44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 29, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. The most important part of it was when she spoke about new jobs in new technologies.
Does this bill not seek to help retrain workers in polluting industries, declining industries? There was no mention of that. In any case, I did not hear my colleague mention it in her speech.
If Canada is moving toward oil expansion, then there is no energy transition, and so there is no need to talk about a fair transition for workers, since there are going to be jobs.
I think it is simplistic to talk about jobs in new technologies. Yes, these jobs must be created according to the principles of the fair transition. However, the fair transition is the approach taken to keep workers in declining industries in the labour market.
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Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech this morning and I asked her a question. She spoke about jobs in green technology, clean technology and renewable energy. The principles of a just transition must apply to all of these new jobs, and those principles include sustainable development, respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and the social safety net. We need to respect the principles of this transition.
However, another thing that is important is providing assistance in retraining workers in polluting industries, which should be in decline. This is mostly about them. At all of the conferences of the parties that I participated in and in all of the discussions that I have had with environmental organizations and unions, that was the big issue. Participants said that workers in fossil fuel industries should not have to bear all of the weight of the transition, but there needs to be a transition for that to be an issue.
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Madam Speaker, as I was saying in my speech, fossil fuel workers should not have to carry all the weight of the energy transition themselves. Yes, we are thinking about the workers.
UN Secretary-General Guterres said that the energy transition will not be possible if we do not think about the workers, if they are not on board with us. Even in Alberta, there is an organization called Beyond Oil and Gas, which represents workers from that sector who want an energy transition.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad the member for Elmwood—Transcona brought up signals that the current government and governments around the world are sending. Five years ago, I was at a G20 meeting on energy. The subject was this transition that we are talking about today. Germany, Japan, Argentina and even China were talking about the need to move to renewables quickly, and Canada got up and said we built an oil pipeline and would like to build more natural gas pipelines. It was a real face-smacking moment on the world stage. Workers can see that too. They see this transition is happening. Could the member talk more about how we need to involve workers in this process?
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