- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Timmins—James Bay
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $134,227.44
- Government Page
- Nov/2/23 12:34:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a great honour to rise here in the House on behalf of the people of Timmins—James Bay at a time when public confidence in public institutions and democracy is at an all-time low. We certainly know that trust in democracy is under very frightening pressures all over the world.
In Canada, recent polls show that over 75% of the Canadian people believe that Parliament and the behaviour of parliamentarians have become “dishonest” and “useless.” At a time of growing difficulty in our country and growing difficulty and very dark times around the world, it is incumbent upon us to be able to show that democracy can work and that parliamentarians can work together.
That is why I am very concerned about today's debate, which seems to be one between an absolute failure of vision on the one hand and an absolute failure of leadership on the other. What we are debating really reflects a political race to the bottom that is leading and feeding this growing public alienation and rage farming. As elected representatives, we all have a sacred duty to adjudicate the very difficult economic, environmental, political and international issues that confront us as a nation.
This means that we must occasionally climb out of our partisan trenches and put forward a bigger vision for the nation. Doing this means that sometimes we are going to need to stand up on unpopular issues. If we are going to build a long-term future for our children, sometimes it is incumbent upon the leadership of this generation to say that tough choices have to be made.
However, that is not what we are debating here. We are debating the realm of gotcha politics and rage-farm politics in response to a very desperate and cynical gerrymandering of public policy that was clearly seen, in the public's eyes, as a desperate attempt to shore up Liberal MPs in certain parts of the country. The result was to pit region against region and to raise fundamental questions about a signature piece of the government's climate action plan, which is carbon pricing. It has now been thrown into doubt.
We need to find a way, as Canadians, to address this. It would have been very fair in the fall economic statement, for example, for the Prime Minister to step forward and say that we are dealing with two very major crises in our country right now. We have an unprecedented climate catastrophe unfolding, which is something the Conservatives pretend does not exist. This climate catastrophe dislocated over 200,000 people this summer alone. It is a climate catastrophe that has now impacted over 60% of Canadian small businesses. People are frightened about what the future holds, and they want to know that a burning planet can be addressed through policies that force down the use of fossil fuel emissions. They expect that from us.
Instead, from the Conservatives, they get a party platform of climate denial. They are told not to worry that the planet is burning; Conservatives are going to make fossil fuel burning free for everybody. As the city of Kelowna was burning, we had the MP for that region not standing up for the people but standing up for this myth that burning carbon fuels was somehow going to be good for everybody. That is a failure of leadership and of our responsibility to tell people the truth of what we are facing right now in an unprecedented climate catastrophe. It is also a failure to the planet.
It could have been perfectly fair, in the fall economic statement, for the Prime Minister to say that we are dealing with an unprecedented climate catastrophe, and we need to make sure the policies we have in place work. One of the policies Liberals sold the country is carbon pricing.
It would have been equally fair for the Prime Minister to say that we are dealing with an unprecedented crisis. Liberals call it “affordability”, but as my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley pointed out, it is a much deeper and more troubling crisis, a crisis of people unable to heat their homes and feed their families.
The Prime Minister could have said that we are going to find a way across this country to take some pressure off. To do that, it would have been a reasonable suggestion to say that we are going to take the GST-HST off home heating. Why? It is not a luxury to heat one's home in Canada, particularly in regions like mine that go to -45°C and sometimes -50°C. It is not a luxury. This is not wasteful spending on behalf of citizens. This is about keeping families alive.
To take the GST off would have affected people across the country and it would have been fair, but the Liberal government did not do that. It opted to focus on home heating oil, which certainly is a very problematic fuel that we need to address. It also is a fuel that tends to be used by people in more rural and poor regions who cannot afford to switch.
The way it was laid out was so cynical. It was about defending beleaguered Liberal MPs in Atlantic Canada. It sent a very clear message that the Prime Minister's focus was on keeping his MPs above the water line and not responding to the needs of Canadians, so it was not a credible plan. It has pitted region against region. It has raised serious questions about whether the Prime Minister has an environmental plan to deal with the climate crisis. It also raises questions about the whole pitch of carbon pricing.
Canadians were told that this was going to be a fundamental feature. New Democrats have argued with the government on carbon pricing over the years. We have said that we need to make the big polluters pay, the people who are actually damaging the planet and destroying our kids' future. They are the ones who should be paying. Senior citizens who have to heat their homes in rural northern Ontario are not responsible for the climate crisis.
There needs to be a balance. The across-the-board imposition raised real questions about fairness. What we ended up having in this situation is that one group of people is being exempted. We are hearing all kinds of positive reasons for it, but the fundamental issue it is coming down to is they were being exempted because they are in regions represented by Liberals who are afraid about their future. That is not good enough.
We have said all along that it should have been the GST from the get-go. We know the Conservatives voted against our attempt to take off the GST from heating because that would have covered people across the country.
What the Conservatives have brought to us today is another way of dividing region against region, because they know that if we just take the carbon tax off, it is not going to mean anything for people in British Columbia who are still paying heating bills. They are not covered by the carbon tax because they are under cap and trade, and neither are people in Quebec because Quebec is under cap and trade. One part of the country will have taxes taken off their heating and another part of the country will not.
If we are going to talk about the climate crisis and affordability, we have to put in place measures that are not ad hoc or gotcha moments, but measures that address the difficulties we are facing across the board.
To that, New Democrats have said time and time again that the people who are making the pollution have to be the ones paying. Rich Kruger, the CEO of Suncor, said there is a sense of urgency right now, as our planet is burning, for the big oil industry to make as much money as possible, as they are firing workers, as they are moving to automation and as they are doing stock buybacks. They could be paying the greater share for carbon pricing. We can take efforts to make sure that this is across the board and fair.
If we are going to stop pitting region against region, I would like to move the following amendment: “That, the motion be amended by adding after the words 'all forms of home heating', the following: 'and to eliminate the GST on home heating in provinces where no federal carbon tax is in place'.”
That would be fair across the board.
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Madam Speaker, I am a registered gun owner and all my neighbours are gun owners, but I do not know very many people who have AR-15s or handguns or are interested in getting them. For the people in my region this is not that kind of issue. We want to make sure that the strong rules for licensing stay in place and the safety provisions that we have stay in place.
I want to ask the hon. colleague about the grandfather clause. It seemed to us that in the previous Parliament, having the grandfather clause for people who legally bought those weapons was a reasonable position, as it allows them to be grandfathered if we are going to say no more AR-15s on the market.
The cost we are looking at is enormous. Would the Conservatives consider supporting legislation that had a grandfather clause allowing legal gun owners to maintain their weapons, or have them bought back if they so choose?
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- Mar/3/22 11:59:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would tell my hon. colleague that if the truth hurts, too bad, so sad, because the Conservatives have taken the crisis in Ukraine, the humanitarian suffering, the deaths, the murder of innocent people, turned it around and said this is a great opportunity for them to take billions in taxpayers' money to promote the interests of oil and gas. If they do not like the mathematics of how bad that is, then they should not be in the chamber. Too bad, so sad, because this is their motion. We could have been debating anything of substance. Instead, we are debating Conservative mythologies.
As I was saying, over the last few years, 60 financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings plc, Hartford Financial, the Japan Petroleum Exploration, have all pulled out of Canada. Why? It is because of the lack of a plan to deal with the climate crisis.
Not only are the Conservatives misrepresenting the facts in terms of the horrific humanitarian crisis, but they are misrepresenting the facts to workers because the transition is here. We see the potential. Calgary Economic Development and Edmonton Global are saying that if we start to invest now in clean energy, we are looking at an additional $61 billion for the provincial Alberta economy. If they continue with business as usual, there will be only $4 billion. Year in, year out, we see drops in employment in the oil sector and that is not because people are being mean to them. It is because industry is cutting jobs and making more profits. That is the thing.
That leads me back to the Forbes comparison. Forbes says that having lost the debate in Canada on the climate crisis, oil and gas have shifted, like big tobacco, to the global south, where the number one plan is to make some claims about greenwashing, shift massive exports to the global south where it does not count and then only invest enough in clean tech so it looks like they are doing something. Meanwhile, the market has moved beyond, and it has moved beyond in a substantial way. What we have been given, time and time again, by the Conservative Party is a fake, failed mythology when, year in, year out, jobs in the oil patch have gone down and the opportunity for a clean-tech economy is staring us in the face. There is a huge potential, but if we do not meet that, then we are consigning our children to no future.
To get back to the motion at hand in a very clear way, I have seen a lot of ways the Conservatives and the Liberals will bend over backwards to give taxpayers' money to big oil, to excuse all manner of abuses of accountability and to go along with all manner of fake claims about dealing with the crisis, but emissions have continued to rise, year in, year out. We are talking about the future of our planet, but we are talking about it now, within the context of a global crisis, a humanitarian crisis where people are dying. They expect more from us than this gaudy attempt to claim that our best response to Ukraine is to spend billions of dollars on an unproven, unplanned, unidentified pipeline, when the Europeans are already moving toward clean energy alternatives. This is exploitative and crass.
I have enormous respect for my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills, so I will offer an amendment in order for us to come together and show a higher standard. I move that the motion be amended in paragraph (c) by deleting all the words after “Government of Canada to” and substituting the following, “greatly increase humanitarian aid for Ukraine and for countries bordering Ukraine that have already accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees and provide targeted supports to ethnic minorities who have faced discrimination in their attempt to flee Putin's war in Ukraine.”
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