44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 19, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for giving me another opportunity to speak to Bill C‑50, which I gave a speech about a few days ago.
I would like to ask my Liberal colleague a question. How is it that this bill was drafted without taking into account the existing job training agreements between Ottawa and Quebec?
These agreements have been around for 25 years. How can the government come up with a bill without taking into account Quebec's reality?
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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 am starting to wonder if I am in the right debate. I thought we were supposed to be talking about Bill C‑50.
I will bring my colleague back to Bill C‑50. Since he is a member from Quebec, he knows full well that there exists in that province the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail, which is a Quebec-Ottawa agreement on skills training. There is no mention of it in Bill C‑50. No one even thought of the fact that this agreement exists.
I also want to come back to the Conservatives under Harper. In 2013, the federal budget introduced the Canada job grant. It was the centrepiece of the budget. Quebec was against it. At the time, Ms. Maltais called the Conservatives to make them understand that Quebec already had something like that.
I would like my colleague from Louis‑Saint‑Laurent to tell me how the two major parties in this country do not even know what is happening in Quebec.
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Mr. Speaker, I have to say I am surprised we are having a Conservative opposition day where the Conservatives are asking the government to come up with a plan to balance the budget in eight days. They are saying that five years is too long. One has to be reasonable. It depends on the project. I can tell my colleague that most of what is in the bill already exists in Quebec. We do not need additional resources or bureaucracy, but we will need the money to implement whatever is decided.
Sometimes reports and consultation are needed. The right people need to be appointed in the right places. Unions, employers and educational institutions all need to be included. We have to do it right. We must also not rush to produce as many reports as possible as quickly as possible, only for them to be shelved. There has to be a balance between the amount of bureaucracy and the usefulness of it all. The usefulness of what is in the bill is greatly reduced in Quebec, if not non-existent, because we have already thought of all this. We are simply waiting for the resources to be able to do more.
Obviously, those resources are in Ottawa.
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