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Context: House Hansard - 237 - Oct/23/23

Jan/30/24 11:29:46 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-59

Madam Speaker, I am very concerned. We are into the second year of Putin's brutal attack on Ukraine. We see that Trump has undermined Ukraine. We see that the far right, and we know the Conservatives have been meeting with the far right in Europe, is undermining Ukraine. I want to ask why that member, his leader, his defence critic and his foreign affairs critic stood up to vote against funding to support the people of Ukraine in their time of need. That sends a very message that the Conservatives are on the Putin troll machine.

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Context: House Hansard - 237 - Oct/23/23

Oct/23/23 4:46:36 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-57

Mr. Speaker, my concern is that while we support Ukraine and we want to make sure that we can deal with the horrific war that has gone on, until we deal with the massive destruction of homes, the massive destruction of the environment, there is not going to be much of a trade going on, and we are now coming into the second winter of a brutal war. I want to follow up on what my Conservative colleague asked about on the light armoured vehicles. We know that General Dynamics in London can produce them, which is an advantage that Canada has. We cannot compete militarily with some of our allies, but light armoured vehicles from General Dynamics could do the job. Is this government willing to augment the supply force that it has already sent to Ukraine in order to hold the Russians back in what is going to be a very hard winter coming?

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Oct/23/23 3:48:26 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-57

Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in what we can do with our Ukrainian allies. My concern is the $54 billion in damaged housing in Ukraine, destroyed or damaged, which is almost 9% of the housing stock. There is massive damage to the energy grid and to the infrastructure, which makes it almost impossible to run an economy. There is massive environmental damage. I want to know, beyond signing an agreement, what steps the government would take to work with Ukraine on that. The government here is having a very hard time addressing our own housing crisis, our own need to build an energy grid and infrastructure, and the climate disasters that has hit us. How can we honestly say to Ukraine that we will be there to deal with the horrific impacts of the war Putin has caused, there for Ukraine to rebuild, while also saying to Canadians that we will be here to make sure we get the necessary housing, build the electricity grid and address the horrific costs of the climate fires?

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Oct/18/22 12:42:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was very interested in my hon. colleague's talk about propaganda, because one of the most dangerous things we have seen with the Putin regime is the powerful use of propaganda and disinformation. That needs to be called out. One of the things I found very concerning was to see the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, using her position to promote Putin propaganda, like, for example, claiming that it is right for people in Ukraine to be forcibly annexed into Russia. That has to be called out. There is nothing democratic about this. This is not about choice; it is about an illegal annexation that is being done with terror, murder, torture and rape. If we are going to stand up to Putin and Putin propaganda, we have to call out those who are spreading disinformation. I ask the member if he will denounce Danielle Smith and her totally unacceptable comments promoting Putin's misinformation war against the Ukrainian people.

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Oct/18/22 12:28:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, given the horrific comments by Danielle Smith promoting pro-Putin propaganda and blaming the people of Ukraine for causing the war, I would like to see if just one Conservative, and I am not asking for much here, who has a backbone and a willingness to stand up and denounce Danielle Smith and her pro-Putin propaganda. If I can have that one, we would be much further ahead today in Parliament. I see a hand up. I want to hear him denounce Danielle Smith and her pro-Putin propaganda.

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Oct/18/22 11:51:32 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the really disturbing things that Premier Danielle Smith used her platform for was to say that Ukraine has nuclear weapons, which we know is false. This is part of the Putin propaganda. When we raise Danielle Smith in the House, we have not seen a single Conservative speak up, yet the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan decided to try to avoid the conversation about the refusal of the Conservatives to denounce pro-Putin propaganda and start speaking about nuclear disarmament. I find it ironic that when the Conservatives are asked to make a simple statement as to whether they support Danielle Smith's claims that Ukraine deserved the attack and that Russia had a right to be upset with it, and the other falsehoods she is perpetuating, we have not seen a single Alberta Conservative stand up and say it is wrong. I want to ask my hon. colleague this. Why does she think the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan and the rest of the Alberta and Saskatchewan caucuses are rallying to try to divert attention from the despicable language coming out of the Premier of Alberta regarding pro-Putin propaganda?

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Context: House Hansard - 90 - Jun/16/22

Oct/18/22 11:16:39 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is a very important discussion, but I find it disturbing that we are talking about supporting legitimate opposition in Russia when we have the Premier of Alberta spreading pro-Putin falsehoods and propaganda. She has claimed that Russia had a right to be upset with Ukraine, when we see mass murder, rape and killing, and the forcible annexation of Ukrainian territories. We have not heard a single Conservative in the House denounce this pro-Putin propaganda, so I would ask my colleague this. What does it say about our credibility of supporting opposition in Russia when we have pro-Putin propaganda right here in Canada? The silence from the Conservatives supporting Danielle Smith and her abhorrent comments is very concerning.

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Context: House Hansard - 90 - Jun/16/22

Jun/16/22 9:49:44 p.m.
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Madam Chair, what is really concerning is that we are dealing with an unprecedented situation where hunger and famine are being used as tools of war. It is really important for Parliament to be looking beyond our own backyard and how we might benefit. I have lots of farmers in my region who could help, but we are dealing with a much larger international crisis, with Russian disinformation and war crimes. I am asking my colleagues about their willingness to put a larger frame on this. How are we going to deal with this in an age of destabilization, with the failure of globalization and the fact that the modern norms we have trusted in the international community are not helping us deal with a war criminal like Putin? We need to have a broader, bigger picture. I am asking my colleague if can he articulate where he sees this going in an age of growing instability.

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Context: House Hansard - 73 - May/17/22

Jun/16/22 6:58:28 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am really concerned about the situation where food and hunger are being used as a chip in Putin's war against the people of Ukraine, and now the world. It speaks to a larger destabilization that is happening. We are just learning about the Colorado River. With 80% of it going to agriculture, it feeds 40 million people, and the climate crisis in the southwest is now going to have severe impacts on agriculture. We depend on that agriculture as well. We have Putin blocking the ports, using food as a hunger weapon, and we can see increasing destabilization from climate change. I want to ask the minister what steps Canada will be taking in the long term to ensure food security and to ensure that we can actually respond to this destabilizing global reality that we are living in 2022.

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Context: House Hansard - 53 - Apr/5/22

May/17/22 10:53:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals did promise, in 2019, to get rid of fossil fuel subsidies, and then they amended it to say “inefficient”. Well, “inefficient” means anything they want it to, such as the $570 million the government gave to the methane cleanup, and we have no proof that the money was actually spent on dealing with methane. The issue here, in terms of Putin's war, has certainly exacerbated the price of oil. It has created a crisis, and that has to be addressed. However, we were told the government was going to have an electric vehicle plan. We do not even have a plan to get the charging stations. Canadians across Canada would love to buy an electric vehicle, but if they cannot plug it in, what are they going to do? I am looking at the budget, and I see more support for oil and gas than I see for the clean energy alternatives.

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Apr/5/22 3:52:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is the massacre of civilians in Bucha and the allegations of mass rape that have shocked the world, but it really is just an escalation of the war of terror that the Putin regime has been running against the people of Ukraine. It really is a line in the sand for us in Canada and for the world. I have enormous respect for my colleague's expertise on this. The number one obligation is getting international war crime investigators in there so it can be documented because we are dealing with a disinformation terror regime, and second is getting the materials on the ground to help the people of Ukraine defend their skies, defend their communities and stop the killings and torture of their people by the Putin gang.

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Mar/3/22 12:15:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we need to rise up to a higher level here, because we are being watched around the world, and this motion brings us to a much lower, much more cynical, exploitive level. I urge all my colleagues to vote against it. We need to move forward on something that shows that, as a Parliament, we will stand up for freedom for the people of Ukraine and not just for the pecuniary interests of the oil lobby.

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Mar/3/22 12:13:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague and say, “Welcome to the petrostate.” Remember how the Conservatives, who are all really upset about Communist China, actually sold off sections of the oil patch to state-owned Chinese companies because as long as it was Chinese companies owning them, they did not mind. Now, we have the Liberals talking about sanctions but refusing to go after these key oligarchs. This is the face of the petrostate between Conservatives and Liberals. We need to have better accountability.

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Mar/3/22 12:12:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think my hon. colleague, like me, like everyone in the House, is fielding calls every day from people who have family in the Ukraine. They are asking what we are doing as the Parliament of Canada to help them. Am I going to say, in response to the fact that their family is trapped in Kyiv or on the Polish border, the Parliament of Canada came forward today to say that what we want to do is approve new pipelines? I cannot call anybody back and say that. I can say that we tried to work with the Conservatives, but they did not want to work with us. We tried to work with them on the issue of speeding up visas, of making sure we could get people to safety. That is what I would like to see. I am hoping the Liberals will oppose this motion because of the cynicism of it. My God, if I were Putin, what I would be saying now is, “Look at the Conservative Party. They are not worrying about the horrific death rates in the Ukraine. They want to compete with us for our natural gas.” To me, that is an appalling position.

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Mar/3/22 12:10:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if we look at what is happening in Europe now, the discussion is clearly about the need to get off Russian energy. They are talking about doing this through improving the electricity grids and making sure that their non-renewable and nuclear options are in place. I do not see any of that from this Conservative party, a party that is trying to exploit a humanitarian crisis right now, at this time, in order to sell this false pipe dream that we could in six months, a year or two years, build a pipeline from the west to Atlantic Canada to capture a market, when there are already at least 12 other LNG projects sitting on the sidelines across North America and the European stock in clean energy is going up. All of this is predicated on the usual Conservative scheme of saying, “Let us take billions in taxpayers' money and try to drive it through.”

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Mar/3/22 12:08:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the issue here is really concerning and is a constant misrepresentation. We have a huge opportunity in Canada to be a world leader in moving forward with renewables, hydrogen and geothermal energy. The expertise in Canada is second to none. We could be working around the world with this, but we are not because we are focused on putting billions and billions of dollars into a 20th-century economy when the planet is burning around us. This is a lost opportunity for workers, for regions and also for the future of our children.

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Mar/3/22 12:07:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really would hope that my hon. Liberal colleagues are not going to support this motion to expand gas line production, because we are afraid of what Russia is going to say. I just want to put that on the record. We have been unanimous in standing up on the issue of Ukraine. What we are seeing is the Conservatives using this as a wedge to undermine our credibility by saying that our number one issue at this time, of all the issues that we are dealing with from Russia, is to undertake measures to ensure new, natural gas pipelines be approved. That is such a cynical and exploitive position. I certainly hope the Liberals are not going to go there with them.

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Mar/3/22 12:05:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I did not know they built the pipeline in 1854 to deal with the food crisis in Ukraine, but again, the Conservatives will tell us anything. We start with this being a big oil and gas issue, but as soon as we poke them, they start talking about children being hungry. We do not carry nitrogen in pipelines. This is about oil and gas. This is a simple fact. For my hon. colleague who wants to go back to 1854, we can go back throughout history. They were not using pipelines to deliver agricultural support and they still are not. Once again, we see the Conservatives using a humanitarian disaster and a humanitarian crisis to promote the false interests of the oil and gas sector.

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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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