- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
- Nov/7/23 1:25:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the wonderful MP for Edmonton Griesbach.
I am very honoured, and frankly excited, to stand here this afternoon to speak to the NDP motion that sets out a truly fair, common-sense approach to deal with two of the most important issues of our time: the climate catastrophes we are living through every year across this country and the struggle that many Canadians are facing just to get by.
In a nutshell, the motion recognizes that Canadians are facing increasing costs, both the financial costs and human costs of the climate crisis. At the same time, they are facing rising fuel costs for gas at the pumps and in their home heating, while the fossil fuel companies that are charging them those costs are reaping record profits. On top of that, both oil and gas heating are contributing to the carbon emissions that are fuelling the climate crisis.
The NDP motion proposes three straightforward solutions to that situation: to take the GST off home heating; to provide heat pumps for free to lower- and medium-income families in an easily accessible program; and to fund the program with a windfall tax on the record profits made by fossil fuel companies.
Listeners at home may quickly realize that this motion is a reaction to both the Liberals' bungled program to provide relief to some Canadians by taking the carbon tax off home heating oil and the Conservatives' motion to extend that relief to natural gas for home heating as well. Both those ideas fail the fairness test of this Canadian federation.
The Liberal program benefits predominantly people in Atlantic Canada, where many homes are heated with oil, while the Conservative motion leaves British Columbians and Québécois out in the cold since families in those provinces do not pay a federal carbon tax. I have yet to hear a single Conservative from B.C. admit that fact in this place.
The NDP is proposing to take the GST off home heating bills. The GST is not supposed to be paid on the necessities of life. We do not pay GST on food. I think everyone would agree that home heating is a necessity of life in Canada, but right now, everyone across the country has to pay it. Removing the GST from home heating bills would save everyone across the country money on their energy bills, helping people to get by in a truly fair way.
We have had bad years for extreme weather and wildfires for the past eight years or so, but this year was in a different league of catastrophes. It started with a hot, dry spring that sent fires in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Alberta raging through forests and communities. As the season progressed, we had fires explode in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. Several of those fires in B.C. were in the coastal rainforest where it is usually hard enough to start a campfire, let alone destroy a forest. Then Nova Scotia, which was still recovering from two catastrophic fires, suffered a devastating flood.
I live in the dry interior of British Columbia in the South Okanagan Valley. We all held our breath as we saw fires springing up in northeastern B.C., central B.C., then Kamloops and the Shuswap. At the end of July, the fires began in the Okanagan Valley and Similkameen Valley. One came within inches of destroying a large neighbourhood in Osoyoos.
In mid-August, the Shuswap fires swept out of the wilderness and burned through Celista, Scotch Creek and Squilax, communities that I used to live in during the summers of the 1970s. A fire in the mountains west of Kelowna roared down to devastate neighbourhoods on the west side of Okanagan Lake and then jumped across the lake two kilometres to terrorize neighbourhoods on the east side.
People struggled to breathe across the country this summer. Hundreds of thousands had to leave their homes in hastily planned evacuations, including the entire city of Yellowknife. People lost their homes. Some people unfortunately died. This was a summer that marked another shift in public opinion. It was public awareness that climate change is not a theoretical event somewhere in the future. We are living it today and we have to adapt to it.
The climate data back that up. This year has been literally off the charts. Air temperature records were shattered every day around the world. Ocean temperatures were so high that scientists could barely believe what was happening.
This year was even worse than 2021. That year British Columbia, there was a heat dome in late June followed by an unprecedented atmospheric river event in November. The Town of Lytton burned down after reporting Canada's record-high temperature three days in a row. The cost of the climate destruction in 2021 in B.C. alone was over $5 billion. However, even as we said that 2021 was the worst year ever, and now people are saying that 2023 is the worst year ever, the projections are saying that these will actually be the best years for the rest of our lives. Extreme weather events will only get worse as we pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
What many people forget, or do not even know, is that 619 people died in Metro Vancouver in one week during the heat dome of 2021, which was the real tragedy of that year. What most of those people had in common was that they lived in the lower-income parts of the city in neighbourhoods with no access to shady, cool, green areas and in apartment complexes with no air conditioning. They died with their windows closed against the stifling heat. We cannot let this happen again. We need to provide people, especially lower-income Canadians, with air conditioning, even in places like Vancouver and Halifax, where maybe they did not need it very often in the past. They will need it in the future. That would save hundreds of lives during future heat events.
If we do that with heat pumps, switching out oil and gas heating units, it would not only save lives but would also cut emissions, and people, including landlords, would save significant money on their energy bills all year round. At the same time, we must make it easy for people to properly insulate their homes. We have to make sure we are not building new buildings, new housing, with fossil fuel heating infrastructure. New builds should have electric heat, preferably heat pumps. There is a growing movement in cities across Canada to ban fossil fuel infrastructure to heat new homes and buildings. Montreal and Nanaimo have done that. Vancouver almost did it but then backed off to a partial ban. It is being discussed by communities in my riding.
While Canadians are struggling to pay for fuel costs, fossil fuel companies are raking in record profits. The top five companies in Canada posted $38 billion in profits last year alone. Meanwhile, Canadians saw prices at the pump go up almost a dollar a litre over the last three years. The Conservatives' big bogey man, the carbon tax, went up five cents over that time. The fossil fuel companies are not paying any more to make gasoline or natural gas; they are just benefiting big time from a rise in world oil and gas prices. These are windfall profits. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has determined that a windfall tax on these profits would bring in over $4 billion. The NDP has been calling for such a tax for over a year but has gotten no support from either the Liberals or the Conservatives. Therefore, we are proposing today to bring in a windfall tax on the profits of fossil fuel companies and use that money to fund our proposal for an easily accessible program that would install free heat pumps in Canadian homes.
The Liberals are handpicking what regions get help with the cost of living, and leaving the rest of Canada behind. The Conservatives have absolutely no climate plan. For over a year, the NDP has called on the government to remove the GST from home heating and help everyone across the country, but the Liberals and Conservatives have ignored those calls. The NDP wants to make eco-energy retrofits and heat pumps free and easy to access for low- to middle-class Canadians, regardless of their initial home heating energy source. We are calling on the government to fund those changes by finally implementing a windfall profits tax on the excess profits of oil and gas companies.
These are common-sense, effective ideas that would save all Canadians money and save lives and heartache from climate disasters in an increasingly dangerous future. I am sure all members here will support this motion to help all Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
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- Nov/2/23 10:41:14 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from my constituents. They point out that the impacts of climate change are accelerating in Canada and around the world; Canada's current GHG reduction targets are not consistent with our fair share to meet the global goals agreed upon in Paris; subsidizing fossil fuel production is not compatible with the stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and the government's continued support of fossil fuels puts our future in danger.
They, therefore, ask the government and the House of Commons to fulfill Canada's obligations under the Paris Agreement through a just transition off of fossil fuels that leaves no one behind, eliminating federal fossil fuel subsidies and halting the expansion of fossil fuel production in Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Kitchener Centre for taking part in a press conference I held with the member for Timmins—James Bay on that subject last week, where we called both the government and fossil fuel companies to account for the fact the International Energy Agency has said we cannot move forward with any new fossil fuel projects and here we are, as he mentioned, $30 billion into the Trans Mountain pipeline. I could go on and on about other projects.
This is something the government and the fossil fuel industry need to face. The fossil fuel industry has known since the 1980s where we are headed. It warned in the 1980s that it could not go down that path, and then it decided that would be too expensive and there was too much money to be made. We need to call both the government and the industry to account on this and make some very important changes very quickly.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague said she wanted to base her speech on facts, but there is apparently some alternate world out there about facts.
She mentioned that the fossil fuel sector has just less than 200,000 employees in Canada. The clean energy sector already has 430 employees, and it is expected to grow by more than 200,000 over the next 10 years. That is where her constituents and workers across Canada are looking.
I will close by saying she should read John Vaillant's book Fire Weather, which is about her province, about the world, about climate change and about the industry that she is such a fierce protector of.
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Madam Speaker, this is something the NDP has been calling for, for years. It is something the Harper government promised to the G20 to do years ago.
The Liberal government has not even come up with a definition of what a fossil fuel subsidy is, what an inefficient subsidy is.
We see that the cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline is now at $30 billion. People complain about how much dental care—
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- Oct/20/22 2:47:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, people are struggling with the destruction caused by the climate emergency, and it is only going to get worse. A report by the Canadian Climate Institute reveals that the federal government needs to take greater action. By 2025, Canada will see an annual $25-billion loss to GDP, and it will only get worse every year. CCI found that proactive measures are the best way to reduce those losses, but the Liberals are far behind.
Will the government stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and redirect those billions of dollars to help communities prepare for climate change?
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- Sep/27/22 4:44:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member started off well, pointing out that inflation does hit lower-income Canadians more than it hits higher-income Canadians, but he seems to forget that we are debating his party's motion here, which is about the carbon tax.
Right now, we have seen, in British Columbia, our home province, his and mine, that gas prices have increased about a dollar a litre this year. Two cents of that increase was from the carbon tax. The bulk of that increase was not from the price of oil. It was from greed. It was from big oil and gas companies seeing an opportunity and putting up the price of oil by a tremendous amount, fuelling inflation, and now he says that the federal government cannot do anything about that.
It can. It can put a windfall tax on those profits, those profits from greed, and take that money, billions of dollars, and distribute it in various ways to the people in Canada who are suffering now because of that rising cost of fuel.
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- May/17/22 3:19:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, obviously, the price of gas is at the top of a lot of Canadians' minds right now. It has gone up a tremendous amount. It has probably gone up $1 a litre since the war in Ukraine has changed the world markets.
What I am looking for is a future that we are moving toward and planning for, which will create an energy market that is not so sensitive to world events. I am looking for an energy future where Canada is creating its own energy and not subject to world prices for oil.
The Conservatives are always talking about using Canadian oil to fuel Canada, but I can bet that if we had that system right now, Canadian oil companies would not want the Conservatives to say that we will cut the price of oil in half because we control oil in Canada. We need a system that is good for the planet and for consumers, and we have to plan for that.
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- May/17/22 1:57:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the latest budget, the Liberal government promises over $2 billion for carbon capture and storage projects for fossil fuel companies. That is more taxpayer dollars to companies that are doing very well. Imperial Oil is making more money than it has for 30 years. Suncor made a profit of almost $3 billion in the last quarter alone.
Again, is this an inefficient subsidy? Even if carbon capture projects can be developed that actually work, and there is a lot of evidence that most do not, using them to clean up an industry whose raison d'être is providing oil and gas for the world to burn to create more carbon dioxide is an highly inefficient way to wean the world off of fossil fuels.
What do Canadians get for this multi-billion dollar propping-up of oil and gas multinationals? They get record-high prices for gasoline. The oil barons are doing well, but ordinary Canadians are not. What Canadian families need is help during these times of increasing costs. We all need help transitioning to a low-carbon future. Let us imagine a future where our car, truck and home heating costs were not left to the vagaries of world markets and the international price of oil.
Canada has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. We cannot achieve this goal if we continue to pour 14 times the number of taxpayer dollars into the fossil fuel industry than we provide to the development of renewable energy.
The latest IPCC report had a stark warning. Either we take action now on mitigation and adaptation for climate change, or we risk suffering even more severe consequences from extreme weather events, wildfires and floods.
António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, said some government and businesses have not entirely been truthful in claiming to be on track. In his words, he warned, “Some governments and business leaders are saying one thing but doing another...And the results will be catastrophic.”
Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut in half by 2030, and the good news from the IPCC report is that this can be done. The final cost of necessary actions will be minimal, but will require a massive effort by governments around the world.
Wayne Gretzky once said that a good hockey player plays where the puck is, but a great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. For Canada's energy future, the puck is going to be with renewable energy. Canada is uniquely positioned for becoming a renewable energy superpower. Our nation is rich in hydro, wind, solar power and the rare earth minerals that are needed for that low-carbon future.
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- Feb/28/22 11:30:34 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I knew the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands was going to be speaking about fossil fuels, but I am very happy that she brought up nuclear weapons and Canada's inaction on the nuclear treaty ban.
I would like to give the member more time to respond to some of the Conservative calls for Canada to export more oil and gas to Europe, and some of the logistical problems with that even being contemplated.
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