44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 2, 2023 10:00AM
- Nov/2/23 10:26:48 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to join in the tributes to Veterans' Week and Remembrance Day, and I ask if I have unanimous consent to proceed.
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- Nov/2/23 10:27:14 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I cannot thank my colleagues enough for allowing me to rise today with the other parties in the House to pay tribute to our veterans and to take a moment to mark Veterans' Week, from November 5 to 11.
All of us are, at this moment, thinking of how we will mark Remembrance Day in our own communities and how we will, in the week leading to Remembrance Day, mark and honour veterans' extraordinary contributions. The lives we lead today in this country, as many members have said, would not be possible without the sacrifices of others and other generations, for the most part, although, as the hon member for Burnaby South just reminded us, we have veterans now and members of our armed forces now who need our support.
I am of that generation of baby boomers who were close. My dad and my uncle fought in the Second World War. I even remember as a child meeting my dad's cousin. My dad was British and he lived through the Blitz, but his cousin Victor was in the trenches in the First World War. We did not have the term “post-traumatic stress disorder” then. Everybody just knew that cousin Victor was not quite right. He never got over the First World War. He once said to the family that, if someone were to tell him they were afraid of teacups, he would understand. There is a trauma that never leaves one from the horrors of war.
I particularly want to pay tribute to day to Mary Greyeyes Reid. She was born in Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Her daughter, Cheryl Greyeyes, is a friend of mine, and that is the only reason I know that Mary Greyeyes Reid was the first indigenous Canadian woman to join the armed forces. On Indigenous Veterans Day, I particularly think of Mary Greyeyes Reid, who faced, at five years old, being seized from her family and taken to residential school. In 1942, she joined the Canadian military and served overseas where, even there in the Canadian military at a time of war, she faced discrimination: both sexism and racism. She served with such distinction and honour, and we do plan, all of us, to find ways in our own communities to mark Indigenous Veterans Day on September 8.
This is the first time in many a year that we have risen in this place to pay tribute to our veterans when we are close to theatres of war in two places: in Europe and in the Middle East. There was that end-of-history moment when we thought the brutality of direct armed conflict, one country against another, belonged in a different time.
To our Canadian men and women serving now in our military, I thank them. We will be with them. We support them, and we must never let our veterans down.
We will wear the poppy and buy as many as we can, knowing that the Canadian Legion does such good work in our communities, and I just want to take a moment to pray for the war dead in the most neglected of all Canadian war cemeteries. I only know about it because of the former member for Cumberland—Colchester, Bill Casey. When a group of us, 18 MPs, toured occupied territories in Palestinian territories and in Israel, Bill Casey spoke to the Canadian government to ask it to please let us go to the Gaza War Cemetery where several thousand Commonwealth war dead, some Canadian, lie buried. Nobody from Parliament had gone to honour them for many years. It was too dangerous then in 2018, and the government would not let us go.
In this moment there are some in that cemetery who are marked as never identified, but they are not marked as unknown. Their graves read, “A soldier of the Great War...known unto God”. No one is unknown, but some are known only to God, and they are lying near another theatre of war, near Gaza, in the Gaza War Cemetery.
I will close with taking a moment, and hope all will join me, in a prayer for peace for the whole world, for Ukraine, for Gaza and for Israel. I pray that we will, before the next Veterans' Week, be able to go to the Gaza War Cemetery, that it will be quiet and tranquil, and that we will lay flowers on the graves of those known only to God.
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- Nov/2/23 10:36:21 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the petition, signed by residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands, starts by recognizing that Canada is legally obligated, under the terms of the Paris Agreement, which was signed and ratified by Canada, to the goal of attempting to hold the global average temperature increase to no more than 1.5°C. We are now at 1.1°C, and we are already seeing dramatic and devastating impacts of the climate crisis.
The petitioners therefore call on the Government of Canada to take bold climate action. They particularly call on the government to do the following things: set ambitious targets for reduction of emissions; set a national price on carbon; arrest growth in oil sands and other fossil fuel production; end the export of thermal coal from Canada, which was a promise made in the 2021 election; and invest in the transition to a carbon-free, decarbonized economy, one with strong and sustainable jobs and a strong postcarbon economy.
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- Nov/2/23 12:00:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the debate on home heating, sometimes people express a belief that natural gas is more environmentally friendly than heating oil. That is not true. For the most part, natural gas is shale gas. The method for producing shale gas leaves a bigger carbon footprint than heating oil. It is not a good choice for our climate.
Can my colleague comment on the issue of the carbon footprint of shale gas?
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- Nov/2/23 3:15:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as we have gathered here for the last hour or so of question period, I have wanted to engage in the debate and talk about the climate crisis, but all I can think about is that, while we are sitting here in such safety and security, the children of Gaza are terrorized and terrified. Children in Israel remain terrorized and terrified. We need a ceasefire, and we need it now.
I want the Government of Canada, which has always stood for peace and for solutions to conflicts that do not involve the bombing of civilians, which is a war crime in itself, to please, the government or any minister, stand up to say right now that Canada will call for a ceasefire on both sides.
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- Nov/2/23 6:46:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this evening's adjournment proceedings. I am pleased to be able to rise to pursue a question I originally asked on June 7 of this year.
It was in question period and I had the honour to address my question directly to the Right Hon. Prime Minister. We could actually feel the smoke in Parliament that day. I do not know how many of my colleagues remember that, but on June 7, the forest fires across Canada had reached the inside of Parliament. As I said in my question, the Ottawa bubble had been pierced by the reality of the climate crisis. We felt it in the chamber. There was smoke in our eyes. Our eyes were burning and it brought home forcibly that we are in a climate emergency.
My questions to the Prime Minister were directly about what a government would do if it understood that it was an emergency. I know the Liberals continually claim that they have done more for climate than any previous government. That is possibly true. Certainly, the climate plan put forward under the government was never as complete or as effective as it could have been if Paul Martin's government had not been brought down on November 28, 2005. Money was in place in the 2005 budget and the plans were stronger and more comprehensive.
However, here we are and it is 2023. Time is literally running out. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has told us clearly that in order to hold to 1.5ºC global average temperature increase, which is not a political goal but a goal required by physics and chemistry to ensure a livable climate for our kids, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak and begin to drop rapidly by 2025.
That is why António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has said that continued investments in fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure is “economic and moral madness”.
We started talking about the forest fires this year. All around the world, scientists have tracked Canada with alarm. We had a fire season that started earlier and lasted later. In total, it burned approximately 19 million hectares. We also had floods that took lives in Nova Scotia. We also had fires that extended as far as evacuating all of Yellowknife. Both in total area affected and in the number of people affected and lives disrupted, nothing should have said so clearly to the Liberals as this forest fire season that it is not enough to put in place policies on one hand to reduce greenhouse gases, if we keep subsidizing fossil fuels with the other hand.
Now is the time to bring in an excess profits tax on the fossil fuel industry, which is bringing in $4.2 billion as Motion No. 92 would have it. Now is the time to cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion before wasting a single additional dollar of public money. Now is the time to say that if we are serious about reconciliation, we do not drive that pipeline through Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc Territory. Now is the time to understand this is an emergency and we act like it.
From now on, we take it so seriously that building fossil fuel infrastructure and expanding fossil fuel production will stop, and stop now.
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- Nov/2/23 6:55:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague that we need to have a sensible discussion in this place. The climate emergency is not going away; it is galloping on and threatening lives.
When we talk about affordability, we need to recognize that climate emergency events make life less affordable for everyone. In fact, they threaten our very lives, livelihoods and communities. We need to take the climate crisis far more seriously than we do. This means that the Liberals cannot continue to do one thing for climate and another for fossil fuels at the same time, all the time, and think that amounts to climate leadership. It does not.
We need to cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline. We are building it with public money. We are violating indigenous rights while building it. If it is finished and starts shipping diluted bitumen out in tankers in larger numbers, it is not a question of if but when there will be a major spill, despoiling the Salish Sea in ways that can never be cleaned up.
Please, for the love of God, we must take this seriously.
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