- 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
- Jun/3/24 9:40:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I believe that the member wants bold climate action. Unfortunately, his party continues to water down key climate policies at the request of the biggest polluters. The Liberals even went so far as to invite the CEOs of oil and gas companies to help them craft their climate plan. It is not surprising that we see huge loopholes in the proposed draft on the emissions cap. This is one of the key policies that we need to drive down emissions, yet the Liberals are listening to the oil and gas industry once again.
The finance minister decided not to implement a windfall tax on oil and gas. We could have invested this money in climate solutions. Why was this? It was because oil and gas lobbyists asked her not to.
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- Jun/3/24 9:33:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last year's summer was the hottest on record and the most devastating for wildfires. Smoke from wildfires forced kids to spend their days indoors, and Canadians across the country were evacuated from their homes because of the wildfires.
Our kids are breathing in harmful toxins, and when I think about the summer to come, it is only going to get worse with this year's wildfire season. However, we have the Liberals, who keep acting like it is business as usual. They are breaking their climate promises, handing out billions of dollars to Canada's biggest polluters and watering down key climate policies, like the emissions cap. The Conservatives, though, cannot even agree that climate change is real. Canadians should not have to choose between deny and delay, but it is not only wildfire smoke that is contributing to air pollution and making people sick.
This past year, we saw increased deaths due to air pollution because of the wildfires, but on average, in Canada, 15,000 Canadians die each year because of air pollution. We also know that petrochemical plants are making people sick. In Ontario, the Aamjiwnaang First Nation issued a state of emergency declaration last month due to excessive discharge of benzene from an industry factory. Several people had fallen ill with headaches, nausea and dizziness, and it is all too common that these impacts disproportionately affect indigenous communities.
This is unacceptable, and the government must do more to regulate industry pollution. It also needs to do more to tackle the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving up emissions, that are threatening the future for our children and our grandchildren and that are polluting our air, so much so that a child in Edmonton said that it felt like an elephant was standing on their chest. This is in Canada.
I continue to be disappointed by the Liberal government's refusal to address environmental dangers, to address environmental racism and to protect Canadians. Will the Liberals stop putting the interests of the biggest polluters over the health and safety of Canadians?
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- Jun/3/24 6:22:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we hear from the Conservative caucus about the costs of pharmacare. The member spoke about how this is needed for an affordability measure, but we have not heard about how national single-payer pharmacare saves money. The Parliamentary Budget Officer tabled a report saying that $1.4 billion would be saved because national single-payer pharmacare gives governments the negotiating and bargaining power to drive down drug costs. Therefore, it is not surprising to see Conservatives oppose it when their friends, the lobbyists, the CEOs and big pharma keep saying the same things that they do.
Can the member speak to how Conservatives are constantly looking out for the corporations at the very top instead of everyday Canadians who are struggling to pay for essential medications?
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- Jun/3/24 4:32:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservative member has been parroting talking points from the big pharmaceutical companies, and while he talks about the majority of Canadians already having coverage, people with diabetes who are covered are still spending thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for essential medication. Why does he not think those people deserve support?
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- May/30/24 9:47:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that they cannot trust the Conservatives when it comes to health care.
The Conservative team is full of corporate insiders and lobbyists, including their deputy leader, who is a former lobbyist for big pharma. In fact, the Conservatives' national governing body is made up of 50% lobbyists. It is not a surprise that the Conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to keep money in the pockets of big pharma at the expense of Canadians who are paying out-of-pocket for essential medication.
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- May/30/24 9:45:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am a member of Parliament from British Columbia, so I am not familiar with the Saskatchewan program.
However, it is written into the legislation that the federal government is going to work with provinces. Provinces are going to get on board because this is funding, transferring money, to ensure that people have access. We also know there are different age cut-offs in different provinces, and that is not acceptable. We do not want to have someone in one province be able to access medication and another person in another province not be able to access it. We want to be able to deliver health care. Everyone should have access to the medication they need with their health card, not their credit card.
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- May/30/24 9:44:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member stole my thunder a little.
We are talking about a universal, single-payer pharmacare program. The reason it is so effective, the reason experts and labour unions have been calling for this, and the reason civil society has been calling for it is that it would save Canadians money, and it would give access to essential drugs. It would also mean that when we buy as a single payer, we would get to negotiate prices as a single payer. It would mean that we would have so much more negotiating power.
That is why pharmaceutical companies are so opposed to it. They do not want to lower our drug costs and make less money. By ensuring that we have a single-payer system, it means those kinds of drugs are going to be more accessible to Canadians. It means that Canadians would be paying less, and it would save money over time.
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- May/30/24 9:33:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a historic day: We are going to be voting on the first steps toward universal pharmacare. The Liberals have been promising pharmacare to Canadians since 1997, and for decades Canadians have been waiting to have access to essential medication.
I want to start off by sharing a story. In 2021, I was out door knocking in a subsidized housing complex. When I knocked on one of the doors, the first person to come to the door was a little girl. She was holding two mermaid dolls and she was adorable. She might have been three or four years old, and she smiled up at me. Then her siblings came running out, and they called for their mom. When I talked to her mother, she had these bright eyes, and she was listening and staring up at us. Her mom said she had not a chance to think about policies or what needs to happen because she was so stressed about how much the devices for her little girl's diabetes cost and how much the medication costs.
This family had been struggling to afford essential medications, and the costs were so high that this mother was wondering how she was going to care for her little girl. I do not know how anyone could look that little girl in the eye and say that she does not deserve access to life-saving medication. I promised that mom that I would come here to Ottawa and fight for universal pharmacare so that her little girl would have her medication covered. I am so proud to be part of a team that is delivering on that promise.
For that family and their struggle, and for families across Canada that are in the same position, it is not inevitable. They are working hard. They are doing everything right. They are trying their best to provide a good life for their kids. However, with the choices of Liberal and Conservative governments for decades, they have decided to side with the biggest pharmaceutical companies instead of everyday Canadians, instead of that little girl.
Liberals have promised this for decades, but it is only now that New Democrats are in a position of power and are able to force the government to deliver on pharmacare. While the Conservatives try to do whatever they possibly can to stop people from getting access to life-saving medication, we are going to keep fighting to deliver on the promise to that mom, to that family and to families across Canada who deserve pharmacare.
I once shared a bit of that story and then asked the Leader of the Opposition how he could look that little girl in the eye and say that she does not deserve access to diabetes medication, that she does not deserve access to life-saving devices. His answer was to spew misinformation. He said that pharmacare will “roll back the rights that unions have fought so hard and so long to secure. Our labour movement fought too hard to secure private drug plans, and we will never let a big, centralizing, bureaucratic government in Ottawa take those rights away from workers.”
However, the major unions in Canada are calling for universal single-payer pharmacare: the United Steelworkers, CUPE, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and Unifor. I could go on. Many of these unions have specific campaigns advocating for single-payer universal pharmacare. Unions across Canada came out celebrating the fact that the NDP was able to force the government to first provide contraception and diabetes medications and diabetes devices, but also to lay the legislative framework for universal pharmacare.
This is a huge step, and I think about some of those huge steps. Tommy Douglas had a vision of universal health care. It was New Democrats who fought alongside Tommy Douglas to get our country to a place where if a person broke their leg, they were not going to be turned away because they could not afford to fix it. I think about young kids, and we know that dental surgery is the most common surgery at pediatric hospitals. If people have essential dental costs or if they have tooth pain, then for the first time in our country's history, there would be people accessing dental care who could not afford it. We would have people like that family I talked about accessing diabetes medication and not worrying about whether they could afford it. They would not have to choose between putting food on the table or paying the rent and could access life-saving medication. This is a historic, huge step forward for our country. I am so proud to be part of the team that is making this happen.
I want to also take a moment to talk about providing contraception across Canada and what that means for women and for gender-diverse people. It is huge. I want to give a special shout-out to Devon Black and Teale Phelps Bondaroff, who are the co-founders of AccessBC, and who fought, pushed and advocated, and were successful in bringing this issue to the attention of the provincial government. I am proud that the B.C. NDP has already paved the way, offering British Columbians access to free contraception. We know that countries around the world have been doing this for decades, and finally, the federal government acknowledges that contraception is health care.
It is not surprising that the Conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to stop women from having control over their reproductive health. We know that their MPs have brought forward legislation that is trying to bring back the debate around a woman's right to choose or a woman's control over her own body. A Conservative MP went out and spoke at the rally that was calling to end abortion access in Canada. I would hope that we were past a point in Canada when a major political party is accepting of its members of Parliament calling to end abortion access. Abortion is health care. Contraception is health care.
Now, in Canada, we could start expanding our universal coverage to essential medication and to dental care. I would like to see it also expanded to mental health care. We could have a system in Canada that, if a person is sick and they need health care, they could access it.
I want to end by calling on all MPs in the House to take a moment and to think about the historic steps that we are taking. This would make a tangible difference in the lives of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. I think about that family, that little girl and what this would mean to her. I am so proud to be voting in favour of pharmacare tonight. I am grateful to be able to work alongside 24 other New Democrat MPs who have fought tooth and nail to get this piece of legislation to this point. We are going to take it over the finish line to ensure that every Canadian would be able to access the medication they need.
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- May/30/24 1:53:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wanted to ask the member about the mental health crisis of young people who are concerned about the climate crisis. Climate anxiety is at an all-time high. When young people are seeing communities evacuated because of wildfires, multi-year droughts, heat domes that kill hundreds of people and extreme flooding, they are worried about right now and they are worried about their future.
Can the member speak to young people and tell them why the Conservatives have no climate plan?
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- May/30/24 1:38:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when I asked the Leader of the Opposition about industrial carbon pricing, he said that the industrial carbon price did not exist, which is a new level of misinformation.
However, I am critical of the Liberal government's loopholes that have been left in the federal backstop that allow companies like Suncor to pay 14 times less than average Canadians. The government could close the loopholes in industrial carbon pricing, strengthen our emissions reduction plan, get greater emissions reduction and also hold the biggest polluters to account. It could also enshrine industrial carbon pricing in law so that if, in the future, there were another government that wanted to scrap it, it would be much more difficult to take away this vital policy, which is doing the bulk of our emissions reduction.
I am curious if the member is pushing his government to close the loopholes and enshrine industrial carbon pricing in legislation?
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- May/30/24 12:41:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to say that Canada should be a leader. We have a responsibility, as a country who has one of the highest per capita emissions around the world, to do our fair share to reduce our emissions. It is our responsibility as Canadians to ensure that we are tackling the climate emergency head-on.
I want to thank the member for his work on the environment committee and for his commitment to freshwater. I do just want to put forward a quick plug that he push his government to fund a B.C. watershed security fund. There have been investments on the east coast, or at least in eastern Canada, but unfortunately, B.C. is struggling with multi-year droughts and with unprecedented wildfire seasons. A B.C. watershed security fund would make a world of difference in adapting to climate change.
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- May/30/24 12:40:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, just as a point of clarification so that the Canadians watching are not misinformed by Conservative rhetoric, Victoria actually has a sewage treatment centre and is treating its sewage. I have attended many meetings to ensure that Victoria treats its sewage.
I am also putting forward a motion, which I put forward in the past Parliament and in this one again, to stop the cruise industry from dumping sewage as well as effluent into the oceans. I am going to continue to stand up to protect our water and to stop the dumping that happens, and I am going to continue to stand up against the oil and gas industry, whose CEOs and lobbyists are flocking to the Conservative fundraisers because they know that the Conservatives are going to continue to let them pollute.
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- May/30/24 12:38:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for her constant advocacy not only for bold climate action, but also for upholding indigenous rights. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is very clear: free, prior and informed consent. That means yes. That means no. That means yes, with conditions. Every member in the House has a responsibility to uphold that declaration.
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- May/30/24 12:36:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his kind words.
However, this is what we have been seeing from the Conservative Party time and time again. Conservatives would like to see there be no consequences for the biggest polluters. They are not committed to climate action. When they voted at their convention, they could not vote in favour of a resolution that said climate change was real. This is the level of debate that we are at right now.
I call upon Conservative members to look at the science and to listen to the international climate experts who are telling us that we are in a climate emergency, that we need to come together as elected officials and create and ensure a climate-safe future for Canadians today and for future generations.
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- May/30/24 12:34:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very firmly committed to carbon pricing. The industrial carbon price makes up between 20% and 48% of our emissions reduction. The consumer carbon price makes up between 8% and 14%. My commitment is that we reduce emissions in Canada to meet our international climate targets. Honestly, I am not married to any particular policy, but I am committed to ensuring that we have a credible climate plan, and right now, that means including carbon pricing.
The fact is that the Conservatives are saying to scrap the carbon tax, but they have not been clear about whether that means the industrial carbon price as well, which could be about half of our emissions reduction in Canada that all of a sudden would no longer be happening. However, the Liberals, unfortunately, have failed to close the loopholes in the industrial carbon price. They failed to hold big polluters accountable. It is no wonder that people are questioning the Liberal government and its commitment to climate action when it waters down its policies on the emissions cap, fails to implement bold climate policies and buys a pipeline.
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- May/30/24 12:33:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, young people are struggling, and they are worried about their future. They are worried about both the climate crisis and the cost-of-living crisis. I wish the Conservatives had put forward a motion today that would tackle that to ensure that young people are not going to face ecosystem collapse, their food systems threatened and disaster responses overwhelmed. I wish they had put forward a motion that would tackle the housing crisis. Unfortunately, all we get from the Conservatives is more propping up of oil and gas CEOs, rich real estate investors, big pharmaceutical companies and the big grocery stores. They continue to have the back of the richest Canadians—
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- 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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- May/30/24 10:51:17 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for the oil and gas industry. He fills his fundraisers with its lobbyists and CEOs, so it is not surprising that he has no climate plan. He is not concerned with the fact that many Canadians will have a road trip this summer in which they flee wildfire evacuation zones, worrying about whether their home will still be there when they get back. On top of that, he has been going around the country saying that he would also scrap the north coast oil tanker moratorium. This would ignore municipalities, first nations, anglers, commercial fishermen and the majority of the people in the District of Kitimat, among many other communities in the north, who wholly reject any plan to bring crude oil supertankers to the north coast of B.C.
Can the Leader of the Opposition confirm that he would scrap that moratorium?
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- May/30/24 10:14:55 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition. The petitioners note that we are facing intersecting crises, the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis, as well as pollution and resource depletion.
The petitioners are calling on the government to publicly declare its support for the international crime of ecocide.
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- May/29/24 7:48:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this week I met with members of the Matsqui First Nation who have been calling for a health study for their community for decades. They are seeing rare forms of cancer in their community in unprecedented proportions that should be unheard of. The government could fund that health study, it could invest in protecting the communities impacted by the oil sands and by the corporate greed that we are seeing across this country, but it is choosing not to. It could be giving every low- and middle-income Canadian a heat pump, but it is choosing not to.
If the Liberals are choosing not to, because, as they are saying, there are fiscal restraints, well then tax the big oil and gas companies that are burning our planet, poisoning the water and fuelling the climate crisis that we are in. When will the government implement a tax on the biggest corporations, the big oil and gas companies?
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