44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 9, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/9/24 12:03:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Victoria.
It is always an honour to rise in the House to speak, but I am deeply ashamed at the ignorance and failure of the Parliament of Canada and Canada's politicians from the provincial level up to deal with the greatest crisis we, as a civilization and people, have ever faced. I say that because wildfire season is officially under way in British Columbia. It began in Alberta in February, when northern Alberta was bringing back its firefighting crews. In northern Ontario, our firefighting crews are getting ready.
I am 61 years old. Some people might say I never grew up, and that is fair, but one thing in all my 61 years is that I always felt so much excitement every single spring because I thought of summer. This year when I talk with people about summer, they talk about fire season. This is the planet we are giving to our children. As a 61-year-old white guy with grey hair, I expect young people to look at us and ask what we did when the crisis came.
We know that the Conservatives ridiculed, laughed and snorted every time we talked about the climate crisis. However, climate crisis deniers are not just the ones who troll about it and ridicule and try to deny the science. We see other forms of climate denial, such as thinking that if one puts out enough press releases, somehow the planet will get better, or that big oil will continue to be allowed to destroy the planet but that somehow if we just keep giving it money it will somehow find a way to make increasing fossil fuel production net-zero, and we will all be better off.
We note that the Liberal government underspent by $15 billion on climate commitments. In the face of a climate catastrophe, the press releases went out. The money was promised but it was not spent. I mention this because, in order to bring a bit of reality to the conversation today, I want to bring a few facts about what is happening in the outside world.
This past month, Antarctica posted the single-biggest increase that has ever been recorded on the planet, a 38.5°C jump. A glaciologist, Professor Martin Siegert, stated that no one ever thought anything like this could ever happen: “It is extraordinary and a real concern. We are now having to wrestle with something that is completely unprecedented.” Another scientist has called it “simply “mind-boggling”. Furthermore, what we are seeing in the Atlantic over just the last 14 months are the highest temperatures ever recorded.
Of course people in the climate denial world will say that it is going to be life as normal; it will just be a little hotter and it will just be a little different. It is the problem of Lucretius, which is that nobody can anticipate a problem bigger than what they have seen in their lifetime, so we have no capacity to recognize the damage and the ongoing planetary breakdown that is happening. In 2023, there was the loss of global tree cover in the areas outside of the tropics like Brazil, where the trees are being hacked down. The fact is that Canada was responsible for the largest tree cover loss recorded, with a 24% loss in a single year. That is from our burning forests.
I would think that the Conservatives would have thought it would great to bring all our parliamentarians and provincial leaders together to talk about solutions to the crisis, but that is not what they care about. This is about a “gotcha” moment. There are a couple of things in the Conservative motion I am kind of interested in, but some of it I just find ridiculous. If this were going to be about “the ongoing carbon tax crisis and the financial burden it places on Canadians”, that would show leadership. It would show vision. It would show we are being adults and we care about our kids, but no, Conservatives do not want to talk about that. They are going to let our kids burn.
Then it is being said that we are going to bring our premiers in to talk about options of opting out of the carbon tax. Are we going to do that with the Doug Ford grifter government? Ontario was not paying the carbon tax until Doug Ford said, “Hey, you know what? We're going to get rid of cap and trade and then make every ordinary Ontarian pay a carbon tax.” Then he then turned around and asked, “Whoa, how come we have this carbon tax?” He said it was because of the bad Liberal government.
Do we seriously think that we are going to let a grifter such as Doug Ford come in and talk about how to deal with the climate crisis? This is a guy who, as soon as he was elected, went and ripped up all the EV charging stations and then realized, “Oh my God, Ontario wants to be an automotive superpower with EV. Someone is going to have to build those EV charging stations.”
Are we going to invite Danielle Smith, the conspiracy queen-in-chief? Alberta had a carbon tax. It was a made-in-Alberta solution. The NDP Alberta solution made a lot more sense than the Liberal solution ever did, because it was about taking money from pollution and reinvesting in business and in alternatives. The Notley government said that they needed to reduce emissions in Alberta. They wanted to get it down by, I think, 30 million tonnes by 2030, and the money from pollution was going to be reinvested. Even some of those big oil companies got backhanders on that if they were willing to commit to clean energy and alternatives. However, Danielle Smith came and ripped all that up, and then she kicked out $66 billion in clean energy projects strictly for ideology. There is no place on the planet where we can get more clean energy projects off the ground at the drop of a hat than in Alberta, but she did not want any of that. What do we have in Alberta now? Alberta has rolling blackouts in April. This is Canada's energy superpower, and she cannot even keep the power on. This is a failed-state approach.
The other thing is that Alberta is suffering a severe drought from the climate catastrophe, but we have not seen a single Conservative from Saskatchewan or Alberta get up and talk about how they are actually burning the province. Now they are saying that maybe they will get themselves this Athabasca pipeline to take water out of the already suffering, damaged Athabasca water system; however, that is not going to be shipped down to southern Alberta, because it is needed by big oil.
The issue here, and this is my problem with the Liberal carbon levy, is that the carbon tax was always a market solution. Therefore, we did not actually penalize the people who were burning our planet and knew they were doing it. I cannot go back and explain to working-class Joe back home that “Hey, you pay the money, then you get more back.” He will ask, “So, what does it do?” That is a good question. I will agree with the Conservatives on their motion that Canada is now 62nd out of 67 countries on the climate change performance index, but what they do not say is that the reason Canada is at the back of the pack is that we have never targeted those who are causing the emission increases.
The oil and gas sector never had any intention of lowering emissions; it never even tried. The intensity of creating oil in Canada today is higher than it was in 1990. When those in the sector talk about carbon capture and want us to give them billions for that, it is not to take it out of the atmosphere but so they can pump out more oil; it is about more fossil fuels. Alberta is responsible for close to 40% of Canada's emissions. Where does that come from? Is the average Albertan any more wasteful than the average Canadian anywhere else? No, it is coming out of one sector; that sector has not been doing its job, and now our planet is on fire. However, we do not see any willingness from the Liberals to actually take this on, and the Conservatives will take on anything except the fact that our planet is on fire and that we are at peak carbon.
The fact is that the emissions that are now being registered coming out of the oil sands are 6,000 times higher than registered. I come from mining country; if a mine was pumping emissions into the local river that were 6,000 times higher than allowed, there would be charges and arrests. If we were sold a product that had 6,000 times more risk to human health, something would be done. However, in Alberta, they have the Alberta Energy Regulator, which is basically an extension of Richie Rich Kruger and probably has an office down the hall.
Why am I going at them so hard? It is because they knew all along. They knew in the late 1950s of the simple science that increased carbon will create a situation where we will get greenhouse gas emissions.
The American Petroleum Institute did a study in 1982 that plotted out the timelines of what was going to be a slow-moving disaster. The study said that significant temperature changes were certain to occur by the year 2000, and this would lead to the eventual collapse of the Antarctic ice shelf—
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- Apr/9/24 12:14:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, can I just get a clarification? The member knocked on people's doors in British Columbia? The member was part of a government that brought in a provincial carbon tax. The member will not tell the truth when he is talking to people. He is going to axe the facts.
People in B.C. are not paying a federal carbon tax. How dumb does he think his constituents are? How dumb does he think people are if he goes door to door with such blatant misinformation? This is a guy who brought in a carbon tax, who is blaming a government for a carbon tax that British Columbians are not paying.
By the way, while B.C. burns, this is what we have to deal with in the climate-denying world of the Conservatives.
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- Apr/9/24 12:16:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to say I would be careful in believing anything Danielle Smith said. They want to bring her to have a premiers' conference. This is the woman who said cigarette smoking was good for people. No wonder she thinks burning the planet is good for us too, while Alberta dies in drought and she cannot keep the power on.
Would we have Danielle Smith, the conspiracy queen of North America, come and talk about carbon and the carbon crisis? My God, it is bad enough for my poor friends in Alberta. They cannot even keep the lights on in the energy superpower province, because she has chased out all the clean energy. She believes in smoking. I cannot even keep track of where Danielle Smith goes on a given day with the conspiracy claims she makes.
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- Apr/9/24 12:18:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we gave $31 billion to big oil, so companies could take unrefined bitumen; they would not even bother to process it in Canada. It is the dirtiest product on the planet, and we are going to have the taxpayers pay to ship it. Meanwhile, the Conservatives cheer it on and the Liberals say it is going to be good because they will somehow lower our emissions. We cannot continue to burn fossil fuels without killing the future of our children. Those are the facts.
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- Apr/9/24 1:04:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to support my colleague. It is really unfair for the NDP members to talk about science when there are Conservatives in the room. I think it puts us all at a great disadvantage.
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- Apr/9/24 1:06:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member has made an accusation that 50% of the Conservatives do not believe in climate change. I think he needs to prove it. Maybe it is 100%.
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- Apr/9/24 1:18:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when we had energy workers come talk to Parliament about being part of a new energy economy and the need to have their voices at the table, the Conservatives shut them down. They shut down the IBEW. They shut down the construction workers. They shut down the building trades. They shut down the Canadian Labour Congress and the Alberta Federation of Labour. They would not let them speak.
When it came to coal workers who had been hurt in the transition, it was New Democrats who brought in the coal workers, because the Conservatives were not interested in letting working people speak.
Given the evidence that we heard from energy workers in Alberta, who understood that there is a new future out there, why did the Conservatives shut them down time and time again and not let workers from the energy community speak?
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