SoVote

Ms. Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, CPC)

Feb/8/23 2:34:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canadians cannot afford groceries, which are up 11%. They cannot afford rent; it has doubled. Nine out of 10 young people say that they will never be able to afford a home. To add insult to injury, he is tripling the carbon tax. Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for the cost-of-living crisis that he created or at least get out of the way so we can fix it?

81 words

Context: House Hansard - 156 - Feb/8/23

Hon. Rob Moore (Fundy Royal, CPC)

Feb/8/23 2:47:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, this bail crisis is a crisis of the Prime Minister's own making. What he is doing is not working. Violent crime in the last eight years is up 32%. The Liberal minister loves to stand up and say Canadians deserve to feel safe. What Canadians are saying is they deserve to be safe. Canadians do not have the privilege to travel with armed guards like the Prime Minister does. After eight years, the Prime Minister is badly out of touch. Will he take responsibility today for his broken bail system and commit to changing it today?

102 words

Context: House Hansard - 156 - Feb/8/23

Ms. Laurel Collins (Victoria, NDP)

Feb/8/23 7:52:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to start by taking a moment to express my heartbreak and condolences to the parents, the day care staff and the children, and to everyone who is impacted by the tragedy in Laval. It is hard to find words to express the depth of loss that these families are facing. We are grieving with them. Every year, more people across Canada are forced to face the devastating reality of the climate crisis: increasingly severe hurricanes on the east coast, and forest fires, extreme flooding and heat domes on the west coast. We are in a climate emergency, and it is impacting everything that we hold dear. People have lost their homes and their jobs, and hundreds of Canadians have lost their lives. It has been four years since the government declared a climate emergency, and yet it still refuses to take climate action at the scale or speed required. Why would the Liberal government say it believes there is a climate emergency but then refuse to treat it like an emergency? Why would it continue to hand out billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies? Why would it buy the Trans Mountain pipeline? Why would it approve Bay du Nord? Why is it openly planning to increase oil and gas production? We are in a climate emergency. These are not the actions of a government responding to an emergency. These are the actions of a government that is captured by the oil and gas lobby. This past year was the most profitable year ever for the five biggest oil companies. Take that in. Big oil and gas made more profit than they ever have before. While they rake in these record profits, profiting off the backs of Canadians who are struggling just to make ends meet, these companies are also announcing that they are scaling down their climate commitments, lowering their emission reduction targets and walking back their pledges to climate action. Instead, they are upping their spending on new oil and gas. Just two weeks ago, Canadian oil and gas executives claimed they could not invest any more in clean energy and renewable projects, that they want to but there is no place to invest these billions in. If that is true, why would the federal government give them billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies? These companies are making more money than ever before, and they claim they want to spend it on climate action. Why would the government not require that they pay for their own pollution, regulate them, force them to reduce their emissions, and make big oil and gas put their exorbitant money where their mouth is? Instead, the government decided to give the oil and gas sector billions more for carbon capture technology. Not only is carbon capture an unproven technology, which according to the IPCC, according to the world's top climate scientists, is one of the costliest and least effective options out there, but this $2.6-billion carbon capture tax credit is money that the government could have invested in renewable technology that is readily available, that is proven. The government could have excluded oil and gas companies from this handout. It could have forced these companies to pay for their own carbon capture projects. Instead, the Liberals keep footing the bill for the oil and gas industry. What that actually means is that the Liberals are making Canadians foot the bill. Among the G20 countries, Canada has the worst track record when it comes to public financing of the oil and gas sector. These are choices about how we spend our public money. Profitable oil and gas companies should be paying to clean up their own pollution. If the Liberals truly believe that we are in a climate emergency, they could implement a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies. Other countries have done it. We could use that money to invest in climate solutions, in making life more affordable for Canadians, in making communities more climate-resilient. Why is the government so focused on protecting the profits of big oil and gas instead of protecting Canadians and our communities from the climate crisis?

699 words