- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Timmins—James Bay
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
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Madam Speaker, when I was 17, I was playing in biker bars, so getting tackled by a Conservative from Alberta is not something that I lose much sleep over. Hopefully, they will not start throwing bottles.
Right now, I am going back to the issue that disinformation, rage politics and relentless falsehoods are being promoted by climate deniers in the midst of a climate catastrophe. The question for me is the issue of climate denial, not only by bots, but also by a government in its belief that, if it just does a little bit here and a little bit there, everything will be fine. That is another form of climate denialism. It is not good enough, not at this time in our history.
The belief on the government's side is that corporations must do their part and that it has Pathways Alliance, with a 2050 plan for net zero. We have seen that Pathways Alliance has met none of its objectives. It has spent millions on disinformation campaigns, but Canada is the only G7 country where emissions continue to rise. If it continues on this path, our emissions will be much higher.
There is a great peer-reviewed study on Pathways Alliance. I encourage everyone to read it, because it shows the greenwashing, disinformation and fundamental lack of honesty that are evident. In the review, it said there was no credible proof of Pathways Alliance's carbon capture claims making any difference, yet it wants us to give them billions in carbon capture. What it is doing with carbon capture is not lowering emissions; it is using carbon capture to pump out more oil and gas and to burn more, while telling us that we have to pay for it.
This shows how they all worked together on this disinformation campaign. This is a peer-reviewed study. I am not just making this up. I read peer-review studies once in a while. It reads, “the degree of strategic coordination shown by the main producers of the oil sands sector reflects a troubling concentration of corporate power for the purposes of political and public influence.” I see my colleagues over there and my colleagues here. It continues by saying that “regulators...should actively consider how to equip themselves to detect and address sector-scale greenwashing.” They say this becomes a really important issue “as liability claims mount regarding the role of fossil fuels organizations in their ‘failure to warn’ of impeding harms due to their products.”
This issue of a “failure to warn” leads us to where this is going to go: to lawsuits. Those are the decisions where we will see some action. We know that Shell has recently been found guilty by a Dutch court of failing to mitigate against climate disaster and constant disinformation. Shell has been ordered to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030. That is what courts are doing. The European Court of Human Rights has just moved against big oil.
We have groundbreaking lawsuits. I really like the one in Colorado. I encourage people to check it out, because it names the Canadian giant Suncor and Exxon.
Since 2017, five states, the District of Columbia and 20 municipalities in the U.S. have taken major climate polluters to court for knowingly spreading disinformation. I certainly encourage people to read the California statement. This is the big tobacco moment. This is where the people are able to get back, and there is some great stuff in it. It talks about how Exxon and Shell purposely directed tortuous conduct toward California by distributing, marketing, advertising, promoting and supplying fossil fuels with the knowledge that the intended use of those products for combustion has caused and will continue to cause climate change-related harms, including to the state's industries. It is a campaign of deception and denial of climate change.
That right there is the entire platform of the Conservative opposition, which does everything on bumper stickers. I think we could put its entire environmental strategy, denialism of what the crisis is, on a bumper sticker. It would even fit on a little Austin Mini.
I want to go through some of these issues here, because it is really important that people understand what they knew and the importance of having stuff in place to take them on. Since at least 1988, the American Petroleum Institute participated and led several coalitions to promote disinformation. It has had front groups including the Global Climate Coalition; the Partnership for a Better Energy Future; the Coalition for American Jobs; and I love this one, the Alliance for Climate Strategies. They knew in the late 1960s that they were in a situation where the ice caps would actually start to melt by the year 2000. They knew that in 1968, so they lied. That was the American Petroleum Institute.
In 1980, Esso, a good Canadian company, told its managers of the danger of C02 buildup in the atmosphere and that it could have catastrophic effects. Then they said that there were measures to lower emissions. In 1980, they could have lowered emissions, but it would have cost money. What did Esso do? Esso spent the money on disinformation, on greenwashing and on bogus studies.
In 1982, Exxon had much better science than anyone, and it is right here in the State of California versus the big oil giants. Exxon was warning, from their scientific studies, that climate catastrophe would become evident by the year 2000. That was when we would first start to notice its effects. However, by then it might be too late. All through the nineties, they knew, but what did they do? They decided to pay for bogus studies and disinformation, the kind of stuff that is still being spouted from the front benches of the Conservative Party today. They knew that the results would be catastrophic for the planet.
The other one that is very telling in the California indictment is that, in 1988, Shell did a study of scientific reports that said that, again, the crisis in climate would be noticeable to the public beginning in around the year 2000, which I think most of us agree is when most of began to wonder and worry, and by then, it would possibly be too late. What did Shell do? Shell raised their oil drilling platforms in the ocean by six feet, so that, as the ice caps collapsed, coastal cities were wiped out and South Pacific islands were destroyed, it would be to hell with them; Shell was going to make money.
That is what they did. That is in the indictment. This is like Philip Morris telling kids, “Not only is smoking good, but you have to smoke if you're going to grow up and be healthy.” They knew they were burning the planet.
How does this relate back to Bill C-50? It relates back to this constant pattern of the Conservatives to promote disinformation, bogus claims and hysterical talk about the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are going to somehow be destroyed if we do anything to support—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Apr/11/24 1:31:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today is an important day and a proud day. It is a day that we fulfill the promise to workers who came to us and said that they needed to have their voices heard in dealing with the biggest economic and environmental crisis of the last 300 years.
I think back seven years ago, in Edmonton, when I met with the incredible workers at Local 424 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. They had asked me to go to their plant and meet with them. They wanted to show me the incredible training they were doing for a clean-tech future. They said that the world was changing and they were not going to be left behind, that they had the skills to take on whatever. They also said, which I knew then and believe, that there was no place in the world that could move to a clean-energy economy quicker than Alberta, and these workers were at the front of the line in the training.
They asked me where the government was on this. They saw the future coming. That question has stayed with me ever since. In the seven years since, the climate crisis has become much more pronounced. We no longer talk about the summer, we talk about the fire season. Our national fire chiefs have talked about a ferocious fire season after last year, when 200,000 Canadians were forced from their homes because of the ongoing climate disaster due to increased burning of fossil fuels.
However, we also see how fast the transition is happening around the world. It is not a myth. It is not a lie. It is not, as the Conservatives claim, some kind of globalist woke conspiracy. It is a fact. When the market changes and we do not have a plan, it is heartbreaking.
I live in mining country. I remember when the market changed in iron ore prices. Kirkland Lake and my community of Cobalt were never the same again. I remember being on one of the last shifts underground at Stanleigh Mine in Elliot Lake when the uranium market fell. It did not matter how much one believed in disinformation or claimed there was a conspiracy, once it was gone, those jobs were gone forever.
We have lost 45,000 jobs in the oil sector, and those jobs are not coming back. We lost 1,500 jobs just this year. Richie Rich Kruger from Suncor told investors in his company, which was part of the group that made $78 billion in profits, that he was going to target work as a way to be more efficient. The billions of dollars they are making they are putting into automation. They are not putting it into communities or jobs. We are seeing a reality where there will be a drop in oil and gas jobs, we figure from 171,000 down to 100,000 by 2030. Therefore, we have to be prepared.
When we lost our mining economies in the north, there was no plan. There was no place where people could go, and it was devastating. We talk about a just transition. I always say it is a transition where I come from when we see U-Hauls on the lawns of our neighbours, who are leaving with no future.
The IBEW, the operating engineers, Unifor, the Canadian Labour Congress came to us and said that there had to be a plan in place, otherwise we would miss the boat. The transition is happening. China put $890 billion into clean tech last year, more than the rest of the world combined. The result was that it pumped $1.6 trillion into its economy and brought it up 30% in a single year. It is moving ahead.
South of the border, Joe Biden's IRA has created 170,000 jobs and over half a trillion dollars in new investments. What we hear from the Conservatives now is that this is some kind of George Soros woke conspiracy that is being planned, a planned Soviet economy to destroy jobs. It was the workers themselves who came to us and said that we needed plan in place, that they did not want all those jobs going stateside.
Where are we in Canada? Danielle Smith blew $30 billion in clean-tech investments out of Alberta and said that they were not welcome. Why? It was just out of ideology. This is a province that was Canada's energy superpower and she cannot even keep the lights on in April. It is becoming Canada's banana republic for energy at a time when the climate crisis in Alberta is burning the fields. We are in fire season already and it does not have the water. We have never heard a single Alberta Conservative ever talk about the drought that is hitting due to the climate crisis. We need to take action.
It is a reasonable step that we are talking about. We need to ensure this transition happens, and, for my Liberal colleagues, that plan is not moving fast enough. We have to keep up and we have to be competitive, but we need to have workers at the table. They have a right to be at the table, because decisions will be made. It could be pork barrel, misspending or it could be a plan that ensures we build on the strengths of the workers we have and our incredible resources.
It is amazing. The other day the leader of the Conservative Party was asked about his opinion on the industrial carbon tax, and of course after having belittled the member for Victoria, which is very much in keeping with his style, he claimed there was no industrial carbon tax. It is a falsehood.
We have this funny tradition in Parliament. One can come into the House and lie all day long, but one can never be accused of being a liar because one is supposed to be an honourable member. The fact that the leader of the Conservative Party is making disinformation about the industrial price of carbon is a concern. Maybe he just does not know his file, but I do not think that is the case.
The Conservatives this morning, with some of the numbers they were talking about, were trying to claim that Bill C-50 is some kind of plot. They were saying that there were 1.4 million jobs, 170,000 jobs and 200-some thousand jobs that would immediately disappear if this happened. One can only make ridiculous claims like that if one deliberately shuts down the voices of the people who came to testify.
What happens when legislation is brought forward, and it can be good or bad and can be amended, is that we hear from the witnesses. Who were the witnesses who were not allowed to speak? The Conservatives did not allow the IBEW to speak. They did not let the carpenters union speak. They shut them down. It was the New Democrats who brought the people who have gone through the coal transition, and the Conservatives did not give a darn about those workers in the coal transition. They did not want to hear them. They did not want to hear anyone from Unifor. Those are the people who are working in the EV technologies. They shut them down and would not let them speak. They did not want the Alberta Federation of Labour to speak.
They did not want that, because if they let people speak who actually speak the truth, then disinformation falls by the side of the road. They cannot then walk around with claims of conspiracy and idiocy if there are people who say something is simply not true.
When one says to Conservatives something is simply not true, they really lose their minds. Look at the Conservative leader and his support from Alex Jones. Alex Jones is an absolute hate-monger. This is a man who taunted the families of 20 children who were murdered by an evil conspiracy hater. Alex Jones was on the John Birch Society podcast, which is another hate site, bragging about the member who lives in Stornoway. Does anyone think he was going to challenge that? Not a chance.
However, I challenged Alex Jones, and within an hour, photos of my daughters were online with their addresses. We know how the hate machine works. It is the politics of intimidation. When I take on the member for Carleton for not even bothering to show up for the election he is threatening to call, boy oh boy, within an hour their hate memes are going through my riding to call me and threaten me.
What Conservatives wanted to do was shut down Bill C-50. When they brought forward the amendments, most of which had to be generated by AI because I do not think the Conservatives were smart enough to actually bring them forward, we had to sit through hours with them screaming. They screamed for eight hours of intimidation. It was like gong-show Brownshirts. In all my career, I have never seen such deplorable and disgraceful behaviour.
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- Apr/9/24 1:06:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member has made an accusation that 50% of the Conservatives do not believe in climate change. I think he needs to prove it. Maybe it is 100%.
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- Apr/9/24 12:03:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Victoria.
It is always an honour to rise in the House to speak, but I am deeply ashamed at the ignorance and failure of the Parliament of Canada and Canada's politicians from the provincial level up to deal with the greatest crisis we, as a civilization and people, have ever faced. I say that because wildfire season is officially under way in British Columbia. It began in Alberta in February, when northern Alberta was bringing back its firefighting crews. In northern Ontario, our firefighting crews are getting ready.
I am 61 years old. Some people might say I never grew up, and that is fair, but one thing in all my 61 years is that I always felt so much excitement every single spring because I thought of summer. This year when I talk with people about summer, they talk about fire season. This is the planet we are giving to our children. As a 61-year-old white guy with grey hair, I expect young people to look at us and ask what we did when the crisis came.
We know that the Conservatives ridiculed, laughed and snorted every time we talked about the climate crisis. However, climate crisis deniers are not just the ones who troll about it and ridicule and try to deny the science. We see other forms of climate denial, such as thinking that if one puts out enough press releases, somehow the planet will get better, or that big oil will continue to be allowed to destroy the planet but that somehow if we just keep giving it money it will somehow find a way to make increasing fossil fuel production net-zero, and we will all be better off.
We note that the Liberal government underspent by $15 billion on climate commitments. In the face of a climate catastrophe, the press releases went out. The money was promised but it was not spent. I mention this because, in order to bring a bit of reality to the conversation today, I want to bring a few facts about what is happening in the outside world.
This past month, Antarctica posted the single-biggest increase that has ever been recorded on the planet, a 38.5°C jump. A glaciologist, Professor Martin Siegert, stated that no one ever thought anything like this could ever happen: “It is extraordinary and a real concern. We are now having to wrestle with something that is completely unprecedented.” Another scientist has called it “simply “mind-boggling”. Furthermore, what we are seeing in the Atlantic over just the last 14 months are the highest temperatures ever recorded.
Of course people in the climate denial world will say that it is going to be life as normal; it will just be a little hotter and it will just be a little different. It is the problem of Lucretius, which is that nobody can anticipate a problem bigger than what they have seen in their lifetime, so we have no capacity to recognize the damage and the ongoing planetary breakdown that is happening. In 2023, there was the loss of global tree cover in the areas outside of the tropics like Brazil, where the trees are being hacked down. The fact is that Canada was responsible for the largest tree cover loss recorded, with a 24% loss in a single year. That is from our burning forests.
I would think that the Conservatives would have thought it would great to bring all our parliamentarians and provincial leaders together to talk about solutions to the crisis, but that is not what they care about. This is about a “gotcha” moment. There are a couple of things in the Conservative motion I am kind of interested in, but some of it I just find ridiculous. If this were going to be about “the ongoing carbon tax crisis and the financial burden it places on Canadians”, that would show leadership. It would show vision. It would show we are being adults and we care about our kids, but no, Conservatives do not want to talk about that. They are going to let our kids burn.
Then it is being said that we are going to bring our premiers in to talk about options of opting out of the carbon tax. Are we going to do that with the Doug Ford grifter government? Ontario was not paying the carbon tax until Doug Ford said, “Hey, you know what? We're going to get rid of cap and trade and then make every ordinary Ontarian pay a carbon tax.” Then he then turned around and asked, “Whoa, how come we have this carbon tax?” He said it was because of the bad Liberal government.
Do we seriously think that we are going to let a grifter such as Doug Ford come in and talk about how to deal with the climate crisis? This is a guy who, as soon as he was elected, went and ripped up all the EV charging stations and then realized, “Oh my God, Ontario wants to be an automotive superpower with EV. Someone is going to have to build those EV charging stations.”
Are we going to invite Danielle Smith, the conspiracy queen-in-chief? Alberta had a carbon tax. It was a made-in-Alberta solution. The NDP Alberta solution made a lot more sense than the Liberal solution ever did, because it was about taking money from pollution and reinvesting in business and in alternatives. The Notley government said that they needed to reduce emissions in Alberta. They wanted to get it down by, I think, 30 million tonnes by 2030, and the money from pollution was going to be reinvested. Even some of those big oil companies got backhanders on that if they were willing to commit to clean energy and alternatives. However, Danielle Smith came and ripped all that up, and then she kicked out $66 billion in clean energy projects strictly for ideology. There is no place on the planet where we can get more clean energy projects off the ground at the drop of a hat than in Alberta, but she did not want any of that. What do we have in Alberta now? Alberta has rolling blackouts in April. This is Canada's energy superpower, and she cannot even keep the power on. This is a failed-state approach.
The other thing is that Alberta is suffering a severe drought from the climate catastrophe, but we have not seen a single Conservative from Saskatchewan or Alberta get up and talk about how they are actually burning the province. Now they are saying that maybe they will get themselves this Athabasca pipeline to take water out of the already suffering, damaged Athabasca water system; however, that is not going to be shipped down to southern Alberta, because it is needed by big oil.
The issue here, and this is my problem with the Liberal carbon levy, is that the carbon tax was always a market solution. Therefore, we did not actually penalize the people who were burning our planet and knew they were doing it. I cannot go back and explain to working-class Joe back home that “Hey, you pay the money, then you get more back.” He will ask, “So, what does it do?” That is a good question. I will agree with the Conservatives on their motion that Canada is now 62nd out of 67 countries on the climate change performance index, but what they do not say is that the reason Canada is at the back of the pack is that we have never targeted those who are causing the emission increases.
The oil and gas sector never had any intention of lowering emissions; it never even tried. The intensity of creating oil in Canada today is higher than it was in 1990. When those in the sector talk about carbon capture and want us to give them billions for that, it is not to take it out of the atmosphere but so they can pump out more oil; it is about more fossil fuels. Alberta is responsible for close to 40% of Canada's emissions. Where does that come from? Is the average Albertan any more wasteful than the average Canadian anywhere else? No, it is coming out of one sector; that sector has not been doing its job, and now our planet is on fire. However, we do not see any willingness from the Liberals to actually take this on, and the Conservatives will take on anything except the fact that our planet is on fire and that we are at peak carbon.
The fact is that the emissions that are now being registered coming out of the oil sands are 6,000 times higher than registered. I come from mining country; if a mine was pumping emissions into the local river that were 6,000 times higher than allowed, there would be charges and arrests. If we were sold a product that had 6,000 times more risk to human health, something would be done. However, in Alberta, they have the Alberta Energy Regulator, which is basically an extension of Richie Rich Kruger and probably has an office down the hall.
Why am I going at them so hard? It is because they knew all along. They knew in the late 1950s of the simple science that increased carbon will create a situation where we will get greenhouse gas emissions.
The American Petroleum Institute did a study in 1982 that plotted out the timelines of what was going to be a slow-moving disaster. The study said that significant temperature changes were certain to occur by the year 2000, and this would lead to the eventual collapse of the Antarctic ice shelf—
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- Feb/1/24 12:21:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was very important to set up a plan to address the climate crisis in the Far North. The massive fires were an unprecedented disaster in our region. In the James Bay area, many huge fires affected indigenous communities. The federal government did not have a plan and provided no support. Canadians and Quebeckers need us to address the climate crisis to protect the future of our region.
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- Feb/1/24 12:18:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we finally see someone from British Columbia stand up and actually speak for his community that is facing a climate disaster.
What have we heard? We have heard “get that tax off”, “let us burn the planet” and “all the people in British Columbia who are not paying a federal carbon tax, we have to get them all stoked”.
I would like to say to the member that, yes, he is ground zero in the climate catastrophe, and his leader's response is to let them burn. He has done nothing. Does that member have a climate plan? No, he does not. He has a bumper-sticker slogan and some toxic little lapel pin that says, “Let them burn”. That is their only response. They are leaving their people behind. We will stand up.
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- Nov/8/23 3:24:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the planet is on fire, so what is the difference between the Conservative leader's approach and the Prime Minister's? The Conservative leader is a climate denier, and he would pull us out of the Paris accord; the Prime Minister is simply a denier of his global obligations, which is why we are not going to meet our 2030 targets. The United Nations is pointing out that, under the Prime Minister, Canada is planning a massive increase in oil and gas production. It is no wonder we are the worst country in the G7 for tackling emissions. There has been enough of the denial of facts; where is that emissions cap?
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- Nov/2/23 1:18:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have heard a lot that is fascinating, but I am really shocked to hear the Conservatives mention science, from their leader who is running on an anti-vax platform to members of a party who are climate change deniers. The Conservatives have no plan. They are making it up. They claim that we will have technology, but yet while we have EV investments in Canada, $7 billion in Volkswagen, the member for Sarnia—Lambton said that all those cars would catch fire if we invested in them.
With respect to heat pumps, people in my region would die to get a heat pump, but they cannot get them through the useless Liberal program. We have the Conservatives who say that heat pumps do not work.
That is a party that while Kelowna was burning, its MP was out there saying they loved burning carbon for free. Her community was burning. The Conservatives have no climate plan. They are climate deniers. At least they should be truthful and stop pretending they know anything about science.
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- Nov/2/23 12:51:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, again, it really hurts the Conservatives when they go out and tell the public they are going to deal with a carbon plan and then they pretend climate change does not exist. They say they are going to get rid of the GST on home heating, and then they say it is a fantasy and it never happened. The Conservatives are continuing to divide Canadians, and when we offer them an amendment to include other parts of the country that are excluded by their region-against-region attack on the Liberals, they refuse to support it. This is the kind of politics we are dealing with here.
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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 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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- Apr/17/23 12:59:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the real issues we are dealing with is the climate catastrophe that is looming, and we certainly see that the Conservatives do not even believe there is a climate crisis. The Liberals have been sitting and doing nothing. New Democrats have pushed them to action to invest in clean energy, as Biden is doing. We now have $85 billion committed, and it is tied to ensuring that there are good union jobs and good wages. These are not McJobs; these are good jobs. This is the support that we have gotten from Alberta energy workers who called on this.
Will my colleague stand with us and keep pushing the current government to make sure that these jobs are there, in the clean-tech sector that is taking a revolutionary approach around the world?
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Mr. Speaker, it is always such a great honour to rise for the great communities of Timmins—James Bay. Talking about agriculture is extremely important in a region so dependent on the agricultural families in beef, canola, rye and dairy. There is such great pride to see young farmers coming in to build up our region from the traditional lands in Temiskaming all the way up through emerging lands in Cochrane, Val Gagné and Matheson.
It is really important to point out in this discussion today, happening a week after the latest IPCC report, what we are facing globally in terms of the climate crisis. I know it makes my Conservative colleagues very uncomfortable when we talk about climate reality, because it is something they pretend does not exist. However, with respect to vulnerabilities on the planet right now, there is no industry more vulnerable than agriculture, because those businesses are dependent on weather and the vagaries of weather and what is happening with growing fires, storms, droughts and floods. These have caused enormous amounts of damage. One has only to look at British Columbia, which, in 2021 suffered $17 billion in damages from the climate storms, the wildfires, the droughts and severe flooding. Agriculture took severe losses from all that.
Therefore, finding ways for agriculture to be part of the conversation about sustainability is fundamental because it is also recognizing that farmers and the agricultural community are thinking about sustainability all the time. It is part of the fundamentals of their business.
In Canada, about 250,000 farmers look after and manage about 68 million hectares of land. Through these farmers, over the last 20 years, we have seen incredible improvements in sustainability, soil management practices for crops and grazing, and rising standards that the farmers have pushed for in terms of water management. Furthermore, since 2000, Canada's agricultural soils have been sequestering more carbon than was emitted. That is the result of the sustainability commitments made by the farming community.
However, we have to look at it in a larger context because it has been reported that, since the 1960s, agricultural yields around the world are 21% lower than they would have been if we had not been dealing with erratic temperatures and the increase of over 1.1°C around the world. Even as we are working harder for sustainability, we are losing ground.
It needs to be said that the inputs in agriculture, including fuel inputs and the need for fertilizer, are all fundamental costs that are borne by the farming community and individual farm families. We also know there are significant drivers in some areas in terms of climate risk. We can look at nitrogen, for example. We know that, if there is better management of nitrogen, the losses in the environment will be only a fraction of what they are now. The latest study said that there could be a $500-billion societal benefit for food supply and human health if we start to put in mitigation measures on nitrogen, which would cost in the area of $20 billion.
Therefore, my question for the Conservatives, who only ever go on carbon tax and nothing else with a vision for dealing with the climate crisis, is this: Where is the commitment for investments in agriculture to deal with nitrogen mitigation?
My colleagues in the Liberal Party are more than willing to give billions of dollars to big oil, but farmers have to deal with the costs themselves. Therefore, nitrogen is something we have to talk about. It is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Runoffs from nitrogen are causing algae blooms that have created dead zones in waterways. We all know this needs to be addressed, so let us start looking at investments in that.
In terms of the input costs for fuel, they are extraordinary costs that are borne by farmers. We need to start looking at how we can move toward more sustainability so that Canada's agricultural community will truly be the world leader.
The measure that is being brought forward is about a carve-out provision to ensure that the fuels that are being used are not covered by the carbon tax, and I think that is a reasonable solution. However, the Conservatives only have the one tool. They have one hammer, which is the carbon tax, and they pound on the table all the time. When I talk with farmers, they say they are looking at long-term ways they can make their farming operations sustainable with regard to the climate commitments that Canada and the world are looking at for the reduction of fossil fuels. They know that the more we burn, the more damage it is going to do to the land in the long term.
I look at the issue of tractors and diesel. There is the potential, if the federal government was willing to work with partners, to invest in technologies so that we could not only move more to batteries but also allow for automation because we cannot find workers on many of the farms to sustain what is happening.
I have heard Conservatives tell me that we cannot use batteries in diesel tractors. Have they ever been to a mine? There are 70-tonne trucks running underground that have moved from diesel to clean energy sources. What we are not seeing is a vision to support farming to be able to do that, because right now these costs are borne by farmers. Farmers are not in a position to shift their tractors to batteries. Financially, it is not possible. However, for example, with carbon capture, big oil companies are making record profits, but they are still coming for handouts and they are still expecting that the people of Canada will cover those costs.
To me, this is a fair question: Why are we willing to invest billions in the oil sector, which is already hugely profitable, when we are not willing to ask farming communities how we could start to move toward sustainability, and how we could remove our dependence on diesel and other fuels? That is a conversation we need to have, and it raises questions about the grid. We do not have a grid in rural Canada that could even carry electrification through batteries and other sources to get to farms. Farms are on their own.
We have the one tool before us right now. We need to deal with the high input costs of farming, of drying grain and of sustaining barns. These are big operations, and they are taking heavy amounts of cost in inputs. They cannot pass those on to the consumers. That is the reality. These are mostly family-run farm operations that have limits in terms of how much of the cost they can accept.
I am more than willing to support this motion to get to committee so we can look at it. However, I am urging my colleagues, in light of the latest IPCC report, to get serious about addressing issues such as nitrogen, which is much more of a planet killer than carbon dioxide. We need to be looking to find the alternatives for fuels such as diesel.
If we are going to insist that every other sector of the economy shifts, then we need to be showing the shift in agriculture. Agriculture is a fundamental of sustainability. Agriculture is the area that takes the biggest hit, but the problem is that agriculture bears the costs of the transition, and agriculture bears the cost of the damage that is done to the economy by other sectors that do not do their part.
I would urge my colleagues from all parties to work together to put a vision forward with sustainability measures, with support and with conversation with agriculture. It is the farmers who understand environment better than anyone else, it is the farmers who understand how to run their operations, and it is the farmers who will have the solutions, ultimately, to make farming sustainable in the 21st century so that the world is sustainable in the 21st century.
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- Oct/18/22 1:48:58 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, it is really important that we are talking about a bill that is about dealing with the central crisis of our time, which is climate. I would ask my hon. colleague what she thinks about a government that has made promise after promise to create a clean-energy economy but has missed every single climate target it has set.
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- Oct/3/22 3:10:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, energy workers in western Canada are frustrated because the current government has no credible plan for a just transition. Compared to Joe Biden, who is transforming the American economy with massive investments in clean tech to create what he calls good-paying union jobs, the Prime Minister has missed every single climate target. He has shown no vision for the incredible potential of a clean energy economy.
My question for the environment minister is this. Will the government put the necessary money on the table to create a clean energy future for Canadian workers and their families?
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- May/17/22 12:02:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not want to challenge the Conservatives on whether they believe in climate change, but the member should get some better acting skills if he is going to pretend he believes in climate change.
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- Apr/26/22 2:49:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, God help our planet with answers like that from the minister, because the environment commissioner today warned that energy workers are facing a potential economic upheaval as devastating as the collapse of the cod fisheries in the 1990s. Slogans and promises about a so-called “just transition” just will not cut it. The commissioner reminds us that the government has broken every environmental promise it has made, and now it is breaking faith with energy workers and their families.
It is simple. The climate crisis is here. How can the minister stand in the House and continue to show such a dismal record of failure?
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- Apr/6/22 2:53:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, do I get to start over?
last week the Prime Minister gave a thumbs-up to a massive increase in oil production. This week, the IPCC tells us the planet is now at the tipping point of irreversible climate catastrophe. The UN Secretary-General called out government leaders who are “saying one thing [on the environment], but doing another.” He says, “Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic.”
We are talking about the future of our children here. This Prime Minister has clearly been carbon-captured. Why does he continue to rubber-stamp big-oil projects while the planet is on fire?
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- Apr/6/22 2:53:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last week the Prime Minister gave a huge thumbs-up to increased oil production, and this week the IPCC said the planet is now at the tipping point of irreversible climate catastrophe. The UN Secretary-General has called out government leaders—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Mar/31/22 2:30:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at COP26 the Prime Minister promised the world he would finally put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, but if we look at his new climate scheme, we can scratch that promise because he has given billions to the oil lobby to increase production on the fantasy of capturing carbon. That public money should be invested in energy workers to create a truly Canadian clean-energy revolution. We have the skills to do this, but we have a Prime Minister who has broken every climate promise he has made.
Does he not get that the clock is ticking, the planet is burning and the window of opportunity is rapidly closing?
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