- Member of Parliament
- Deputy whip of the New Democratic Party
- NDP
- Victoria
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $127,392.53
- Government Page
- May/30/24 12:12:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is my first full speech since the IDF air strike on a camp for displaced persons. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the horrors taking place in Gaza. We must do everything in our power to stop genocide.
I think of the families that were burnt alive in their tents in a place they were told would be safe. I urge the government to immediately implement a two-way arms embargo, to uphold the rulings from the International Court of Justice, to support the call for arrests from the International Criminal Court and implement sanctions now.
The Conservatives and the Liberals continue to oppose the recognition of the Palestinian State. This is a dehumanizing position that undermines those working for peace and it undermines the safety of Israelis and Palestinians.
I will continue to the motion that the Conservatives have put forward today.
It is not surprising to me that, yet again, the Conservatives are ignoring the role of big oil and gas CEOs in driving up gas prices, while fuelling the climate crisis. They have mentioned wanting to support Canadians in taking road trips, but they ignore the fact that, for many Canadians, the road trip they will be forced to take this summer is when they flee wildfire evacuation zones.
The Conservatives have no climate plan and they do not care about Canadians who are struggling with affordability. If they did, they would support dental care, they would support medication for people with diabetes, they would support contraception for women and they would support a national school food program, so kids do not go hungry and can focus on their studies.
For many Canadians, road trips are a summer tradition that goes back generations. It is the chance to explore our beautiful country and the nature we are grateful to have in Canada. I have enjoyed road trips in the past, but when thinking about road trips this coming summer, which I think is on the minds of a lot of Canadians, I wonder if we will be choking on smoke. Will my community be safe?
Communities are already facing wildfires. Homes have already been burnt to the ground. Communities within the past couple months, while they face multi-year droughts, have had to be evacuated for extreme flooding. We are facing a climate emergency.
The Leader of the Opposition is fooling himself if he thinks that pausing taxes on gas and diesel will save summer for Canadians. In 2021, the B.C. heat dome took the lives of 619 individuals. Those 619 people had loved ones who miss them. Predominantly, those people were low-income folks, seniors and people on fixed incomes who were in homes that did not have cooling.
We have solutions that will make life more affordable, that will bring down our emissions and that will save lives. The heat dome would have been virtually impossible without the added effects of climate change. It is disturbing to me that we have members of Parliament sitting in the House who continue to question whether climate change is real.
While the Conservatives deny the reality of the climate crisis and deny the fact that we have to address the intersecting crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss, the Liberals tell us that they believe in climate change and that that there is a biodiversity crisis, but refuse to take the action that would match the scale and the urgency of the crisis.
Climate denial and climate delay are not good options. Both of those options leave us in a scenario where the climate crisis is costing us the lives of Canadians.
I think about the conversation I had this week. I spoke to members from the Mikisew First Nation. They said that if there was a wildfire near their community and if the smoke was too dense in the air, they had no way to evacuate. They are a remote community with fly-in service. If the wind is blowing in a certain direction and if there is too much smoke in the air, they have no options.
They also shared with me that numerous members of their community had a rare form of bile cancer. Each one told a story about the numerous loved ones who had been diagnosed with cancer, because they were in such close proximity to the tailings ponds. Their water has been poisoned. For decades, they have been calling on the government to fund a health study, at the bare minimum, to find out and to prove what is going on, why their loved ones are dying.
Consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed the Mikisew Cree First Nation. While the Liberals like to say that at least they believe in climate change, that does not excuse the fact that they refuse to hold the oil and gas companies accountable for polluting the water, for driving up emissions. In fact, they not only refuse to hold them accountable, they are handing out taxpayer dollars to these same companies, giving them tax breaks.
At a time when Canadians are calling on the government for bold climate action, what we get are watered down policies. What we get is the Liberal government inviting oil and gas CEOs to help them craft their climate plan. I have said it before and will say it again, that is like inviting the fox to help us design our hen house.
The consequences are dire for Canadians. They are dire for the Mikisew Cree First Nation. I call on the government to fund the health study for which this community has been asking for decades. I call on them to uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and ensure they have consent from the nations that are directly impacted by the pollution of these greedy oil and gas CEOs.
I think about the low water levels in their community as a direct result of the climate crisis. Climate change continues to impact access to fresh water.
Western Canada is in a multi-year drought, with no end in sight. Ecosystems that have been in place for hundreds of thousands of years are breaking down, because there are increasing emissions affecting our atmosphere. If the Conservatives do not like to admit that there is a climate crisis and they do not like to accept the international experts, the climate experts, who are telling us that we are in a climate emergency, I am just at a loss as to how they face their constituents; how they face constituents who are fleeing from wildfires; how they face constituents who are seeing their farms flooded, their livestock stranded.
How can Conservative MPs look young people in the eye and tell them they do not deserve a climate-safe future? When I speak to young people, they tell me how worried they are about their future. They tell me they are fed up with governments that fail to act, that talk the talk but will not walk the walk. For the first time in generations, the younger generation will have a lower quality of life than their parents. Government after government has failed to address the systemic problems that have bubbled up.
It is not just the climate crisis; we are also facing a cost of living crisis. It is surprising to me that Conservatives and Liberals do not get how the climate crisis and the environmental crisis are intersecting with the affordability crisis. We have solutions that can drive down costs and drive down emissions. We have solutions that can support young people, like a youth climate corps, where we can employ young people in the green, sustainable jobs of the future, support them in getting training and ensure there is a skilled workforce for the kinds of jobs we need in a low-carbon economy.
Wildfires cost Canada a billion dollars every season. Those costs are only going to go up. Families in areas at high risk for flooding and wildfires are finding it impossible to insure their homes or pay for their extremely high premiums. It is not just the astronomical costs of the climate crisis that we should be concerned about, but we should also be concerned about how the government is bankrolling the oil and gas industry.
In 2023, the Government of Canada provided at least $18.6 billion in financial support to fossil fuel and petrochemical companies. Over the last four years, the federal government's total financial support for the oil and gas industry was at least $65 billion. This is at a time when oil and gas companies are making record profits and when their CEOs are getting over a million dollars in bonuses.
Doing nothing about the climate crisis has cost Canadian taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and watering down key climate policies and delaying the needed action continues to cost Canadians. It costs them their taxpayer money, their livelihoods, their homes and their lives.
There are also the long-term impacts on our economy.
If the leader of the official opposition, or the Prime Minister himself for that matter, cared about the Canadian economy, they would support strong climate action, and not the watered-down climate action that we have seen from the government, not the delays and not the broken promises. The government would stop implementing incremental changes and stop cozying up to their friends in oil and gas. Enough is enough.
It is clear to so many people, especially people in my community, that the CEOs of oil and gas giants need to be forced to clean up their acts. They are threatening our future. They are poisoning our waters. They are driving up emissions, and they are threatening our coast. There is no way that these companies that are making record profits and polluting at an all-time high will willingly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but the Prime Minister and the environment minister seem to believe that if we are nice enough, if we take small steps towards progress, then everything will be fine, like if we buy a pipeline to fund climate action, somehow that is going to help us avoid the worst outcomes of the climate crisis.
The government is misleading Canadians, but nothing compares to the level of misleading Canadians that we have seen from the Leader of the Opposition. I would be open to a conversation to hear, if they are going to roll back climate policies, what policies they are going to put in place to reduce emissions to the same levels or, even better, to get greater emissions reductions, but that is not the conversation we are having.
The conversation that the Conservatives continue to have is one where they ignore the fact that we are in a climate crisis. What will it take to get the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister to take this crisis seriously?
The Liberals think that they are climate leaders because they have implemented a carbon tax. The consumer carbon tax makes up between 8% and 14% of their emissions reduction plan. This is while they are letting the biggest polluters off the hook. This is while their industrial carbon price, which is doing the bulk of emissions reduction, has allowed loopholes such as allowing Suncor to pay 14 times less than everyday Canadians.
The Liberals have turned the carbon tax into this silver bullet of climate policy, while they refuse to implement a strong, robust emissions cap, to transform our economy with a green industrial strategy, to centre indigenous voices on climate action and to adequately fund watershed security in my home province of B.C.
If we invest in climate resilience and climate adaptation, in supporting our communities, our farmers and indigenous communities to adapt to the coming changes, we will save billions of dollars and we will save lives.
However, it seems like the Liberals and the Conservatives do not actually care that thousands of people are going to be evacuated from their homes again this year. Instead of showing concern and compassion for the people who are going through this unimaginable disruption, we have one party that denies that there is actually a problem and another one that continues to delay and to break promises.
How will Canada uphold its international commitments and its international climate agreements? How will we prevent wildfires, floods and heat domes? How are we going to protect Canadians from the worst impacts of the climate crisis?
Canadians are seeing elected leaders who ignore some of the most serious problems that we are facing. They should not have to pick between denial and delay. They should not have to pick between no plan and watered-down policies.
Canadians are facing a climate emergency and a cost of living crisis. We know that a huge piece of this is corporate greed. These two major parties refuse to tackle corporate greed. They lack the courage to take on the biggest corporations and the CEOs making record profits while Canadians suffer, while our planet burns, while Canadians are struggling to get by, while they are choking on smoke and while they are being evacuated from their homes.
New Democrats are the only ones who have the courage to take on corporate greed, who will name the oil and gas CEOs responsible for fuelling the climate crisis. We are going to continue to fight for Canadians. We are going to continue to fight for bold climate action. I will continue to hold the leaders of the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party to account for their failures.
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- Feb/2/24 11:13:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the same day the International Court of Justice ruled that measures are needed to prevent genocide in Gaza, the Liberals cut off funding to UNRWA. This is the UN agency providing relief to Palestinian refugees. It is the only organization of its size that is positioned to provide food and aid to civilians caught in this horrific conflict. New Democrats support an investigation into its 12 former staff, but defunding UNRWA and cutting off millions of innocent Palestinians from their only lifeline is collective punishment. It is cruel, and it is illegal.
Two million civilians, over half of whom are children, rely on UNRWA and are facing starvation, famine and continued indiscriminate bombing. The International Court of Justice ordered immediate and effective action to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance in Gaza. Canada must reverse these cuts.
Why have my Liberals colleagues abandoned human rights and abandoned international law? How can they punish over a million innocent children?
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