- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Timmins—James Bay
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $134,227.44
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member will agree that she and I have been in some good scraps over the years, but we come to this place for the betterment of Canada, so when I see the opportunity to create good-paying jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador being attacked by the Conservatives, and the Conservatives say they are going to stop jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador, I ask why. It is because they want to burn the planet.
What does it say to people in Newfoundland and Labrador that there are Conservative members who want to burn the planet and deny jobs and good, clean energy, while we see in America, on the Atlantic coast, that the Americans are getting thousands and thousands of jobs, clean jobs?
What does that say to the people in Newfoundland and Labrador?
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, we heard from representatives of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents many energy workers across the country. The Conservatives did not ask them questions; they used their time to do a political stunt. When we talk to these workers, they are very concerned about their seat at the table because they know change is coming.
It is really important that we actually have legislation that is strong enough, because this is about the tax credits that would be going out. If the tax credits are done by these functionaries, who knows where this is going to be and how it is going to happen? Will the Bloc be willing to come forward with amendments?
We are looking for the New Democrats to have regional voices and working-class people represented, as well as having public NGOs and youth at the table. We do not want just industry, so that it would not just be a carve-out of pals but would actually ensure that the jobs being created are good, sustainable, long-term jobs, and that they represent our regions.
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Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. My grandfather was a coal miner and had to leave the coal mines because there was no future there. That is when he went to work in the gold mines and broke his back underground. My mother is a miner's daughter. This is what we grew up with.
When the jobs went out, I never heard the Conservatives say they cared. We lost jobs and the pensions of the workers at Kerr-Addison, Pamour miners were ripped off and Elliot Lake went down. We are in a situation of transition, and I think of the people in Atlantic Canada who have had to travel too often to find jobs.
Right now, we are competing with the United States offshore in the Atlantic, and it is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore wind. We can either get in the game and provide sustainable jobs for the communities out there or sit on the sidelines and let the Americans take them. I am not willing to let the Americans take our opportunities.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a very important question because we saw big oil racking up $200 billion in profits in the most catastrophic climate year on record.
Rich Kruger, Suncor's CEO, said there was a “sense of urgency” to make as much money as possible. I think of the 200,000 people who were displaced. I think of the buildings that were lost. I think of the terrifying situations we had and the obligation the CEOs have to deal with this.
The Conservatives live in a bubble of pretending that the world does not exist. Meanwhile, there are over 100 major lawsuits right now against Exxon and Suncor in jurisdictions like California and Colorado because they knew back in the 1960s and 1980s that they were burning the future of the planet. Shell, in 1988, warned that by the time issues became clear in the 2000s, it might be too late, but it took the time to raise its oil platforms six feet on the offshore rigs so that when the ice caps melted, it could still make money.
That is their responsibility and we will call that out.
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Mr. Speaker, words do matter, and when we met with workers about what they wanted, they wanted to know there was a future. That was why the words “sustainable jobs” meant something. We heard that from workers.
In terms of international obligations, we need to ensure in the legislation that this is not just an island by itself. It must meet the international commitments we have made on issues like the just transition.
It is very important, when I am in Edmonton meeting with electrical workers who want to know what their future looks like, to say this is about jobs. This is about tomorrow. Once we have established trust with the working class, we will move further ahead because there is no energy transition without workers at the table. That is why the language matters.
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Mr. Speaker, I am more than willing to put out our sponsored travel. Are they willing? The member for Cumberland—Colchester had the $1,800 bottle of wine. Would they put the documents on the table and tell us who bought that wine?
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Mr. Speaker, as we saw earlier today, the Conservatives attempted to use the horrific kidnappings by Hamas to promote the oil and gas agenda. I do not say these things are lies. I do not need to. I do not even need to respond to that kind of gutter talk.
The fact that the Conservatives would say that going to meet the German Chancellor and German parliamentarians about energy was somehow tied to the terror attacks in Israel shows how marginal they are and how deplorable the actions are of a party that will say anything, do anything and misrepresent anything at a time of such horror, tragedy and killings. I would tell the member shame on him.
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Mr. Speaker, it is my deep tradition in Parliament to not cast aspersions on any but to only speak to facts, so I will only speak to facts.
The member for Sarnia—Lambton lives on Highway 401 and Highway 401 is the heart of Canada's auto belt. Canada's auto belt has gone all in on EV technology. Here is the simple thing. Those jobs could go to Ohio or they could stay in Canada.
We see the Conservatives do misinformation after misinformation about EV, about critical minerals, about battery technology, as if our workers cannot make proper cars.
I am sorry. Canadians can make the best cars on the planet. The Conservatives and the Conservative leader attack EV technology and the battery technology, but my region is dependent on those jobs. We are going to get the critical minerals out of the ground. We are going to work with the companies on Highway 401. We are going to make the cars in Canada and make them sustainably.
The Conservatives do not have to drive them. They want to go back to the days of the horse and buggy, so let them.
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Mr. Speaker, I think I am getting so much interference because I am getting to the punchline. Then, I will move on, but I think it would be unfair to intimidate me and have my ability to speak circumscribed, because it is about what our priorities are. Our priority, as New Democrats, has been workers, and particularly people from the natural resources industry, like where I come from. I live in a mining town that is looking for the clean energy future, and nobody in my town would be given a $719 bottle of wine. What was in that wine?
I am coming to the conclusion. At the end of this night with these four Conservatives, paid for apparently by my cousin Dan McTeague over in the U.K., meeting somebody we do not know, they had a bottle of champagne for $1,791 Canadian. That is obviously not sparkling Baby Duck. I do not know who bought that for them.
I ask that, because what we are talking about is the insecurity of workers at a time of transition. Do we wish there was a transition? No, we do not. We are used to living the way we have lived. I have lived through transitions, and it is not pretty. Cobalt is where we lost every single silver mining job in one summer. When our iron ore mines shut down, there was no future there. We know the word “transition”, and we know it is not pretty. This was something we heard from workers in Alberta and other regions. They asked what is “just” about a transition and how we could make it so they have some place to go. This was the New Democratic plan from the beginning, which we negotiated with the Liberals.
The Liberals initially said that they were going to put a jobs centre as their solution. We said that a jobs centre sends a message that we are turning out the lights and leaving. Where are we going to put those jobs centres? Are we going to put them in Fort McMurray or Saint John's? We needed something broader and something bigger, so we pushed for the sustainable jobs legislation that would serve as the framework. This is the important thing: We need a framework around how these tax credits would be implemented. We know that if we do not have a plan, it will be just a gong show of friends, pals and lobbyists who are going to be sucking up this money, as unfortunately happens all too often in Canada.
We need to compete the way the United States has. They brought an all-of-government approach to make sure they were making a truly transformative revolution.
I will say another thing they talked to us about when we were in Germany. The Germans were very concerned about the IRA, because of the competitiveness. Over in Europe, 3,000 or 4,000 kilometres away, they were concerned about how they were going to compete against Joe Biden and the massive amount of investment that is moving out of Europe and moving to the United States. We are right on the American border, so when $33 billion gets sucked out of Alberta, it goes stateside.
In my region, talking to miners and mining companies, the first thing they said to me was, “Did you see the tax credits Joe Biden put in? They are really interesting to us.” We have to be able to say that we are here too, we will compete and we will make sure that the investment stays here.
Again, I am dealing with the Liberal government. We are trying to make this work. We are saying, for example, that there are a lot of things missing in this plan. What is the sustainable jobs secretariat? Is that just going to be some desk in some minister's office, or is it going to have a true mandate? What is the partnership council? Are we actually looking at something credible here?
What we are going to be insisting on, while the Conservatives try to filibuster that committee and that legislation, is checks and balances to make sure that regional representation is there. We want to make sure that labour is there with enough voices representing enough regions of the country, because they are the ones who are going to be dealing with the implementation of that, not us. We want to make sure that indigenous rights are fully respected and implemented, and part of that is in the tax credit incentives. They are going to be different in different areas, and they are certainly going to be different in the opportunities for indigenous people. We need to make sure they are front and centre.
The other thing we really want to know is that we have a youth voice on the stewardship council, because we want to make sure that those who are being most affected by the climate disaster that is unfolding have their future interests at stake. We need to make sure that the tax credits work, we need to make sure that they are being implemented and we need to have better data collection. What the Liberals are offering us on data collection is insufficient. There would not be a job left in Canada by the time they report back.
There need to be mechanisms that come back to Parliament to tell us if this is working. If it does not work, it is is going to affect our environment, number one, but it is going to affect working-class families from one end of the country to the other.
What we were really surprised by, again, with the all-of-government approach taken by the Biden administration, is that we have seen, in one year, a staggering turnaround in terms of projects getting off the ground, in terms of jobs, in terms of commitments.
That is where we are at as New Democrats. We believe that we have a huge opportunity right now. Is this bill perfect? It is far from perfect. What we can do in a minority Parliament is come in with good plans and good amendments to make it happen, unlike our Conservative colleagues, who want to go back to the 19th century.
It is not going to happen. I am sorry. That world is gone. What we need to do is to say that we have an opportunity and if we do not compete, we are going to be at the side of the road because the United States is moving ahead.
I will just conclude on this. Let us consider Texas. Texas, politically, is about as out there and as right wing as the Conservative backbench and yet 890,000 clean-tech jobs are in Texas right now. There is no other jurisdiction in the world right now that has invested as much in clean tech as Texas. Texas came through the most brutal heat wave, killer heat wave, able to turn on all of their air conditioners.
Meanwhile, Danielle Smith was going around saying, oh my God, if we have clean power, we are going to have to turn the power off. She was paying for these trucks to drive up and down Ottawa saying, my God, if one invests in Canada, we are going to run out of energy. What kind of premier goes around advertising, in an energy-rich province, that the lights are going to be turned off?
The reality is that if we get these clean energy projects off the ground, it is going to dramatically decrease costs for families. It is going to give the working class and middle class steady jobs and it is going to save our planet. We will go to these hearings and we will push for strong amendments.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate that. It allows me to go back. I was responding to the previous intervention and attack on me by a Conservative, who said that she contested what was said by the Chancellor of Germany to me in a meeting. I was saying that we were meeting with the Germans about energy. The Conservatives went over. We do not know who they met with, but it is worth noting an $818 bottle of wine. There was then a second bottle of wine for $265. That still is probably pretty good. That is not sparkling Baby Duck—
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Mr. Speaker, it is amazing. It is no wonder the German Chancellor did not bother to meet with the Conservatives, because he would have heard stuff like that. However, he met with us, and I met with him personally. He said that LNG was not where Germany was going and that it was moving so far ahead on green energy that either Canada was going to provide hydrogen or Canada was going to be out of the mix. That was the message we got.
Meanwhile, we get continuous misinformation, but where do we get that from? When the Conservatives go to Europe, whom do they meet with? There is Dan McTeague. Talk about a bonkers climate change denier, who somehow paid for four Conservatives to fly to the U.K. and put them up in big hotels. He is my cousin, by the way, so I am not saying anything out of family. Dan McTeague and his group apparently paid for three bottles of wine that came to $1,800 Canadian. Who drinks booze like that? Again, this is a party that goes on about affordability and about the price of potatoes, but, man, it can certainly afford it when it is being given a bottle of wine that costs $818 Canadian. Do members think the Conservatives would even know what an—
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Mr. Speaker, I hope that was not a point of order on this really important issue, but I will try to continue, because this is important.
We actually saw at our committee that the issue of sustainable jobs is a top-of-mind issue for Canadian workers, yet the Conservatives have done everything to slow it down and attack it. This is a big issue, because there are problems with this legislation, and our job is to fix it, not to obstruct something that is badly needed.
I want to get to the point of what we are up against in terms of Mr. Biden. In the first week of the Biden administration, he signed an executive order creating an inter-agency working group on energy transition. He set up a transition group to make sure that energy-dependent regions were not left behind. Biden came out of the gate in his first week. He also went to COP26 and said that America would create a new clean energy economy based on good-paying union jobs, because he knew that he had to send a signal that he was going to fight for the middle class, unlike what we see with the Conservatives, who are out to shut down job investments in Alberta and to attack investments in the battery plants.
This leaves us with, my God, the Liberals, who had never talked about these issues before. They were dragged kicking and screaming by the New Democrats. We said that we have to have some key investments. We need commitments and clarity, such as on prevailing wages. We need to say that if someone is going to get tax credits to do energy investment in Canada, there have to be good-paying union jobs. We also need to make sure that apprenticeships are part of the mix.
However, the promised $85 billion in clean energy tax credits, which sounds great, is not here yet. We are going up against a government that, within its first year, had set up its energy transition, a government in the United States that is now saying that there will be nine million direct jobs from the IRA. We have to compete with the U.S.
I have heard constant drivel of misinformation from the Conservatives about what the Chancellor of Germany asked for from Canada. I met the Chancellor of Germany, and he said that Germany was not interested in LNG but that it was interested in the long term and in hydrogen—
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Mr. Speaker, I would have sat down, but at my tender age, I have a problem with my back.
The fact is that the Conservatives get panic-stricken every time I start talking about how much they are against technology and that they are climate deniers. What riding is the member from? He is the member for Carleton, who lives in a 19-room mansion with his own personal chef, paid for by the taxpayers. That is a fact. I know they get triggered—
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Mr. Speaker, I hope none of my time has been cut off by the panic attacks of the Conservatives.
As far as making up names, I am talking about Danielle Smith and the Conservative Party and the fact that the member who lives in Stornoway was up for cutting off all these jobs. These are facts. Conservatives might not like facts, but—
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Mr. Speaker, I will give you my notes afterward because, obviously, this is what we are talking about. I see there is very thin skin in Conservative country when one talks about their attempts to chase out investment.
Here is the thing with Danielle Smith. There were 33 billion dollars' worth of investments in clean tech killed in Alberta. If we were to talk to anybody in the clean tech industry internationally, they will recognize we are from Canada and ask where our project is. If we say Alberta, it is done. Why is that? It is because nobody is going to invest in a jurisdiction with a premier who is out to kill jobs. That is why this legislation is important. We have to have workers at the table, and we have to protect the potential for new investments.
Yes, we were meeting with workers in Alberta because we understood that these were serious issues, while Danielle Smith and the Conservatives over there, under the member for Stornoway, were talking about killing those jobs. What were they doing? Who were they meeting with?
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Mr. Speaker, the issue raised was an attempt to intimidate and stop members from speaking. I will not be intimidated.
I will continue to speak even if it takes all night. I will speak out about climate change denial, even if I am interrupted relentlessly. These are the facts of this bill. I will continue to speak on behalf of the work that is being done, particularly the work we have done with energy workers.
I was speaking about the urgency. I spoke about the urgency of the climate crisis, and that certainly triggered the Conservatives. I spoke of the urgency of what the International Energy Agency is reporting, warning governments against continuing to invest in the fossil fuel industry because they are going to be stranded assets. The urgency is at the point that we are now reaching peak oil by 2025-30. We have this falsehood that if we continue to build infrastructure, we could ignore science, the economy and reality, which is something the Conservatives have done for so long.
I would like to speak to one other element of urgency in getting this legislation passed, which is the fact that the United States, under the IRA, in a single year, has created what is being called economic shock waves for their investments in clean tech. This is a game-changer of unprecedented proportions.
Again, I do not know any jurisdiction on the planet that chases away investment, but I know how upset the Conservatives are whenever we talk about what is happening in the United States. Offshore wind, under Joe Biden, in a single year, is moving to 40 gigawatts of power. The Vineyard Wind project would run 400,000 homes on cheap, clean energy. The Conservatives do not want Canadians to know that because they want to continue to promote coal and oil. There is 146 billion dollars worth of investment in the United States in offshore wind. This is something the Conservatives would shut down in a second.
We are seeing right now, within one year, 86,000 new permanent jobs, and 50,000 in EV. What we have seen is the Conservatives, again and again, ridiculing investments in battery technology and EV technology. We had the member who lives in Stornoway, which I do not believe is in his riding, show up in Timmins—James Bay to ridicule the critical mineral strategy, in a mining town. For God's sake, the guy has had a paper route. However, here is a man who comes into a mining region and makes fun of EV technology, when our communities and our workers are going to be ones building this new technology, and we are investing in it. We will push the government to continue to invest.
The legislation was very problematic for New Democrats. There was not a lot there. We pushed hard by working with labour and union workers who are on the front lines. One of the key places we went to was Alberta. We hear Conservatives talk about workers in Alberta, but they do not talk to them. They misrepresent them. We met with the electrical workers. We met with the construction workers. We met with the boiler workers.
We asked them what they wanted, and they said that they know the world is changing around them. Forty-five thousand jobs have been lost in oil and gas at a time of record profits, and the workers know those jobs are not coming back. Suncor fired 1,500 workers this year. Richie Rich Kruger, its CEO, bragged to his investors about the urgency, at a time of climate crisis, to make as much money as possible. He said he would target workers, that he would make every one of those workers in Suncor prove their worth if they were going to keep their jobs. It is taking record profits, over $200 billion, to big oil. It is putting it into stock buybacks and automation.
The workers knew there was no future. They told us they wanted a seat at the table. That is something New Democrats fought for in this legislation. Is it enough? No. We want to make sure that we have labour represented in the regional round tables that are moving forward. The idea of the Liberal government meeting with Danielle Smith without labour is a ridiculous proposition.
Here is the thing, there is no place on the planet that was more ready for the clean tech revolution than Alberta. In fact, just last Christmas, they were talking about the solar gold rush in Alberta. Just this past July, they were talking about how Alberta was set to become the clean energy capital of the world. Then Danielle Smith stepped up and shut it down. That was $33 billion. Here we go again—
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Mr. Speaker, I will not be intimidated by a group of climate change deniers. I will continue to speak facts. They can interrupt me all night long—
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Mr. Speaker, I know that facts really tend to frighten the Conservatives. If they are feeling uncomfortable about facts, maybe they can get a little safe room where they can live in disinformation. I was talking about the International Energy Agency.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise with respect to this legislation and the urgency of moving forward. We have come across the worst climate catastrophe in our nation's history with the hottest summer on record. Normally, September is when fire season is over. Just this past September, in one weekend, more carbon was pumped into the atmosphere from burning Canadian forests than is normally pumped in an entire year of Canada's boreal forest fires. That is one part of the urgency.
The other part of the urgency is that just this past month, the International Energy Agency announced that the beginning of the end of the oil and gas industry is now foreseeable on the horizon. The agency is warning governments that they have to make a plan because they are going to be stuck with stranded assets if they continue to invest in an industry that can no longer compete with what is happening internationally with the rise of—
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Mr. Speaker, this is all fascinating, and the member can ask about it tomorrow, but we are debating Bill C-50 and there is absolutely nothing about it in the question.
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