44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 6, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, as I ask this question, my community is thick with smoke from the fires. I know the smoke from the fires is in Toronto and I know it is in Ottawa. Our country is on fire, and I have been watching the shenanigans in the House go on. We have work to do as parliamentarians.
My Conservative colleagues are talking about their rights. I support the rights of opposition, but we need to get legislation passed. I am very concerned about the ongoing efforts to obstruct the money needed to get support for critical minerals for clean energy. We know that the leader of the Conservative Party has ridiculed the investments in EV technology. He has been in my region ridiculing EV technology even though our communities are dependent on base metal mining and critical mineral mining.
I want to ask the Deputy Prime Minister not only about the willingness of the government to put money on the table to know we can get a clean energy economy moving as quickly as it needs to be in the face of the climate crisis, but also whether the government is willing to put the legislative tools in place so we can tell Canadian workers, and particularly energy workers in western Canada, that we have their backs, that there is a plan and that this Parliament actually can get something done that is beyond the circus antics we have witnessed.
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Madam Speaker, I am speaking today from northern Ontario, where the air is thick with the smoke from out-of-control fires. I know that people in Ottawa are dealing with the heavy smoke from out-of-control fires. I just spoke with a senior citizen in Toronto who ended up in hospital because of his lungs, and he was told it is because of the smoke from the fires.
Halifax burns. Abitibi burns. Sept-Îles burns. Alberta has burned for over a month, with 30,000 people evacuated. What we are dealing with is an unprecedented crisis as the climate catastrophe descends upon us, yet in the House, we see shenanigans, game playing, chest-thumping and climate denial.
I am speaking today about the need to get the budget implementation legislation passed so that we can address serious issues facing our country and our planet. Certainly, the people I represent want to know that the dental care plan for seniors is not going to be obstructed by the man who lives in the 19-room mansion at Stornoway with his own personal chef. They have a right to dental care, and they want that dental care passed. I will stay night after night until we get that passed. It is the same for the people who are calling us about food insecurity and inflation; they want us to act.
However, more than ever, I am hearing from people who are deeply concerned about the climate catastrophe that is unfolding. From Lucretius, the Roman poet, we have what is called the “Lucretius problem”, which is that a human being cannot imagine a river bigger than any river they have ever seen. Perhaps, for the longest time, we could not imagine the catastrophe of a planet unbalanced, and then Lytton burned. Then Fort McMurray burned, with nine billion dollars' worth of damages. Then there was the Paradise fire in California. Then Australia burned. Then, last year, the Arctic Circle was burning. This year, in Canada, more land will burn than in the entire history of our country. This is not a one-off; this is the accelerating impacts of the global temperature rise. Parliament does need to show Canadians that we are going to do something about it. Part of this is the work that we have been doing as New Democrats to push the government on embracing a sustainable energy future. The time is now. In this budget, we have seen some significant promises, and we need to make those promises happen.
There is another urgency in terms of the climate crisis, which is the urgency of not being left behind. In the nine months since Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, 31 battery manufacturing plants have come on stream. This will amount to 1,000 gigawatt hours of energy by 2030, enough to support the manufacture of 10 million to 13 million electric vehicles a year. We cannot be left behind while America shoots ahead. In energy production, in the nine months since the IRA, companies in the United States have announced 96 gigawatts of new clean power within an eight-month period. That is enough to power 20 million homes.
This is the work we have been doing as New Democrats, yet we see the Conservatives, who are long-standing climate deniers, make fun of and interfere with this funding, and they are now doing everything they can to block the funding from getting out to kick-start clean energy projects.
When the leader of the Conservative Party, the member from Stornoway, came to my riding, he was making all kinds of jokes about electric vehicles. I checked his work resume, and I know he has never worked in manufacturing or the mines, but my region is going to be dependent on the critical mineral supply chain for jobs and for long-term sustainability. We know that the Conservatives have attacked and undermined the investments at the EV plant in St. Thomas. They have also had nothing to say about the need to get the battery plant in Windsor off the ground, even though that represents thousands of jobs.
Just recently, at the committee on natural resources, the member for Calgary Centre claimed that the critical mineral strategy was a minor contribution to energy. He said that EV plants in the supply chain will have little or nothing to offer for 20 years. That is just false, and I want to get down to that right now, because we have been dealing with disinformation from the Conservatives consistently.
Peak oil is when oil reaches a historic high. This was supposed to be in 2030, but the massive changes in renewable energy have reduced that to 2025 or possibly 2024. This year, the investment in renewable energy was almost twice that of oil and gas. The urgent point is that Canada does not leave its energy workers behind. Just this past week, I held a press conference with the Alberta Federation of Labour, with which I have worked closely on this, and the energy workers there who are ready to embrace the clean energy opportunities in hydrogen and in geothermal. They have the skills and the ideas, but what we all know is that the clock is ticking. We have to address this.
Whether the Conservatives want to admit it or not, the transition is happening. This is what I hear from energy workers in Alberta. They know this. The day after Danielle Smith won the election, 1,500 Suncor employees, 10% of its workforce, were fired. Suncor is getting rid of its workers and shifting to automation. That is where the big money is. Over the last nine years, we have seen Texas lose 110,000 jobs for oil workers. Alberta lost 45,000 jobs over the last nine years in the oil sector. Those jobs are not coming back.
We need to retool. We need to build an economy that is actually focused on creating sustainable energy from our immense resources. There is no other country in the world that has the resources we have or the skilled workers. However, this country is being blocked by an immature opposition, in terms of the Conservatives, who continue to deny the climate catastrophe. I encourage them to step out and go take a big, deep breath of that smoke-filled air, to realize that the fire is here. It is coming. It is not going away. We have to address it.
There are many shortfalls in the present government, which I will continue to call out. There are many shortfalls in this budget, but there are key areas we have to move on with a sense of urgency and a sense of responsibility for the Canadian people. We have to get this passed so that the national dental care strategy is actually able to help seniors this year, as was promised.
We have to get the funding and support out there to start the clean energy strategy so that we are not left behind in terms of our American, European or Chinese competition. We actually need to move quickly on legislation that will enable the protections in place to make sure that communities are part of the sustainable jobs transition and that energy workers are at the table; energy workers are the ones with the expertise, and we need to be hearing from them at this time.
I encourage my colleagues to put the June game playing away for a little bit. People sent us to get a job done. They sent us to work. I am here to work. I am here to make sure that energy workers, natural resources workers, miners in the communities I represent and young people who are watching the planet burn around them are not going to look at a Parliament that ignores that and plays games.
We have a job to do in the midst of a worsening climate crisis, and we have the potential to do it, but the window for action is narrowing. I urge my colleagues to step up. Let us get this thing voted on and then let us get on to other really important matters that are facing our country at this insecure time.
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Madam Speaker, certainly, the Leader of the Opposition has always acted in his own interest. The guy owns a house in Ottawa, but he gets to move into Stornoway, a 19-room mansion, with its chefs and groundskeepers. He has had public dental care for nearly 20 years, paid for, for him and his family, yet he expects us to disrupt Parliament to the point that senior citizens do not get dental care.
That is not leadership; that is grandstanding. We need to be able to reassure Canadians, at a time when they have good reason not to trust politicians, that we are actually here to do a job. We are not just here to pull stunts and light our hair on fire, but to deliver something.
I do not know what the problem with the member in Stornoway is, but senior citizens on my watch are going to get access to dental care. They deserve it. They have a right to it.
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Ouch, Madam Speaker, I am hurt.
I looked up Mr. Stornoway's job record, because I thought maybe I would understand him better. I cannot find that he has ever actually had a job other than professional politician. I was a carpenter and a house builder; I had—
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Madam Speaker, that is a double ouch. The Conservatives certainly have a raw wound there. I was talking only about the member who moved out of his home in Ottawa and moved into Stornoway, which is a fact. That is a 19-room mansion funded by taxpayers.
I was just saying that I had a job; I had many jobs. When I ran my own business, I had to go to dentists to try to get a deal on dental care for my children. The member who lives in Stornoway has never had to do that. He has lived pretty damn well off the taxpayer. He is telling senior citizens in 2023 that they have no right to dental care; he said he will do anything, including jumping up and down all night long in Parliament, to stop this from happening.
He should tell his chef in the morning to give him some eggs, some yogourt, some granola and some green tea to calm him, so he is not just a rage bucket. That way, he can actually show up in Parliament to do some work.
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Madam Speaker, I certainly think the New Democrats would be more than willing to do a workshop for the Bloc on the years that we have spent, time and time again, fighting for senior citizens and fighting for health care, because it is the right thing to do. We will continue to do that.
As for the member's comments on the fires, yes, we are very concerned about the fires in Abitibi. They are having a huge impact in my region. We are very concerned about Sept-Îles. This is why we need to be seen to be delivering for the Canadian people, and I look forward to working with the Bloc and maybe helping them understand how much work we have done on health care as a party. In fact, we are the party that brought in national health care, and we will continue to defend it.
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