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Mrs. Cathay Wagantall (Yorkton—Melville, CPC)

May/17/22 1:33:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really appreciate the conversation around carbon capture and underground storage. As the member may know, in Estevan, Saskatchewan, this whole process, the very first in the world, was developed, and it was done with coal, which is the hardest to function with. Since its opening, 4,402,000,073 tonnes of carbon dioxide have been stored underground just from that one location. Now the knowledge is there and the innovation has been done, so to go forward and do this in other areas of resources will cost far less. I just do not understand. I would ask the member to clarify for me why, in light of the facts that the reality is the world will still need oil for the next, as they say, 20, 30 or 40 years, and the best product, the most ethical and clean, is in Canada, why would we not want to draw what still exists from oil wells, rather than increase carbon emissions by creating more wells and get more oil from other sources than what is already there?

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Mr. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith

May/17/22 1:34:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would say that there will be a role for oil and gas. I noted that by 2050, that role will be for non-combustion purposes principally. Certainly we are going to see a steady decline over the coming decades in the production and use of oil and gas, especially for combustion purposes. I suppose my answer is simply to say that I do not have the same challenges with our country as a producer as I would with a regime like Russia, for example. We are rightly prohibiting Russian oil and gas for good reason, but we also need to transition very quickly. We need to support that transition and make sure that we support our workers and our society in a future that is ultimately going to be net zero by 2050.

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Mr. Mario Simard (Jonquière, BQ)

May/17/22 1:35:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague, and I picked up on some serious contradictions. He concluded his speech with the assertion that we should not challenge the $2.4 billion set aside for carbon capture. However, during his speech, he said that, from a technical perspective, carbon capture may not be feasible, as many experts have said, but that we need to roll the dice anyway. I have not seen a whole lot of $2.4 billion die rolls in my time. Does my colleague agree that it would be much more responsible to invest that money in clean energy, such as green hydrogen, wind energy and hydroelectricity, which are all low-carbon power sources that have proven their worth?

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Mr. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith

May/17/22 1:35:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the best argument is around opportunity costs and saying we should invest this money elsewhere, but my point is that there are many experts who do support CCUS technology, and when we look at the scale of the challenge, we should be examining and embracing every single opportunity to address climate change and reduce emissions. CCUS is one such option. We should not ignore it, and we definitely should not undermine it.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

May/17/22 1:36:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay. I would like to start by thanking the member for Victoria for bringing forward this motion and the member for Timmins—James Bay for the incredible work he has done on fossil fuel subsidies. Canadians spend more tax dollars propping up the fossil fuel industry than any other country in the developed world, with an average of around $14 billion per year in subsidies before the massive COVID-19 orphan well bailout. The question is why. What do we as Canadian taxpayers get for all of this money? Where does this money go? From 2014-21, corporate profits in the oil and gas sector in Canada rose steadily, seeing an all-time high of $445 billion in 2021. Public subsidies were a significant factor in those record high profits, adding nearly $100 billion over this time to these multinational corporations' bottom lines. In March 2022, Topaz Energy announced an 8% increase to its quarterly dividend, the company's third such increase since launching its dividend program in 2020. In October 2021, Suncor doubled its quarterly dividend for shareholders, and just last week the oil sands company announced a more than threefold increase in profits in the first three months of this year. While this is great news for the Americans, the Chinese and other shareholders who own these companies, it is not good news for Albertans. It is not good news for Canadians. While Canadian taxpayers are underwriting these corporation dividends to shareholders, they are laying off workers. During this same period of time, while these massive multinational corporations were soaking up Canadian taxpayers' largesse, the fossil fuel sector was laying off 53,000 Canadian workers. That is 53,000 families, most of them in Alberta, who are facing the worst of times, while their former employers are relishing in the best of times. What are Canadians getting for this unprecedented public investment? Surely we are at least getting some environmental protection, or some environmental mitigation from emission reductions. The answer is no. In 2020, the government provided $1.7 billion to the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia to fund the cleanup of inactive oil and gas wells as part of the COVID-19 economic response. The member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay and I wrote to the minister at the time and begged him to attach strings to that money so we would know that it would go to workers, and that it would not just go to corporations that would then not clean up their wells. Can members guess what happened? The money went to the corporations, and the wells have not been cleaned up. In short, this $1.7 billion handout to the oil and gas industry did nothing to create jobs or mitigate pollution. It merely allowed these companies to replace the costs they were obligated to cover with government money. At the same time that these companies were reaping billions in subsidies, recording record high profits and asking for public dollars to underwrite their own obligations to reduce emissions, they are refusing to pay their local and municipal taxes. In Alberta, rural municipalities are now facing $253 million in unpaid taxes owed by delinquent oil and gas companies. These taxes pay for the roads and the water systems that the companies are relying upon. These taxes support the communities who own the resources, yet the companies are pocketing the profits, walking away from their local tax obligations, just like they walked away from their emissions obligations and their orphan well obligations. It does not have to be this way. We know what we get with billions in fossil fuel subsidies. We get layoffs. We get devastated communities. We get pollution, and we get climate change. We get to prop up a sunsetting industry whose days are numbered, whether we as taxpayers like it or not, and oil and gas companies get massive profits. Why would we continue this cycle? There are much better things we could be spending these public dollars on. In Alberta, we have lived through the boom and bust cycles of an economy that is chained to the fossil fuel industry. We need to break this chain. We need to make sure that Albertans, the people in my province, have a future. We need to diversify the economy before it is too late. For Alberta, the climate crisis is an existential crisis, just like it is for the rest of Canada and the rest of the world. We see an increase in devastation from wildfires, and an increase in droughts and floods. We feel the impacts on our agriculture and forestry sectors. However, for Alberta, it is different. A transition from fossil fuels is also a matter of economic survival. Instead of $100 billion in public dollars padding fossil fuel's bottom line, and instead of throwing this money at foreign investors, the government should be investing in Alberta, and elsewhere in Canada, to help workers and to create jobs of the future. More than 50,000 Canadian oil and gas workers have lost their jobs to automation over the past decade, and experts expect layoffs to continue. Why are we not investing to help these workers and apply their skills to other sectors? Why are we not investing to create the jobs they need now, and that their children will need in the future? Today, approximately 140,000 Albertans work directly in the sector, and hundreds of thousands more rely on jobs from it, but we know that subsidizing the industry is not going to save those jobs. We have decades upon decades of experience demonstrating that. How much longer are we going to keep doing this? Alberta is uniquely positioned to be a global leader in renewable energy. My province has abundant solar, wind and geothermal resources, and it would have abundant jobs in these areas, if only there were substantial investments in the means necessary, and if only we were not pouring those billions of dollars into subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. However, there are also opportunities outside of energy, opportunities that develop sectors of our economy based on strategic advantage, such as biomedical research, engineering or artificial intelligence, just to name a few, but these require investment. These opportunities require investment from the federal government. The government should be leading the way when it comes to diversifying Alberta's economy. Canada has benefited for decades from the oil and gas development in Alberta. I am proud of that. I am proud that Alberta helped build this country. Now, it would be to every Canadian's advantage to help Alberta out of its reliance on oil and gas, and the government has the means to do this. It just needs the will. I have said this before in the House, but I will finish by saying that I come from an oil and gas family. My grandfather worked in oil and gas. My father was a trucker in the oil and gas sector. My brother washes trucks in the oil and gas sector, and my husband works in the pipeline sector. Members would be hard pressed to find anyone in Alberta who does not have a link to the oil and gas sector. It is our history, and it is a history I am proud of. I am proud of being Albertan, and I want to make it very clear that Albertans know climate change is real, and we know our future cannot depend on fossil fuels. We do not love our children any less, and we do not want any less for our communities, but unlike other provinces, and unlike folks in other areas of this country, Albertans have so much more to lose if we do not get this right. It is our families and our livelihoods we will lose, if we do not get the just transition right. We know we cannot depend on the fossil fuel sector. We simply cannot continue along this path of losing jobs, polluting our province and destroying our planet any longer. Whether we want to or not, we know we must change, but we need the government to reverse course, live up to its climate commitments and invest in diversifying our economy before it is too late.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

May/17/22 1:46:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in many ways, this government has, in fact, been very progressive on its measures dealing with the whole idea of a green transition. It is something that is not new. We have literally invested over the last six years hundreds of millions of dollars, going into multiple billions of dollars, into a green transition. We have been recognized by the former leader of the Green Party in the province of British Columbia for the efforts that we have presented to Canadians. My question, specifically, is in regard to the issue of carbon capture. What is the official NDP position on the technology and advancing the technology on carbon capture?

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Ms. Heather McPherson

May/17/22 1:47:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if I were a worker in Alberta, I would have zero trust that the government has any interest in supporting me, because it has not shown any interest in supporting Alberta workers. I mentioned in my speech that we asked the government to tie a string so that workers were supported, not big business, and it refused to do it. In terms of carbon capture, here is my question for the member. Why would taxpayers need to subsidize carbon capture? Why can industry not pay for the carbon capture that it is so proud of and would like to see happen? It should be responsible for funding it.

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Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)

May/17/22 1:48:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have some questions about the member's figures, but I am going to get to something that I think is more important. We are talking about 53,000 families in Alberta that were suffering during the oil and gas downturn. It is no longer in a downturn, I will point out. The Court of Appeal of Alberta came out last week and indicated very clearly that Bill C-69 was ultra vires of the federal government. That being the case, the NDP leader in Alberta indicated that the main cause of the layoffs in Alberta was a punitive regulatory regime as a result of Bill C-69. Would the member agree with her party leader in Alberta that it is the Alberta Court of Appeal's decision on Bill C-69 that led to those 53,000 families being laid off in Alberta?

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Ms. Heather McPherson

May/17/22 1:49:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to give my colleague my deep sympathies, because the Flames are going to lose the next round in the playoffs. To answer that particular question, I would say there are many things that have contributed to the layoff of Alberta workers. One of the things that I pointed out in my speech is the automation of the oil and gas sector. Even if the oil and gas sector was not causing climate damage and was something that we could continue to go gangbusters with, it does not have the jobs. They are not there. Talk to any worker in the oil and gas sector and they know that. They know the jobs are not staying. There has to be something else. The longer the Conservatives fail to take that action, the more coverage they give to the Liberals doing nothing. They are helping the Liberals do nothing.

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Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)

May/17/22 1:50:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I very much enjoy listening to my colleague from Edmonton Strathcona talk about Alberta. When we hear her talk about Alberta, we see that there is another type of Albertan, one who is more concerned about the environment and less concerned about oil, one who sees that there are solutions for breaking our dependency on oil and who is open to a transition to renewable energy. We are voting in favour of the motion moved by our NDP colleagues today. In the motion there is a paragraph that I think is very important regarding re-investing savings from the elimination of fossil fuels subsidies to help those Canadians who have been hit the hardest by the high cost of living. What measures would the NDP want put in place? Practically speaking, what measures are the NDP proposing to help Quebeckers and Canadians?

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Ms. Heather McPherson

May/17/22 1:50:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have worked very well with the member on committee and enjoy his interventions a great deal. This ability to take these dollars and investing them in communities is very important. One of the areas that I would love to see better investment in is infrastructure for first nation and Métis communities in Alberta. Right now, we are looking at a situation in northern Alberta where communities have to make a very difficult choice of whether or not to allow the release of tailings ponds into their ecosystem, because they have not been dealt with. There are communities that do not have the resources they need for clean drinking water and for schools. I would love to see those resources going into—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/17/22 1:51:41 p.m.
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Before we resume debate, the hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. John Williamson

May/17/22 1:51:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, earlier today, when I attempted to state what I thought was the NDP's position clearly, the member for Timmins—James Bay yelled that I was lying. He told the House that Canada can decide whether our children have a future or whether we are going to continue to have cheap gas. I should not have to point to his words or my words to request an apology. I would like him to withdraw the remark that he made that somehow members of this side, myself in particular, are lying for pointing out what the NDP is in fact saying today in the House of Commons.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/17/22 1:52:32 p.m.
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The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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Mr. Charlie Angus

May/17/22 1:52:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really appreciate that my hon. colleague put on the record once again the issue that the Conservatives continue to misrepresent, which is that they believe our children do not need a future as long as they get cheap—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/17/22 1:52:48 p.m.
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We have a request for a withdrawal. An hon. member: Oh, oh! The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès): It could lead us into debate, and we do not have that opportunity. There was a request for an apology. Is the hon. member not ready to make that apology?

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Mr. Charlie Angus

May/17/22 1:53:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am more likely to say that my hon. colleague probably did not understand the difference. I withdraw the word “lying”, but the fact that the Conservatives would use this on—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/17/22 1:53:22 p.m.
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That was all that was required. I thank the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay. Resuming debate, the hon. member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay has about three minutes.

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Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

May/17/22 1:53:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak to the NDP motion before us. The NDP has always focused entirely on helping Canadian families. The most important issues for Canadians right now are the affordability crisis, the impossibility of the housing market, the rising cost of groceries, the soaring price of gas and the more existential crisis of climate change that asks what kind of planet we are going to leave our children and our grandchildren. The NDP motion today asks the government to stop subsidizing highly profitable oil and gas companies once and for all. We are talking billions of dollars every year. Instead, it should invest those funds in relief for the millions of Canadians who are struggling right now with the high cost of everything, as well as renewable energy and other initiatives to deal with the climate crisis. I would like to start by talking about fossil fuel subsidies. Canada and its G20 partners promised 13 years ago to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. Four years ago, I was at a G20 meeting in Argentina where that promise was reaffirmed and a peer review of the subsidies was initiated. That review is now years behind schedule. Finance officials recently admitted that they will not even finish the self-review portion of that until the summer of 2023, which is five years later. Most of the other countries finished their peer review within 18 months. A couple of years ago, the environment commissioner could not even do a proper audit of our commitment to end subsidies, because the government admitted it did not yet have a clear definition of what an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy was. Only last year, the Liberals forked out over $8.6 billion in subsidies and public financing to the multinational oil and gas companies. Over $5 billion of that was provided by Export Development Canada. Canada gives more tax dollars to oil and gas companies than any other G20 country, handing out 14 times more taxpayer dollars to that sector than it did to renewable energy companies between 2018 and 2020. Canada paid $4.5 billion for the Trans Mountain pipeline when the private company building it said it was no longer a viable project. We are now facing a $21-billion cost for the expansion of that pipeline. It is an expansion that assumes and depends on an increasing demand for oil, when everyone realizes we must drastically cut our oil consumption worldwide. We will never recoup the cost of Trans Mountain, so if there ever was an inefficient subsidy, I would say that buying a pipeline that a private company did not want and then spending $20 billion to expand it to provide capacity for expanded oil production that the world will not need and cannot withstand is—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/17/22 1:57:02 p.m.
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I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but can members keep it quiet? It is already very noisy in the courtyard. If people have conversations in the House, I cannot hear the hon. member's speech. The hon. member may continue.

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