, as I referenced in my question in June, the IPCC advanced the clock on “too late” and warned us that for humanity to have any chance of holding to what we agreed to do in the Paris agreement, we must hold the global average temperature increase to as far below 2°C as possible, and preferably to 1.5°C.
Last year, at COP26 in Glasgow, as we all headed home feeling that disappointment, the president of the COP, from the U.K., said that 1.5°C was on life support. Really, it is very hard to believe that we could possibly hold to 1.5°C at this point, and that is because the most recent information from the IPCC, which I referenced in my question in June, was that in order to hold to 1.5°C or 2°C, we must ensure that global emissions peak, that is, hit their highest point ever, and begin to fall between 2020 and at the latest 2025. The window on our having a livable world for our kids, to avoid a self-accelerating, unstoppable, irreversible climate breakdown, closes before our next election, thanks to the cozy deal the Liberals and the NDP have cooked up, with no further action.
The response I got from the hon. parliamentary secretary in question period was that the government's ambitious agenda would ensure “that we will...do what is needed to reach our emissions projections”. However, here is the problem: The government's targets are not aligned with the science. The government's targets will amount to too little, too late.
The government's proactive promotion of new fossil fuel infrastructure and new fossil fuel development, projects like having the Canadian people pay billions of dollars to build the Trans Mountain pipeline, putting in place fossil fuel infrastructure to take us to that climate hell and developing Baie du Nord in offshore Newfoundland, are unforgivable. I ask the hon. parliamentary secretary to clarify how we can claim to be a climate leader.
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- Nov/21/22 7:01:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying I share the sense of urgency my friend was just speaking about, as a person who sees it in the natural disasters we are seeing in our country, as a mother and as someone who cares deeply about her community, about her country and about this world.
I share that. That is why I see the work and commitment to doing that hard work, and it is not easy. Anyone who says it is easy is actually missing the point, and I am not suggesting my friend is saying it is easy. I know she recognizes this is a big challenge we are facing, but we are taking that on.
We set an ambitious and achievable emissions reduction target of 40% to 45% below 2000 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. That is backed by science. When we talk about the IPCC and the scientists who are doing that heavy lifting, we have on our net-zero advisory board people who are also working on those reports helping to guide the work we are doing.
Since 2016, the Government of Canada has been taking actions, and the most recent one members will have seen in the spring was the emissions reduction plan. That is a really important piece, because I really want to reiterate that this is not just about one sector in our economy. We need to take action across all sectors of our economy. This is a large transition we are in the middle of, and as we do that, we need to make sure we have an opportunity as well, and we do have an opportunity, to have a strong economy, to create sustainable jobs and to make sure our country is well placed to meet the challenge of the emissions we must reduce and at the same create those jobs.
When I am talking about that, in my home city of Toronto, the largest source of emissions is actually our buildings. People do not talk about the built sector very much, but right now part of the work we are doing is on a green building strategy. In fact just today there was an announcement about further funding to help support Canadians in making that transition off oil heating to heat pumps. That is part of how we can increase affordability and help Canadians who are trying to make those changes for the environment at the same time. That is just one piece.
Another part of it is how we reduce emissions from our transportation sector, which is also a very large sector for emissions. We are putting in place a sales mandate that would mean that by 2035 all new cars sold in Canada will be zero emissions. To back that up, because the whole thing is that this is across all sectors and it is about addressing these issues in a very holistic sense, we are also building the charging infrastructure that is required to support those vehicles.
It is part of a holistic plan, and that is what I would really like to emphasize. It is not just one thing. We can always pick at one thing and say that the carbon price alone will not do it. We recognize this is going to take many tools, and that is exactly what we are doing, and we have been putting in that hard work. We are putting a price on carbon pollution. There are methane regulations and sales mandates for zero-emission vehicles. I am not going to get through the whole list in the time I have, but there is the green building strategy, and at the same time battery manufacturing is happening here in our country to help support that transition right across North America.
We have invested in the Energy Transition Centre in Calgary, which is going to be helping to build out that renewable energy sector that is doing so well and thriving in Alberta. These are opportunities, and we need to seize them at the same time as we meet that challenge to reduce emissions across our country, because it is our obligation and we have undertaken to do it.
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