44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 29, 2024 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I see that my colleague is using his speaking time in the House to chant campaign slogans and even announce some new candidates for the next election, which is scheduled to take place in a year and a half, rather than talking about the bill before us.
That being said, I have not heard him mention the environment even once in all his famous election promises, even though he seems to want to win over Quebeckers. One thing I do know about Quebeckers is that they are worried about the climate crisis. We experienced unprecedented forest fires and floods this summer. One need only go to the Magdalen Islands, the Gaspé or my riding. In the last snowstorm, 30 feet of shoreline were lost to the sea because no more ice is forming. The well-known highway 132, which circles the Gaspé peninsula, will soon be under water. I think Quebeckers are worried about the climate crisis and expect their elected representatives to propose solutions to address it.
I would like to hear what the Conservative leader is proposing to fight the climate crisis.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by asking for unanimous consent to share my time.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Terrebonne.
Before I begin, I want to wish you, Madam Speaker, and all my colleagues, a happy new year. This is the first opportunity we have had to do so. I also wish a happy new year to everyone in Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia.
I would like to mention that today I am wearing a small green square, like many other members, because January 29 is the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action Against Islamophobia. This small gesture is made in support of the families and loved ones of the victims of the Quebec City mosque attack.
We are here to debate Bill C‑59, which seeks to implement the budget. This bill can be described as an omnibus bill. It is a bit of a hodgepodge. There is a tremendous amount of items in there that affect many different topics. Today, I will be talking about the environment, housing, pregnancy, vaping, business transfers, psychotherapy and tax havens. Why will I be focusing on all these topics? It is because Bill C‑59 addresses them all and many more, but these are the ones that interest me the most.
When I was in my riding over the holidays, I kept hearing the same thing when I met with constituents. Based on what I was told, people sometimes get the impression that they have no idea what we do in Ottawa or what measures we are working on. When they listen to the radio and watch television, they hear slogans from the different parties geared to the next election. The election is not due for another year and a half. In the meantime, we have work to do as parliamentarians, as elected members. That is what people elected us for.
There are bills that are currently before Parliament, including this economic statement. I think that we need to analyze them. Even though it may be a rather tedious job, we need to analyze everything in the bill and determine what is good and what is not so good. Obviously, as with any omnibus bill, there are some things that are good and some that are less good, and we need to strike a balance between the two.
Unfortunately, there are two key measures in Bill C‑59 that make it impossible for the Bloc Québécois to support it. Because of those two measures, we cannot vote in favour of the bill, despite the fact that, as I was saying, it does contain some good and important measures, although some of them could use a bit of tweaking. Quite simply, voting in favour of the bill would fly in the face of our party's values and those of Quebeckers. I am talking about our environmental values and the importance that we place on protecting the jurisdictions of the provinces and Quebec. What poses a problem for us is the measures that the government describes as environmental, which I would say are more pseudo-environmental, and one of the housing measures.
I want to start with these two measures. First, the government is offering a total of $30.3 billion in subsidies, in the form of tax credits, primarily to oil companies. This means that taxpayers will be paying oil companies to try and pollute less. That is essentially my understanding of the tax credits that are being offered.
As for the second measure I was talking about, the government is going to create a federal department of municipal affairs. A similar department already exists in Quebec and the provinces, and it manages municipal affairs. The federal government has decided to legislate in this area and create a department of housing, infrastructure and communities. This means more interference, more disputes and more delays. Why is it taking so long for Quebec and the federal government to agree on certain projects? It is because the federal government wants to impose conditions, and that delays the process. I fail to see how creating another department will help facilitate that process.
Let us begin with the much-discussed tax credits for oil companies. Quite frankly, they do not need any handouts. According to the Centre for Future Work, the oil and gas extraction sector has raked in record profits in recent years, to the tune of roughly $38 billion over three years. Everyone heard me correctly. I said the government wanted to add another $30 billion to that $38 billion, as though they needed it. When I look at those astronomical amounts, I think about all the other areas where the federal government could invest money, for example to help people cope with the rising cost of living.
It is being reported that roughly 70% of shareholders in the oil and gas sector are foreign. In other words, that money is going to leave the country. In the last two budgets, the government announced its plans to introduce no fewer than six tax credits largely for oil companies. According to information and figures provided by the Department of Finance, these investments will total a whopping $83 billion by 2035.
People talk about the climate crisis and say that we need to do more to fight it. This government's solution is to give the oil companies more money to create more pollution. I have a hard time following that logic.
This bill will amend the Income Tax Act by creating two tax credits. The first is a tax credit for investments in clean technology. We are talking about a $17.8-billion investment in clean technology. That sounds promising and desirable, but on closer inspection, it becomes clear that the tax credit is tailor-made for increased bitumen extraction and gas exports.
The oil sands are essentially tar mixed with soil. Extracting it is energy-intensive. Hot water or steam has to be injected into the ground to liquefy the tar, which then floats on polluted water to be recovered. Oil companies currently use gas to heat this water.
However, the industry would rather export its gas than use it to extract oil. That is timely, since there is a new liquefied natural gas terminal being built on the coast of British Columbia. It is a gateway to Asia. TC Energy has almost completed the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the Shell and LNG Canada liquefied natural gas terminal should be operational in about a year. The only thing left is to make more gas available for export and that is where the clean technology investment tax credit comes in.
Under Bill C‑59 the oil companies would be paid to buy small nuclear reactors. That nuclear energy, which would replace the gas they are currently using, would allow them to extract more bitumen and make more gas available for export, all at taxpayers' expense. I am not going to get into that today, but we have already talked about how small nuclear reactors are not such a good idea, for various reasons.
Yes, the tax credit can be used for other purposes, such as a real transition to renewable energy. Some good examples are in the manufacturing sector, including the use of biomass by paper mills and the development of carbon-neutral aluminum. I think that would be a good way to use this tax credit. However, given the enormity of the investments needed for the oil companies to use nuclear energy to extract more bitumen, we can expect the oil companies to pocket most of the profits.
As for the second tax credit, the one for carbon capture, utilization and storage, we are talking about an investment of $12.5 billion. Since I have only two minutes left, I will unfortunately not have time to talk about the positive aspects. That is too bad, because I really wanted to explain to my constituents all the little measures I mentioned at the beginning. I will therefore continue to talk about the tax credit for carbon capture, utilization and storage, because I find it quite interesting that the government is touting this as an environmental measure when, once again, the government is merely helping the oil companies perhaps pollute a little less. Rather than accelerating the transition to renewable energy, the government would rather help them in that way. Oddly enough, this tax credit is only available to businesses in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.
Carbon capture and storage is an experimental technology through which big polluters would recover some of the carbon dioxide that they emit and store it underground, usually in old empty oil wells. That is a key element of the oil companies' and the government's pseudo-environmental strategy, even though the International Energy Agency, which is part of the OECD, believes that countries would be making a serious mistake if they were to make carbon capture the focus of their environmental strategy. The International Energy Agency believes that such technology is smoke and mirrors, that it is as of yet unproven and that, if it were to one day be used on an industrial scale, it would produce only marginal results at an exorbitant cost.
Even knowing all that, the federal government wants to move forward with this technology. Why? To pander to the oil companies, of course. Independent media outlet The Narwhal released a document obtained though the Access to Information Act that shows that Suncor helped to write the government's environmental policy, particularly the section on carbon capture found in Bill C‑59. In December, we learned that the government met with oil and gas lobbies at least 2,000 times between 2022 and 2023.
That shows just how involved the oil companies are in writing the Liberal government's strategies. This will do nothing to help Quebeckers and Canadians fight the climate crisis. That is why we will be voting against this bill.
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Madam Speaker, of course, when the government wants to invest just over $30 billion in clean technologies, names like that make a good impression. The government gets to feel like it is clearly investing in the environment. However, knowing that most of this money is going to the most polluting sectors of our economy, I wonder whether there is a way to ensure that this money is invested solely in renewable energy, not in the most polluting sectors. I do not know whether the strategy can be rewritten, but surely there is a way.
At this time, I cannot congratulate the federal government for investing in green energy when I see that it is investing most of its money in carbon storage, utilization and capture. As I was saying, this technology is still unproven. It is very expensive and yields very few results. Most companies have not yet begun to implement these technologies, and yet our greenhouse gas reduction targets are just around the corner.
How are we going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, even if we invest all this money? I do not know.
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Madam Speaker, I agree that we need to spend smarter. We do not need new investments. The money we are already investing needs to be spent on different things.
This $30 billion is going mostly to oil, but why not invest it in health transfers to the provinces instead? The government could also give more to Quebec for housing and allow Quebec to implement its own projects with the municipalities. There are plans on the table, and organizations are just waiting for federal funding. In my own region, apparently people got the green light from Quebec City and wanted to move forward, but there is no more money because the CMHC affordable housing fund is empty.
Why not invest the money better and then balance public finances?
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Madam Speaker, carbon capture and storage is not a solution. The UN tells us so. The OECD and the International Energy Agency tell us not to focus all our efforts on that, not to put all our eggs in the carbon storage basket, because it will not work. We will not be able to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as much as we would like or hope.
The government is quite ambitious, I must say. It has set its greenhouse gas reduction targets fairly high. However, it is not doing anything to reach them. The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development told us not long ago, in 2023, that a few measures here and there were good, but that the government was dragging its feet on implementing them. That is why it is not delivering results.
The Conservative Party says that we need to get into carbon capture and storage, which they say is a good idea. Clearly, the party has not been getting its information from scientists, because they say that carbon capture and storage is not a good idea.
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