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House Hansard - 235

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 19, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 235 - Oct/19/23
Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)
  • Oct/19/23 10:24:19 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise virtually this morning to present a petition from constituents who are very concerned about the galloping climate crisis. The particular approach of these petitioners, physicians, is to cite the health impacts of the climate crisis and to draw the attention of the House to the scientific consensus as represented in the Paris Agreement, that global emissions must be rapidly reduced for it to hold to a less-than-1.5°C global average temperature increase and to make the cuts that are necessary before the year 2030. Petitioners direct the House to the finding of the World Health Organization, that the climate crisis represents the single largest threat to human health of the 21st century. They call on the government to act rapidly to reduce the health threats that they list and that I will only summarize, the impacts from wildfire smoke, the impacts on lungs, the increase in insect-borne diseases such as Lyme disease, the threats created by heat domes and heat-related illnesses and death. They call on this House to act rapidly to complete the end of the dependence of our economy on fossil fuels and take necessary steps to move rapidly to not just net zero but a zero-carbon green energy future.
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Context: House Hansard - 235 - Oct/19/23
Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)
  • Oct/19/23 10:50:35 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-50 
Mr. Speaker, I am afraid the hon. Minister of Labour's speech would have been well informed if there had been some reference to already broken promises to workers in the fossil fuels sector. We talk about how workers do not like to hear this language. I was in Paris with the member's friend, the minister of the environment at the time, Catherine McKenna, was working with Canadian labour unions, and working hard, to get the language of exactly “just transition” into the Paris Agreement. At that point she came back to Canada and put in place a task force on coal sector workers. The task force went into every coal sector worker community in Alberta and Saskatchewan, co-chaired by the head of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick and co-chaired by the then head of the Canadian Labour Congress, who is now a senator. They went into every community, listened to coal sector workers and came up with 10 key principles that should be followed. They are gathering dust, these principles, under the title “A Just and Fair Transition for Canadian Coal Power Workers and Communities”. This morning, this debate is not about the bill itself. It is about everybody's right to speak to it. Here I am as Leader of the Green Party of Canada, and my first chance to speak to the bill is on the question of shutting down debate before we even talk about the work that is important to do and about using language. It is not phraseology or minimizing it and ridiculing it. It was hard work to get it into a legally binding agreement, to which Canada agreed to, signed and ratified, that uses the language “just transition”. The emphasis there is not only on the transition, but also on the justice of it for the workers and the communities, who gave their time in full faith that their report would go somewhere and not just gather dust on a shelf. I see the Speaker wants me to hurry up, but I have had it with being hurried up, shut up and kept off the floor because the bill is important, and now we are going to have time allocation. I do not know that I will get to speak to it. I ask my dear friend, the Minister of Labour, to please not use time allocation on every single bill. It is insulting to democracy and it makes a mockery of the work to review important legislation in this place.
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