44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 29, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague a question following along the same line as the last question. What is the risk to the Canadian economy and workers if we do not put into place a clear plan, and if we are not strategic about supporting our workers as the world's economy is developing to address climate change? What risk does Canada face by burying our head in the sand and not acknowledging that the jobs of the future are also the jobs that are going to solve the climate crisis?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for that question because it is so important that we recognize that fighting climate change not only helps us to avert the natural disasters we are seeing in our country, but also that, more than that, it is economic policy. It is so important we make sure our economy is a net-zero economy. When we talk to people in industry, and I have talked with different people from companies around the world, they say that they looked at Canada because we have one of the cleanest grids in the world. We can do better than that; we can have a net-zero grid, which is what we are working toward.
More than that, we can talk about things like, for example, the EU, which in only a few days is putting in place a border carbon adjustment. If we want to be able to continue to trade with that important bloc, getting rid of things like a price on carbon pollution and stopping action to fight climate change would make our trade relationships more difficult.
If we believe in a strong economy, in workers and in trade, we need to fight climate change. This bill is part of the work that we need to do.
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Madam Speaker, in my hon. colleague's speech, she spoke about how the Conservatives view tackling climate change through technology, yet they oppose the Atlantic accord, which would allow for technology development in Atlantic Canada. The member also spoke about the cost of energy in Atlantic Canada. However, once again, by blocking the Atlantic accord, Conservatives block economic development in Atlantic Canada, the ability to reduce energy prices in Atlantic Canada and good jobs for Atlantic Canadians.
Do the Conservatives even believe climate change is real? How do they plan to address it if they continue to block technological advancements? Why will they not allow Atlantic Canadians to have the good, clean jobs of the future?
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Madam Speaker, my colleague said she wanted to base her speech on facts, but there is apparently some alternate world out there about facts.
She mentioned that the fossil fuel sector has just less than 200,000 employees in Canada. The clean energy sector already has 430 employees, and it is expected to grow by more than 200,000 over the next 10 years. That is where her constituents and workers across Canada are looking.
I will close by saying she should read John Vaillant's book Fire Weather, which is about her province, about the world, about climate change and about the industry that she is such a fierce protector of.
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- Sep/29/23 11:29:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the oil and gas sector caused a 2.1% increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and yet the government is not cracking down on oil companies. Instead, it is rewarding them.
Last week, the government announced that it wanted to double oil production off the coast of Newfoundland. Oil companies are polluting so much that they are increasing the entire country's emissions. However, instead of asking them to reduce those emissions, the federal government is paving the way for them to generate more.
When will this government stop being part of the climate change problem?
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- Sep/29/23 11:30:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I invite my hon. colleague to read our climate change plan, which was praised by the entire environmental community, by scientists and by municipalities, including the City of Montreal. The plan shows that the oil and gas industry will have to co-operate, as will every other industry in Canada.
That is why we already have methane regulations to reduce emissions of this very potent greenhouse gas by at least 40% by 2025. That is one of the most ambitious targets on the planet. We already have a clean fuel standard to force gas and diesel suppliers to reduce the environmental footprint of their fuel.
We are taking action to combat climate change.
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- Sep/29/23 11:48:53 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to remind my hon. colleague that federal carbon pricing does not apply in Quebec. For many, many years, Quebec has had its own system, a cap-and-trade system, for greenhouse gas emissions
I would also like to remind him that it is certainly not common sense to ignore the impact climate change is having on our farmers across the country, especially in Quebec. I meet farmers who are experiencing the repercussions of climate change: too much water, not enough water, too much heat, not enough heat, pests. However, the Conservatives have not said a single word about what they are going to do to help our farmers deal with the consequences of climate change.
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- Sep/29/23 11:55:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, last week, during the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit in New York, I was at an event with West Kelowna's fire chief, Jason Brolund. Chief Brolund vividly described the trauma of fighting this summer's massive wildfires, of sending his team into danger, of fighting to protect homes and lives. It was a miracle that no one died in Kelowna. He called it a once-in-a-lifetime fire, but then told us it was the second once-in-a-lifetime fire he has faced in 20 years. That is the impact of climate change.
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- Sep/29/23 11:56:09 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have seen the impact of climate change devastating provinces right across this country and impacting most significantly our farmers. In winter, we saw record cold temperatures, leading to damaged homes, businesses and crop results.
Canadian farmers are on the front line of climate change, and that is exactly why we are investing nearly half a billion dollars in programs like the agricultural technology program and the climate solutions program. We will continue to do everything that is necessary to help our farmers deal with the increasing effects of climate change.
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- Sep/29/23 11:58:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, in 2023, it is incomprehensible, and I would even say immoral, that a political party aspiring to form the government has nothing to say on the issue of climate change, when tens of thousands of people were displaced by forest fires this summer. The smoke was detected as far away as New York and, even further, on the coasts of Europe.
Meanwhile, the official position of the Conservative Party of Canada is that climate change does not exist, even though it is costing Canadians tens of billions of dollars. That is outrageous.
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- Sep/29/23 12:26:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to present a petition.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned us repeatedly that rising temperatures over the next two decades will bring widespread devastation and extreme weather. Petitioners are certainly feeling the impacts in Canada today with increased flooding, wildfires and extreme temperatures. Addressing the climate crisis requires a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, the federal government committed to cap and cut emissions from the oil and gas sector to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to move forward immediately with bold emissions caps for the oil and gas sector that are comprehensive in scope and realistic in achieving the necessary targets that Canada has set to reduce emissions by 2030.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague. After yesterday, when we heard all the Conservatives stand up and say they were against fighting climate change, would she not agree that it is important to continue the fight on the federal side?
That is exactly what my bill aims to do, specifically take action on the federal side. Is it not important to think about workers and ensure sustainable jobs for the net-zero economy of the future?
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Madam Speaker, I too would like to sincerely congratulate my colleague from Repentigny on the quality of her speech, as well as her ability to remain focused. During part of her speech, she had to put up with three annoying members behind her who would not stop talking. I just wanted to say that I admire how she remained focused on her message.
I am always surprised that this Liberal government, which claims to be a strong advocate for the environment and active in the fight against climate change, continues to support and invest massively in oil companies.
How does my colleague break down and understand the Liberal government's approach to climate change? Does that approach, by any chance, reflect the fact that they are trying to have it both ways, from an electoral perspective? What other reason could they have for continuing to support the oil industry when the planet is falling apart?
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Madam Speaker, I have just one minute, but it would take me hours to explain everything that is wrong with the government's approach to fighting climate change.
The former Liberal environment minister, Mrs. McKenna, said that Canada could not be part of such a bad movie. That is not nothing. She said that it did not make sense for Canada to rank second in the world when it comes to expanding oil production.
What I find really too bad is that when government ministers open their mouths all I hear are speeches from oil companies.
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Madam Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate. It is a debate that, certainly in respect of the larger issue of climate change, is the most important of our time. We are being called on to try to navigate what is an increasingly challenging, dangerous and expensive climate crisis. This summer was just the latest and most extreme example so far of what failure to take climate change seriously looks like.
I grew up in a house where climate change was an important theme. At one time it was called global warming. NDP MPs were the first to raise the issue of global warming in the House of Commons as far back as the 1980s. This is a debate that many of us in Canada have been wanting to have for a long time. We have been debating climate change in various ways over the last decade or more.
However, I do not think that the quality of the debate has risen to the occasion. That is not to say that particular people in the context of that debate have not done a good job of presenting the kinds of ideas that I think we need in order to be able to adequately tackle the climate, but I think if we take a step back and look at the debate as a whole, it has not served us well. We are not where we need to be.
These are not my words, but I think they are helpful to kind of get a sense of some of the pitfalls in the climate debate. I have heard others say that those pitfalls are encapsulated by the three Ds: denial, delay and despair. There is still no shortage of denial, even in the House of Commons, respecting the real threats that the climate poses to life on planet Earth, and, if things do not get that dire, real threats that are posed to the economy.
This year, we saw some of the worst examples so far of that. It seems to me that, for a number of years now, we have been in the unfortunate position of having to say that we have seen some of the worst examples. If the folks who study these things for a living are to be believed, and I think they should be, we are in for more bad weather events and other things that will have a cost not only in human life, property damage and all the rest but also to the very economy that proponents of denial often say they want to save.
Today's bill is not perfect by any stretch, but it is an important part of putting infrastructure in place to be able to deal with the economic impacts of climate change, and to try to put workers at the centre of that.
Often we will hear from opponents of legislation like this that it is all about shutting down the oil and gas industry, and that it is going to hurt workers and the economy. I want to take a moment to speak to that criticism. I do not think that is true, frankly. There is a lot of the pain that workers in the oil and gas industry have been experiencing. We have seen moments of international pricing of fossil fuels falling.
I remember an important debate early on in the 42nd Parliament, around 2016 or 2017, not long after I was first elected, when the international price of western crude plummeted. It had some very real impacts for workers in Alberta and for workers in the oil and gas sector across the country. That was painful for them and painful for us to watch, and merited a response that was centred on workers and how to support workers at that time.
I want to just take a moment to say that the interests of the oil and gas industry and the interests of oil and gas workers are sometimes aligned, but not always. In fact, over the last couple of years, what we have seen is an increase in extraction. If we listen to Conservatives in particular, that can get lost in the noise. It sounds as if oil and gas companies are being told to shut down and cut production. That is actually not true. There are certainly some of us who think that unlimited and unbridled growth in extraction is a recipe to worsen the climate crisis.
There is a reasonable debate to be had about what an appropriate amount of extraction every year could look like and what would be sustainable, but that is not the debate that we hear from Conservatives.
Over the last couple of years, we have seen a decrease in employment in oil and gas, which is why I think a lot of people who work in oil and gas feel that the sector is in trouble, but if we look at the corporate readouts, the fact is that they are extracting more oil and gas than ever and making more money than ever.
Part of the way that they are doing that is by having very close political allies that they have worked for a long time to capture. This has even reached the point that Suncor recently held off on announcing 1,500 layoffs that it was making in a year where it had just almost doubled its previous year's profits.
In 2022, Suncor made $2.74 billion in profit. Despite having one of their most profitable years ever, almost double the profits from 2021, which itself was a year of record profit, it decided to lay off 1,500 people.
It did not just do that when it suited them. It did it when it suited its political allies in Alberta. It waited until after the Alberta election to announce those layoffs.
It was not that long ago that a story surfaced about Conservative MPs who, on the dime of a right-wing Hungarian think tank and an anti-carbon tax lobby in Canada, flew to the U.K. and were treated to lavish dinners, including $600 of champagne and expensive meals, because they are part of a political and economic club that benefits from the profit-making of the oil and gas industry, which I say, again, does not always mean something that directly benefits workers.
We see a decline in employment even as we see an increase in production and profit in the oil and gas sector. Therefore, I think Canadians should be suspicious of the denial argument, because there is a lot of money in the oil and gas sector and a lot of people who benefit from that.
What New Democrats are concerned to see is that workers in Alberta and across the country continue to have gainful employment, good union jobs, where they can be assured of good workplace safety and health standards when they go to work. They should be able to go to their shift in the morning, come back at the end of the day and be paid well for the work they perform.
The economy is not static. The fact of the matter is that whether Canada seriously recognizes the threat that climate change represents to the planet and to our economy or not, our international allies and economic competitors are recognizing that.
As some in the House will know, I sit on the finance committee. We have heard from a number of people in the private sector who are talking about the incredible economic opportunities that decarbonization represents. There are opportunities in renewable energy and the emerging and growing electric vehicle market.
That is where the puck is going. I would say, of the oil and gas industry, particularly in Alberta, obviously the private sector has played a huge role in that. Obviously a lot of people in the private sector made a lot of money, and obviously a lot of Canadian workers have benefited, over the decades, from that, in terms of stable and well-paying employment. However, that industry was created with some very deliberate public policy and some very large investments.
That is the kind of foresight that a person like Peter Lougheed exhibited. If we took that same wisdom and apply it to today, what it entails is government once again looking at the public policy agenda and putting into place favourable conditions for those markets of the future.
This is not to say that the oil and gas industry is going to disappear overnight. In fact, we have a government right now that is pumping over $30 billion into a pipeline exactly because it does not believe the oil and gas industry is disappearing overnight.
I think that was a poor use of public funds. I think the opportunity cost of investing over $30 billion in a pipeline instead of investing it in the new energy economy will ultimately not serve Canadians well. We could have created a lot of employment and helped position Canada far more competitively in the new energy economy had we spent those public dollars in that economy instead of on a pipeline.
We have a government that is very invested in fossil fuels. It does not matter what the government does for the fossil fuel industry, including saying no to the NDP's calls for an excess profit tax on the oil and gas industry. We have an official opposition that cannot get the Liberals to do that here, although it is something some Conservative governments elsewhere have been willing to agree to.
The fossil fuel industry is alive and well in Canada. It is doing very well for itself. More and more, it is not passing that success on to workers, because the industry is finding ways to do more of that work with fewer workers. We are seeing that the oil and gas industry, including the companies and the shareholders, does not have the same loyalty to the workers that workers have shown to the industry.
New Democrats want to build an industry and have governments and public policy that are there for those workers as those companies find ways of moving, and even as they make money. In time, as the world economy shifts to a lower-carbon future, we need to make sure those workers are not left behind but that they are players with skills that are valued, and that people, not just in Canada but across the world, want to hire them for those skills in order to build out that new energy economy.
The path of denial really gets us nowhere. For too long, Canada, under the Liberals, has been on a path of delay. What does that look like? That looks like big investments in a pipeline, tens of billions of public dollars that, had we started spending five or six years ago, Canada would be in a much more competitive position in relation to our peers in terms of generating good union jobs in the emerging sectors.
I hear Conservatives often complaining about the fact that Canada's productivity growth has not kept up with that of our competitors. Business investment in Canada has been stagnant for a long time now. It is not because corporations have not had access to capital. In fact, many Canadian companies have large capital reserves, and they have seen the corporate tax rate go from 28% or 29% in the year 2000 to just 15% now. While that corporate tax rate was being reduced, the argument being made for it, among others, was that this tax reduction would allow Canadian companies to invest back into the Canadian economy. That is not what they have been doing with the money.
The new energy economy provides an opportunity, in at least two ways, to raise the level of business investment and the level of productivity. It is an opportunity for governments to make investments, for sure. We are starting to see some of that. Thankfully, the Biden administration in the U.S. provided real leadership on that. It was not until it provided that leadership that we saw the Liberals here really get going in a meaningful way on investments in the new energy economy. I think we are late to the table, and that is going to create challenges for Canada.
There is also a lot of private capital that wants to invest in renewables, and Canada has a lot going for it. We need to do it in the right way with indigenous people, instead of railroading them and railroading their rights to land and resources. I think Canada has a lot of offer in terms of natural resources, but we also have amazing workers with some awesome skills who can compete on the international stage. That would be a reason why international investors want to come here, and they do want to come here. However, they want certainty, and that is part of having predictability. We have seen a Conservative government, like the government in Alberta, win an election and then completely throw out plans for meaningful investment in renewables.
Conservatives like to talk a lot about how governments signal to the international community and the effects that can have on the economy. When we have a Conservative government like that run one way and then the day after, tear up major plans for investment in renewables, that says to the international investment community that it cannot put its money in Canada because it does not know what will happen when the political winds change.
In fact, in this case, it was not even a change of government. It was a government that got past the election test and figured that if it does this all now, four years from now when we have another election, maybe people will have forgotten about it. It completely changed course. How does that help Canada tell a credible story to international investors that want certainty and predictability on this front? Canada has been delaying for too long.
We are finally seeing some action from the government, but it is reactive and is in response to the Biden administration in the U.S. making the kinds of generational investments that ought to be made in the new energy economy in order to ensure that the United States has a serious foot in the door in that economy. Canada has to get with the program, but there is more than one way to participate in the new energy economy.
What New Democrats do not want to see is what we are starting to see in oil and gas, where workers are not at the centre of this. They get talked about but do not have a seat at the table, and at the end of day, if wealthy investors and shareholders are able to make extra money by screwing workers, they will do it. We are seeing it in the oil and gas sector. It is not the way we want the renewable sector to be set up.
The sustainable jobs act, which is a product of some of what we forced the Liberals to agree to in the confidence and supply agreement, is an attempt to start building infrastructure so that when we push past the denial and delay, we do not end up with the third “d”, which is despair, and people feeling that after all this, as we build the foundational infrastructure of a new energy economy, there is no real room for workers there and that workers are being pushed into new industries with lower standards for pay and working conditions. The only way to prevent that is to put workers right at the table.
That is not just a defensive manoeuvre for workers to be able to advocate for the wages and working conditions they properly ought to have. It is also an opportunity for Canadians, for public policy-makers and investors to have the wisdom of people who know how to do these jobs at the table. They will then be able to evaluate various specific proposals about building particular things and can ask if they make sense, if they are going to work out and what the challenges involved with them are, and not just the engineering challenges, because there are engineers for that. It will mean having people who are familiar with what it means to commute from Nova Scotia to Alberta to work on a project.
To be able to weigh in on how to get the human resources we need in order to build this new low-carbon infrastructure is a really important part of the story, and I believe that having workers at the table is not just good for workers but good for the projects to help us understand how to staff those projects, particularly in a tight labour market. Although I think this is true generally, they need to know how to do it in way that is genuinely attractive to the kinds of workers who have the talent, skills, education and training that we need in order to make these projects a success.
I talked a bit about what I think is a terrible mistake in Alberta to turn away from building up the renewable energy economy. I think it is a decision that goes against the enterprising spirit of Peter Lougheed back in the 1970s to set up an industry that would serve his province well for decades to come. The clean energy sector's GDP forecast, economists believe, is that it is set to grow by 58% by 2030. They are projecting only 9% growth in fossil fuels. If we want to go where the jobs are and the money is and if we want to take Canada's economy to the places it needs to go to remain competitive and continue providing good livelihoods for Canadian workers, that means investing in the clean energy sector and creating a policy environment that works for the clean energy sector and for workers.
In the United States, we have seen the private sector announce more than $110 billion in new clean energy manufacturing since the Inflation Reduction Act was put into place. That is an incredible amount of investment, and that means an incredible amount of work for American workers. We do not want Canadians to get left out of those opportunities. It does not make sense for Canadians to be left out of those opportunities if the concern is about workers and the future of families. As my colleague from Winnipeg Centre said very wisely earlier, it is not that Canadian workers love the oil and gas sector. What they love is good employment. What they love are fair wages. What they love is to be able to put food on their tables and afford a home.
In the future, going forward, there are going to be a lot of opportunities to do exactly that: put food on the table, afford a good home and have some financial security in clean energy jobs or in what I call the new energy economy. It is a lower-carbon economy—
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- Sep/29/23 1:24:02 p.m.
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The hon. member will be able to add more during questions and comments. We will not be able to get through all the questions and comments, but we will do the best we can.
The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and to the Minister of Natural Resources has the floor.
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Madam Speaker, this is where that question of the three Ds comes in. Workers do know, as everyone can see it. We could not miss this summer that there are real problems beginning to happen as a result of climate change. They pose real threats to human life and safety, our property and our economy. We cannot get away from that.
What is on offer in political alternatives? There is a party that is offering the idea that we can just ignore it and maybe it will go away. Too often we have seen from the government a willingness just to say, “Yes, that is important, and we are going to get to it”, and then it just keeps kicking the can down the road. In the face of that, it is easy to despair and say, “What do we do?”
We are not seeing leadership from government. What we are starting to see is some leadership in the market and that is because, thankfully—
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