44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 18, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/18/24 10:16:03 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Humber River—Black Creek, as Transport Canada must address the ongoing aircraft-induced noise pollution by exercising its authority and implementing necessary actions in the Humber River—Black Creek community. They firmly believe that environmental responsibility extends to addressing both air pollution and the adverse effects of noise on their well-being.
Therefore, the undersigned residents of the Humber River—Black Creek community call upon the Government of Canada to promptly assess nighttime noise pollution caused by aircraft activities in their community; collaborate with Nav Canada to develop effective mitigation strategies, considering curfews and other noise reduction measures; establish and enforce noise level regulations, ensuring emissions remain with acceptable limits; conduct regular monitoring to ensure compliance with regulations; and engage in transparent communication with the Humber River—Black Creek community.
I should add that this is not an issue simply for the residents of Humber River—Black Creek; we have these kinds of issues throughout Canada.
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- Apr/18/24 2:22:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, eight out of 10 families receive more from the carbon rebate than they pay on the carbon price. The reason is that all of the proceeds from the carbon price are sent back to Canadians. Wealthier families pay more so that low-income and middle-class families get more. Eight out of 10 families get more from the carbon rebate than they pay on the carbon price.
In addition, obviously, that reduces pollution and reduces the cost of climate change.
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- Apr/18/24 2:40:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us bring some sanity and facts into this conversation.
According to Dan McTeague, who is the president of the advocacy group Canadians for Affordable Energy, “in past years the switchover to summer fuel typically results in an increase of about six to 10 cents per litre.” He said that in warmer weather, refiners must make this change so that the fuel is more stable.
There is good news. Prices will come down by about five cents by Friday; by September, they will be even lower. This has nothing to do with the price on pollution and everything to do with theatrics by the Conservatives.
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- Apr/18/24 2:51:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would invite the New Democrats and their leader to find the courage of their own convictions and come back to supporting us on a price on pollution.
We are staying in the lane with a price on pollution each and every day. We are going to make sure that we have a planet that will be here for our kids and grandkids. We will have a price on pollution. Eight out of 10 Canadians will get more money back. That is what we have set out to do. We have run in three elections on it. We are going to keep doing that.
We are going to defend Canadians. We are going to defend the planet. We are going to do it in a way that makes Canadians better off.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-380, an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, regarding plastic manufactured items, introduced by the member for Saskatoon—University, whom we just heard from.
If passed, Bill C-380 would remove “plastic manufactured items” from the list of toxic substances in schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, or CEPA, as it is more commonly known.
We unequivocally oppose this bill. It would eliminate the legislative basis underpinning the regulatory actions the government has taken and is taking under CEPA to prevent plastic pollution. The vast majority of Canadians are concerned about plastic pollution and they expect our government to act.
In 2021, a survey found that over 90% of Canadians expressed concern about the impact that plastic pollution has on oceans and wildlife. In late 2023, a survey from the Angus Reid Institute revealed that most Canadians felt that a single-use plastic ban is an effective means to reduce plastic waste.
We know that plastic pollution is everywhere in the environment, posing the threat of harm to wildlife and damaging their habitats. Scientific findings support this conclusion. The government's 2020 science assessment provides a summary of peer-reviewed studies related to the effects of plastic pollution on organisms and their habitats. It confirms that plastic pollution is everywhere in the environment, including shorelines, surface waters, sediment, soil, groundwater, indoor and outdoor air, drinking water and food.
Statistics Canada's physical flow account for plastic material estimates that of the 4.9 million tonnes of discarded plastics in Canada in 2020, only a little over 7% of that was recycled into pellets and flakes for use in the production of new products, while over 40,000 tonnes ended up in the environment as pollution. That is why the government is taking regulatory action, as part of Canada's comprehensive zero plastic waste agenda, to eliminate certain harmful and problematic plastic products before they enter the marketplace.
The Government of Canada's zero plastic waste agenda also includes a wide range of measures aimed at reducing plastic pollution, enhancing value retention processes including reuse and recycling systems, minimizing single-use plastics, and fostering a circular economy approach to plastic management. With a focus on collaboration between government, industry and stakeholders, we are making meaningful and substantive progress. Implementing measures to prevent plastic pollution from single-use plastics is a common-sense approach.
This preventative approach is reflected in the government's single-use plastics prohibition regulations. These regulations, published in June 2022, phase out certain single-use plastics that are commonly found in the environment as pollution, pose a threat to wildlife and their habitats, are difficult to recycle and have readily available alternatives.
Over the next decade, it is estimated that these regulations will eliminate over 1.3 million tonnes of hard-to-recycle plastic waste and more than 22,000 tonnes of plastic pollution, which is equivalent to over a million garbage bags full of litter. These regulations have spurred businesses across Canada to elevate their efforts and successfully transition to sustainable alternatives, including the adoption of reusable items.
Provinces and territories are also providing important leadership in improving the management of plastic waste and diverting plastic waste from landfills. Across Canada, many municipalities, including major cities such as Montreal, St. John's, Edmonton and Victoria, have either banned single-use plastic checkout bags outright or are charging a fee to discourage their use.
Bill C-380 arrives in the House for debate at an interesting moment. Next week, Canada will welcome the world to the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, or INC4. This is a pivotal moment for Canada and the world as countries meet to negotiate a new global agreement on plastics. Canada, from the start of the negotiations, has called for an ambitious and effective treaty that addresses the life cycle of plastics. We want to see negotiations conclude this year so that countries can move forward on implementation.
To ensure that we take an evidence-based approach and measure progress over time, we are advancing a federal plastics registry. The registry, the first of its kind in the world, would require plastics producers to report annually on the quantity and types of plastic they place on the Canadian market. This would facilitate the design, implementation and monitoring of measures aimed at addressing plastic pollution that are part of the zero plastic waste agenda, and it would help to identify areas where further action is required.
We also recognize the importance of innovation in addressing plastic waste and preventing plastic pollution. Through the innovative solutions Canada program, we are supporting Canadian businesses to spur innovation and the development of technologies that address issues such as reuse and difficult-to-recycle film and flexible plastic.
Most recently, the government has contributed over $25 million to support small and medium-sized businesses in Canada to find innovative solutions to specific plastics issues. The government will continue engaging provinces, territories, civil society, indigenous partners, industry and other concrete initiatives to keep plastics out of the economy and out of the environment. A plastics circular economy would help strengthen sustainable economies and create jobs; it would help fight climate change by avoiding the production of virgin plastic in favour of approaches like recycling and reuse, and it would protect biodiversity and the environment.
In conclusion, federal leadership, via concrete regulatory action, is essential to effectively prevent plastic pollution. It is in the interests of Canadians and the environment that the listing of plastic manufactured items on schedule 1 of CEPA is critical to the important work we are doing, and it should be kept intact. It is essential that we oppose this bill.
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Madam Speaker, Bill C‑380 raises some worrisome doubts about the Conservative Party's position on a policy objective that is in the common interest and that is accepted by all departments of the environment in every province and territory, including Quebec.
This bill once again embodies the official opposition's denial of environmental issues, but especially its denial of everything that years of scientific work and research have analyzed and confirmed, namely four things. First, plastic pollution is a major environmental and health problem. Second, it is the result of the widespread use of plastic, especially for manufacturing single-use products. Third, whether it is in the form of visible waste, microplastics or nanoplastics, this pollution harms our ecosystems as well as biodiversity. It can also have adverse effects on health, particularly when it goes up the food chain and ends up in our food. Fourth, plastic pollution is present along our shorelines and in our surface waters, sediment, soil, groundwater, indoor and outdoor air, drinking water and food.
The author of the bill, the member for Saskatoon—University, makes a bold statement by claiming, and I am paraphrasing, that the management of plastic manufactured products has no positive impact on environmental protection and public health. This is patently false. I would almost describe this statement as abhorrent. No specialized scientific organization recognized in this field of research shares this position, not one. We might reasonably wonder whether the Conservatives have ever read a scientific study on this. To be clear, I am talking about independent studies carried out somewhere other than the labs at Dow Chemical or Imperial Oil.
Before I address another angle, I would like to clarify something right away, because members of the official opposition might try to say that the Bloc Québécois is not defending provincial jurisdictions. What Bill C‑380 seeks to do is invoke the alleged unconstitutionality of the Single-use Plastics Prohibition Regulations made under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
We all know that the federal government is appealing the Federal Court's decision to overturn the government's order on plastics, which the court found to be unconstitutional. The Bloc Québécois agrees with the government's approach for one simple reason, that is, because the Federal Court's decision was wrong, period. If an environmental policy were unconstitutional, of course the Bloc Québécois would immediately demand that the Government of Canada review that policy and respect the environmental sovereignty of Quebec and the provinces.
As a reminder, the Supreme Court already ruled in favour of the provisions of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act that prohibit “specific acts for the purpose of preventing pollution or, to put it in other terms, causing the entry into the environment of certain toxic substances”.
However, the Conservatives do not see the difference between reviewing a policy and completely abandoning a legitimate policy objective. Bill C‑380 proposes to completely eliminate the main regulatory measure that allows the government to act on the issue of single-use plastics.
It comes as no surprise to the Bloc Québécois that the official opposition is once again acting as the political valet of the oil and petrochemical lobby. I am saying that because Dow Chemical, Imperial Oil and Nova Chemicals are the ones that led the legal challenge against the regulations.
I am sorry, but no good will come of rejecting science, denying the evidence and filling the legislative agenda with the concerns of companies that want the status quo or, even worse, full deregulation.
Let us look back on what the government has done. In 2019, it made an ambitious announcement about banning the use of some single-use plastics. In October 2020, it announced its intention to impose standards to make plastic manufacturers accountable when it comes to the collection and recycling of plastic waste. Then, the environment minister at the time, the current Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, announced, with great fanfare, the goal of achieving zero plastic waste by 2030. That was a good intention, an honourable desire, but it was just an announcement, nothing more.
The government had promised to bring this regulation into force as early as 2021. However, as has been the case with other issues where the government has lacked ambition and not taken action, they blamed the pandemic, that old scapegoat. That said, the government did not lack ambition or action during the pandemic when it came to prioritizing the interests of the fossil fuel sector. It subsidized oil companies in the name of fighting climate change, granted new multibillion-dollar loans for Trans Mountain and authorized exploratory offshore drilling without impact assessments and in marine refuges it had created itself, to name just a few.
Today, the restrictions in force are very incomplete. They cover only six of the hundreds of items in the economy. As far as exports are concerned, no ban on manufacturing or sales will be in force before December 20, 2025, in other words, after the government's current term of office. In our opinion, this is already a rather half-hearted regulation, and I sometimes doubt that it will be enforced. Liberal policies are certainly not up to the task of providing solutions to the growing and worrying problems of plastic pollution, but the Conservative stance on this global issue is damning in its denial of what is basically obvious—namely, that the use of plastics, and consequently its waste, has reached dizzying, even stratospheric heights.
According to every credible and independent source, items made of plastic were considered a toxic substance under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act precisely because the scientific literature proved it. As far as the temptation to talk about recycling is concerned, I would remind the House that the data from 2016 show that Canada recycles only 9% of plastic waste, that 86% ends up in landfills, that 4% is incinerated and that 1% end up in nature. There is no circular economy here.
Recognizing the problem may lead us part-way to the solution. However, let us be clear: the challenge before us is first to recognize that we must act predictably and firmly and then oppose any hint of deregulation with respect to the existing framework. Reusing, remanufacturing, repairing, prioritizing the use of renewable energy in the process of using the material: these priorities alone would guide us to healthy public policies on plastics.
Thanks to the expertise of Recyc‑Québec and its recycling facilities, Quebec is already engaged in a process aimed at moving away from the linear extractivist economic model that the Conservatives hold dear and that also seems to suit the government just fine. Recyc‑Québec has made the circular economy its priority. In Quebec, we value the principle of extended producer responsibility, under which the responsibility for managing end-of-life products lies with the companies that produce them.
I will close by quoting Michael Burt, vice-president and global director of climate and energy policy at Dow Canada, in an appearance before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development on the issue of single-use plastics. I talked about Dow Canada's expertise in industrial chemistry and engineering, and I said that there was no doubt that Dow Canada could contribute to advancing the circular economy or developing something innovative. When I asked him if he intended to transition away from virgin resin production, he slowly leaned towards the microphone, maintained eye contact with me and, without hesitation, replied no. He also said, “The reality is that the world doesn't have a plastic problem, but it definitely has a plastic-waste problem. ...The reality is that, from an investment standpoint, Dow Canada is a profitable company.” I think his remarks were clear.
How can the production of plastics possibly be separated from their existence as waste? Mr. Burt's statement speaks volumes, does it not? One thing is certain. By introducing Bill C‑380, the official opposition wins the prize for being this major lobby group's legislative representative.
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- Apr/18/24 6:09:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to stand up and speak to this bill. I have to admit it is a little disheartening to hear how the mover of this motion started his speech this evening. However, it is also not surprising from a party that continues to deny that there are environmental issues that need to be addressed in a timely manner in order to protect our futures and the future generations to come.
We heard the member speak about paper straws, make jokes about the sogginess of them and ask who really liked paper straws. I understand they are inconvenient, but my goodness, let us talk about the issue at hand here. The issue at hand is that we have plastic pollution that is destroying our marine ecosystems and is destroying the health and well-being of people across the country.
The real problem is around plastics that are polluting our planet and being ingested through marine ecosystems. It goes into the entire ecosystem and then into us, creating health implications. Instead of talking about the real issues at hand, the member was deflecting and talking about soggy straws.
I think this is exactly what is to be expected from my colleagues in the Conservative Party: a consistent deflection from the issues at hand. The member even went so far as to say that banning plastics is bad for health, bad for pocketbooks and bad for the environment. I am floored to hear this.
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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- Apr/18/24 6:11:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, instead of what was shared in the prior member's speech, we know that regulating plastics is essential to addressing the harms of plastic, especially of single-use plastics, that are caused to our ecosystem, human health, the environment and even our climate. This is what we should be talking about.
We know that plastics are polluting our oceans at a fast rate. The impacts are horrific. As the critic for fisheries and oceans, and a West Coaster, previously an East Coaster, but now on Vancouver Island, I know that, in Canada, we are seeing the impacts of plastic pollution in so many ways.
One such example that comes to mind is from when I was first elected and we had the Zim Kingston freighter spill along the coast of Vancouver Island. I believe there were over 100 containers spilled, and only four of those containers were recovered. The rest were left to sink along the shores of Vancouver Island. In these containers were a variety of items, many of them plastic.
A year after the spill, there was a story by the CBC, entitled “From urinal mats to unicorns, cargo from major container spill is still washing up on B.C. shores”. I will ask members to imagine walking down the shoreline of our beautiful coastal Vancouver Island and there are these pink inflatable unicorns washing up on the shore. I do not know if everybody here has had an opportunity to visit our beautiful coastline, but most certainly, pink plastic unicorns are not a part of our natural marine ecosystem. It is quite the opposite. There is a tremendous negative impact to our environment when these plastic unicorns and urinal mats break down into microplastics and get into our marine life. The exact seafood we are eating is full of microplastics, and the cycle continues.
We need to be addressing this plastic pollution in all ways. One being that, if marine cargo spills continue to happen, there needs to be a strategy in place to make sure we are integrating local knowledge to put a response plan in place immediately. I hope we will see some of these things from the Liberal government in due time.
With that, I would like to speak about a new disease that has been found. There is an article by the National Audubon Society, a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats, entitled “Plastic Pollution Is So Pervasive That It’s Causing a New Disease in Seabirds”. This new disease is “marked by severe stomach damage from eating little bits of plastic”. The damage is tremendous to these birds that are ingesting these plastics. It is scraping their organs, causing “several knock-on health effects”. It makes the birds “feel less hungry.” There is also “less room for nutrients.” It is scarring their stomachs, creating less flexibility, “so birds are able to transport less fish back to the nest.” The article explains how the “damaged organ creates less digestive acid to process food and protect against parasites.”
With that, I would like to point out that the impacts of the plastic pollution disproportionately impact many indigenous communities across Canada. A constituent in my riding, from whom I have not received permission to talk about this, but I know he will be very excited for me to do so because he talks about it at all times, has been very focused on gathering and providing detailed information around the location of city dumps and how close in proximity they are, consistently, to first nations. We know these dumps are places where plastics are brought.
I would like to finish by saying that constituents in my riding are reaching out, asking for the Minister of Environment to deal with plastic pollution, and are calling on him to take action on plastics in Canada to address the adverse human health outcomes linked with chemicals of concern in the cradle-to-grave cycle of plastics. This includes a few points: a just and equitable treaty, and national policies that respect human rights; limit global production of plastics; eliminate unnecessary plastic products; prioritize the prohibition of hazardous chemicals of concern; prioritize immediate action to address people vulnerable to exposure; and ensure that business respects the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Despite the Conservatives' attempt to ensure that our planet is burning, that our planet is polluted and that people are not provided with strong solutions to move forward, I would ask that we take the actions necessary to put an end to plastic pollution.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to address Bill C-380, a private member's bill from my friend and colleague, the member for Saskatoon—University, with the very important aim of repealing the government's irresponsible and senseless ban on single-use plastics.
This debate tonight is not about plastic waste, although certainly there is more to be done there. This is about whether plastic manufactured products are toxic, because that is what the government did. It had them labelled “toxic” and it was ruled to be unconstitutional.
In my speech today, I will first outline the history of the ban and its flawed premise, and then detail why it is ultimately unhelpful to the environment and talk about the harmful impacts on Canadians and Canadian industry. Finally, I will expand on the unintended and knock-on consequences of the ban, with a final appeal to the House for some common sense.
Canadians are now unfortunately well versed in the effects of climate change. The Liberals, with a need to be seen to be taking action, decided to place the blame for climate change exclusively on Canadian consumers, making plastics the scapegoat with a particular spotlight on single-use plastics.
In 2019, the Prime Minister announced bans on single-use plastics, and in May 2021, plastic manufactured items were added to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA, to be designated as toxic. In June 2022, six categories of single-use plastics, or SUPs, were banned, with a timeline to prohibit manufacture and import for sale in Canada, prohibition on sale in Canada and prohibition on manufacturing, import and export sales.
Unfortunately, quite in line with a government bent on destroying Canada's competitiveness and foreign direct investment, checkout bags, cutlery, straws, food service utensils, stir sticks, ring carriers and plastic straws packaged with drink containers were outlawed in one fell swoop. Yes, because banning the straws from juice boxes in the lunches of Canada's first graders will definitely beat climate change. No, it will not.
First, this ban on single-use plastics is unfounded and a serious overreach. Plastic manufactured items, as I referred to, do not rightfully belong in the CEPA list as a toxic substance. CEPA is a federal criminal statute and the enabling mechanism that the federal government is applying wrongly to provide a legal basis for usurping provincial powers over waste management and the local plastics economy.
Using CEPA, while unjustified, allows the federal government to take control of provincial waste management systems and centralizes all decisions related to what plastic products can be manufactured, imported, exported and distributed in Canada. CEPA is a chemical management tool for toxic substances. It was never intended to be an environmental management tool. This broadens the scope of the act, which was to list chemically harmful substances like mercury and lead as toxic. Therefore, listing the entire category of plastic manufactured items in schedule 1 of the CEPA without a chemical risk assessment testing for toxicity is a serious violation of the act.
What is more is that it is not even plastic itself that is listed as toxic. It is plastic manufactured items, things like medical supplies and devices, protective equipment, food packaging, fridges and cars. All of these are made with plastic. Are they all toxic? No, they are not.
I worked for 21 years as a chemical engineer in plastics. I designed many plastic products used in medical devices, medical supplies and food packaging. I was involved in the approval process to understand how we assess to make sure they do not have a negative medical impact.
People here in the House every day are drinking orange juice from a plastic container. Is it toxic? No, it is not. They are eating their yogourt in the lobby from a plastic container. Is it toxic? No, it is not. They are going to the hospital, and in the hospital they use a single-use plastic for blood transfusions. Is it toxic? No, it is not. We are putting contact lenses in our eyes that are plastic. Is it toxic? No, it is not. We are giving babies formula in plastic bottles. Is it toxic? No, it is not.
It is such a ridiculous argument to say that plastic is not toxic, but plastic manufactured items are. That is like me saying that the wool I am knitting with is not toxic, but the sweater I produce is. It is absolutely ridiculous.
Even the minister himself said at the environment committee, “Plastics are not toxic in the normal sense of the word that people use pejoratively,” and that he does not think anybody says they are. Then why are they on the list? This is causing a huge issue in the industry, threatening jobs and the environment. As usual for the Liberals, their words and actions do not line up.
Perhaps they think that by banning plastics and causing serious deleterious effects to Canadians and Canadian industry, they can fool voters into thinking they did something, but like most Liberal strategies, it is built on false premises. The Liberals want Canadians to believe that banning single-use plastics will assist with the reduction of plastic pollution and emissions production. However, the scale of plastic pollution is small, less than 1% of all litter in Canada, according to a report written by the Liberal government in 2020.
Further, only 1% of Canada's plastic waste is disposed of improperly. Plastic pollution is not a pervasive problem in Canada. Moreover, alternatives to plastic actually produce more carbon emissions, not less. We know the government loves McKinsey and its consulting work, so I will quote from one of its reports, “The potential impact of reusable packaging”. Modelling done by McKinsey in 2023 indicates that there would be a 150% increase in emissions due to the higher share of fossil components in materials, transport and energy use to make the alternative products. What a good job fighting climate change.
These so-called alternatives cost twice as much to make as well. Packaging accounts for 10% to 20% of a product's cost, and if the packaging now costs twice as much, as likewise estimated in that same McKinsey report, there will be a significant inflationary increase to consumers if the government introduces requirements related to use, recycled content and eliminating plastic from produce and meats. That is just what we need when Canadians cannot afford to eat and are going to homeless shelters and food banks in increasing numbers.
As it is, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business estimates the added cost to the Canadian economy is $1.9 billion to produce these alternatives to the banned plastic packaging. We use plastic for a reason. It is vital to extend the shelf life of foods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables. These fresh fruits and vegetables, even pet food, will face a reduced shelf life and increased prices due to the federal regulations on plastic.
The Canadian Produce Marketing Association estimates it will cost between $2.5 billion and $5 billion in costs for food losses, accompanying an estimated half million tonne increase in food losses. Rotting food increases methane emissions. At a time when so many Canadians are struggling and the food banks are seeing unprecedented usage, it is unconscionable.
Worse still are the effects on the thousands of families who rely on those working in the plastic manufacturing industry. More than 99,000 people work in the Canadian plastics industry, which is estimated to be worth $35 billion. The ban will impact 13,000 to 20,000 direct jobs and as many as 26,000 to 40,000 indirect jobs. Together, that is up to 60,000 Canadians who will face further hardship at the hands of the Liberal-NDP government and its ideology.
In my riding of Sarnia—Lambton, there are multiple plastics facilities that produce single-use plastics. In 2019, the federal Liberals decided they wanted Nova Chemicals to build a $3-billion plant in my riding instead of in Texas. They provided incentives and money to get it to build a single-use plastic production facility that would export plastics to the world. The very next month, they decided they were going to ban the products it is producing, and now they are planning to stop the export. They would shut that facility down, along with all the economic benefits. It is total hypocrisy on the part of the government.
Are we really going to destroy the lives and livelihoods of 60,000 Canadians and their families while putting increased costs and inconveniences on Canadians for a detrimental environmental and economic outcome? There is no benefit to this, and it was an egregious error to enact the ban in the first place.
Instead, efforts can be made to shore up recycling and recovery infrastructure to better manage plastic waste sources. These industries are willing to partner to address some of the issues that we know exist with plastics, like microbeads in the Great Lakes, for example. Let us work on those problems.
Plastics are not toxic, and plastic-manufactured products are not toxic, so I implore the government to listen to reason and common sense.
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Madam Speaker, burning coal for electricity is the dirtiest source of power generation. It produces the most greenhouse gases globally. The IPCC states that the world must dramatically reduce its consumption of coal by 2030 to avoid the worst outcomes of the climate crisis. When thermal coal is exported to be burned in other countries, it has a devastating impact on global emissions. However, here in Canada, the government is choosing to ignore the facts when it comes to coal.
In 2021, the Liberals ran on an environment platform that promised they would phase out thermal coal exports. When they formed government, the Prime Minister ordered the Minister of Environment to phase out thermal coal exports in his mandate letter. What actions has the Liberal government taken since then? Nothing. In fact, since the Liberals took power in 2015, thermal coal exports have tripled. How can the Minister of Environment look at himself in the mirror? How can the Liberal members look at themselves in the mirror and call themselves climate champions?
Canada is ignoring its own climate commitments and sending millions of tonnes of thermal coal across the globe. We are shipping the dirtiest fossil fuel to be burnt in faraway lands where we can close our eyes and pretend that everything is fine. Everything is not fine.
Greenhouse gas emissions do not know international borders. Rising temperatures hurt us all. Increased natural disasters are happening around the globe, but especially here in Canada in my home province of B.C. Even if the thermal coal that originates from Canada or the U.S. is burnt in China, it is the same greenhouse gas emissions that fuel the conditions for the dry forests that light up in flames across this country, displacing thousands of people.
Why has the government not fulfilled its promise to Canadians to end thermal coal exports? Why does it continue to mislead Canadians and promise climate action, but continually fall short? It is no wonder that Canadians are cynical. This last year alone, Canada exported 19.5 million tonnes of thermal coal. In 2022, 40 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions were burnt from Canadian thermal coal exports. That is roughly the same number of emissions as 16.7 million cars. Every year, air pollution contributes to roughly one million deaths around the world. Burning coal is a big factor in this.
Canadian coal should not be playing a role in polluting the air we breathe. This is one of the many reasons I tabled my private member's bill, Bill C-383, to phase out thermal coal exports, work with unions to ensure sustainable job transitions and fulfill our international climate commitments.
My question for the member is this: Will you fulfill your promise to Canadians and phase out thermal coal? Why have you broken this promise?
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