44th Parl. 1st Sess.

January 29, 2024 11:00AM

Context: House Hansard - 270 - Jan/29/24

Mr. Adam van Koeverden (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and to the Minister of Sport and Physical Activity, Lib.)

Jan/29/24 8:34:28 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague and friend for the well wishes on my birthday and for standing up for climate action at this time. I cannot say enough or emphasize strongly enough how nice it is to stand up in the House of Commons and talk about how we fight climate change, not whether we fight climate change. With the Conservatives, day after day, asking the majority of the questions in this House, it is a challenge occasionally. The vast majority of Canadians I talk to, the vast majority of Canadians, full stop, demand climate action. They want to help lower our emissions. They want our government to take strong action, and one of those strong actions was indeed our oil and gas emissions cap. It was just in December that our government, with the Minister of Environment and Climate Change at COP, announced a very ambitious plan to lower our emissions with an oil and gas emissions cap. It is the first of its kind in the world. We are the fourth-largest producer of oil and gas in the world, and we are the first-ever country to produce a cap on emissions from oil and gas production. It is going to lead the way on lowering emissions from this sector as we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels going forward. Like I said, as the world's fourth-largest producer, it is a strong signal that we are sending internationally to the sector and to our colleagues in the G7 and G20. We are taking a leadership role in the energy transition. We are aiming to achieve net-zero emissions from the oil and gas sector by 2050, and the emissions cap will ensure that we get there. The challenge, of course, is to reduce emissions while building a stronger, more resilient economy of the 21st century. That is why we are not doing this alone. It requires consultation with the sector to ensure that we are protecting jobs and recognizing that oil and gas still have a role to play in our economy and our society. Last December, we published a proposed regulatory framework, and we look forward to hearing from stakeholders on the approach in this document in the months ahead. On a more personal note, I am a member of the environment committee, and I am looking forward to working more closely with my colleague from Victoria on the environment committee. We had the CEO of Imperial Oil at committee, late in the last session. I had the opportunity to question that CEO, who earns, as the member mentioned, about $17 million a year. He earns that money for taking something from the planet and leaving it in a worse place. The oil and gas sector and the oil sands, as the member rightly pointed out, are responsible for the largest proportion of Canada's emissions, but it is also the most carbon-intensive fuel in the world. It has been shown just recently, in an article that I think we both read, that it is up to 6,500% higher than reported. For some of those compounds, which are called organic compounds, the rate at which they are going into the atmosphere is upwards of 6,000% higher than had been indicated, which is absolutely atrocious. The question I had for that CEO was about the Kearl spill with respect to effluent from tailings ponds. They insist that those tailings releases, as they call them, into a tailings pond have no effect on the environment and no effect on people's health, which is absolutely untrue. It is absolutely not accurate to suggest that there is no effect. It is having an impact on water quality. It is having an impact on cancer rates. It is having a deleterious impact on the environment and the health of first nations around the Athabasca watershed. It is an absolute travesty. I could not agree with my colleague more that we need to do more to ensure that we are protecting the environment from the oil and gas sector, and the oil and gas emissions cap is one way that we are doing that.

703 words

Hear!
Rabble!
add
star_border
share

SoVote

House Hansard - 270