44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 3, 2022 10:00AM
- 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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- Mar/3/22 4:16:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this opposition motion. I am sure nobody will be surprised by this, but I regret to inform the House so early on that I will not be supporting this opposition motion.
This motion we have before us has nothing to do with Ukraine. This is a motion about pipelines. It is extremely unfortunate the Conservative Party of Canada would bring a motion to this House about pipelines under the guise of trying to be supportive of Ukraine.
This is so glaringly obvious to me, because nobody would every disagree with the first two clauses of this motion. I do not think there is a Canadian out there who does not realize the vast majority of Canadians stand with Ukraine right now. There is no one who follows politics closely, or even remotely follows politics, who does not realize that every party in this House supports the Ukrainian people, supports what they are fighting for and condemns Vladimir Putin.
The first two clauses in this motion are moot because we already passed unanimous consent motions of this support. We already talked about the different things we can be doing in Ukraine to make the situation there better and to properly support Ukraine as it is going through this extremely difficult time.
It all comes down to the third clause in this motion, which is a clause about pipelines. It would have been much more genuine had the Conservatives just shown up here today and said that they had a motion about pipelines, presented their motion saying that they want more pipelines, like they do so often in this House, and just called it for what it was.
Instead, Conservatives come in with this motion with these two additional clauses in it to somehow suggest that this has to do with Ukraine. This is just wedge politics they are doing right now. It is feeding to their base, which is so dead set on oil being the only solution.
We listened to what the Conservatives said today about energy security. They talk about energy as though oil is the only option for energy. They use the terms energy and oil interchangeably because they see oil as being the only option when it comes to energy.
I will talk about this motion in the context of it being a motion about pipelines. Let us just assume for a second that that was genuinely what the Conservatives wanted, that they came in here to talk about pipelines. It does not make any sense even from a pipeline perspective. The Conservatives keep talking about these new pipelines and the eastern European countries, and the other countries, that will supposedly be saved by them, but why is it that Conservatives think Europe wants to transfer its dependency from one third country to another third country? They do not want to do that.
As a matter of fact, the European commissioner for energy, Kadri Simson, said that the Russian invasion made their vulnerability painfully clear. She stated, “We cannot let any third country destabilize our energy markets or influence our energy choices.”
We have the energy commissioner for the European Union saying they do not want to be dependent on any third country for their energy sources, but then we have the Conservatives coming in here and saying that we need to build pipelines so we can make them dependent on us. The same commissioner for energy for the European Union said that they had to be “boosting renewables and energy efficiency as fast as technically possible.”
Even if the European Union was looking to diversify and get some of this oil, even though the commissioner said it is not, it is not interested in oil as a source of energy. It is interested in renewables. That is what it is saying. Even if the Conservatives are coming from a well-intentioned place on this and really thought that these pipelines were about the security of Europe, those in Europe are telling us that they are not interested in them. They do not want to be dependent on another country and they are very much interested in looking for a very fast transition to renewables. That is not to mention the fact that building these pipelines will cost billions of dollars and will take years to complete.
Europe has made it clear that it is comfortable with its current reserve situation for this winter, but has to start looking toward next winter. It has also made it clear that it is not interested in being dependent on another country, and that it is interested in renewables as a form of energy as quickly as possible. Most of the western world is on board with this and understands it, the European energy commissioner knows this, four parties in the House know this and I would say the vast majority of Canadians know this, yet somehow the Conservatives come in here and are completely unaware of it. I am left wondering why they are doing this. Why do they think they need to put this forward? Do they genuinely think this is plausible? Let us remember that the European Union has said it is not interested and this will take years to build and a lot of money. Why are they doing this? Is it just to shore up their base and prove to their base that they are fighting for oil and gas? That is the only thing I can conclude as the motivation for bringing forward such a motion today.
In conclusion, I will say that I am more than willing to tell my Conservative colleagues across the way, all members of the House and all Canadians that I am not interested in pipelines. I am certainly not interested in the government subsidizing pipelines. I do not think there is a role anymore in this day and age for the Government of Canada to be subsidizing pipelines. Does that mean I am completely naive to the amount of oil we use? No, I am not. I am fully aware that to make the vast majority of the products in this room, if not all, we used oil, whether directly or indirectly. I am also aware that the technologies we need to be investing in and subsidizing are those that provide options to make these products differently so we can put different things into the various products we are currently making out of oil.
This is the default reaction from the Conservatives all the time. They always say that we need oil and that we will not be getting off oil tomorrow. I get that, I agree with that, I understand that and I am not dismissing it at all. However, I am saying that my personal opinion is that oil is not the solution long term. When we talk about building pipelines, we are talking long term. We are interested in 20, 30 or 40 years down the road. There will always be a dependency on some form of oil or gas and I get that, but hopefully not the degree of dependency we have today. We need to move away from this.
I surely do not support this motion, and I think it is shameful that the Conservatives are using a crisis on the other side of the world to promote their agenda.
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