- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Lac-Saint-Louis
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,581.21
- Government Page
- Oct/18/22 12:09:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, with Gazprom and the turbines, it has been said in the House that we did not want to give Vladimir Putin an excuse. That is as a pretext to say that we were making the situation worse.
On another point, yes, we have to take difficult decisions, but there are going to be cases where we have to make some judgments. Does creating a complete energy crisis in Germany advance the goal of peace? I am not so sure it does.
These are decisions, obviously, that the government has to make. They have to be debated around the cabinet table. I have no doubt whatsoever about the proper intent of the government, but it had to make a difficult decision and it looks like it made the right one.
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- Mar/3/22 4:15:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I cannot comment on all of those examples. There are multiple examples in the world. Each situation can be different and each requires a different, sometimes only a slightly different, response. It is an interesting question.
I have total confidence in the Minister of Immigration, the work that he is doing and the decisions he is making at the moment.
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- Mar/3/22 4:14:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is an interesting question.
It is difficult to know who is investing in what in the Canadian economy. However, there are other measures we can take if we find that some people, like Russian oligarchs, are profiting in a bad way from a project in Canada. The government also has other measures to deal with such dangers, such as the Sergei Magnitsky Law.
The identity of business owners is a complex matter. I think we need to separate the two questions because, if we do not, it becomes far too complicated. However, we have laws at our disposal that could apply in such a situation.
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- Mar/3/22 4:12:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I said, there is an immediate energy need in Europe, and 31 countries are coming together to release strategic oil reserves to help the European Union get through this difficult period. Oil is part of the energy mix. It is central to the functioning of economies, but we are in a transition and the motion talks about a time far away from today. The energy mix is bound to change.
In terms of individual projects, they are subject to environmental assessments and a whole process of decision-making. I cannot really comment on the particular reserves that the member is referring to.
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- Mar/3/22 4:03:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.
Courage has a home country, and that country is Ukraine. Courage has a people, and that people is the Ukrainian people. Ukrainians’ resilience is legendary and once again in full view today. Ukraine is the world’s inspiration and its strength, the strength to join forces against Vladimir Putin.
The Ukrainian people survived Stalin, the Nazi occupation and the yoke of communism. They are invincible. Today, Vladimir Putin’s forces are meeting with the ferocious resistance of a deeply proud, intrepid people whose love for freedom and for their history, culture and democracy is unconditional.
The collective response to this blatant, unprovoked and highly reprehensible offensive has so far been exemplary. Like all of us, I hope that it will be effective and decisive, that Putin and his friends will clearly fail, and that other dictators considering the same course of action will understand the risks and consequences of doing so.
I must point out that this response is not a simple affair. It is complex, a daunting challenge. It is based on the unprecedented collaboration of a large number of countries that instantly saw in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a threat to democracy and freedom around the world, to international security.
It is a multi-pronged response, namely diplomatic, humanitarian, economic, financial and even logistical, in terms of the procurement of military equipment. There is also the cybersecurity component to counteract cyber-attacks, the new weapons of war, as well as the other components taking place in real time, such as the growing refugee crisis the conflict has caused.
We have seen a complex, coordinated response to the greatest threat to global security since World War II, a response designed to show a concrete and undisputable resolve against a dictator and to suffocate the Russian economy. That said, the greatest threat or challenge to effective decision-making is the oversimplification of the issues at hand. I wonder if today's motion does not fall into the trap of oversimplification.
What do I mean when I say that this motion may fall prey to oversimplification? While clauses (a) and (b) are definitely worth repeating, they are well understood and supported by all in this House. In other words, we all condemn Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation in no uncertain terms for what it has done. We stand four square behind the Ukrainian people, an extraordinarily courageous people fighting for the universal values of democracy and freedom against a shameless tyrant who has joined the hall of infamy, a room he shares with the bloody dictators of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Meanwhile section (c) of the motion is vague. What measures is the opposition talking about to ensure that new natural gas pipelines could be built to tidewater in the east? Are we talking about weakening the environmental assessment process that was recently modernized to obtain public and stakeholder buy-in to allow projects such as pipelines to be built across the diverse political landscape of this country and withstand the inevitable court challenges from opponents? Are we talking about creating a pipeline Crown corporation? Are we talking about the public financing of pipelines or about governments underwriting the private financial risks of pipeline builders? Are we suggesting suppressing provincial permitting processes?
Also, I find that part (c) of the motion abstracts from context, both present and future contexts. The present context is necessarily focused on helping the Ukrainian people under attack today through military aid, humanitarian support and air tight sanctions that are bringing to bear the heaviest financial and economic consequences on Putin's Russia and its oligarchs.
The present context is also necessarily focused on immediate energy needs. We know that natural gas accounts for 40% of the EU supply and Russian crude oil accounts for 25% of the EU's supply of crude oil. Fortunately, EU countries have a cushion in terms of oil reserves and 20 European Union countries are members of the International Energy Agency. They are thus obliged to hold at least 90 days of oil reserves. Fortunately, summer is coming and energy demand will fall.
As we speak, governments are working together to direct new supply to the European Union. As President Biden said in his state of the union address, the U.S. will be making supplies from the strategic oil reserves it has available. In fact, 30 other countries, including Canada, are joining the U.S. to release 60 million barrels of oil to stabilize the global energy market.
How else is the motion perhaps simplistic and therefore not immediately helpful? It gives the impression that building a pipeline is a fairly simple thing to do, but pipelines cannot be built in a day. They are not a tap we turn on and off. They are massive, financially and logistically complex, time-consuming enterprises. In addition to construction, there is, as I have mentioned, the environmental assessment process and the related efforts to obtain the agreement of communities along pipeline routes. We are past the days when projects could go ahead without environmental assessments, when the public, including indigenous peoples, could summarily be circumvented.
Finally, the Conservative motion abstracts from the longer term context, which involves numerous other dimensions. These dimensions include the fight against climate change, which is well under way, especially in Europe where efforts have been ongoing for years. Kadri Simson, the European Union Energy Commissioner, is quoted as saying that the strategy is ultimately “boosting renewables and energy efficiency as fast as technically possible”.
Like Canada, the EU's plan is to become carbon neutral by 2050. European countries intend to, like Canada, synchronize electricity grids, among other things. Germany's very recent apparent reversal on building nuclear power plants points to what the future of energy in Europe might look like, a mix of non-emitting sources of power.
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