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House Hansard - 280

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 12, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 280 - Feb/12/24
Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)
  • Feb/12/24 11:22:01 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that the NDP supports this bill. Looking at the climate crisis and the consequences it is increasingly having on the ground, this is a no-brainer for us. It is important to have a broader scope when it comes to adapting to climate change, as well as more resources and better emergency preparedness planning for high-risk areas. We have seen this happen in British Columbia, perhaps even more than in the other provinces. We need only look at what happened a few years ago with the heat dome that killed 600 people in the greater Vancouver area. Some 60 people in my riding died as a result of the intense heat, which wreaked havoc in my entire region. That was something we had never seen in the entire history of our province and in the entire history of our country. Because of the dome, which remained in place for a few days, the entire emergency preparedness team of responders was overwhelmed. Paramedics could not respond to all of the emergency calls they received. In apartments with inadequate ventilation, people, often seniors, died a few hours after their apartment turned into a sauna. Firefighters in New Westminster—Burnaby tried to help the paramedics and hospital workers. I will always remember what the paramedics, firefighters and police officers told me: If the heat dome had lasted a mere 24 hours longer, we would have lost far more than the 600 people who died. We were faced with the complete breakdown of our emergency system. The reality is that climate change and its effects are having an increasing impact. We know that. I mentioned the heat dome but, that same year, and last year as well, we experienced atmospheric rivers that isolated British Columbia from the rest of the country. These weather events cut off all roads and railways between British Columbia and the rest of Canada for quite some time. People had to go through the United States to get to eastern Canada from Canada’s west coast. We are also increasingly seeing damage caused by strong winds, and we will have to create a new hurricane category, category 6, because the existing categories are inadequate to reflect the force of the hurricanes we are seeing now. I had the sad experience of visiting New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, in which 1,800 people died. I saw neighbourhoods that are still in tatters, even years later. Given the situation, we will have to change things. This bill is a step in the right direction, but Canada needs to do much more. On this side of the House, in the NDP, we can see that this has to be made a priority. I want to note that the first motion moved by the NDP during this Parliament was Motion No. 1, the green new deal, which points to the importance of starting to invest in clean energy and, of course, in promoting public safety, ensuring that we are able to adapt to climate change, and, more importantly, ensuring that we are winning this battle against climate change. To us in the NDP, this is absolutely a priority. We see how the Liberals have been dragging their feet for years. They should be doing much more. They keep giving money to the CEOs of oil companies instead of investing in fighting climate change. Of course, the Conservatives deny that climate change even exists. It makes me sad to see that they are not prepared to bring in the necessary measures. We have lived in British Columbia with the heat dome that killed 600 people across our region. Emergency services were on the verge of collapse; what we heard from firefighters and ambulance technicians, as people literally died in the saunas their apartments became, is that if that crisis had lasted another 24 or 48 hours, we would have seen a collapse of our emergency services. This is why it is so important to reinforce public safety initiatives to ensure that we can respond to the incredible gravity of incidents of climate change and storms from climate change, all of which have such a dramatic impact. British Columbia has lived through two atmospheric rivers that have cut off British Columbia from the rest of Canada. Roads and railway beds were washed away. There was loss of life that came with that. We have also seen that discussions of hurricanes and strong winds need to move to a whole new category. There are storms we have never seen in the history of humanity. Now, category 6 storms are increasingly occurring. According to newspaper articles, there were at least five that went beyond category 5, which used to be the most severe hurricanes, to category 6. This is why the NDP tabled, as the first piece of legislation before this Parliament, Motion No. 1, the green new deal, where what we would do is go beyond the well-intended private member's bill before us, which we support, to a whole range of government actions, including cutting off the massive subsidies that go to oil and gas CEOs. We need to make sure we are actually putting into place measures that would help our clean energy economy, and that means hundreds of thousands of jobs. Particularly in areas like Alberta and Saskatchewan, where there are clean energy workers, clean energy investments are going to make a huge difference to the local economy, yet the government has refused to act beyond putting in place a few well-intended measures. The Conservative Party simply denies climate change. What we need is a government that steps up, understands the important impacts of climate change and is willing to make the investments to help save this planet. We have seen first-hand in British Columbia, in my riding, 60 deaths after the heat dome in New Westminster—Burnaby and how the impacts of climate change are increasing year to year. What we need to do as parliamentarians is stand together, go beyond the bill before us and put in place measures that would fight climate change like it is a battle that we mean to win. The wonderful thing is that by making those investments in clean energy, Canada can become a clean energy powerhouse. It is vitally important that we do this. The mitigation measures and the public safety measures are important, but what is most important is that we treat climate change with the severity that it has, as an impact right across this country. In agricultural regions, in our cities, in our towns and in northern Canada, we are seeing first-hand the impacts of climate change. We need to leave a better planet to our children and our children's children, and the only way to do that is by a more comprehensive approach on climate change. That is why the NDP tabled the green new deal, and that is why we will continue to push for measures that would fight climate change in a meaningful way.
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