44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 19, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, the member opposite would have us believe that Bill C-50 is about creating sustainable jobs, when in actual fact it is not even a plan; it is a plan to get a plan. It is the typical Liberal tactic of saying, “Let us get a bunch of well-paid LIberal insiders to be on a council to advise the government on what the plan might be. Then let us pay another high-paid Liberal insider to be the secretariat, so that two years from now, when they figure out what the plan is, it will happen.” However, nothing says that they do not have a plan like a bill that says it is a plan to get a plan.
Would the member admit they do not have a plan for sustainable jobs?
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Madam Speaker, I am rising today to express my serious concerns about Bill C-50. This bill is called the sustainable jobs act, which is typical of what Liberals do. They pick a name that sounds good. Who does not like sustainable jobs? I like sustainable jobs. I think all Canadians want sustainable jobs. It sounds really good, but the problem is that in this bill there is no plan to create sustainable jobs. This is a plan to get a plan.
The bill outlines how the Liberals are going to put together a council. Based on past behaviour, I suggest that it would be highly paid Liberal insiders who will get these jobs and advise on what the plan ought to be. As to the timeline of when they are going to come up with what the plan ought to be, it be should by 2025, coincidentally just after the next election.
The Liberals do not have a plan. Nothing says there is no plan like a bill that is introduced to get a plan. That is the first thing.
The second thing is the Liberals have another role, a secretariat, that is going to do some coordination, with another highly paid Liberal insider when they get the plan. The problem is that is it; that is all. It is a plan to get a plan, with some principles that are motherhood and apple pie and that we would all agree on, such as well-paying jobs, caring about the environment and the need to respect labour, all of these good things. They are all motherhood and apple pie, but the bill does not have a specific action that is going to help.
On the other hand, it is going to hurt. The analysts of the government have said that Bill C-50 would kill 170,000 direct Canadian jobs, would displace 450,000 workers directly and indirectly working in the energy sector and would risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadians across all provinces. The bill would destroy as many as 2.7 million jobs when there is not a single action in it to create any sustainable jobs at all. That is a problem.
The other thing is that it is going to cost a lot of money. Right now the energy sector provides 10% of Canada's GDP and pays over $20 billion in taxes to all levels of government every year. Last year, $48 billion in royalties and taxes were contributed by the energy sector. This bill purports to get rid of that by eliminating the sector.
We can look at other places in the world that have come up with a sustainable jobs plan and are starting to implement it, Scotland being one example. If we took the cost per person of its plan and did the equivalent thing here, it would cost $37.2 billion. The Liberals are taking away as much as $48 billion and adding a cost of another $37 billion. If we do the math, they are increasing by greater than $70 billion the loss to the Canadian economy.
I do not know why the Liberal government cannot learn the lesson when countless people can, like former Liberal John Manley, who said that when it runs these huge deficits, it is putting a foot on the inflationary gas pedal, which is causing the Bank of Canada to put its foot on the brake with higher interest rates. This raises the cost of mortgages. Canadians are suffering from coast to coast, so definitely not only is the bill not going to create jobs, but it will come with a huge cost.
It is not like this is the first time there has been an attack on oil and gas and the energy sector. This has been a continual theme from the time I got elected in 2015. Let us start with the tanker ban, Bill C-48, to keep Canadian oil from getting out there when everybody else's ships are out there full of oil. Then we had Bill C-55, which created marine protected areas so we could do no oil and gas development there. Then there was Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” bill, which was just called unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. All of these things were intended to be a war against creating oil and gas projects.
There is evidence. When the Liberals took power, there were 18 LNG projects on the books and there were four pipelines. Zero pipelines have been built and all the LNG projects but one are cancelled. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our friends in Germany were going to give us $59 billion to replace their Russian oil and coal with our green LNG. The Prime Minister said there was no business case, so Australia took that deal.
Then Japan came up with a similar deal and again we would not take the deal, so Saudi Arabia took it. Then came France and the Netherlands. There were all these opportunities for Canada to be a leader, supplanting higher-carbon fuels with our green LNG, the most responsibly produced product in the world with the best human rights record, but again the Liberal government refused. Instead, it is focused on its own ideology and things that it wants to do that continue to destroy the economy.
We can talk about the electric vehicle mandates. That was another great idea. Let us give away $31 billion to create 3,000 jobs. For those who can do the math, if we just gave each of those 3,000 people $10 million, they would never have to work again and there would not be any footprint. There is a total misunderstanding of how to create a growing economy.
Then there is the clean electricity standard, another hugely divisive bill that was introduced by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, clearly not understanding that where the Liberals want to go with all the electric vehicles, electricity and the grid would require building the equivalent of 19 nuclear facilities, like the one from Bruce Power. They cannot build anything, so I do not know where they get the idea that they are going to be successful in achieving that.
At the same time, they are ignoring the fact that only 7% of the public even wants an electric vehicle because the technology is not there. No one wants to be trapped in a snowstorm at -30°C because the batteries do not work. They catch fire. In addition to that, they do not have a very long range. Instead, the government decided to pick a winner and loser with the battery plants that are being built.
Now Toyota has come out with a solid-state battery, with a 1,275-kilometre range, that works at -20°C and does not catch fire. That will make our technology obsolete, with $31 billion after the fact. Maybe the Liberal government needs a few more engineers so that it can actually make science-, fact- and data-based decisions, but that is not what is happening today.
The Liberals continue to move ahead with the carbon tax and the second carbon tax, putting punishment on the backs of Canadians and achieving nothing. Emissions have gone up under the government. At the 2005 level, we were at 732 megatonnes. We needed to get to 519 and now we are at 819. They are not achieving their targets and keep putting bills like this in place, talking about sustainability, the environment and creating jobs. They are not actually achieving that.
Sarnia—Lambton has a huge oil and gas sector, but it knows how to do a transition and is doing a transition. It is creating good-paying, sustainable jobs like the ones at Origin Materials, a net-zero plastics plant in my riding. My riding has one of the largest solar facilities in North America. There is a whole bio-innovation centre that is growing different kinds of bio-facilities that are all either carbon sinks or carbon-neutral. These are the kinds of actual solutions and actions we need. That is not what is in Bill C-50. It is a plan to get a plan with nothing else. For that reason, I will not be supporting Bill C-50.
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- Oct/19/23 2:39:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the government voted against a simple request: a plan for an eventual return to a balanced budget. A plan is not too much to ask. We are not asking the government to cut services to balance the budget. We are just asking for a plan.
Everyone knows the first part of the quote from Émile de Girardin: “Governing means planning ahead”. However, he then adds, “and he who does not plan ahead is doomed”. The Liberals just might be doomed. All we want is a plan. Is that really too much to ask?
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