SoVote

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

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.
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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.
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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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Ms. Elizabeth May

Sep/26/22 11:54:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with my friend from South Okanagan—West Kootenay, but I would add that we need to make sure that we have distributed energy systems, such as solar panels to run generators to make sure that people who are relying on a heat pump do not have it conk out because their power grid has gone down at the same time. When we are looking at Fiona, right now people are running generators to keep themselves going. The ice storm event was another climate event that affected an urban area. Those people who had generators were able to help their neighbours that did not have generators. There is a lot the government could do, but I think the number one thing is to make sure our electricity grid works east, west, north and south, and continually recharges itself with renewable energy so that the grid itself is the big battery we need.

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

Sep/26/22 11:55:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands talked about the promise of help versus the delivery of help. We have seen that this is a concern in the debate here. We experienced it after hurricane Dorian in 2019, when the help that was promised did not arrive for a lot of our municipalities. We heard about the floods last year in B.C. Could the member expand more on that issue and where she has seen that happen, where the issue seems to fade and the money does not flow?

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Ms. Elizabeth May

Sep/26/22 11:55:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is apropos given the last debate we were having about the fixed link. I was actually in the minister of the environment's office when we signed off on that being the first piece of infrastructure that adapted to climate change, because it was built for a one-metre sea level rise. We need to stop taking our attention off an issue once it is no longer in the front pages, and we need to find a place where we get the money. I respectfully suggest that given the profiteering by big oil right now from the profits they get from the war in Ukraine, we should double their tax for one year, from 15% to 30%. That would generate $8 billion that we could dedicate to making sure we protect communities and help them rebuild.

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The Deputy Speaker

Sep/26/22 11:56:24 p.m.
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Tonight is full of surprises, and I have learned all kinds of things. It is amazing how many people sitting in the House were involved in the Confederation Bridge. Continuing debate, the hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

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

Sep/26/22 11:56:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will assure you that I did not have very much to do with the building of the Confederation Bridge. Tonight, we are debating in this emergency debate another instance of nature trying to kill us. We have seen that a big hurricane has hit the east coast of Canada. To some degree, the very nature of civilization or being civilized is our war against nature. It is our war to ensure that nature does not kill us. To be civilized is to live in a warm home. To be civilized is to have clean running water. To be civilized is to have clothing that allows us to function when nature is trying to kill us, whether that means too warm or too cold. Humans are fragile beings and we are therefore always in a struggle to survive. The very fact that people live on every square inch of this planet is a testament to our dominion over nature. We do live in every corner of the globe, so there is a resilience that comes from the human experience. As an Albertan, I want to extend our support for the Maritimes and Quebec at this time, and I want to say a bit about the many folks who have moved from that part of the country to my riding to support work in the oil patch. They have helped me in my campaigns along the way as well. They are Sonya Andrews from Newfoundland, JD Dennis from Nova Scotia, Glenn Mitchell from New Brunswick and Jordan Johnson from P.E.I. All of these folks I am pleased to call friends, and I know that every one of them has family back home they are concerned about. They will likely be heading there to help with the cleanup efforts. This is the Canadian story: When our neighbours are in trouble, we step up. We head out and gas up our chainsaw, and do what we have to do to show up and ensure that our neighbours thrive and flourish and that we collectively, to be civilized people, war with nature to survive. I am very excited to add my voice to the debate tonight, and I look forward to the resiliency of Canadians as we rebuild eastern Canada.

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The Deputy Speaker

Sep/26/22 11:59:33 p.m.
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I want to use my prerogative quickly to thank everyone for their interventions. As I said on Friday, if members know someone in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I., Îles de la Madeleine or Newfoundland and Labrador, please give them a call. Reach out and see how they are doing because it is going to be a while that they will be looking for some help and waiting for their power to be restored, especially those folks in my constituency of West Nova. It being midnight, I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until later this day at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1). (The House adjourned at 12 a.m.)

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