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Leader of the Bloc Québécois

Yves-François Blanchet

  • Member of Parliament
  • Leader of the Bloc Québécois
  • Bloc Québécois
  • Beloeil—Chambly
  • Quebec
  • Voting Attendance: 56%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $98,385.23

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 209 - Jun/8/23
Mr. Yves-François Blanchet
  • Jun/8/23 10:15:03 a.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, right now, in Quebec, we are seeing a level of devastation roughly 11 times greater than the average for the last 10 years. We have not even begun to assess the dramatic economic impact of these wildfires. Over the next few years, we will likely experience many phenomena that will dramatically worsen the impact of climate change. This is very worrisome. The seasons conducive to extreme events, whether they are tornadoes, extreme tropical storms that have an impact in our area, heat waves, droughts, wildfires or floods, will get increasingly longer, begin earlier and end later. The likelihood of extreme events will increase. The intensity of these events will also increase. These droughts, heat waves, floods and storms will have a very significant impact on Quebec. They will also affect people around the world. These people will have to try to protect themselves and prepare for the situation. One possible way for them to adapt would be to move somewhere else because the waters will rise, deserts will grow and lands that were once fertile will no longer be. We, the countries that can do so, will be responsible for receiving climate migrants. That will put additional humanitarian pressure on migration issues. On a billionaire friend’s yacht, people do not feel the water rising. At sea, a glass of champagne in hand, they rise with the ocean. However, when the water slowly rises or suddenly rushes over banks and shorelines, entire villages are destroyed, in places where people were unable to protect themselves. It is in places that could, in theory, protect themselves—such as major cities around the world—that massive and extremely costly infrastructure is needed. To a lesser extent, Quebec will face similar pressure. Every storm and every event slowly and irrevocably changes and adds to the misery in the world. Ecosystems are unable to adapt to this climate change. Animal species are more mobile, of course, but they are dependent on plant environments. Plant environments cannot move along with climate change. Plants cannot migrate fast enough to new areas with a climate that is conducive to their growth. The Observatoire régional de recherche sur la forêt boréale at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi is studying these phenomena. The entire biodiversity of vast regions of the planet, and also of Quebec, is affected. We cannot naively say that the forest will move north, that we will have more space with potential for plant life to grow. It simply does not work that way because things are changing too fast. Within the space of a few decades, we are provoking what has historically taken thousands and tens of thousands of years through changes that others would have us believe are still natural, even today. The loss of biodiversity is also having an impact. The destruction of economic models comes with this destruction of ecosystems. There is still a massive share of the global and Quebec economies that rely on the growth of plant and animal life. I am talking in particular of fishing and agriculture, and also forestry. The forests in Quebec are in many ways a resource that is comparable in importance to petroleum resources in western Canada, aside from one small detail: They are a renewable resource. Not only is it a resource that does not contribute to climate change, but it is also a fundamental resource that is still the best way we know to capture carbon naturally and to reduce the phenomena that lead to climate change. Still, despite the importance of the forests for our economy, for the regions of Quebec, for our very identity as a people and a nation, today we see the effect of climate change. This effect is not direct. Let us not claim that science says certain things that it has not said. We cannot associate the 11-fold increases over the last 10-year average with a particular climate event, but the probability is increased to such a degree that science would never dare to deny again. This has an even more significant impact because Quebec's money, which should be invested in a much greener and much more sustainable economy for Quebec, is going into western oil, in the form of tax credits, direct subsidies or nonsense such as costly carbon sequestration or, worse, the hypocrisy of wanting to use nuclear energy, which is not a clean energy, so as not to use oil to extract oil. All of this sends us into a spiral of destruction. Is it not time to put an end to it? Is it not time, given the evidence of the damage caused by climate change, to put an end to all funding of fossil fuels, to rather use this money, especially in Quebec because that is our strength, to ensure a sustainable economy, and to explain to people that environmental challenges are not restrictions on what we can do, but a wealth-creation model that is not only different, but the bearer of increased wealth, especially in Quebec? As I have said before, we are open to having the necessary amounts that are now invested in oil but that would be invested in the green transition, stay in western Canada, which really needs to engage in this energy transition. We need to use this money immediately to fight forest fires, help communities in distress, support research to mitigate the consequences of climate change, which, even if we stopped everything tomorrow morning, would continue to exist, and finance municipal infrastructures to meet the challenge. We must, however, resist the temptation to make this a political instrument for centralization. We are starting to see that when people say that the Canadian military should be the main resource for fighting forest fires. Quebec has the institutions and the expertise needed to fight the forest fires. What do we not have? Because of the fiscal imbalance, we do not have money. It is the tried and true tactic of saying that, since the provinces do not have money and the federal government would like to take over their jurisdictions, everything will be taken over by the federal government, and the provinces will have to rely on the federal government. That is not what we want. We want our share of the money needed to adapt to the situation to go to Quebec and the provinces. Given the government's moral collapse, this may be an opportunity to give more meaning to the concept of state and to ensure that people actually see that our institutions, democracy and parliaments can still serve the common good with dignity, honour and respect. By voting this way, we will be taking action.
1130 words
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