44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 11, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/11/24 11:00:49 a.m.
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moved:
That Bill C-50, in the preamble, be amended by replacing lines 13 to 15 on page 2 with the following:
“fostering the creation of sustainable jobs;”
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- Apr/11/24 11:09:31 a.m.
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moved:
That Bill C-50, in Clause 2, be amended by replacing lines 24 to 32 on page 5 with the following:
“sustainable job means any job which provides a powerful pay cheque for a Canadian worker. (emploi durable)”
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- Apr/11/24 11:11:07 a.m.
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moved:
That Bill C-50, in Clause 7, be amended by replacing lines 4 to 6 on page 7 with the following:
“ters on potential areas of cooperation in relation to the Sustainable”
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- Apr/11/24 11:24:40 a.m.
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moved:
That Bill C-50, in Clause 16, be amended by replacing line 30 on page 11 with the following:
“tribute to the creation and retention of sustainable jobs and to sup-”
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- Apr/11/24 11:24:40 a.m.
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moved:
That Bill C-50, in Clause 16, be amended by replacing lines 30 and 31 on page 11 with the following:
“tribute to the creation of sustainable jobs; and”
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- Apr/11/24 11:24:40 a.m.
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moved:
That Bill C-50, in Clause 16, be amended by replacing line 23 on page 10 with the following:
“to sustainable jobs for workers, particularly those who are lndigenous peoples or Black or other racialized individuals;”
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- Apr/11/24 11:57:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-50, which can be summed up in one short sentence: It is an act to promote Liberal friends to fancy boards and to destroy the economy of western Canada. There is an obsession by this radical socialist environment minister to push his not-so-hidden agenda on Canadians, to wipe oil and gas production off the face of the earth and ensure that we all live in energy poverty.
If members do not believe me, they can listen to his own comments. He said that fossil fuels must be phased out by 2050, and even earlier if possible.
Let us contrast that statement with some comments from Japan’s ambassador to Canada about the role we could be playing in the world’s future energy mix, in particular when it comes to LNG: “The world is waiting for Canada...Canada can and should play a very important role to support the energy situation not only in Japan and South Korea, but the world.”
When it comes to Canada, we are the closest market to Japan and South Korea that could be providers of clean, sustainable and affordable LNG. Canada has a natural advantage in producing LNG, because of the naturally colder climate that we have for more than half of the year. Japan and South Korea are trying to find ways to avoid being energy-dependent on nefarious players like the Communist regime in Beijing. As the Japanese ambassador said, we have an important role to play, but the world is still waiting.
Look around the rest of the world, and we can see what other options there are available to us for selling our LNG. Last year, we saw Germany, Italy and France sign long-term LNG supply agreements with Qatar, but only after they came to Canada asking us to be their provider of choice. They came to us because they did not want to go to a country with a deplorable human rights record, like Qatar. They did not want to go to a country that is housing the leaders of Hamas, but, because of the minister’s blind and radical loathing of our world-class energy sector, he said no. The Liberals left those countries with no choice but to basically support the enemies of one of our most important allies, Israel, and in February it was announced that India and Bangladesh are signing agreements, and so has a Chinese company as well.
It is a shame, because if we look at the way the world is right now, there is both a moral case and a business case for producing and exporting Canadian energy, in particular our LNG, but the Liberal government does not get it. We have a radical environment minister and his incompetent Prime Minister, who apparently would rather see energy deals go to a country that houses the head of Hamas than to Canada, with our high standards for things like human rights, high regulatory standards and an abundance of supply.
How does that make any sense?
When the government stands against Canadian energy, we are not doing the world any favours. At the same time, it also hurts a lot of people in our own country, who benefit from having a successful energy industry here at home. There are so many communities that rely on the oil and gas industry for their survival. It is the industry that keeps the lights on at the hockey rink, at the community centre and at the seniors centre, and that pays the royalties and taxes that are needed to invest in things like hospitals, schools, libraries and emergency services.
Here in Ottawa, if we walk down the street across from Parliament, there is a good example of two different billboards, one after the other, that highlight the social benefits of the oil and gas sector. The first billboard says that Canada needs a fully funded Canada disability benefit. The second billboard is a message from Canada Action, and it says, “As Long As The World Needs Oil & Natural Gas Shouldn't It Be Canadian?”
Why are those two billboards related? It is because the royalties and the tax dollars that are raised when the energy sector is going strong fill the government coffers with the necessary money to invest in those types of social programs. They cannot exist or succeed in the first place without generating a significant amount of revenue from our energy sector.
As much as the NDP-Liberals keep trying, we cannot get away with spending money that we do not have. Sooner or later, it runs out, and bad things start to happen, like some of what we are seeing now with inflation. As we know, the Prime Minister does not have the type of common sense or self-control as the Conservative leader, the member for Carleton, to be able to implement a one-for-one policy, whereby for every new dollar of spending the government has to find a dollar of savings.
As such, when the government sets out to destroy the very industry that massively funds government programs and the equalization payments that prop up Quebec, everyone loses. That includes indigenous communities as well.
Natural Law Energy is a company made up of a group of first nations in Saskatchewan and Alberta. They wanted to invest in the Keystone XL pipeline expansion so they could increase their cash flow, which would support their people. It would have been a great opportunity for economic reconciliation. Do members remember when the Prime Minister claimed that no relationship was more important to him than the one with first nations? Apparently, he said that for his own political gain, because once he had a chance to put his words into action, he was nowhere to be found, other than to say that, no, they do not get to participate in the economy or have any economic self-determination and reconciliation.
Then there are the thousands of jobs and economic spinoffs that come from having a robust oil and gas sector in an area. There was a local news headline in my riding recently that read “April Oil and Gas Public Offering Shows Kindersley Area Generated $234,074.68 in Revenue”. That is just from one public offering. It does not include all the wages of workers in the area or the money they are spending in their community.
This past winter was like every other winter across the Prairies, and we had some strong cold snaps. More urgently, there was a period of time when Alberta was sending warnings to its people to reduce their power consumption to avoid rolling blackouts during peak times when the temperature was in the -40°C range.
How could this happen to a province like Alberta? It had an NDP government that drank the same Kool-Aid as the radical environment minister and decided to close down the reliable, affordable baseload power and replace it with expensive, intermittent wind and solar power. The irony is that it was not due to a lack of wind. There is enough wind most days to produce power. The issue was that it was so cold that it was not safe for the turbines to operate. I have actually worked in the wind industry, and I know that actually happens, because it happened all the time on the wind farm I worked at. Quite often, in the winter, it was also overcast, and the days are short, so there was next to no solar capacity that was actually available. The previous NDP government in Alberta literally almost killed people because of its radical ideology.
Thank God that Saskatchewan had the ability and the capacity to fire up Boundary Dam Unit 4 to be able to help provide power to our neighbours. Thank God that our province has invested in natural gas power stations like the Chinook Power Station in Swift Current, which can provide the equivalent baseload power to hundreds of thousands of homes. If the Liberals’ radical agenda is allowed to proceed, this is only going to be the beginning, and this is just a snapshot of what we can expect. The Liberals have this idea that any new natural gas has to be phased out by 2035 too, if not sooner.
I met with some of the turbine suppliers, and they were willing to tell me some of the timelines to get the parts needed to build a plant now. In some cases it might take up to 10 years to get all the parts they need to build a power plant. It is the same story about trying to procure solar panels and wind turbine equipment, because there is minimal manufacturing in North America for that equipment and that industry as well. However, in order to comply with the regulations that the government is rolling out, they have to be in operation before 2035. Simply ordering the power plant prior to the deadline is not good enough. Canadians are at serious risk of being plunged into widespread energy poverty, but the Liberals know that. The regulations that are published in the Canada Gazette told us that the people most at risk or most likely to already live in energy poverty are single mothers and seniors living on a fixed income, and those regulations would disproportionately impact those people.
The Liberals also know the devastating unemployment that their transition is set to cause. The natural resources minister received a memo discussing exactly that. The Liberals' own government document says that their so-called just transition will affect over 200,000 workers in the energy sector. That is listed as 1% of our employment rate and, with how unemployment numbers are already rising, we really cannot afford for that to keep going up.
The memo also happens to mention 292,000 workers in agriculture and 193,000 workers in manufacturing. Does anyone really believe that the Liberals are going to replace hundreds of thousands of jobs on the line?
Combine all this with the carbon tax, the Liberal fuel regulations, the emissions cap regulations and other burdensome regulations like the unconstitutional Impact Assessment Act, and it is quite easy to see the place where the Liberals are trying to take us. Their plan punishes Canadians, and it will bring misery and devastation upon them.
Thank God that there is an election on the horizon, in which Canadians can give this radical socialist environment minister the boot and get Canada back on track with a Conservative government that would axe the tax and fix the budget so that Canadians can get back to living in prosperity instead of poverty. Canada can become an energy-independent country that no longer relies on imported oil from dictators. We can use our own resources to produce what our country needs and what the world needs: clean, affordable, ethical and sustainable Canadian energy. Only a Conservative government would get it done.
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- Apr/11/24 12:06:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to listen to Conservatives speak to this legislation. Obviously, they are four-square against the legislation. They are in election mode. They hate this legislation.
Canadians need to have an understanding of what is actually in the legislation itself that the member is so adamantly opposed to, such as the sustainable jobs partnership council. What is wrong with a council working with Canadians in communities, looking at sustainable jobs into the future and providing a strategic annual report and a report that comes out on a five-year plan? What is wrong with that?
The Conservative Party believes, at the end of the day, that anything that includes the word “sustainable” or “environment” is bad for Canadians. I have news for the Conservative Party: These are good things. Working with Canadians is a good thing. Why is the member opposed to that aspect of the legislation?
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- Apr/11/24 12:10:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I hear that the member and his party are opposed to the legislation, but there is a climate emergency happening. There is a climate crisis and it is impacting Canadians across the country. We need to invest in sustainable jobs.
Putting the legislation aside, I am wondering if he can at least agree to those principles.
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- Apr/11/24 12:12:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the father of 20th-century modern management, Peter F. Drucker, once said, “There is...nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” That quote depicts the foundation of the just transition act that we have before us today.
There is nothing just about forcing a transition on an industry or on a community that has made it its life journey to produce the cleanest energy products the world has ever seen, especially knowing that through global turmoil, food insecurity and increased energy demands, the world's hydrocarbons will continue to be needed as a solution to humanity's woes and not, as ideologists would have us believe, as the cause of those woes.
To ensure that, should the world decide that its energy demands will be satisfied by strong environmental hydrocarbon-producing countries, we as Canadians will continue to be there to answer the call, but we will not be there if Canada’s major economic driver is brought to its knees by the twisted ideology of the government and its anti-energy partners.
The Conservative leader has said that we will unleash the growth within our economy, that with our most powerful resources, produced in the most environmentally positive way, there will be benefits to our people and to the environment at the same time. We will not follow the Prime Minister, with the help of his NDP masters, to push production out of Canada and, thus, toward other countries that pollute more, burn more coal and put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere with no remorse.
The Prime Minister would sooner drive production away from Canadians, who already have the cleanest electricity grid on planet Earth, toward other nations that, frankly, are incapable of change or just do not care.
By using the wealth generated by our essential hydrocarbon resources, we can protect the environment and prevent the loss of billions of dollars of stranded assets owned by provinces and first nations, and use our innovative skills to move the global needle of greenhouse gases to a level that would satisfy all but the most radical eco-activists.
At the natural resources committee, we have had much debate on the future of Canada’s hydrocarbon industries. I find it unbelievable that the natural resources minister, along with his cohorts in cabinet, would actively pursue a framework to handcuff one of Canada’s greatest assets. Of course, all of this discussion has been created because of the planned attack on resource development in Canada. Had Bill C-69, the anti-resource development law, never happened and if tens of billions of investment plans not been shelved, then the government would not have had to produce legislation to prop up the ghost towns that it is actively creating.
The Liberal just transition action plan is a dangerous government-mandated plan to kill off 170,000 Canadian jobs and to put at risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadian workers. This is a plan that creates subsidized jobs, not sustainable jobs. Conservatives do not believe in a central-planning “Ottawa knows best” approach that tells private sector energy companies how to run their operations. The government cannot even track emissions properly.
As a member of the natural resources committee, I have asked multiple times for an analysis of the full life-cycle impact of all the projects we have, from the first shovel in the ground to the last shovel used to cover up those projects. The government has no clue, yet we are to trust it to dictate to industries how to best run their operations. I think not.
Oil and gas are still Canada’s largest export sector, and it is so important in the development of renewable and alternative fuels of the future to have it strong and to keep it strong.
The Liberals and their NDP cohorts are ignoring cost, technology and infrastructure demands. Reports vary on how the federal government has underfunded its climate plans. RBC had a report that stated that the government needed to spend $2 trillion to make it to net zero. It published a supplementary report saying Canada could capitalize on the global increase for oil and gas and still meet its net-zero targets with investments from the profits, but the government turned its back on our allies while peddling technology and alternative fuel sources that cannot be produced at a commercial rate.
A Conservative government would unleash the energy sector while fostering technology and innovation to protect our environment, so that more Canadian energy would get to the world to displace dictator energy and create jobs and powerful paycheques for Canadians.
Let us be clear. There is noting just about this transition and tax plan the Liberals have. Chief Dale Swampy said, “There is nothing fair or equitable about what is happening today.”
After eight years of anti-energy messages, delays, arbitrary and inconsistent regulatory conditions, an outright veto of an approved export pipeline and the imposition of project-killing Bill C-69, despite universal provincial opposition, the Liberals have made no secret their intention to accelerate the phase-out of the oil and gas sector in Canada.
It is sad. First nations communities are begging the government to get out of the way and let them produce the resources on their land so that their communities can thrive. Our global allies are begging for our help to get off Putin’s oil, so they can have a stable and ethical energy source. All the while, the government believes that if it cannot be produced, it cannot be shipped and, therefore, its ideological push will win.
The reality is that everyone loses, but the government is too self-absorbed to see that. Canada should be the world’s go-to energy producer and supplier of choice, and be energy secure and self-sufficient as well. Instead, the Liberals put ideology and partisanship above reality and the economy.
Politicians should be honest about the outcomes of their policies. Too often with these Liberals we see them fall back on wordsmithing and absolve themselves of any negative socio-economic consequences of the so-called just transition concept for Canada. This needs to stop.
Many times we hear about how the world is changing and how important it is for us to keep up with our European partners. Perhaps the government should be paying attention to what is happening in Europe. The mood has changed. Governments in Europe are starting to recognize the consequences of this blind action. They are listening to their people.
That is the problem: We do not have a government that is prepared to vary, in any way, from the path that it has set forward. It is not listening to the people. Here, it is understandable that they do not listen to opposition parties, but it had best be listening to the people in their ridings. The mood has changed, and it is important that all parliamentarians recognize that. If we do not, we will be left behind by a world that is looking for Canadian energy.
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- Apr/11/24 12:27:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a privilege today to rise to speak to Bill C-50. I have spoken to it before. As well, I sit on the natural resources committee, and this is a bill that we studied. We heard a lot of testimony from different folks with all aspects of concern for and support of the bill. I plan to use my time this afternoon to make my case as to why this legislation is bad for Canadians and show the correlation between this bill and the carbon tax.
I will address the legislation directly, but I will take a bit of a roundabout way to get there, so I ask for the Chair's indulgence to do that.
Only the Liberal government would have the audacity to put forward this piece of legislation and call it a “sustainable jobs” plan. Bill C-50 is simply a rebranding of the Liberals’ so-called “just transition”, a plan that would shut down Canada’s energy sector and move to what they claim will be a more green, sustainable and just economy.
The Liberals could not sell it under that name. Nobody was buying it. Now, just like a shifty used car salesman, they have slipped on a new coat of paint and jacked up the price. It seems that the Liberals’ new approach to legislation is to title their bills to say the exact opposite of what they are actually going to do because, to date, the government has failed spectacularly at meeting one single environmental target.
The Liberals love to talk about the environment, but their first act in office was to authorize the City of Montreal to dump eight billion litres of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River. I think most Canadians would call that making pollution free again. Their promise to plant two billion trees never materialized. The said it would be two billion tree over 10 years. They have now had eight years. The time is nearly up, yet how many have they managed to plant? What percentage of those trees are in the ground after eight years? It is 0.05 of 1%, which is not even 1%.
They keep talking about net zero, and it is all over this bill, but the government has yet to meet a single emissions reduction target. It keeps upping what it says it will achieve, when it has not met a single target of it should have achieved.
Again, the government talks a big game, but it does not execute. Across the board, whether it is the economy, immigration, getting a passport or something as simple as sticking a sapling in the ground, it just cannot get the job done.
If we are going to talk about the environment failures, we need look no further than the carbon tax. The Liberal, NDP, and now the Bloc, carbon tax continues to drive inflation and drive up the cost of living for struggling Canadians because the carbon tax is a tax on everything.
The only thing, it seems, that remains unaffected by the Prime Minister’s beloved carbon tax is the environment. That the carbon tax has made little to no difference to the environment should not surprise us. The whole thing is a scam. It is another smoke-and-mirrors sales job, just like its “just transition” to cover up the government’s actual goal, which is its real agenda, the one thing that it has so far been successful at achieving, which is the redistribution of wealth.
That is what the carbon tax is all about. It is what a significant portion of its COVID policies were all about, and that is what this legislation is about. It is a classical Marxist redistribution of wealth.
Members can remember that day a while back when the Minister of the Environment got up in the House to proudly proclaim that he was a socialist, and all the Liberals around him applauded.
It was shocking, not just because of the dark and bloody history associated with such regimes, but also because a Liberal minister actually got up and told the truth about what they were doing. That is what this legislation is about. It is about the government picking winners and losers based on a warped ideology and redistributing wealth and opportunity to those it deems worthy. As retired General Rick Hillier put it just this week, “Ideology masking as leadership killed the Canadian dream.”
Before they start to claim that this is some far right MAGA conspiracy, I would point my colleagues to an excellent article written by Dr. Vijay Kolinjivadi. He is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Development Policy at the University of Antwerp, an expert in the social and economic ramifications of climate change. Dr. Kolinjivadi is a firm believer that climate change is an existential threat. He says that we western governments are “'greening' ourselves to extinction”.
What Dr. Kolinjivadi means by that, and he makes a very convincing case for it, is that the so-called green policies of this and other western governments, or what he calls “fake” solutions, not only do nothing to stop climate change but are in fact a smoke-and-mirrors job to help governments and wealthy investors get even richer off the backs of the middle class and the poorest, most vulnerable, people on our planet. That is what he meant when he said that we are “'greening' ourselves to extinction.”
He is not alone. There is a growing recognition across the political spectrum that what these governments are doing, what our government is doing with these policies, is about wealth redistribution and not the environment. How do they do it? They do it by destroying the middle class. How did they do that? Members can look no further than the effect its COVID and environmental policies have had on our economy in just the last three years.
Can Canadians, particularly those would be the most affected by this legislation, Bill C-50, trust the Liberal government to transition them in a just and sustainable way? I think not, but I like to judge a person by what they do and not what they say. That brings me back to the carbon tax.
Let us look at the three main government talking points about the carbon tax. The first is that the carbon tax is putting a price on pollution. This is false. Eight billion litres of raw sewage went into the St. Lawrence River, and there was no price on pollution there. The carbon tax has made no demonstrable change to emissions, and no targets have been met, nor will they be, at least not from the carbon tax.
Those on the political left say that the tax is too low to force people to modify their behaviour. They complain that it leaves exemptions for large emitters, which it does. Those on the right are equally correct that taxing carbon in Canada is virtue signalling at best as Canada accounts for a mere 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That means that, if we were to shut down every single carbon-producing thing here in Canada, shut our whole economy down, we would make a whopping difference of 1.5% globally. In questioning the sanity of ignoring actual pollution while taxing a life-enhancing element of the very air we breathe, now, with Bill C-50, Liberals want to spend billions more of taxpayers' dollars to shut down not only the largest private sector driver of our economy but also the largest private sector driver of green and renewable technology as well.
The second talking point is that eight out of 10 Canadian families will receive more money back in rebates than they paid into it. That is false. Rex Murphy pointed out, in his excellent piece in the National Post:
Name a tax that makes the taxpayer richer. What a strange incentive that would be. Half of Canada would be upping the thermostat, putting the air conditioner on in winter, and driving day and night to burn up oil and gas so that they could get more back than they put in.
As the PBO has made clear, one is not getting more money back, and hardly anyone is. In fact, by the time the tax is fully implemented in 2030, eight out of 10 households will pay exponentially more, which is a fact even our proud socialist environment minister has admitted to. No tax makes the taxpayer richer. It only makes the government richer, which leads to the third claim.
The third talking point the Liberals have about the carbon tax is that it is revenue-neutral. This is false. Even if we were to believe the principle that the taxes collected all go toward rebates, which makes no sense, the Liberals are charging GST on top of the carbon tax, and that goes directly into the government’s coffers. We have learned recently that it is holding back billions of dollars collected by the GST on the carbon tax.
All three talking points are demonstrably false. By the way, the Liberals love to repeat their talking points, but one we have not heard in a while is that they are supporting the middle class and those working hard to join it. I guess that has changed.
However, what is true is that this tax, like so many others, is costing Canadians more money at a time when most cannot afford it, and despite its obvious failures, the Liberals continue to double down on this failed policy. Why is that? It is because it is successful in one metric, and one metric only, which is the redistribution of wealth.
It is to the destruction of the middle class to make more money for billionaires and Liberal insiders and to force more everyday Canadians into total reliance on government. This bill, Bill C-50, would do the exact same thing. It is just the next step in the plan. The Liberals’ so-called sustainable jobs plan would actually kill 170,000 Canadian middle-class jobs, displace 450,000 middle-class workers and risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadians.
In short, the Liberal government's just transition is anything but just, and its sustainable jobs plan is anything but sustainable. When those jobs have gone, as they were during COVID, when everyone but the giant billionaire chains were shut down, where else will people turn to but the government?
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- Apr/11/24 12:40:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, similar to how I answered the previous member's question, the oil and gas industry is doing lots of research and development into transitioning to other energy sources that contribute less CO. When we allow something to naturally transform, and when the economies actually make sense in terms of producing energy in an alternative method, it will happen. It should not require government influence.
This bill would require billions of federal taxpayer dollars to be successful, and we will have to subsidize those sustainable jobs. It really is what the government called it initially: At best, it is a transition bill.
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- Apr/11/24 12:41:00 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, a Calgary economic development study estimated that Alberta could see $61 billion pumped into its economy through clean technology investments.
Does the member agree that transitioning to sustainable energy is the way to go, so provinces such as Alberta could continue to see their economies grow?
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- Apr/11/24 12:43:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak to a vital piece of legislation, the Canadian sustainable jobs act.
To set the context, climate change is altering our world's natural environment in numerous harmful ways. In fact, last summer, Canadians experienced the worst wildfire season on record, destroying homes and livelihoods, blanketing cities and towns in smoke and putting brave first responders in harm's way. While some political leaders choose to deny, deflect and downplay such events, Canadians know the facts: Our planet is burning up, and climate change is the cause.
At the same time, climate change is also rapidly transforming the global economy and finance in ways that are creating enormous economic opportunities for those who approach the shift to a low-carbon world in a thoughtful, determined and strategic manner. The global energy transition that is already well under way is both an environmental imperative to protect the planet for our children and an economic opportunity on a scale similar to that of the Industrial Revolution.
In releasing “World Energy Outlook 2023”, Dr. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, stated, “The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable. It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’”.
The majority of Canadians are indeed concerned about climate change, but they are also concerned about their economic situation, and they want good jobs and economic opportunities for themselves and their children in the future.
In order for Canada to seize the extraordinary opportunities offered by the transition to a net-zero economy, we must accept the scientific reality of climate change and ensure that it informs and shapes Canada's economic strategy.
Since 2015, the federal government has committed almost $200 billion to the fight against climate change and to accelerating the development of a prosperous low-carbon economy. This includes the nearly $86 billion that last year's budget committed for tools, including major investment tax credits, to accelerate clean growth and ensure Canadian competitiveness; we are seeing significant progress from these investments right across the country.
In Newfoundland, Braya Renewable Fuels is converting its refinery to renewable diesel. In Nova Scotia, EverWind Fuels recently received approval to build North America's first facility to produce hydrogen from renewables.
In Quebec, progress was made on new lithium mines and the announcement of TES Canada's $4-billion hydrogen project.
In Ontario, we are seeing massive investments in the entirety of the electric vehicle value chain. In Saskatchewan, BHP is constructing the largest potash mine with the lowest emissions in the world. Companies in Alberta are developing net-zero and low-carbon industrial facilities, including Air Products' clean hydrogen facility and Dow's recently announced $12-billion net-zero petrochemical facility. In B.C., the recently announced $1-billion investment in the E-One Moli battery facility will create almost 500 jobs and will generate further employment in upstream activities.
To date, we have invested over $1.5 billion in measures for skills programming, supporting communities and industries across the country. The sustainable jobs action plan and the sustainable jobs act are both about creating low-carbon economic opportunities in all regions of the country that will create jobs and opportunities for generations. They are about ensuring that we prepare workers and communities to fully seize these opportunities.
As far as this piece of legislation is concerned, there are five key elements.
Firstly, the bill establishes guiding principles that ensure workers are at the heart of building a net-zero future. The original bill was enhanced by an amendment to include additional considerations of environmental sustainability and equity. This amendment ensures alignment with commitments made under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act and Canada's 2030 emissions reduction plan.
Secondly, the bill would create a sustainable jobs partnership council composed of Canadians from sectors involved in the shift to a net-zero economy. This part of the bill reflects a tripartite-plus approach, ensuring dialogue among industry, labour, indigenous and other experts in policy-making. Amendments to the original bill provide further clarity about the exact composition of the council, as well as the co-chair and member appointments. This council would provide valuable advice to the Government of Canada, sourced, in part, from dialogues engaged in across the country, ensuring diverse and well-informed perspectives to shape policy recommendations.
Thirdly, accountability is reinforced by the requirement to publish action plans every five years. Amendments to the original bill in this section will ensure that areas of federal-provincial co-operation are taken into account in the development of action plans. The amendments will also ensure that analyses are regularly conducted to assess how action plan measures interact with those of Canada's emissions reduction plan.
Fourthly, this bill would establish a sustainable jobs secretariat to coordinate intergovernmental efforts and enforce compliance with the acts.
Finally, the bill designates the ministers responsible for implementing the act and the plan.
Overall, the amendments being made to this bill are the product of work by committee members, very much including Liberal and NDP members, with some helpful assistance from the member for Jonquière. I would like to specifically thank my Liberal colleagues, the members for Toronto—Danforth, Calgary Skyview, Cloverdale—Langley City, Sudbury, Vaughan—Woodbridge, Nickel Belt and Labrador, for their hard work and dedication. I must also say it has been a pleasure working with the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay, whose passion for this work is a strong example of the dedication he has brought to two decades of service to his constituents. He will be missed in the House of Commons.
The amendments noted would enhance legislated transparency, ensure effective representation on the partnership council, secure strong linkage to the climate accountability legislation and emphasize the pivotal role of provinces, territories and other levels of government as key partners in advancing sustainable job opportunities. This bill has gained strong support on the part of the labour movement and civil society. I want to thank leaders in the labour movement, and Bea Bruske in particular, for their strong and active support.
This legislation underscores the government's commitment to working collaboratively and thoughtfully to advance the prosperity and well-being of all regions of Canada, of all communities and of all workers as we look to seize the massive economic opportunities before us.
The fact of the matter is that this legislation represents a thoughtful approach to the future. It has been supported by Clean Energy Canada, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Business Council of Alberta, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Climate Action Network, Electricity Human Resources Canada, the United Steelworkers, Environmental Defence, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the Pembina Institute, the Power Workers' Union and many more.
Unfortunately, Conservatives' contempt for Canadian workers led them to engage in months of shenanigans in committee that I could only characterize as legislative vandalism. The fact is that not only has the opposition's obstructionism been a roadblock to environmental progress, but it also represents a direct attack on our economy and the livelihoods and prospects for generations of Canadian workers. In order to keep workers from the decision-making table, the Conservative Party submitted over 20,000 amendments on an 11-page bill.
I repeat, the Conservative Party of Canada submitted more than 20,000 amendments to an 11-page bill. Canadians expect better. They expect us to take this work seriously, to look at the bill first and to speak to the substance of the bill, even if we disagree. With their stunts, the Conservatives have proven that they have no interest in dialogue or serious governance issues.
They have been busy dog whistling about globalist plots and are increasingly denying the reality of climate change while they neglect their responsibility as parliamentarians, which is to act in the interest of the long-term prosperity of Canadians. For too long, the opposition has put the interests of an extreme climate-denying fringe above the well-being of our planet and of Canadian workers.
As we work to build a thriving, dynamic and prosperous low-carbon economy, we must ensure Canadian communities and Canadian workers remain at the centre of this critical work. That is precisely what this legislation would do. I implore all parliamentarians to stand with Canadian workers, who are calling on us to support Bill C-50.
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- Apr/11/24 1:01:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as every member of the House should know, we are in a climate crisis, with a closing window of opportunity to act. I will share the words of the UN Secretary General about this: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” He also says, “We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing....our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible....The global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade – on our watch.”
In the face of this crisis, as Greens, we are deeply concerned that the so-called Canadian sustainable jobs act, Bill C-50, remains a massive missed opportunity and an example of checkbox politics rather than substance. This is about checking a partial box from the government’s supply and confidence agreement with the NDP. There are some members of the House who decry the bill as central planning and destroying the economy of Western Canada, but none of this is true.
I have the bill here and will share what it would actually do. In fact, it would do three things. First, it would create a group to give the minister advice, which would be called the sustainable jobs partnership council. Second, the bill would require a sustainable jobs action plan. As of the current version of the bill, this would be required by December 31, 2040. As Greens, we are glad the government has proposed amendments to bring the plan sooner. We have put forward an amendment to bring it forward as soon as possible; we have suggested December 31 of this year. Again, we are in a crisis that demands urgent action. Third, the bill would create a sustainable jobs secretariat to help the minister implement this act. That is it. In the words of public policy researcher and author Seth Klein, it is “a snoozer”.
There is actually nothing on the words “just transition”, which were long forgotten by the time we moved from the supply and confidence agreement to the bill. They are words that are a key principle of the Paris Agreement. Unions fought for the words “just transition” to be in the Paris Agreement; workers across this country advocated for that to be the case. There is nothing in the bill about meaningful investments in truly sustainable jobs, such as a just transition transfer that could be linked to climate infrastructure projects with training and apprenticeships, in the same way that we already have a Canada health transfer. There is nothing on provincial and territorial just transition agencies to ensure that the funds flow to affected workers.
There is nothing on a youth climate corps, a federally funded job training and placement program that already exists in other jurisdictions that could ensure that young people know there will be good, green jobs available to them in the economy in the years to come, as the MP for Victoria has proposed a motion for. There is nothing on investments in training and apprenticeships in the skilled trades, including the carpenters, electricians and plumbers we will need to support as we move to retrofit buildings across the country: homes, businesses and industrial buildings. These are good, well-paying jobs that the bill could have been investing in.
There is nothing in the bill that talks about the coal workers that the government consulted with in 2018, made promises to and has since provided no support to for things like job retraining that were promised to them. There is nothing in the bill with respect to Bloc and Green amendments at committee. Of course there were various partisan tactics that led to that not getting debated. However, when it came to the actual vote, none of those were accepted to be in the bill.
There is also nothing in the bill when it comes to actually investing in the economy of the future. As Greens, we have been putting forward that it is well past time that we put in place a windfall profit tax on the oil and gas industry. This is a measure that has already been taken by the government when it comes to banks and life insurance companies. It would be just a 15% tax on profits over $1 billion.
The largest oil and gas companies in the country, the most recent year we have numbers for, made $36 billion in profits. If we are going to put in place even a 15% windfall profit tax on profits over $1 billion, we would have $4.2 billion that could be invested in affordability measures for Canadians. It could be invested in workers who need that support, like some of the measures I mentioned earlier, or in apprenticeships and job retraining. Those are the investments we could be making. It is important that we point to revenue tools along with the measures that could have been in this bill, but none of it was.
Again, we are talking about three measures to put in place a council, an action plan and a secretariat. We are facing a climate emergency and are at a time when workers across the country, many of whom are anxious, recognize that they deserve supports. This was the moment to do it. This legislation was an opportunity to demonstrate to them that they were being listened to, unlike coal workers from 2018, and to build trust with them. It is why we will continue to advocate for better.
I encourage Liberals to read A Good War by Mr. Klein. I would encourage them to act like they understand the crisis we are in. The fact is that this remains a unique moment in time, one where we can stand up and say it is possible for us to hold onto 1.5ºC. It is possible to speak to young people today, recognizing the enormity of the challenge we face, and say that their government could take action at federal, provincial and municipal levels to invest in good jobs for them in the future and to take action while we still can, yet that is not what is here.
We will continue to advocate for better. We are going to work with all parties that are willing to do so. I will point out again that the Bloc proposed amendments that would have improved this bill, just as Greens did. We brought more forward at report stage to continue that advocacy. We will continue to do so, because we recognize that we are living in a unique moment, one where we still have this opportunity to act. We encourage the government to take it.
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- Apr/11/24 1:09:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, could my colleague provide further thoughts regarding the benefits of the sustainable jobs action plan? We are talking about every five years, and there is a great deal of merit for that. I do not quite understand why the official opposition would see that as a bad thing. It is more of a longer-term plan that could have a positive outcome, when we start consulting with Canadian workers and others to ultimately come up with a plan.
What does he think?
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- Apr/11/24 1:52:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate hearing from the member for Timmins—James Bay. He speaks the real truth, and this is something I know Conservative members object to because facts are something they oppose. However, the reality is that the sustainable jobs act would lead to thousands and thousands of jobs, including new jobs in the energy sector. Coming from the energy sector, as a former refinery worker, I can say how important that is for Canadians.
The member for Timmins—James Bay has been a champion for sustainable jobs. He has met with a wide variety of workers right across the energy sector. At any point in all those meetings, did my colleague ever see a single Conservative MP actually consulting energy workers or actually speaking with energy workers? I know the Conservatives love to hobnob with oil and gas CEO's, but were they ever there with the workers?
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- Apr/11/24 1:54:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to a common‑sense piece of legislation, the Canadian sustainable jobs act. This is legislation that will enable Canadian workers to succeed. That is what it is all about.
I will be honest, and I think I am just going to riff a bit here. Honestly, I could not stay in the House for very long. I needed to find a wall to bang my head against while I heard what I heard from the other side of the House, or what little we could hear with their heads in the sand.
Let me be very clear about the context in which we are discussing this proposed legislation. Green energy is happening. Renewables are happening. Biofuels are happening. Hydrogen is happening. Lowering emissions in the oil and gas industry in Alberta, in British Columbia, in Saskatchewan and in Newfoundland and Labrador is happening.
One thing I learned as minister of natural resources is that workers want to know, want to understand and want to have a say in what is happening. If members were to blame anybody for the shenanigans of what we have heard over these past few months, I guess they will have to blame me because I am the one who thought maybe it was a good idea to set up a committee that would involve workers so that we could take their advice on the big issues facing the fourth biggest producer of oil and gas in the world, which is Canada. We are very good at doing what we do, but all these things that I am talking about and all the investments, prosperity and the jobs that come with those things are happening, and we have to make the most of them.
When we came up with this legislation, we did get a reaction from workers. We got a reaction from the International Union of Operating Engineers who said that the act “puts the interests of energy workers at the forefront of a low-carbon economy.” We heard from the president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who said that this act shows the government's “commitment to protecting good-paying, highly skilled jobs.” Canada's Building Trades Unions welcomed the bill, saying that the consultation built into this process would “ensure workers are front and centre during this transition”.
Just to be clear for the Leader of the Opposition, these are the workers who actually wear steel-toed boots every day.
I could go on, but I know that the party opposite does not put much stock in what workers want. Why would they, when their leader has spent his entire career trying to bust unions and the workers who were in them? If they will not listen to workers, maybe they will listen to industry.
The president of the Business Council of Alberta said, “The Sustainable Jobs Act represents an important opportunity for Canada: to shape our future and create jobs by providing the resources that the world needs”. He also said that the act would help “equip [Canada] with the skills for the jobs of our future economy”.
From Clean Energy Canada: “deliverables and measurements for success while coordinating across the many federal departments...[a] commitment to centring indigenous voices”.
I could quote more leaders from industry, but then the Leader of the Opposition also has no respect for the people spearheading our resource industries after he said, “I meet with resource companies when they come to Ottawa, and all they do is suck up to the [Liberal] government. They have no backbone and no courage”.
I could list a slew of support that this legislation has from leaders in the climate and environmental sector, but I think I will go out on a limb and say that the party opposite probably does not hold much for them either, which begs the questions then: Who are they listening to? If it is not unions, if it is not workers, if it is not industry, if it is not business, Lord knows it is not science, and it is not environmentalists, then who are they listening to?
I will commend their efforts though. When the opposition decides to fight for something for no good reason, they will do it with so much conviction and creativity that we might think they have an actual cause.
After question period, I look forward to getting into the 14 pages of this piece of legislation, which, in effect, says that workers should be heard. What are the opposition members afraid of? Workers in the oil and gas sector in my riding, in my province, have told me time and time again that they will no longer be left out. They will not longer be marginalized. They will no longer be rage farms. On my watch, they will be included.
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- Apr/11/24 2:31:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, later today we will be voting to advance the sustainable jobs bill. It is a critically important bill in the context of growing an economy that will thrive in a low-carbon future. It will ensure that workers and environmental organizations have a seat at the table when we are discussing Canada's green economic plan.
The Conservatives have obstructed at every turn, including by introducing 20,000 robo-amendments. We are building a strong economy for the future. The Conservatives, by contrast, are engaging in legislative vandalism.
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- Apr/11/24 3:06:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, workers in Vaughan—Woodbridge and across the country have been clear that the sustainable jobs act is critical to ensuring they have the tools and skills they need to build up our net-zero future, from greener buildings to electric vehicles and clean energy. The tens of thousands of Conservative amendments on this legislation are designed to block this bill and block workers from getting a seat at the table.
Can the Minister of Energy tell the House why we are here fighting for workers today?
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