- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,586.11
- Government Page
- Nov/7/23 12:09:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the Bloc member's comments. I thought I heard a couple of red herrings in there.
One concern that the Liberals also raised is about how there might be some wealthy person in Canada who would benefit from having GST removed from their home heating. I am not really concerned about that, as long as they pay their taxes. The other one is the high cost of these programs.
Would the member support an excess profit tax on the oil and gas companies to help pay for things so that others can afford their heating and get off fossil fuels?
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- Nov/7/23 11:09:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's speech with care. He noted that the impact of excess profits is nine times that of the carbon tax. I wonder why he is not nine times as outraged himself about the excess profits that are being raked in while contributing to the climate crisis.
Why will the government not support an excess profit tax on oil and gas, which was even imposed in the U.K. by Conservatives?
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- Feb/7/23 11:37:04 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak, once again, on the important topic of climate change. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, I think we have had seven motions on the carbon tax and not a single one that talks about the problem of climate change.
We know that even if we had stabilized climate change in 2015, the costs already would have taken $25 billion off of GDP growth in Canada. Therefore, the economic costs of not acting on climate change are quite large.
We can talk about economic costs all day long, but we also need to talk about other direct costs like fires and floods. We need to talk about health care costs, increased lung problems, asthma problems. We need to talk about the results of fires with respect to smoke, and drinking water quality, as toxins are released into the atmosphere and end up in our drinking water.
In all those things, we also need to talk about the actual losses suffered by families and individuals.
We had a huge heat dome in British Columbia and across western Canada in 2021. In the week from June 25 to July 1 of 2021, the B.C. coroner's office estimated that there were 619 heat-related deaths, 619 families losing loved ones as a result of an event, which the Columbia Climate School of Columbia University studied very carefully and laid squarely at the feet of climate change. It said that there were two factors that caused that heat dome. One was the disruption of the jet stream and the other was the warming of oceans and of the soil.
Instead of expecting something like a heat dome once every 100 or 200 years, the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University now says we need to expect those kinds of events once every 10 years.
During that week, the village of Lytton set a new record for a temperature in Canada, 49.6°C. The next day, after setting that record, a wildfire swept through the town, killing two people and destroying the entire town of Lytton. More than 200 homes were lost.
We can talk about large numbers in climate change, but when we actually look at what happens to individuals, to families and to communities and what will happen increasingly often as climate change proceeds, it seems misdirected to spend all our time talking about a carbon tax, misdirected for two very good reasons. One is, again, the fact that the larger impacts of climate change will cost far more than any climate-related carbon tax. I have not even talked about things like the drop in agricultural yields and the loss of fisheries that are coming up, all of these things we see on the horizon as a result of the climate change.
I forgot to say at the beginning, Madam Speaker. I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver East, so I apologize for that.
When we are talking about the Conservative motion today, the Conservatives continue to repeat and bring back their slogan, and I hesitate to repeat it myself, which has something to do with something tripling.
In fact, we know that nothing has actually tripled. In fact, we know that where families will face increasing costs directly through fires and heat-related costs, they will also face it in increased insurance premiums for their home insurance, as insurance companies attempt to recover their losses from these climate disasters.
In fact, if we look at the increase in the carbon tax, which is designed to reduce our emissions and has been proven as one of the most effective ways to do so, on April 1 of this year, the tax will increase from $50 per tonne to $65 per tonne, and I do not see any system of math where that is a tripling.
When we look at the increase of the tax on a litre of gas, it goes from 11¢ a litre to 14¢ a litre. Again, there is no tripling there. Also, that is way less than the inflated profits that the oil companies have been squeezing out of all of us during this climate crisis.
Focusing on the carbon tax seems misdirected at best, especially when over half the households in Canada are not affected by the carbon tax when it comes to things like home heating.
In British Columbia, we have a different scheme. Therefore, taking the carbon tax off home heating would nothing to relieve costs for British Columbians or Quebeckers, who also have a different scheme.
I will politely call this a sleight of hand with figures. We know right now that eight out of 10 households get more back on their rebates than they pay in carbon tax. The Conservatives like to cite a parliamentary budget office report, which talks about 2030 and about estimates of what might happen in seven to eight years from now. Again, speaking about tripling and using figures like those being used here is at best inaccurate.
What has the NDP said about things like home heating costs? At this time of inflation that is certainly a great concern. I remember that one of the times this motion came forward we asked the Conservatives to accept an amendment to their motion to support removing the GST off home heating for every household in Canada and they refused. They were so focused on the carbon tax that they refused a measure that would have helped every Canadian household meet both the costs, specifically of home heating, and the generalized squeeze that they were finding on their incomes and on their ability to make ends meet at the end of the month.
In his opening speech on this motion today, the Leader of the Opposition talked about nuclear power. I have heard some other members in the House, including some on the government side, talking about nuclear power as if it somehow provides some kind of solution to climate change. The member for Carleton said that it would be a good way to combat emissions. Let us take a look at that backward-looking, rear view of the world.
Nuclear power is far too expensive and far too slow to provide any solutions to our emissions crisis at this time. We need to reduce emissions right now. The average planning time to construct a new nuclear facility is over 10 years. That is from start to finish. We know when construction delays are factored in that the actual time for a new nuclear plant to come online around the world now is about 15 years. That is way too late to address the climate crisis we are in now. Let us say we ignore that and nuclear power were to go ahead. What would it cost to build nuclear power as opposed to renewables?
If we take the all-in costs right now, the best figures I could find for solar and wind power, including the cost of storage and the cost of the networks that must be built, is about $2,000 per kilowatt hour of production for renewables. That has dropped 69% over the last decade. Technology is improving and with economies of scale, the cost of renewables continue to drop each and every year.
Over the past decade, nuclear costs in contrast increased 25% in that same period. There is no indication that those costs will drop any time in the future. If we are talking about large-scale nuclear power projects, the costs are estimated at over $10,000 per kilowatt hour. That is five times the cost of renewables. That is five times as much energy one could produce for the same investment from renewables over nuclear, and of course it could be done now instead of in 10 to 15 years.
If we are talking about what some people like to talk about, the new technology of nuclear, which is small-scale nuclear reactors, the cost for small-scale reactors is estimated at $16,000 per kilowatt hour. That is 16% more than a large-scale project and eight times mores than renewables. Therefore, by any stretch of the imagination and by any measure we want to use, it is foolish to talk about nuclear energy as a solution to our climate crisis. Instead, we need to be talking about renewables.
The other part, which I have been interested in ever since I became a member of Parliament, is that these jobs in renewable energy use many of the same skills that workers have in the current energy industry in places like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. We need to focus on investment in those renewables and investment in creating those well family supporting jobs in renewable energy.
We cannot really ask ordinary working families to pay the cost of this transition with their jobs and with their houses. We have to ensure that those new jobs in renewable energy, those sustainable jobs, will be in place for workers as we head into a future where hopefully we can avoid the climate disaster that is on the horizon.
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Madam Speaker, this afternoon the Conservative speeches made me nostalgic for a time when Conservatives were as interested in solutions as they were in slogans. Does the member for Yellowhead realize that taking the carbon tax off home heating fuel would do nothing for people in my province of British Columbia, the province of Quebec or the Atlantic provinces? Why have the Conservatives rejected our idea to take the GST off home heating fuels of all kinds during this winter, for those who heat with electricity as well as with fossil fuels? Are the Conservatives really interested in solutions? Would they drop the rhetoric on the carbon tax and support the NDP plan to take the GST off home heating?
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- Mar/22/22 1:40:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, does the member share the concern we have as New Democrats that if we put in place the measures in the Conservative motion today, oil companies would simply be able to scoop up the reduction in excess profits, as they have done repeatedly? Does she agree with the idea we put forward that applying this to home heating fuels would reach more vulnerable Canadians and would avoid the problem of gas companies simply increasing prices?
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