- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Timmins—James Bay
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $134,227.44
- Government Page
- May/27/24 12:27:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was pretty dismal to sit and watch the Conservatives make it clear they are going to oppose this legislation because it was about clean energy, just like Danielle Smith chased out $33 billion of clean energy on ideological grounds in Alberta.
Through it all I was thinking of my grandfather, Joe MacNeil, a Cape Bretoner. Timmins was the Fort Mac in the thirties, forties and fifties, and all the Cape Bretoners worked in the mines. My grandfather would have gone home in a second if there was a job, but there were no jobs back home so they lived as exiles, bringing their culture, their language and their songs. They all wanted to go home.
We have a proposition, where we are hearing from Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia about sustainable jobs, and that not only we could have people back home but that they could export this and create a new economy, and yet the Conservatives are here to say they will stop that by any means necessary through all the filibusters and the amendments they keep bringing.
I want to ask the hon. minister about the need to tell people in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia that we are committed, through this program, to get clean energy jobs in the offshore.
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- Oct/26/23 11:07:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, there are $133 billion of investments that went into the United States last year from Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and commitment on the environment.
Our workers and our environment are getting a one-two punch. One is from the Liberals, who have made lots of promises on these investment tax credits. They promised them over a year ago. They are nowhere to be seen. Investment dollars are moving south.
The other punch is coming from Conservative ideology. Danielle Smith, who chased out $33 billion in clean tech, turned Alberta into a clean-tech wasteland. We have the Conservatives blocking every effort to get the sustainable jobs legislation, and we have their MPs from the 401 corridor ridiculing the $7-billion investment by Volkswagen and $7 billion by Stellantis.
We need to send certainty to international markets that we are ready to be there and play a role, yet without the tax credits and without an environment to make it happen, that investment money is going elsewhere.
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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 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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- Jun/13/23 12:03:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her passion for fighting on the issue of housing.
In Timmins right now, a community of 45,000 people, we have almost 1,000 homeless people. This is creating a serious social crisis and a policing crisis, as well as exacerbating the opioid crisis. We have no place to get people into safe housing. We have no support for single moms. What we need is mixed housing and co-operative housing of the kind that built much of the community housing that we have in our region, which is sustainable for families. We see the Liberals making lots of promises with respect to housing, but we are not seeing it on the ground. What does my hon. colleague think about the need to guarantee that we have mixed co-operative housing in all our communities, whether it is in northern Ontario or in downtown Vancouver, so we can maintain sustainable communities and people can live humane, decent and hopeful lives?
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Madam Speaker, the New Democrats have spent a lot of time working with energy workers and those who are trying to see a move toward a clean-tech economy. We have heard a lot of promises in the budget, but I cannot go back to workers in Windsor or Fort Mac without a legislative framework and tell them to trust the government. A legislative framework is needed.
They are talking about a sustainable job secretariat. Where is it? When they talk about a sustainable jobs partnership council, is this going to be legislated? I cannot go back to workers and say, “Hey, trust 'em. It's going to happen somehow. It's somewhere in the budget.”
Will the government commit to putting those key elements into legislation with rights for workers to guarantee that we move toward a clean-tech economy with well-paying union jobs?
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- Mar/31/23 11:47:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been speaking with energy workers, miners, auto workers and innovators who are more than ready to make Canada a world leader in clean energy, but to get cheap and renewable energy to market requires massive investments in the national energy grid.
Now, New Democrats worked with this government and we have pushed this government to get serious about sustainable jobs that are tied to obligations for good union wages and apprenticeships. What kind of funding will the government put in place to build the electricity grid that Canadians need for a sustainable 21st century?
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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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- Feb/14/23 3:10:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there has been radio silence from the Prime Minister since Alberta energy workers called out the government to get serious about a clean energy future.
Joe Biden's clean energy tech investments are transforming the American economy. Alberta workers have been clear. There is a huge opportunity to create a sustainable future rooted in clean tech and good-paying union jobs. However, that means the government actually comes to the table with investments.
Could the Minister of Natural Resources tell us if the government actually has a plan? Is it ready to commit, in this coming budget, the funds necessary for a clean energy economy?
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- Oct/7/22 11:31:00 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, Alberta workers are taking the lead on a clean energy future, and they want to know why the Prime Minister is missing in action. They do not want aspirational talk. They want an industrial job strategy focused on unleashing the power of a clean energy future.
The Prime Minister gives $18 billion a year in subsidies to big oil, and they are using that money for automation and cutting thousands of jobs. We see no similar commitment on the clean energy future.
Where is the plan to work with the Alberta Federation of Labour to create sustainable, good-paying union jobs in the west and across Canada?
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