SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 102 - Sep/26/22

Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Sep/26/22 11:05:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are gathered here tonight of course to send our support to our friends from coast to coast to coast who are faced with the aftermath of these natural disasters. We are talking about the importance of taking action now, and there is no question that needs to be done. There is also a question about what investment needs to be made and whether the government should be making investments in a proactive way to ensure climate adaptation projects are in place. Would the member support more investments in proactive climate adaptation projects, instead of always waiting for disasters that are often coming our way in a much more severe manner, as we are seeing now?

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Hon. Rob Moore

Sep/26/22 11:07:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we need to be able to do both: adaptation and mitigation. We need to be able to do that, recognizing challenges coastal areas face, but we also have urgent and critical needs around the rebuilding of wharfs and other coastal resources that our local industry and communities depend on. We have had many hurricanes and other storms in the past that have caused damage from time to time, and one of the things we have to do to get industry, small business and communities back on their feet and individuals working again is make sure we have the right investments in community infrastructure that we can move forward and build together. That is something we are committed to helping our communities do, and we will stand with them every step of the way.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Sep/26/22 11:08:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this important debate tonight about the impacts of hurricane Fiona on eastern Canada. As members know, I represent a riding in Alberta. We live in a big country, where a natural disaster could affect one part of the country and not another. I also know we are a community of solidarity, where people in Alberta follow events in other parts of the country and are feeling a deep sense of solidarity and a desire to help. There are many Albertans with close familial and ancestral connections with Atlantic Canada, who are really following in horror the impacts of this hurricane and would like me to share on their behalf the sense of solidarity and the desire they have to see their government come to the aid of those in need. Just as when western Canada has faced natural disasters, such as the B.C. floods, Atlantic Canada was with us, in the same way my province and my constituents are fully behind Atlantic Canada and are calling on the government to have a strong, effective and continuous response. The lead to this response from within our caucus is coming from the Atlantic caucus, and I want to salute and recognize the excellent work being done by members of that caucus, including the member for Cumberland—Colchester, who put forward the proposal to have this emergency debate tonight. Of course I also want to recognize the engagement of our leader and the powerful speech he gave tonight as well. What really stuck with me from our leader's speech was his saying that we do not want this to be another situation in which there is an “A” for the announcement and an “F” on the follow-through. Sometimes commitments are made when a story is in the news, when there is a focus on the situation, and it is very acute as it is happening. Then there is the question of whether the government and the rest of the country are really there through the follow-up, through the rebuilding process that must continue long after the story is not in the news anymore and attention has shifted to other issues. Is there the follow-through? Also, is the government making announcements but then severely delayed in actually delivering the results, or is the government responding quickly enough? The opposition will be there, led by our Atlantic caucus, in pushing strongly for follow-through, for efficiency, and for the government to support the rebuilding that is required, not just while the story is in the news but in fact over the long term. We need to have a results-oriented approach that measures the results that are achieved, that measures the concrete impacts, that invests the dollars that are required and really measures those results. Canadians can be assured that our opposition will be diligently following up on this issue for the long haul to make sure those results are achieved, or certainly to do all we can from this side of the House to ensure they are achieved. I want to speak tonight in particular to highlight one issue that we have seen with the government's response. It is about the issue of matching programs. There is a problem with the way the government has consistently developed and delivered matching programs. The problem has been that the government identifies one organization or a small group of large organizations for matching support, and it says it will match every donation that is made to organization X or to this group of five organizations. However, the government does not offer matching programs to all of the organizations that are involved in a response. I have encountered this issue, particularly in the area of international development. In cases in which we have seen disasters around the world, this was a major issue brought to my attention by international development organizations working in Lebanon, responding to the humanitarian needs associated with the invasion of Ukraine, and most recently in the situation in Pakistan, where there are organizations, maybe small organizations, diaspora-led organizations, organizations with really deep connections and a significant footprint on the ground, that are left out of a government matching program because it becomes easier for the government to say that it is going to match with these very large organizations that have more experience dealing with government and that we have established relationships with. It is easier to say that it is going to match a contribution to this big player as opposed to saying it is going to match donations to all of the organizations that are doing this work. I have encountered and learned about this issue in the area of international development, but now we are seeing this as part of a domestic disaster response. Again, the government, in the process of a matching program, is choosing one organization. In this case, it is the Red Cross. I want to say at the outset that I think the Red Cross does excellent work. I also think the idea of matching programs, of encouraging individuals to donate and saying that when someone makes a donation, the government is going to match those dollars, is a very good concept. It expresses the shared solidarity that we need here, which is not the government acting alone, but the government being part of a solution and supporting individual philanthropy in collaboration with government. In principle, that is really good. When we have a system that matches donations to some organizations and not others, not only do those smaller organizations, which may have a bigger presence on the ground and may be led by local people and plugged into local communities, lose out on the benefit of the matching dollars, but they actually lose out on donations as well. When people say they want to be part of responding to, in this case, the recovery efforts around hurricane Fiona, or in previous cases, the flooding in Pakistan or the situation in Lebanon, people instinctively want to give to those organizations that are receiving matching, as opposed to the organizations that do not. Organizations tell me that they get calls from previous donors who say they were going to donate to what they were doing, but they actually want to donate to another organization that is getting matched. We see how, through a government policy, by matching donations to some organizations but not others, the government ends up incentivizing private donors to change their donation behaviour from organizations they were previously giving to, to organizations that are matched. The government is, through this matching policy, directing donations from some organizations to others. That is a problem. The effect of offering matching to some organizations is that it might take away from groups that have a long track record and have been working on the ground. It also creates some level of suspicion. People ask why the government is not matching them. Is it because it has somehow determined the organization is not good enough for the match? That is not the reason. In fact, some of these organizations may be more effective in their response, but they are not receiving the match because government instinctively goes back to the same organizations to provide that match every time. Having raised this issue multiple times in other contexts, I want to implore the government again to really reconsider this policy. There are different ways of doing this. The government could identify, in some global sense, all of the donations that are made to charitable organizations related to flood relief, and the government could then put that same amount of money aside in a fund, which it then distributes. It would not have to necessarily match every dollar that was given to an organization to exactly the same organization. However, if it put aside an amount of money that was equivalent to the total donations and then disbursed that, it would at least address the problem right now of disincentivizing donations to organizations that are not matched. I think that would be a good way of exploring the response. Every Canadian who donates to hurricane relief, in some way, should see their donation matched, whether it is to the Red Cross or to organizations that are smaller and embedded in local communities. The Knights of Columbus council in my area might want to raise money and transfer it to a Knights of Columbus council in Atlantic Canada. There might be small local food banks that are raising money, locally and across the country. I would say those worthy efforts deserve the same kind of matching support. Again, I have raised this in the House on past occasions. It is a bit frustrating to feel these simple, non-partisan solutions, which say we need to reform these matching programs, do not seem to be heeded. It has been raised on past instances yet it remains a problem. I implore the government to revisit this issue and to look for mechanisms to match donations in a way that is inclusive, that represents the diversity of organizations and that supports small local organizations as well as the larger ones. Again I want to share with the House that my constituents, the people of western Canada, are very much behind and in support of the people in eastern Canada who are struggling right now. We want to see the government have their backs over the long haul.

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Mr. Adam van Koeverden (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and to the Minister of Sport, Lib.)

Sep/26/22 11:18:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague knows quite a lot about international development and I look forward to our next chat in the elevator on this topic. I did want to highlight, because I had the opportunity to visit the Red Cross in Nova Scotia this summer, its extensive network of community-level contacts and relationships. The type of rapid response that these donations will rely on are those relationships and the ease of access with which community-level groups, such as the one the member highlighted, the Knights of Columbus, that might be doing something at a community level, would be able to contact their local Red Cross. That said, the member also highlighted, which is off topic a bit, some of the international aid. The Humanitarian Coalition, as he is probably aware, is actually a coalition of 12 organizations that are quite diverse, but I take his comments under advisement, which I think are worth considering. I would ask the member if he could explain how his constituents out in Alberta might be supportive of this important restoration effort.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

Sep/26/22 11:19:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to underline that nothing in my speech was to take away from the great work that the Red Cross is doing in eastern Canada or in other parts of the world. Of course, it does have partnerships with local organizations, and I hope it will do its best to engage some of those local organizations. However, fundamentally, it does not change the point that there are many other worthy organizations that are not getting this matching support and, essentially, it puts the Red Cross in the position of being the disbursers of public money, which is a role that we would normally conceive of as being the government's. We should work to provide that support in the form of matching to all of the organizations that are doing good work, not because the organizations being matched are not worthy of it but because there are other organizations that are worthy of it as well. I know my constituents will be actively involved in this relief effort and I would like to see all of the donations that my constituents make matched, regardless of the organizations they give to.

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

Sep/26/22 11:21:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member a question on the opening part of his speech. I think he was saying the government should be in it for the long haul to help the people of Atlantic Canada and other disasters across this country. The government always has their backs when there is a disaster, but sometimes it forgets about it fairly quickly. I am wondering if the member might comment on the concept that we should be spending more money investing in the future in terms of these disasters that are getting more common, more serious and more catastrophic. Should we be investing more to adapt to climate change? Rather than always being reactive and spending billions of dollars after the fact, we should really be ramping up our investments every year in helping Canadian communities get ready for the future.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

Sep/26/22 11:22:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, of course it makes sense to have resilient infrastructure, infrastructure that is fit for purpose and that can respond to these things as much as possible. I am not an engineer. There are probably limits to one's ability to build for all possible events, but I would assent in principle to the idea that we should as much as possible, in the process of rebuilding and in the process of building up infrastructure, try to be prepared for and resilient against the possibility of storms and other kinds of weather events.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Sep/26/22 11:23:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have had similar concerns in the past about the matching programs. I wonder how the member might suggest that in the short term, in the next few days, we make an impact in how we would access the best and most effective charities on the ground.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

Sep/26/22 11:23:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think a really simple thing for the government to do would be to say, as a policy statement, that it will work to identify all of the dollars that have been donated for this purpose and match those dollars insofar as it will set aside, in a fund for relief, the number of dollars equivalent to the amount it estimates has been contributed. That formal calculation does not have to all be done in one or two days. If the government says that now as a policy commitment, then it means that over time the government can engage those charities, work to identify who is involved in relief and what dollars have been contributed and then disburse the funds at a later point.

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Mr. Robert Morrissey (Egmont, Lib.)

Sep/26/22 11:24:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at the outset, I want to indicate that I am sharing my time with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, and I welcome the opportunity to participate in this emergency debate. At this late hour in the House, I expect that I am the only member currently sitting who experienced this weather event in Atlantic Canada directly. There were some on this side. I was in the epicentre of it, along with a number of my colleagues. I know there were a number of other members who experienced this event as well. I can honestly say, and I will speak to Prince Edward Island, that in Prince Edward Island we were well prepared. I give full marks to those emergency agencies, including my own colleague, the minister responsible, and the provincial government, for getting the message out that this was a very serious weather event that people should heed. We were well advised. All we could do, though, was wait and hope that it would not be as traumatic as the warnings that were being given to us. All of the mechanisms of government worked from a warning perspective, and that is why we had minimal loss of life. We cannot minimize any loss of life, as it is too much, but the implications were to that effect. We were aware, and in fact I returned to my riding when I heard the weather forecast was getting more and more severe. I chose to return to be there. I can honestly say that it was one of these weather alerts that woke me up at about 3:30 in the morning. I had decided that I had better take my phone to bed with me. It was pretty nasty and I was unsure how it was going to go. I am glad I did, because the emergency app went off. It woke me up to what was happening. I looked at it, and then I thought I had better look outside. I could see the trees violently shaking, an experience I had never experienced before. I was looking out and then I watched them suddenly start crashing on the house. Yes, those emergency systems did work. I am going to focus my comments on two areas of Atlantic Canada and Prince Edward Island that responded very well. The fishing industry, the fishers, primarily, removed their very expensive boats from the water, so they listened. They took the advice of all governments. They removed them to take them out of harm's way. There was no loss of vessels. However, they could not remove their fishing gear. We are now getting some assessment on that. The damage is significant. Farmers were able to store their equipment as well as they could in buildings. They took precautions. However, they could not take their crops out of the field. That is where extensive damage has occurred to the farming industry. In the two industries, fishing and farming, the farmers and the fishers took all the steps they were advised to take to mitigate their losses, yet there were significant losses, and they are still being incurred. That is where the government has to be prepared to stand with these industries to ensure that we provide resources to mitigate those losses, because they did everything in their power to reduce the damage they would have. We are still assessing that. Then it gets to this issue: We have had infrastructure damage, significant infrastructure damage, to our small craft harbours across the region. That has been a situation that has been growing for some time. I have been listening to some of the speeches in the House saying that the government has to move faster and faster. I spoke to a farmer yesterday and, in fact, I was all across my riding on Saturday and Sunday, at most of the ports, meeting with those who were primarily impacted. It was important. I was listening to a farmer, and he said that even if we gave him money today, he could not hire a contractor to begin the repairs that he has to do. Let us temper the expectation, because some say that we are not moving fast enough and we should be there. I take the Prime Minister and the ministers at their word, that we will be there whenever the ask is made. This has to come through provinces, same as a request. The Government of Canada cannot send the military on its own. It has to wait for provinces to request it. We have met all of the requests that the provinces have made so far. The Government of Canada has been acting as quickly, diligently and judiciously as possible, but there are obstacles. We may not be able to get the necessary repairs made to some critical infrastructure in a timely enough manner simply because of the restraints of not having contractors to do it. I also want to acknowledge the tremendous work of the utility workers in Prince Edward Island and all the provinces in getting the power up. We must recognize that we cannot just bring in people off the street to supplement and double the effort, because these are highly trained, skilled people. This is a very dangerous occupation. We cannot minimize the time it is going to take, but it is a necessity in dealing with a weather event. I heard during the debate this evening that we have had these events before, that we have had ice storms and we have had hurricanes. Let us understand that this event which occurred in Atlantic Canada early Saturday morning and throughout the day was the first weather event of its kind recorded in Canada. These are the first reported meteorologic conditions ever recorded in Canada. We have never had an event like this before. The events are getting more and more serious. This is a significant event. We have to take the time to acknowledge and thank all of the first responders who could not stay indoors during this event like I did. I took the advice that was given to us and did not dare go out after seeing the conditions. Unless one actually lived in some of the higher-impact areas, nobody could describe to me what I experienced, and I have experienced some wild storms, as I am sure other members have. This was a very scary event, and the damage is significant. Our government will be there, but in some areas, like small craft harbours, I think we are going to have to be innovative. We may have to deliver money to the local harbour authorities to get the work done quickly. We know the time it takes to go through the process, and then often the government is held to account: “You're not following due process.” We cannot have it both ways. This is the first-ever event of this magnitude to occur in Canada. If we are going to respond in a timely manner, we are going to have to make some first approaches as well. In doing this for infrastructure, I would challenge my own government to work with the local harbour authorities when it comes to small craft harbour infrastructure to get timely repairs done quickly. This means it may not go to public tender, because that takes time. We are going to have to be tolerant of that and supportive. We must recognize that the farmers and fishers took all the steps they could to minimize their losses and damage, but in the areas that we depend on to feed this country, those crops were still exposed to Mother Nature, and that is where the damage occurred. Within the fishing industry, the fishing gear was still at sea. We are going to have to respond to those costs that are not covered by insurance for fishers, and we are going to have to build. As it was raised a couple of times in the debate this evening, we can build infrastructure to withstand. I am probably the only member in the House who was part of the design approval for the Confederation Bridge. The Confederation Bridge performed as it was designed to perform during this catastrophic weather event. It had no damage. I recall getting into a debate with the design people when it was being approved. I was the provincial minister responsible at the time. They were putting in a design for category 4 hurricanes, and I said that we were over-designing a bit, which was not the case. So, yes, we can design infrastructure to withstand the weather patterns that are coming. In closing, all I can say is that we better be prepared to put in the investments to protect the critical coastal infrastructure that we have, that we depend on, because Atlantic Canada is the most prone part of Canada to hurricane events coming up on a regular basis. We must invest in the infrastructure that will protect the fishing ports of Atlantic Canada and the infrastructure that we need. It will be expensive, but we have to be there as a government. I challenge my own government that we have to be there. We have to be creative, and we have to be a heck of a lot faster in getting projects and repairs under way to deal with these catastrophic losses that were incurred.

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The Deputy Speaker

Sep/26/22 11:34:45 p.m.
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It is not like me to make comments, but I have seen fishing gear after a hurricane, and it is garbage. We will continue with questions and comments. The hon. member for South Shore—St. Margarets.

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Mr. Rick Perkins (South Shore—St. Margarets, CPC)

Sep/26/22 11:34:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for sharing the experience he went through. I actually had the eye of a hurricane pass over my house and stood outside in it only a few years ago. He is not the only person in the House who experienced the Confederation Bridge. I was the chief of staff to the minister who signed the deal on the Confederation Bridge way back when, when that member was the economic development minister in the Ghiz government, and we had some interaction around Summerside. I am a long-serving member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries, which has done four reports on small craft harbours over the last decade outlining that more was needed in A-base funding, a lot more, so proper long-term capital planning could be done by port authorities to manage these wharfs so they were not in the shape they are in now, where they are more easily destroyed by these storms. Will he help all of us, and I will help him as well, to continue to advocate and push harder for proper funding for that program so we can get ahead of the maintenance? The Speaker's riding and my riding alone need $600 million to bring our wharfs up to operational standards, according to DFO.

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Mr. Robert Morrissey

Sep/26/22 11:36:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I totally agree with my colleague, who I sit with on the fisheries committee. Our government has added $600 million additional to the budget of small craft harbours. It is still a drop in the bucket. Successive governments have cut the A-base funding to a level, and it is still the same, of $100 million for capital across the country. Quite frankly, it is not even a band-aid. I agree this is a wake-up call on infrastructure. Somebody made the comment, and I am not sure who it was, that if this was a section of the Trans-Canada Highway in an area near a municipality, it would be fixed within a number of days. I agree with that comment. We should be able to react in that swift of a fashion to repair small craft harbours and bring them up to a standard where they will not sustain the damage they did. We know these hurricanes are coming. I support the member very much, and I will be curious to see how my government responds to that in a very positive way by putting the resources needed to build this infrastructure up to a level to sustain the storms we know are coming.

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

Sep/26/22 11:37:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I asked the member for Charlottetown earlier what perhaps we could have done before this storm hit. We knew it was coming days ahead of time. There are procedures, I know, for calling in the military. The province needs to request it. In this case, we knew this was going to be a bad storm. We knew it was going to be the storm of the century. We knew we would need help. Would it not have been better to have some members of the armed forces on Prince Edward Island when the storm hit, so they could go to work immediately after the storm passed, and we could get things done in a timely manner? Perhaps there are other things we could have done that did not involve the armed forces, but we need to be working ahead of time now that we have the ability to predict these storms, especially a hurricane like this, where we knew precisely when it was going to hit.

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Mr. Robert Morrissey

Sep/26/22 11:39:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am unsure how preventive we could have been. The military was on the ground yesterday and the storm only subsided late Saturday. That is a very timely response from the Canadian military, which we accept and we do not take for granted. The other side of it is that, if we brought the military in several days before and the storm never advanced the way it did, then we would be accused of being alarmists and reactionary. It is always a fine line. I, for one, say we took all the steps that could be taken. Notices were given and people were on alert that this was a very dangerous storm, and they did heed that advice. All we could do was wait to see what damage would occur, assess it and deal with it, as is being done now.

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The Deputy Speaker

Sep/26/22 11:39:53 p.m.
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Before I get to debate, I want to say that it seems like the later we get in the evening, the longer the answers and questions get. There is an exponential thing here the later we get, so let us shorten them up a bit so we can get a few more done before we finish up at the top of the hour. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Sep/26/22 11:40:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is in fact a late hour, but it is a good metaphor for where we are on the climate crisis, because at the moment, we are standing on the very edge of too late regarding the advice we have been given by the international scientific process, the largest peer-review process in the history of human civilization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I want to start by acknowledging that we are standing on the traditional territory of the Algonquin nation. I say meegwetch. I also want to begin by saying how deeply moved, concerned and committed I think all of us are in this place as we assist the people of Atlantic Canada. We are also thinking of the people of Quebec, because the Magdalen Islands were impacted by the hurricane. I am also concerned for the people of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. I have heard nothing of what has happened to the French protectorate south of Newfoundland and Labrador. I have searched the news to see. That is a place I have visited and find intriguing and charming. Saint Pierre and Miquelon was pretty darned exposed to Fiona as she ran through eastern Canada, Quebec and every single one of our Atlantic provinces. As members have heard me mention a few times in this place, I am both a Cape Bretoner and British Columbian. I have family in both places and experienced the climate events that walloped British Columbia last summer, the summer of 2017 and many other occasions. I have also experienced previous hurricanes going through Atlantic Canada. My thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted. If the Minister of Emergency Preparedness happens to be watching, I also want to send him our good thoughts. I know he is recovering from knee surgery, as I did recently, and it is no picnic. I am sure he is working really hard from wherever he is to deal with emergency preparedness now. Tonight's debate raised a lot of commonalities. I want to speak to those because I think it is important when we find things in common. So often we hear people speaking of the impacts of hurricane Fiona: no phones, no cellphones, no electricity and a real sense of isolation. I can say those very same things run through a lot of climate events that have happened in the last few years. In my own riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands, we had entirely bracketed the week of Christmas 2018. Many people within the riding had no land lines, no cellphones and no electricity, particularly in the Gulf Islands, an experience very much like the one we have heard of, with people running out with their chainsaws clearing trees out of the way, trying to help neighbours, reaching elderly neighbours who were alone at Christmas and getting help to people because no other help was coming. The same thing was true in Ashcroft. I talked to the fire chief there about the summer of 2017 when they were on evacuation warnings. This is the interior of B.C., not far from Lytton in the riding of Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon. The fire chief said they did not know what to do. They had no phones, no cellphones and no power and were told they were on evacuation alert. They did not know how they were going to let their citizens know if they had to evaluate. They now think the technology we need is a really big bell at the fire station so they can warn the town. Our technology is running up against some fairly grim limits that are set by extreme weather events that knock out all our technology. We need to really pay attention to this. The same thing was said of what happened during the floods that occurred in November. Everybody was there with no phones, no cellphones and no electricity, so we have some commonalities. We say Atlantic Canadians are resilient, neighbour helps neighbour, but I would like to say Canadians are resilient, neighbour helps neighbour, whether one is as person on the Gulf Islands of my riding or the interior of B.C., a farmer on the Prairies who needs help or an Atlantic Canadian. I do not even think there is a rural-urban divide to the extent that it is possible to help in an urban centre. I think rural Canadians have more skills to handle the collapse of things all around them, but I think the heart and soul of every Canadian is to help everybody who is a neighbour, to get out there and pitch in when a community is in trouble. I think that Atlantic Canada's provincial governments, every single one of them, and the federal government, did a remarkable job in warning people. The number of lives lost is tragic in this storm, but we lost 800 or 900 people in B.C. last summer because of the heat dome, which was completely predictable right down to the hour yet the provincial government ignored it, never called for an emergency and never warned communities. There is a difference when governments respond appropriately. I want to give credit where credit is due here. The governments of Nova Scotia, P.E.I., New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the federal government identified early that this was going to be really bad and did their best to tell people to stay home and not take chances. That saved lives. Forgive me for being angry about it, but the provincial government of British Columbia cost lives last year when it decided not to call for a state of emergency, not to warn communities and not to open cooling centres. I hope we have learned, by these comparing the two kinds of disasters, that provincial governments play a big role here. They have to step up early and say it is an emergency and that they need help. When they do that, the federal partner has to reach out as well. There are two parts to this debate that we have had tonight. What we do immediately to help people and help people rebuild has been raised. Quite a few members have noted that we cannot necessarily rebuild exactly where we were. We have to have a resilience. We have to adapt to a changed circumstance of extreme weather events that have not yet finished doing their worst. They will continue to worsen. That is baked into the climate science. However, we do know that, as we rebuild and help people, that help must be real and tangible and not just empty words. I have mentioned, more than a few times tonight, that the people of Lytton are still waiting to see a town. People are still waiting to be rebuilt where they are. My husband's farm is a family place but his daughter had been living there and nearly died in the heat dome. Literally, the temperature at my husband's farm last summer hit 50°C and my step-daughter Julia nearly died. They are not there anymore but the house has been pretty steadily occupied by people who have no place to go. Last summer there was a wave, first, of people who had lost their homes in the fires and then of people who had lost their homes in the floods, so the house has proven to be very helpful for lots of people who have no place to live. This is the reality of the climate emergency, the bleeding edge of it, which is in places like Lytton, Ashcroft and now Atlantic Canada. The second part of how we respond is this. What do we learn about climate science? How was this hurricane affected by climate events such as the warming ocean? We know that the heating of our atmosphere dumps itself into our oceans. I find this astonishing. Every single second of every minute of every hour of every day the oceans absorb, due to the climate crisis, the energy equivalent of seven Hiroshima bombs. No wonder the ocean south of Nova Scotia has been heating. It has been heating for some time. The hurricanes come up the eastern seaboard, tracking along the gulf stream, and the water does not cool down the way it used to. The average temperature for the water south of Nova Scotia, pre-climate change, used to be about 15°C in September at this time of year. If we were to look at the temperature records for last week, it was 20°C, then 18°C and had dropped to 17°C the day that Fiona hit Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and all of the adjacent areas, but it was accompanied by extraordinary low barometric pressure. Several members have mentioned this. In fact, it was the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded from any storm in Canada. As well, we had a wind shear event, which, as the hon. member for Charlottetown mentioned, was the big surprise for P.E.I. The wind storm was not really like any hurricane they had ever seen before. We need to pay attention to the climate advice. That means the Government of Canada, as hard as it is for the Liberals to do, must recognize that the IPCC has warned us that if we do not stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, if we do not ensure that they peak and begin to drop before 2025, it will be too late to hold to 1.5°C or even 2°C. That is why it really matters that we get this right, because the window will close on 1.5°C or 2°C before the next election. That means the government has to turn itself inside out. The Liberal caucus has to be the crucible of decision-making for whether we want our children to survive in a livable world with a functioning civilization.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Sep/26/22 11:50:37 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her speech tonight and her stories about the heat dome in B.C. My hon. colleague from the NDP is probably going to bring this up as well, but around the case for mitigation, could the member share her thoughts on how we go forward on mitigating some of these climate change effects that we are experiencing in Canada?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Sep/26/22 11:51:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Green Party did submit a very long piece of advice to the consultation the government is running on how we adapt and what changes we could make. We went through what we could do for farmers and the forest industry. We have to put saving lives up front. We have to make sure that if there is a heat dome we actually get people to safety. One of the more chilling things I heard in preparing that report on adaptation, which could be found on my non-partisan website, elizabethmaymp.ca, was from Professor Blair Feltmate from the University of Waterloo, who said that 700 British Columbians died in the heat dome, but if we had had a power failure at the same time, which is not far-fetched, thousands would have died. We have to think about each one of these major kinds of events, whether it is a hurricane, a flood, a fire or a wind event, and figure out how we keep people safe. There are many ways, and they come from the practicality of members like the member for Peace River—Westlock.

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

Sep/26/22 11:52:19 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the member has pointed out here many times the dangers that we face. Even if we stopped all carbon emissions in the world right now, we would still be in this situation for centuries where we would be having these incredible hurricanes, catastrophic forest fires and floods. That would not stop. What we are trying to stop is making things worse. This is only going to get worse. There is this case for adaptation. We have to deal with the situation as it is now. I just wanted to touch on the heat dome, whether it occurs in B.C. or Alberta or wherever next time. This brings me back to P.E.I. as well. P.E.I. has a program around heat pumps. A really serious investment by the federal government in a heat pump program would allow people to have cooling, especially for low-income Canadians and especially in British Columbia, where not many people have air conditioning. That is what killed people. They were stuck in their homes. They basically got too hot. We could save a lot of people if we provide low-income Canadians with heat pumps that would get us off natural gas and other forms of heating, and at the same time provide the cooling necessary to perhaps save them in a heat dome event.

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