44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 19, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask my colleague basically the same kinds of questions I asked her colleague earlier. In the opinion of the officials who presented Bill C‑50 to us, Quebec's specific situation was not considered at any point in the process of drafting this bill.
We can do something about that, however. We can do better. We suggest that the government introduce an element of asymmetry into Bill C‑50 that would make it compatible with the Canada-Quebec agreements.
I do not expect my colleague to say yes and agree with me. However, I would like to know whether she can commit to defending this idea within her caucus.
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Mr. Speaker, it is important for all Canadians to feel that their voices are heard.
Through this process, we not only had consultations with all provinces and territories, but we also had consultations with indigenous groups, labour unions and industry, representing thousands of Quebeckers in that process. Their voices were very strong in terms of the input they had into the legislation and how they see Bill C-50 rolling out. Most importantly, their voices were strong in how they see themselves in what would happen in the clean economy and in the transition to new energy developments across Canada and to a net-zero economy.
Quebec has a major role to play in that, as my colleague would agree. We are looking forward to having their support and the support of the people of their province to ensure that they, too, would have the opportunities afforded through a clean economy and clean energy economy into the future.
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Mr. Speaker, like the member opposite, I, too, want to recognize how much natural resources have contributed to Canada's wealth.
Canada's oil and gas companies, right now, are making out like bandits. They have never seen profits so high, but what are they doing with that wealth? They are doing stock buybacks and dividend payouts. We are literally seeing the wealth of Canada flow through our fingers. It is certainly not going to workers.
We have to be like Wayne Gretzky. We have to be going to where the puck is going. There a narrative shift going on. We have to transition to a 21st-century economy.
I am very appreciative of the fact that the member for Timmins—James Bay was able to strengthen this legislation so workers and the unions that represent them would be a big part of this conversation. Could my hon. colleague across the way comment on just how important it is that the voice of labour be central to the conversation and to the legislation going forward?
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Mr. Speaker, the member referenced his colleague from Timmins—James Bay. I sat on a committee with him, and we studied this issue. I know that he is passionate about this, in terms of the role that workers would play in Canada in transitioning to a clean economy.
I certainly hope they will support Bill C-50, knowing what it means for Canadians generally, not just in how we reach that net-zero economy but also in how we strengthen it going forward in resource development and how we strengthen jobs for so many Canadians who need those good-paying skilled jobs that they could have right in their own communities and regions.
I am excited about what Bill C-50 would allow us to do in Canada. It would allow us to lead the way to a clean economy that we have rarely seen in any generation. We are a part of making this happen, and my guess is that, if they are passionate about this, they should get on board and make it happen, not sit on the sidelines and just be critical of it. It is going to happen with or without them. If we take an active role, we can make this work, stronger and better, for Canadians.
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Mr. Speaker, the member also comes from an oil and gas area, like I do. It is very interesting. I also have five coal-fired power plants in my area. The workers are extremely worried about the transition that is supposedly happening. There is no aspect of looking at older people who are near the end of their career and how they would transition out, not to mention those who are trying to get involved.
The member talked about wind and solar. I wonder how she actually responds to her constituents when they find out that the wind turbines are all being built somewhere else. They are not being built in Newfoundland and Labrador. They are not being built in her neighbourhood. The solar panels are not being built there. They are all being imported. The jobs are not being created. I am wondering how the member responds to her constituents on that aspect.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a riding that has large hydro power development, but it also has a lot of diesel generation. My communities want to get off diesel. They want to be on clean energy. They want to see new opportunities. Creating small power projects that are clean energy would allow them to do that. What I say to my constituents is that we should get on with the job and make this work so we can have new opportunities in our communities.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-50, which, as a part of this government's agenda of the unjust transition, threatens to do irreparable harm to the people in my communities and across this country.
I will be splitting my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
The so-called sustainable jobs act, which is part of the unjust transition, represents a clear and present danger to the livelihoods and prosperity of hard-working people in my community and in communities across this country. No amount of flowery language crafted by high-priced, Ottawa-based consultants can change the fact and mitigate the very real message being sent to people in my region and across the country, which is that their jobs and their livelihoods are simply not a priority for the NDP-Liberal government.
The legislation before us is a new iteration of the same failed policies that seek to create a taxpayer-funded secretariat of government-appointed elites in Ottawa to decide for the people of my region and of regions across Canada what is best for them and what policies would be imposed on them to meet the Liberal government's arbitrary targets. This is fundamentally unjust. It would lead to significant losses in incomes, to losses in jobs and to losses in livelihoods in my region and across the country. It is clear that the NDP-Liberal government simply is not worth the cost.
I have clear evidence that this is the case, because this is exactly what happened in my region just a few short years ago. The NDP-Liberal government has not learned any lessons from the previous failures of the unjust transition. That failure led to taxpayer-financed corporate bailouts that cost my region thousands of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in annual tax revenue for my local municipalities. The counties of Parkland and Leduc are just two among many across this country that lost a considerable amount of revenue. This is revenue that has not been replaced, leading to higher taxes on people who have lost their jobs. Some people worked for 20 years in the coal-fired power plants, and then the government shut them down. Members of the government did not even listen to the recommendations of its own previous secretariat and its report on the coal transition. It did not listen to it, and the consequences for my region were very real, as I said.
The accelerated phase-out of coal mandated by the Liberal government and its NDP allies cost my community dearly. However, it did not even result in a drop in coal consumption around the world. In fact, coal consumption has gone up around the world. The only achievement of the phase-out is that workers in communities in my region and across the country lost out so that the rest of the world could keep burning coal and keep emitting more greenhouse emissions while my area was left out and suffered so much.
In the wake of the decision of the Liberals and the NDP to accelerate the phase-out of these plants, I met with union representatives and with workers' representatives. They told me that it did not live up to expectations, because the government promised it was going to have retraining and jobs for these people whose jobs it transitioned out of existence. These were people who were earning high five-figure and low six-figure jobs, many of them unionized jobs. Do members know what kind of jobs this government paid to retrain them for? They were jobs that paid $30,000 or maybe $40,000 a year. They were not unionized jobs. These were jobs that are not sustainable to support families, jobs that did not enable people to pay their mortgages or car payments. Since so many people in our region were affected by it, when they were trying to sell their home so they could move to an area where they could get a better-paying job, they could not even sell it, or had to sell at a loss. That is the consequence, and this is a government that has not learned from it.
Let us be clear on what the sustainable jobs plan is. In no uncertain terms, it is an attempt by the government to shut down Canada's oil and gas sector. As always in the case of a government with an ideological agenda, the ends justify the means. However, what are the means when it comes to this legislation and the government's agenda?
The unjust transition would help destroy around 170,000 direct jobs and displace 450,000 workers who are currently directly and indirectly employed in our traditional energy sector. In fact, across all sectors of the economy, the unjust transition would risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadians in every province, across many sectors, including energy, manufacturing, construction, transportation and agriculture. For a government that claims to be evidence-based, these are facts that it either completely ignores or, at worst, feel are justified in order to implement its warped anti-energy ideology. The term “sustainable jobs” could simply be replaced with what it really means, which is jobs that do not exist in our oil and gas sector.
This is extremely short-sighted, because our crude oil and natural gas, and the millions of products that are created from these resources, are entirely sustainable and will be for decades to come. They are not only sustainable, but they also create the highest-paying jobs in the country and provide the greatest economic return of any sector in Canada. In fact, our oil and gas sector is so important that it is the bedrock of our country's economy. Twenty-five per cent of our exports are related to the oil and gas sector. Without it, our trade deficits would be massive. Our dollar would collapse if we did not have it. This would increase the cost of importing goods like food, fuel and pretty much everything else.
Our inflation rate, which is already at record-high levels, would rise even further as our purchasing power collapses. Imagine the catastrophic increase in fuel, groceries and all imported goods if we did not have oil and gas exports propping up our dollar and supporting our economy. The consequences would be catastrophic. It would impoverish not only western Canadians but also Canadians who rely on the purchasing power of our energy-backed Canadian dollar. Inflation would skyrocket, and then the Bank of Canada, in order to get that inflation under control, would have to raise interest rates even further, interest rates that are currently not sustainable for most families in our country. This would lead to more Canadians losing their homes at a time when Canadians are already losing their homes. It would also lead to many families going bankrupt, small businesses collapsing and ultimately, an unacceptable drop in economic growth in our country.
Ironically, this accelerated phase-out of our oil and gas sector, and its resulting impacts, would undermine our efforts to actually make our country have a stronger, greener economy. The commodities we need in order to support wind power, solar power and other clean energy projects are made out of steel, copper and lithium, and these things are priced in American dollars. It would cost Canadian tech manufacturers far more money to produce the manufactured goods here in Canada, and we would not be able to benefit from that. If we have a stronger Canadian dollar with a strong, sustainable energy sector in this country, then we can support the investments needed to make our country greener.
Any serious attempt to grow the renewable energy sector in this country must be led by private industry. In fact, the oil and gas sector is already leading the charge in innovation, and environmental and social responsibility. It is the single biggest investor in clean energy technology in this country. It accounts for about 75% of total investment in this country.
According to Chief Dale Swampy of the National Coalition of Chiefs, “We are the leaders in environmental protection. If you meet with the Canadians who run the oil and gas sector, you'll see that they are just like you. They are concerned about the environment, about safety, about integrity. They'll do whatever they can to protect our country.” Chief Swampy is right. According to another analysis, conducted by the Bank of Montreal, Canada is already ranked as having the top environmental, social and governance profile among the world's top 10 oil and gas producers.
Not only would this bill and the government's agenda do irreparable damage to our own economy, but it would also have consequences that would be felt internationally. Russia's illegal invasion on Ukraine last year underscored the dangers of relying on dictatorships to fulfill our world's energy needs. When our allies have come asking for Canadian energy, the Prime Minister and the Liberal-NDP government have continually turned them away. Just today, I read that the United States is lifting sanctions on the despotic Venezuelan regime, which has repeatedly fixed elections and violently quelled dissent. America and the world are desperate for oil and gas. They are desperate for oil and gas from Canada, and we are the only country turning down the invitation to be part of the global energy solution.
Let us use Germany as an example. It is one of our closest G7 partners. The chancellor came to Ottawa, pleading for Canadian natural gas in order to cut his country off from dirty Russian energy. Germany is a country that, I read recently, has had to restart its coal-fired power plants just to make up for its shortfall in energy. We could be providing low-cost, clean Canadian natural gas. What did the Prime Minister say to the German chancellor? He told him that there was no business case for liquefied natural gas. Likewise, when the Japanese prime minister came to Canada earlier this year, the Prime Minister dismissed his request to help bring Canadian energy to Japan, and he offered just his signature platitudes.
Our allies do not want platitudes. They want Canadian energy. The conclusion is clear: On this side of the House, we believe that as long as the world needs traditional sources of energy, Canada should continue to develop and export its energy sources. Let us let the world's energy market be dominated by a democratic country for a change, one with the highest environmental standards and human rights standards. Let it be Canadian energy for a change.
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Mr. Speaker, I come from a family of coal miners, and when the coal transition went down in Alberta, I went out and met with representatives of coal communities. We invited them to Parliament to testify so we could learn lessons, but unfortunately they did not get asked any questions because the Conservatives, as they are doing on everything, were playing procedural games. They were not interested in what those coal miners had to say, so I find it a little rich that my colleague is now defending them today.
In the same way, when we met with energy workers in Alberta, who were talking about the clean energy transition and how they were ready and more than willing to make it happen, Danielle Smith shut that down and shut down $33 billion in clean energy investments in Alberta.
What kind of region chases jobs out of its area? What kind of region tells the world that it is not open for business because it is ideological? It is a region represented by Conservatives.
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Mr. Speaker, I go door knocking in my riding quite a bit and run into former co-workers, retired co-workers and people who used to work in the industry all the time. I can say that not a single one of them is proud of what happened under the NDP-Liberal government. Not a single one of them is satisfied with how it went down. They are not satisfied with the jobs and retraining. Frankly, even though the government pledged that it would spend $100 million to support these communities, the government has never reached that target. It betrayed our communities.
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Mr. Speaker, touting oil is not okay.
Since the first COP I attended, the 2015 event in Paris, I have heard people everywhere talking about just transition. That is the term that is being used internationally.
Does my colleague understand why the legislation does not use that term? Is it because someone is afraid of possible puns involving the Prime Minister's first name?
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Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that ever since oil was discovered in Alberta back in 1949, we have had central governments in this country try to control it. No other region in this country has had a federal government seek to control its destiny more than western Canada given its oil resources.
Quebeckers stand up for their resources, and I applaud them for that. We should all stand up for our resources. I will not apologize for standing up for our strong oil and gas sector, a sector that is investing in clean energy, renewable energy and carbon capture. I see it in my riding, which is working to sequester CO2 emissions today and is doing a great job. It is a sustainable industry. Let us support it.
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Mr. Speaker, the Competition Bureau found today that after eight years, the power of corporate oligopolistic giants is growing at the expense of Canadians. It is in a report, which said:
Concentration rose in the most concentrated industries, and the number of highly concentrated industries increased;
The largest firms in industries are being less and less challenged by their smaller [firms];
Fewer firms have entered industries overall, suggesting many industries have become less dynamic....
This has—
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- Oct/19/23 4:10:28 p.m.
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We have a point of order from the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.
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Mr. Speaker, this is all fascinating, and the member can ask about it tomorrow, but we are debating Bill C-50 and there is absolutely nothing about it in the question.
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I will allow the hon. leader of the official opposition to complete the question.
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Mr. Speaker, this is for the member who intervened, who does not live in his own riding and has forgotten about the people in Timmins.
Finally, the report states that the consequence of this is that profits and markups are up while Canadian competition is down.
These are the findings of the Competition Bureau's report today. They are part of the reason we have smaller paycheques and higher prices.
Why is the government siding with big, powerful, protected corporate oligarchs rather than with Canadian consumers and workers?
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Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the Liberal government has always sided with big businesses. It has always sided with the oligopolies, whether it is the grocery chains, the big banks or the big railway companies, which are hurting western farmers who are just trying to get their grain to market. The Liberal power structure that has existed in this country has always been backed by big business. It is going to take a Conservative government, under a strong Conservative leader, to break the monopolies, bring true competition to Canada and open up this country for real economic growth.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's comments recently as he talked about the transition to renewable and clean jobs. Are we to believe that the reason the Premier of Alberta put a moratorium on renewable energy projects is that they were so wildly unpopular in Alberta? Is that what we are to believe?
Would it not be the case that there were so many projects that the premier became afraid that they were—
Hon. Pierre Poilievre: The same policies doubled energy prices.
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Mr. Speaker, I am trying to ask a question. The Leader of the Opposition is providing his own MP with the answer. I cannot even hear myself, as he is saying it so loud.
Would it be possible to repeat that, or—
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- Oct/19/23 4:13:01 p.m.
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I will ask the hon. member to answer the question because we are a little over time.
The hon. member for Sturgeon River—Parkland.
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