SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Oct/24/22 12:14:09 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Mr. Speaker, the member said that when it comes to extracting critical resources like the products required for lithium batteries, Canada would somehow be standing on the sidelines. I think those were his words. I would encourage him to talk to his Conservative colleague, the member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, who had a pretty big smile on her face last summer when the Prime Minister showed up in our area to announce that Umicore would be establishing a multi-billion dollar facility in her riding, the largest lithium battery facility in North America, for that matter. It does not appear as though corporate industry is waiting on the sidelines. It is jumping in feet first into the Ontario sector because it knows there is an opportunity here. More importantly, the member now talks about lithium and the transition toward lithium and electrifying the vehicles that we have. Does that mean the Conservatives have now come to realize what the future holds, that the future is in electrification and we will be moving away from fossil fuel-burning vehicles towards lithium and electrification—

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Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Mr. Jeremy Patzer

Oct/24/22 12:15:22 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-5

Mr. Speaker, we always favour an approach whereby industry is given an opportunity to lead and we let people, the consumer, have a choice. Mandating things in or out is not a fair market approach. If electric vehicles are the best solution, providing the best value and product for a person to use, consumers will buy them. However, that is not the approach we are seeing from the government. What I was referring to in the example I gave in my speech was the fact that the government negotiated a three-year window to source lithium regionally, tariff-free. It is going to take 10 years to do so. We heard that at committee. We have also seen other lithium projects in this country cancelled or scrapped after millions of dollars of investment in trying to get them going, because of regulatory uncertainty put in place by the government. Those are the issues we are seeing and continue to see not being addressed. Conservatives definitely support those projects where we have development and resources, but the government is getting in the way and preventing anything from happening sooner rather than later.

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Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Mr. Dan Albas (Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC)

Oct/24/22 1:46:47 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Mr. Speaker, I find the hon. member for Dufferin—Caledon refreshing when he speaks on these issues. Liberal hypocrisy seems to be front and centre on Bill S-5. This is from the same government that starts talking about the need to fast-track certain projects, like LNG. It is talking about lithium without actually talking about the fact that our regulatory system is broken and without talking about the fact that one would need so much water. By the same token, where would it get the water and where would it source this lithium from? The government talks about a so-called “right to a healthy environment”, when it is really a socio-economic factor that an official will take into account during a CEPA regulatory application. Again, when it comes to the government's hypocrisy on these issues in this bill, what does the member have to say about this?

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Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Mr. Kyle Seeback

Oct/24/22 1:47:40 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Mr. Speaker, I cannot ask for a better question than one about Liberal hypocrisy. When we talk about the environment, the government will not approve projects in Canada, let us say a project with lithium, so that project goes on and gets done somewhere else in the world, because the world needs lithium. It goes to a country that has carbon emissions that are 10 to 15 times higher than what would happen if the project were done in Canada. It is generally a country that has lower environmental standards on all other measures of the environment. These countries have terrible human rights records and terrible employment standards for their employees. The government says it has cleaned up its balance sheet, but the global balance sheet on all those metrics gets so much worse. There is no carbon dome over Canada. When we export our carbon emissions to other countries, along with the jobs and the tax revenue, all we do is make the world a much worse place on all those things we talked about. This is the same kind of thinking that the Liberals bring forward with the right to a healthy environment, which they do not define and no one knows what it is, and with respect to the fact that anyone can assess a substance. All these things are absolutely nonsensical.

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