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Ms. Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody—Coquitlam, NDP)

Nov/7/23 1:21:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate this opportunity to ask the member a question, because I am receiving emails. I want to speak specifically about a member in my riding who has been waiting seven months for the Canada greener homes grant. They were informed that they were eligible, based on the report and the required heat pump that they installed. Their grant is worth $4,600 and they have been waiting seven months for it. They have made calls but have not been able to reach anyone. Will the government reach out to my office, reach out to me, and make sure that this Canadian, who has taken the steps to take advantage of the opportunity and do their part, as the member said, to move forward on climate action, gets the results? The government has to stop announcements and start acting. Will the government respond to my constituent?

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Mr. Ryan Turnbull

Nov/7/23 1:22:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know that some members of communities have had challenges with the administration of the Canada greener homes grant and program. I know there are constituents in my riding who have also taken full advantage of that program and have been able to access both components of it. They have retrofit their homes to get as close to net zero as possible. That included installing an extreme cold climate heat pump, as well as solar panels on the roof and a two-way meter so that they can feed into the grid. That seems to be the recipe for getting a lot of Canadian households as close to net zero as possible. Remember that this saves them hundreds and hundreds of dollars per month on their home energy bills. I would be happy to look into the member opposite's specific question. Obviously, I do not know that specific case and what might be holding up the application of that member of her constituency. I would be happy to look into it.

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Mr. Frank Caputo (Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, CPC)

Nov/7/23 1:24:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. The member spoke at length about heat pumps. Can he please tell this House, in 10 or 15 seconds, how heat pumps work in, say, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba?

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Mr. Ryan Turnbull

Nov/7/23 1:24:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that extreme cold climate heat pumps work in Canada. There are examples of them working all the way up as far north as one can get. They are actually very effective, far more efficient in terms of the use of energy. Really, I cannot think of a better solution for wider adoption that Canadians can take advantage of to get those cost savings on their energy bill. The member opposite does not seem to understand the technology. Maybe he should do his homework.

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Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Nov/7/23 1:25:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the wonderful MP for Edmonton Griesbach. I am very honoured, and frankly excited, to stand here this afternoon to speak to the NDP motion that sets out a truly fair, common-sense approach to deal with two of the most important issues of our time: the climate catastrophes we are living through every year across this country and the struggle that many Canadians are facing just to get by. In a nutshell, the motion recognizes that Canadians are facing increasing costs, both the financial costs and human costs of the climate crisis. At the same time, they are facing rising fuel costs for gas at the pumps and in their home heating, while the fossil fuel companies that are charging them those costs are reaping record profits. On top of that, both oil and gas heating are contributing to the carbon emissions that are fuelling the climate crisis. The NDP motion proposes three straightforward solutions to that situation: to take the GST off home heating; to provide heat pumps for free to lower- and medium-income families in an easily accessible program; and to fund the program with a windfall tax on the record profits made by fossil fuel companies. Listeners at home may quickly realize that this motion is a reaction to both the Liberals' bungled program to provide relief to some Canadians by taking the carbon tax off home heating oil and the Conservatives' motion to extend that relief to natural gas for home heating as well. Both those ideas fail the fairness test of this Canadian federation. The Liberal program benefits predominantly people in Atlantic Canada, where many homes are heated with oil, while the Conservative motion leaves British Columbians and Québécois out in the cold since families in those provinces do not pay a federal carbon tax. I have yet to hear a single Conservative from B.C. admit that fact in this place. The NDP is proposing to take the GST off home heating bills. The GST is not supposed to be paid on the necessities of life. We do not pay GST on food. I think everyone would agree that home heating is a necessity of life in Canada, but right now, everyone across the country has to pay it. Removing the GST from home heating bills would save everyone across the country money on their energy bills, helping people to get by in a truly fair way. We have had bad years for extreme weather and wildfires for the past eight years or so, but this year was in a different league of catastrophes. It started with a hot, dry spring that sent fires in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Alberta raging through forests and communities. As the season progressed, we had fires explode in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. Several of those fires in B.C. were in the coastal rainforest where it is usually hard enough to start a campfire, let alone destroy a forest. Then Nova Scotia, which was still recovering from two catastrophic fires, suffered a devastating flood. I live in the dry interior of British Columbia in the South Okanagan Valley. We all held our breath as we saw fires springing up in northeastern B.C., central B.C., then Kamloops and the Shuswap. At the end of July, the fires began in the Okanagan Valley and Similkameen Valley. One came within inches of destroying a large neighbourhood in Osoyoos. In mid-August, the Shuswap fires swept out of the wilderness and burned through Celista, Scotch Creek and Squilax, communities that I used to live in during the summers of the 1970s. A fire in the mountains west of Kelowna roared down to devastate neighbourhoods on the west side of Okanagan Lake and then jumped across the lake two kilometres to terrorize neighbourhoods on the east side. People struggled to breathe across the country this summer. Hundreds of thousands had to leave their homes in hastily planned evacuations, including the entire city of Yellowknife. People lost their homes. Some people unfortunately died. This was a summer that marked another shift in public opinion. It was public awareness that climate change is not a theoretical event somewhere in the future. We are living it today and we have to adapt to it. The climate data back that up. This year has been literally off the charts. Air temperature records were shattered every day around the world. Ocean temperatures were so high that scientists could barely believe what was happening. This year was even worse than 2021. That year British Columbia, there was a heat dome in late June followed by an unprecedented atmospheric river event in November. The Town of Lytton burned down after reporting Canada's record-high temperature three days in a row. The cost of the climate destruction in 2021 in B.C. alone was over $5 billion. However, even as we said that 2021 was the worst year ever, and now people are saying that 2023 is the worst year ever, the projections are saying that these will actually be the best years for the rest of our lives. Extreme weather events will only get worse as we pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What many people forget, or do not even know, is that 619 people died in Metro Vancouver in one week during the heat dome of 2021, which was the real tragedy of that year. What most of those people had in common was that they lived in the lower-income parts of the city in neighbourhoods with no access to shady, cool, green areas and in apartment complexes with no air conditioning. They died with their windows closed against the stifling heat. We cannot let this happen again. We need to provide people, especially lower-income Canadians, with air conditioning, even in places like Vancouver and Halifax, where maybe they did not need it very often in the past. They will need it in the future. That would save hundreds of lives during future heat events. If we do that with heat pumps, switching out oil and gas heating units, it would not only save lives but would also cut emissions, and people, including landlords, would save significant money on their energy bills all year round. At the same time, we must make it easy for people to properly insulate their homes. We have to make sure we are not building new buildings, new housing, with fossil fuel heating infrastructure. New builds should have electric heat, preferably heat pumps. There is a growing movement in cities across Canada to ban fossil fuel infrastructure to heat new homes and buildings. Montreal and Nanaimo have done that. Vancouver almost did it but then backed off to a partial ban. It is being discussed by communities in my riding. While Canadians are struggling to pay for fuel costs, fossil fuel companies are raking in record profits. The top five companies in Canada posted $38 billion in profits last year alone. Meanwhile, Canadians saw prices at the pump go up almost a dollar a litre over the last three years. The Conservatives' big bogey man, the carbon tax, went up five cents over that time. The fossil fuel companies are not paying any more to make gasoline or natural gas; they are just benefiting big time from a rise in world oil and gas prices. These are windfall profits. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has determined that a windfall tax on these profits would bring in over $4 billion. The NDP has been calling for such a tax for over a year but has gotten no support from either the Liberals or the Conservatives. Therefore, we are proposing today to bring in a windfall tax on the profits of fossil fuel companies and use that money to fund our proposal for an easily accessible program that would install free heat pumps in Canadian homes. The Liberals are handpicking what regions get help with the cost of living, and leaving the rest of Canada behind. The Conservatives have absolutely no climate plan. For over a year, the NDP has called on the government to remove the GST from home heating and help everyone across the country, but the Liberals and Conservatives have ignored those calls. The NDP wants to make eco-energy retrofits and heat pumps free and easy to access for low- to middle-class Canadians, regardless of their initial home heating energy source. We are calling on the government to fund those changes by finally implementing a windfall profits tax on the excess profits of oil and gas companies. These are common-sense, effective ideas that would save all Canadians money and save lives and heartache from climate disasters in an increasingly dangerous future. I am sure all members here will support this motion to help all Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Nov/7/23 1:34:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am wondering whether the member could provide some clear indication of what the NDP policy actually is. Is the NDP proposing to get rid of the GST on all aspects of home heating, everything from electricity to oil, propane and natural gas, permanently and even during the summertime? Is that the intent?

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Mr. Richard Cannings

Nov/7/23 1:35:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is kind of obvious. Yes, that is what the New Democrats are proposing. I said in my speech that the GST was never meant to be charged on the necessities of life. We do not pay GST when we go to grocery stores and buy food. However we heat our homes in Canada, and we have to do so, we pay energy bills, whether to electricity companies, natural gas companies or oil companies. We pay GST on that, and we should not. Yes, the NDP is asking that we take the GST off our home heating costs, even in the summer. Maybe in Winnipeg, people have to heat their homes in the summer. I do not usually in British Columbia. That is what we are proposing.

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Mr. Chris Lewis (Essex, CPC)

Nov/7/23 1:36:22 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-241

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of discussion this morning about heat pumps. I have not yet heard anybody bring up the installation of heat pumps. There is a portion that goes outside the house and a portion that goes inside the house, and then there are pipes underground. Not that long ago, I introduced a private member's bill, Bill C-241, regarding a deduction of travel expenses for skilled trades. As we need heat pumps across the country, we will not have people to install them. All but one Liberal member voted against Bill C-241. The NDP was good enough to vote for it. Would the member agree with me that, indeed, the Liberals should have voted for Bill C-241?

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Mr. Richard Cannings

Nov/7/23 1:37:14 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-241

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-241, as I understand it, was an NDP bill before the member, thankfully, took it up and brought it forward again and it was passed. That is what we should be doing: supporting tradespeople across the country who have to travel. Any other business people can charge their travel expenses. As the member mentioned, we will need more tradespeople to do all of this work. Not only do heat pumps have to be installed, but homes also need to be retrofitted to make sure they are properly insulated. That is one of the first things that need to be done. I just finished doing that in my house, and now I am going to turn my thoughts to the heat pump part. We will need tradespeople for that, and sometimes it is difficult to find enough tradespeople because they are doing a lot of work in this regard. Yes, we should be training tradespeople to do that. There is a program for it at Okanagan College in Penticton. It is one of the leading sustainable building trades programs in the country. We have to support people going into those programs and then once they come out.

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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

Nov/7/23 1:38:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for my colleague, who sits next to me and often discusses things with me. I would like to ask him a very pragmatic question. The proposal before us today seems well intentioned. Unfortunately, the numbers do not add up. The estimated cost of giving heat pumps to everyone would be at least $75 billion, if not $100 billion. The proposed tax might generate up to $1 billion. Where will the rest of the money come from?

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Mr. Richard Cannings

Nov/7/23 1:39:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we just had a conversation about tradespeople and how important it is to have enough of them. This is not going to happen in one year; it will happen over a number of years. I would have to do some quick math, but, yes, $4 billion can buy only maybe 400,000 heat pumps. There might be three million households in Canada, so it would take maybe five or 10 years to get through the program, but we have to start it now. This is a very common-sense, easy-to-understand approach with a funding mechanism, a clear goal and clear benefits for all Canadians.

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Mr. Kevin Vuong (Spadina—Fort York, Ind.)

Nov/7/23 1:40:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will say right off the bat that I will vote in support of the NDP's motion. I think a lot of Torontonians will struggle to heat, and hopefully keep, their homes this winter. However, I have trouble reconciling this position with the fact that there is only one opposition party that can compel the government to do anything, and that is the NDP. Instead of putting forward a motion to try to score political points, why will it not just compel the government, through the supply and confidence agreement, to actually do it?

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Mr. Richard Cannings

Nov/7/23 1:40:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, maybe the member does not really understand how confidence and supply agreements work. There is an agreement between the parties. The Liberals say they will do X, Y and Z that the NDP would like done, and we will see if that is enough to provide our support in confidence agreements. In this case, there is a list of 20, 25 or 27 things the Liberals said they would do. It was good enough for us to say that we want that, that we want dental care, pharmacare, anti-scab legislation and on and on. Maybe not everything was in there. There were other things we would have loved to have had in there. This is not what we would put forward if we were in government, but it was good enough for us. We will keep pressing the Liberal government to do better. This is an example of that.

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach, NDP)

Nov/7/23 1:41:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are facing the double crisis of affordability and climate change. It is no secret that Canadians from coast to coast to coast have been demanding action in the face of extreme weather events. There are countless numbers of families right across this country who were disproportionately impacted by wildfires, floods and terrible natural disasters that shocked entire communities. Those instances are not just one-offs. This is truly a pattern of disaster that is growing in intensity and growing in costs. I mean that. When I say costs, they are huge. Those are some of the largest costs in relation to our GDP that we have seen in decades. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, for example, extreme weather events caused our GDP to be 0.8% lower than it should have been if we had combatted climate change more appropriately. That equals to about $20 billion to $25 billion less on reported GDP. That is funding that could have gone to supports for people, such as seniors and young people, and to supports for hospitals. It is nearly Remembrance Day, and it could have gone to supports for veterans. That is real capital, real money, that is just being drained because the government lacks the courage and the will to implement real climate solutions. On the other side, we have an official opposition party, with an official opposition leader who denies climate change even exists. That is plummeting us even further into a deficit. Imagine if we had, for example, even worse outcomes next year. God forbid we would have worse outcomes with worse wildfires and floods, and the number would get worse. It would be even worse if human lives were lost. I hope we can prevent that. We need real climate solutions and real serious leadership when it comes to climate change. I would be lost if I did not mention that this is not the first time New Democrats have called for real solutions to climate change in addition to real solutions to fight poverty. There were many times and many occasions when we tried to do that. It is not lost on me that Remembrance Day is coming very soon. I want to remind Canadians about a defining moment in our history when we rose to the challenges of global crises like we are seeing in terms of climate change. We do not have to look that far in our past to know that we have the solutions to combat things that would take away our future. That includes combatting the climate crisis. Canada, early on, when it was a young country, was seen as a relatively small and poor country, a country that could not levy resources in order to tackle huge issues, but we proved the world wrong once before. Canada can play a role in being a global leader and ensuring everyone has a dignified, clean and safe future. Tommy Douglas reminds us of a story of great Canadians who enlisted in our military in 1939 when Canada declared war on the terrible, fascist Nazi regime in Germany. For the first time in our history, we utilized the Bank of Canada and made it financially, fiscally and materially possible to feed, clothe and arm over a million men and women, and we put them in uniform. At home, we did something even greater: We put everyone to work. The government organized over 100 Crown corporations. We manufactured things that had never been manufactured before. We gave our farmers and our fishermen guaranteed prices, and we produced more food than we had ever produced in peacetime. In addition, we created one of the largest merchant navies in global history. We did all that without borrowing even one dollar from outside Canada. We were able to do that. Our collective consciousness, our united effort and our true Canadian spirit were unified in order to fight the terrible fascist regime in Germany. If we can utilize and restore our own will to ensure that we use the same resources to fight against poverty, social injustice and, yes, climate change, then we can in fact change our future for the better. We can change it for the next generation. New Democrats are calling, in this motion, for very serious solutions to very serious problems. It is no secret that climate change is having disproportionate impacts on our economy. It is also no secret that Canadians are struggling to get by. They are struggling to make ends meet and to pay the basic bills, which they have been working hard to pay their entire lives. We are talking about something as simple as home heating in Canada, which we all need. The previous New Democratic member spoke about the important differentiation between needs and wants of Canadians. It is important that we delineate what those needs are and that we provide relief so those needs are met. One relief measure is to ensure that the GST is removed from home heating. That is important because we made a tax commitment in this country to ensure all necessities would not have a tax burden on them. People need to eat and also need to heat. We need to make sure those important measures are dealt with. I invite my colleagues, from both the Liberal and the Conservative benches, to think about that critically and to say that we can do something good for Canadians. Earlier this week, New Democrats supported a motion by our Conservative colleagues that called for the removal of the carbon tax from home heating oil. We hope the Conservatives would support the removal of GST from all home heating as well. We think that is a better and a stronger policy. It would also ensure that more Canadians would have more money in their pockets, which is something that Conservatives talk about very often. I would invite them to support that very important measure. When it comes to making sure we have a plan to reduce our liability and to reduce our dependence on higher forms of carbon-emitting fuels, it is important that we utilize technology. Every time we talk about or debate climate change in the House, the Conservatives rise to say their solution is “technology” without ever mentioning what that “technology” is. When we have technology present for Canadians, like a heat pump, for example, that is growing in popularity, use and weatherability in Canadian climates, we see Conservatives reject those proposals. Why? The NDP has real proposals and real solutions on the table that could save Canadians thousands of dollars, and our country millions and billions as decades move forward. Finally, it is so important that we finance this, but we cannot finance this crisis on the backs of Canadians. Canadians did not make this crisis. They are showing up to work every single day and doing the hard work. They are trying to make ends meet for their families and doing everything right, but they are falling further behind. All the while, those who claim to play by the rules get away scot-free by evading taxes. It is time that our country does what is right, and reins in the huge windfall profits of oil and gas companies. We have seen that kind of courage in this world once already. During the pandemic, we saw the Conservative government in the United Kingdom bring in a windfall tax because they saw what we all saw. The fact is that we are seeing unstable oil prices and, currently, some of the highest commodity prices in a long time, which are increasing huge revenues for governments, but not enough, apparently, to invest in real climate solutions to mitigate what could be future damages to our economy. I would remind members that not long ago we saw massive issues in British Columbia. There were floods that essentially cut off an entire province by way of the supply chain to the rest of Canada. That had a real cost to Canadians. The impact was in the billions of dollars. On top of that, we also saw consequential seasons of wildfires, drought and serious related issues that continue to exacerbate the economic impact of climate change on Canadians. This costs Canadians real money. Real, tangible money in their pockets is being lost because these disasters continue to destroy communities and ways of life. We have the ability in our country to be as courageous as those veterans, years ago, who said they would serve our country so that tomorrow would be a better day. We have a chance to honour those commitments, to do what is right today for the next generation and to ensure that this motion passes. Then, we could have real, tangible solutions so that our kids would know we are taking the climate crisis seriously, so that our economy could stabilize by ensuring we have good revenues, and we could finally see a day when the affordability crisis would be under wraps from the efforts of this chamber. Then, we could show Canadians that we can unite and do what is right. I invite all members to do what is right. Our children are watching.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Nov/7/23 1:51:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in looking at the NDP motion, one of the first things that comes to my mind is that the biggest benefactor of the motion is actually Canada's wealthiest 1%. When we think about what they are proposing, we would be giving the biggest break on GST to Canada's 1% wealthiest. Would my New Democratic friends recognize that as being factual? The government has demonstrated, through the grocery rebates, that there are other ways we could support Canada's middle class. Why would the New Democrats want a permanent disposal of the GST on home heating when the biggest benefactor would be Canada's wealthiest 1%?

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais

Nov/7/23 1:52:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I find it disingenuous for a member to rise in this place and to speak as if New Democrats would be attempting, in some way, shape or form, to ask for a break for Canada's 1% when speaking to the direct need Canadians have in relation to the price of heating their homes. The member is fully aware of the fact we already do this for groceries. One can go into any grocery store today and see there is no GST on any of those groceries. We, as Canadians, understand that is a need. Canadians need to feed their families, and that is so important to their survival. The same is true with heating. We need to see GST removed from home heating so Canadians can heat their homes. The consequence of not doing that is their pennies would be even further pinched. The risk from that is they would fall behind. The ultimate risk is they would not have a home that is heated. New Democrats stand against that and invite the member to join us.

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Mr. Damien Kurek (Battle River—Crowfoot, CPC)

Nov/7/23 1:53:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I find it incredibly disingenuous that now, all of a sudden, the NDP members claim, along with their coalition partners, to somehow be standing up for affordability for Canadians. Over the last number of years, such as in February 2022, we have seen them consistently vote against a measure that would have reduced costs for Canadians. In April 2022, it was the same thing, and they voted against a common-sense measure to reduce costs for Canadians. In June 2022, it was same thing. They voted against a measure the Conservatives brought forward to reduce costs. In October 2022, again, they voted against a measure to reduce costs. In December 2022, and in February, June and October of this year, they voted against. Then, suddenly, we find that they are concerned about the impact the carbon tax has on affordability for Canadians. Can they at least admit they are wrong and maybe join with Conservatives to axe the tax so Canadians can keep the heat on?

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais

Nov/7/23 1:54:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member seems to conflate two important issues and principles in this debate. One is the equality of Canadians and ensuring that when there are taxes, those taxes are applied equally and fairly. What we saw with the move by the Liberals was to not do that proportionally for all Canadians. We disagree with that move. On the other hand, we do believe in carbon pricing, which is something the member who just rose campaigned on. Conservatives campaigned to have a carbon price that was worse than the Liberals' carbon price. When talking about disingenuous, I would say the Conservative Party of Canada, which flip-flops on whether climate change is real, is the most disingenuous in Canada.

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Mrs. Julie Vignola (Beauport—Limoilou, BQ)

Nov/7/23 1:55:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that a wealth tax could generate a little over $1.05 billion per year, which is $4.2 billion over five years. That is less than the government would save if it were to reduce the subsidies, tax credits and tax avoidance measures it gives to oil companies. Why is the NDP settling for a measure that will not cover the cost of its ideas when it could tackle cleaning up the budget to fund more direct and equitable support for people?

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais

Nov/7/23 1:56:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is one of the better questions asked today, because it contemplates the revenue side of Canada's economy. I would like to suggest to the member to think about this in two ways. One, yes, there would be revenue generation from the windfall taxes on oil and gas companies that would amount to $4 billion to $5 billion. As a matter of fact, when we invest that amount of money in Canadians in terms of looking at the difference between the investment versus the impact to our economy if we did not do those things, we would see that is actually a larger amount. To put it in perspective, if we can prevent a climate disaster, for example, by mitigating the increase in our global temperatures by 1.5°C ideally or by 2°C maximally, we could save Canadians billions of dollars if we take action on that now. It is not only a question of revenue but also a question of how much we could save in terms of the direct impact to our infrastructure and to Canadians' way of life in future years. I agree with the member. There need to be more solutions to the revenue side of things, and I welcome co-operation between the Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats to find those solutions.

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