44th Parl. 1st Sess.

November 7, 2023 10:00AM

Ms. Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

Nov/7/23 12:39:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of our party’s opposition motion. This is what real climate action looks like: climate action that does not divide people, but brings people together; climate action that gives families and individuals struggling to make ends meet a break, while also reducing our carbon emissions; climate action that asks the big polluters, who have seen record profits, to pay for it. We are in the midst of two different crises that must be addressed: a climate crisis and an affordability crisis linked to growing inequality. Last spring and summer, we were confronted directly by the impact of the climate crisis. Record-setting wildfires covered large parts of the country, causing provinces to declare states of emergency and many residents to flee. Smoke blanketed cities across the country, including Winnipeg, where poor air quality kept people indoors and posed a danger to people with pre-existing health issues, including asthma. What we saw over those months was a window into our future if we did not treat this climate crisis with the urgency it deserved. We cannot allow extreme weather events, which put the lives and health of people at risk, to become the new normal. It is not normal; it is a consequence of our failure to act. Meanwhile, a growing affordability crisis is forcing a growing number of people in our communities to choose between groceries and rent, to choose between heating and eating. Grocery prices have soared, far outpacing the general rate of inflation and wage growth. In Winnipeg Centre, which has the third-highest child poverty rate in the country, food bank use is climbing. In fact, according to a report by Food Banks Canada, food banks in Manitoba have seen a 30% rise in demand. In March of this year alone, there were 57,000 food bank visits, more than 20,000 of whom were children. Life is getting harder and harder for people who were already struggling to get by. Who is not struggling? Canada’s big oil and gas companies. The top five Canadian oil and gas companies reported $38.3 billion in profits for 2022. That is an increase of more than double compared to their profits of $16.9 billion in 2021. That is shameful. Suncor alone made over $9 billion in profit during 2022, an astonishing and shameful amount. Where is this money going? It is not going toward fighting climate change or making life more affordable for people. It is going to reward its shareholders and CEOs. Speaking of CEOs, I want to talk about Imperial Oil. Brad Corson, the CEO of Imperial Oil, is the highest-paid executive in the Canadian energy industry. His pay almost doubled in 2022, up to $17.3 million. Imperial Oil is currently under formal federal investigation for a months-long tailings leak at its Kearl oil sands mine in Northern Alberta. Documents filed by the company showed it knew that tailings were seeping into groundwater for years before contaminated fluid was reported on the surface. When my constituents miss a shift at work, they get their pay docked and they risk getting fired. When the CEO of Imperial Oil presides over an environmental catastrophe, he gets his pay doubled. It is an insult to hard-working people all over the country whose wages have not budged for years. That is just one reason why we need a windfall tax on the excess profits of big oil and gas companies. Why a windfall tax? It is about ensuring that the big polluters, which are worsening the climate crisis, are paying for the action needed to address it. Right now, we know that is not happening. Major loopholes in the carbon pricing framework mean that oil and gas companies only pay a small fraction of the cost of their pollution, while 80% to 90% of their emissions are exempt. To take one example, Suncor, which I mentioned previously, only pays one-fourteenth of the full carbon price. It would also generate significant revenue that we can invest in lowering people's energy bills, with home retrofits that reduce emissions and make life more affordable. How significant? The parliamentary budget office estimated that a windfall tax would generate $4 billion over five years. This could fund a program to make heat pumps and other retrofits free of cost to families that would otherwise not be able to afford them. A windfall tax, as we know, is not a radical idea. The European Union, the U.K. and India are among those that have implemented one. Why? It is common sense. At a time when energy companies are making record profits and people are struggling to pay their heating bills, we need to turn a portion of those excess profits into relief for consumers. We can also use revenue from a windfall tax for a massive expansion of energy efficient home renovations for low- and middle-class Canadians. Home retrofits and heating pumps are a win-win-win. They reduce emissions, lower people's utility bills and create green jobs. In Winnipeg Centre, many people would like to make these changes to their homes, but they simply cannot afford the upfront cost. This program should not be restricted to folks who only use a certain type of fuel to heat their homes. Whether they use home heating oil, natural gas, electric baseboard heating or anything else, they should have access to a program that lets them reduce their carbon footprint and reduces their monthly power bill. It is about how we get to net-zero emissions and how we bring millions of people along in the fight against the climate emergency. Life is hard enough already for families and individuals in my riding who are working three jobs and skipping meals so their kids can eat. These are not the people who should be paying more to address the climate crisis. It is the big oil and gas companies and their CEOs who are fuelling this crisis, and we should be sticking them with the bill. We are running out of time to get this right. Dividing people up by region and putting all the burden on individuals, as the Liberals are doing, will not get us there. Neither will burying our heads in the sand and refusing to even offer a climate plan, which is the Conservative approach. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition, the corporate champion from Carleton, is silent when it comes to the obscene profits being made by his oil and gas buddies. It is no wonder, because when he was sitting at the cabinet table, his government handed out $55 billion in tax cuts to wealthy corporations, including oil and gas companies. It is time for a new approach, one that finally asks the big polluters to pay their fair share of the costs, one that gives families and individuals who are struggling real relief from the rising costs driving them deeper into poverty and despair and one that makes energy efficient upgrades available to millions of households that want to do their part for our planet but cannot because the costs are too high. Today’s motion is exactly the kind of new approach that is desperately needed. I urge the government and all parties of the House to support it and put us on a pathway to real climate action that lifts people up and gives them the help they need.

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