SoVote

Nov/3/22 6:22:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when an election comes, we will be campaigning on our own terms, just as we work here on our own terms every day to advance in this place the things we committed to advance for the people who voted for us. We are doing that to the best of our ability, and rather effectively on a number of items, I would say. When it comes to inflationary spending, we should look at the GST rebate. It is targeted at the people who have the least amount of money in the country and who have seen extraordinary increases in the price of groceries and rent. That money is not going to chase more goods. That money is going to try to keep their boat afloat to buy the things they used to buy. Therefore, the idea that somehow doubling the GST rebate is inflationary is simply false. The poor are not driving inflation in Canada, and if the goal of government policy is to help them get through these difficult and trying times, it will not be contributing to inflation.

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Context: House Hansard - 124 - Nov/3/22

Hon. Greg Fergus (Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the President of the Treasury Board, Lib.)

Nov/3/22 6:58:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, every time I listen to my hon. colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands, I learn a lot. I would like to thank her for her excellent speech and her analysis of the fall economic statement. The member mentioned that inflation was not typical this time. The Minister of Finance and her department also recognized that fact. I listen to my colleague quite often, and I have a very honest question for her. We know that even if we stop all economic activity, there is a time lag between our activities and the greenhouse gas emissions. That means there will be some modifications and changes in our climate regardless of what we do now. Is my colleague also telling us that she believes that there will always be inflationary pressure from now on because of climate change and that it will persist until we resolve the climate crisis?

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Context: House Hansard - 124 - Nov/3/22

Ms. Elizabeth May

Nov/3/22 6:59:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hull—Aylmer for his excellent question. We are now in a long emergency, as a book title called it. Madam Speaker, about a decade ago, there was a book by James Kunstler called The Long Emergency, which predicted that we were going to see our economy significantly rocked by what will happen as fossil fuels become more expensive as we move away from fossil fuels. The Long Emergency was about where we are now: real costs are increasing, a real dislocation. That does not mean ongoing inflationary trends. It does mean thinking about how a society flourishes despite these very unusual headwinds. They are unusual now because they are new, but they are not going away. We have to think about that and make sure that we design our economy and our economic signals of what makes us better off. The GDP is not a good measurement to help us chart a course through an ongoing climate emergency. We need to chart our course. I think this is a global challenge. At the end of the Second World War nations met at Bretton Woods to figure out what are the global and shared financial institutions to help us get through that. We need new institutions and a review, a new Bretton Woods, that would help us with both the post-COVID impacts on our economies and the current climate impacts on our economies. We cannot rewrite the laws of atmospheric physics and chemistry. We can easily rewrite the way we want our economy to work if all the economies and central banks of the world get together and say, “This is what we are looking at. How do we protect the citizens and the communities of all, and, I would hope, the non-human species of Mother Earth?”

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