SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 331 - Jun/13/24

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/13/24 12:00:01 p.m.
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I thank the hon. member for the additional information, and it certainly will be taken into consideration as we deliberate on this matter. The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre is rising on a point of order.

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Ms. Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

Jun/13/24 12:00:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member across the way for his intervention, as I have given. This is a very significant, serious matter in the House. The member for Saskatoon West has made similar comments in the past. However, I will not go into those comments. It is important we have trust in the blues and have trust in Hansard, and that members cannot just alter the record to avoid accountability and responsibility, particularly when making blatantly racist comments in the House.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/13/24 12:01:00 p.m.
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I thank the member for the additional information. Again, the hon. member's comments will be taken into consideration as we deliberate on this matter and bring this matter back before the House with a response. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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Timmins

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Jun/13/24 12:01:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am always proud to rise in this House and proud as well to share my time with the member for Vancouver East. There are moments when I have a hard time justifying what people watch on television, when it comes to the House of Commons. Many of them think that our democracy is deteriorating into this ridiculous Punch and Judy show between the Liberals and Conservatives of refusing to deal with the issues at hand. Today is a really strong example of this, where the Conservatives have lit their hair on fire over an internal debate between the Parliamentary Budget Officer's numbers and the government's numbers over a report that we have access to. There are so many things we could be taking the time to debate, like, for example, the issue of foreign interference, which everyone is concerned with, but we know that the Conservatives will not go to the foreign interference file because the leader, who lives in Stornoway, will not or cannot get security clearance. I have never imagined a situation where a would-be prime minister is unable or unwilling to actually know if there are threats to this country, because ignorance is not bliss in politics; it is dereliction of duty. We could be talking about what is happening on the global stage with the frightening rise of the right in Europe and the threat that it poses to the defence of Ukraine as we see Putin's war machine moving continually against the Ukrainian people, but we do not see the Conservatives wanting to stand up on that, and they have voted against Ukraine a number of times. We could talk about the war crimes findings of the United Nations this week, which I find very disturbing. We find the UN has reported that Hamas's crimes against civilians, sexual violence and kidnapping were extremely horrific on October 7, and of course we know that Hamas is a terrorist organization that has been widely condemned, and justly so. However, it is the findings on Israel in the UN reports that say that “The frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-based [violence]... against Palestinians” have become part of the normal “operating procedures” of the Israeli Security Forces. It is a frightening finding by the United Nations about a close ally of ours, that it is using widespread sexual violence against civilians. The other finding that the UN raised serious concerns about is starvation as a method of warfare. The reality is, of course, that starvation is not a method of warfare. It is not a military aim; it is an attempt to destroy a people. When one cuts off food to children and families, they are trying to destroy a people, and that meets the test of genocide, yet the Conservatives do not want to talk about that. Canada once had a bright light on the international stage on social justice. We are tiptoeing around the horrific violence being perpetrated against defenceless people in Palestine. The Conservatives will not speak about that, so they would rather we spend our time on this internal bickering about some numbers. The rest of the world is looking at Canada and saying, “Where are they? Where is their voice? Why are they not standing strong for the International Criminal Court and for justice, like so many of our allies, like our friends in Ireland who are not afraid to speak up?” We have come to one more day of a long-going battle between the climate-denying Conservatives, who believe that the burning of the planet by big oil should be made free, and the Liberals, who have continually failed to explain a credible plan for dealing with rising carbon emissions. The fact is that carbon emissions from the oil and gas sector have risen every single year. They continue to rise. They rise under the current government dramatically. There is government talk about how carbon pricing, when I fill up at the gas station or when I travel, is having this great benefit. Canadians are paying their share, and Canadians are willing to do their share to deal with the climate crisis, but big oil has no intention. Then, we have industrial carbon pricing that allows planet burners, like Suncor, to pay one-fourteenth in comparison to what an average person would pay. Canadians know that is not right. The real issue on carbon pricing with the government is that the Prime Minister went to COP26 and announced an emissions cap that he had not consulted with anybody about and he was going to put an emissions cap on big oil, but at the same time he put aside $34 billion to build a pipeline for which there was no business case. Compare that to the government's work on clean energy. How long has it been since the Deputy Prime Minister announced investment tax credits to kick-start our clean energy economy? We are still waiting. We are still waiting for justice in indigenous communities for housing. We get those promises. In my region, the Prime Minister wrote a letter to the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority saying the government supports getting rid of what is really an apartheid-era hospital, yet none of that has flowed. However, when it came to giving money to big oil, the taps turned on: $34 billion. What does that mean in terms of the credibility of carbon pricing? Right now, in the oil patch, they are talking about a year of record production. Imperial Oil is breaking production records. Why? It is thanks to TMX. Cenovus is going to increase from 800,000 barrels a day to 950,000 barrels a day. Heavy bitumen is going to increase 500,000 barrels a day, thanks to the free gift of taxpayers' money to an industry that has not been serious at any point about reducing emissions. We are going to have an increase of 500,000 barrels a day of raw bitumen, which has the highest greenhouse gas emissions of any fuel on the planet out of the oil and gas sector. Taxpayers are expected to pay for that, but they are not just paying for that. The Trans Mountain pipeline is such a boondoggle that even super-rich companies like Suncor and Imperial and Cenovus could not run the bitumen through it, because it would be too expensive to pay for the toll fees. The toll fees are how we get the money back for the investment in the pipeline. As it stands now, 78¢ on every dollar is going to be paid by the Canadian people as a subsidy to companies that made $68 billion in profit. The government is now saying that it is going to make it a little fairer. It wants the taxpayer to pay maybe 55¢ or 60¢ on every dollar. That is Liberal mathematics. When the Liberals come out and say that the Prime Minister has a Haida tattoo and that the Prime Minister has said that Canada is back on the international stage, what they should have been saying all along is that they were adamant that they were going to massively increase what is the dirtiest oil on the planet. That is not a personal statement. That is a fact. Bitumen has the highest GHG emissions in the world. There is a reason the Liberals had to scramble to spend that money. Certainly we know from the IPCC and the warnings by António Guterres that we are beyond the red line now in terms of a climate catastrophe unfolding, and the United Nations has actually called out world leaders for “lying” about their promises on the international stage while massively increasing fossil fuel production at a time when the planet is on fire. That is what the UN said, but then the International Energy Agency, hardly a hangout for left-wing thought, has been warning consistently against putting more infrastructure into oil and gas because it will result in stranded assets. In fact, the IEA says we are seeing a massive glut that is going to appear in the next three years that will completely undermine the economics of oil and gas production. Since bitumen is the highest cost going, the government had to scramble with our money to expand that, so we could be locked in for decades to come. Under Canada's scenario on oil production, Liberals expect that we will still be burning the same amount of bitumen in 2050 as we are today. They were never serious about dealing with the climate crisis. They were never serious about lowering emissions. They expect the ordinary taxpayers, who are more than willing to do their part to help the planet, to do that, and it is all on their shoulders, while the government is giving gifts to companies that made billions. This is what the government will be remembered for on the climate crisis.

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Mr. Marc Dalton (Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, CPC)

Jun/13/24 12:11:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the OECD, which is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has projected that Canada will be among the worst of 40 advanced nations for the next three decades, that we are just going in a totally wrong direction. There has been a war on Canadian industry, on the resource sector, which we hear time and again from the previous speaker. The NDP members are just supporting and are joined hand in hand and joined at the hip with the Liberals. Does the member recognize that they have abandoned working-class Canadians?

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Jun/13/24 12:12:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that was pretty hilarious. I feel like I am being stoned to death with popcorn, with the insincerity coming from my colleagues. Let us talk about the abandonment of working-class people, when the member for Kelowna—Lake Country was bragging about making carbon and pollution free while her city was on fire during a climate crisis. Let us talk about how the member who lives in Stornoway, who has never actually had a job that we have been able to figure out, was flying up to Yukon to say that they are going to make pollution burning free while people were fleeing from their homes. As for the working class, the working class has a right to sustainable living, sustainable jobs and a sustainable future for their children. The Conservatives would burn that in a second if they could, if it meant giving Suncor some more money.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands, Lib.)

Jun/13/24 12:13:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member started his speech today by talking about other things that we could have been talking about, other things that Conservatives could have brought forward in their opposition day motion. He acknowledged, and I think we all know, that this is just a reoccurring theme. Conservatives always want to talk about the same thing, about the price on pollution, and they want to continue to instill distrust in Canadians, when more than eight out of 10 get back more than they put in. The reality is that we are seeing this time and time again with Conservatives. They are basing their information on misinformation to try to mislead Canadians. For two months, they sat silent on the capital gains tax, to only suddenly, two days ago, push the rage farm button to activate all the trolls to do all of their dirty work for them. What does the member think about the position that the Leader of the Opposition has taken?

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Speech

Mr. Charlie Angus

Jun/13/24 12:14:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I feel like I am being asked to make commentary on something that was going on inside the member's head. I do not know really what the question was, but then I never quite do. Let us talk about getting out more than what one puts in. Let us talk about Pathways Alliance and what they get out of Canada with putting less in. That is the question, I think, we should be asking the Liberals. Why do they continue to give Pathways Alliance such a free pass, when it is making $68 billion in profits and it has made it clear that it has no intention of lessening its emissions unless we pay for it? It wants us to pay 70% of the costs of this carbon capture scheme, which even it admits does not work. That is it. We put in a lot more and we get out a lot less from those guys.

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Mr. Mario Beaulieu (La Pointe-de-l'Île, BQ)

Jun/13/24 12:15:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we saw in the motion that the Liberals seemed to be trying to prevent the release of the report. Earlier, we heard the Minister of Environment and Climate Change say that he had stopped subsidizing oil when in fact he continues to subsidize the oil companies in all manner of ways, including the pipeline and so-called carbon capture. What does my colleague make of this doublespeak?

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Mr. Charlie Angus

Jun/13/24 12:15:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is clear that the Liberal government has no credibility when it comes to subsidies for the oil companies. Let us not forget that the public investment in developing the Trans Mountain pipeline was enormous. There were a lot of subsidies for helping with the expansion and the development of the oil companies, which led to an increase in GHG emissions in Alberta, without any plan to lower them. The question is: what about the GHG target? Mr. Trudeau made a promise, but where is the plan?

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Jun/13/24 12:16:32 p.m.
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We cannot use other members' names, as the hon. member knows. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Vancouver East.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Jun/13/24 12:16:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise in this House to enter into this debate. However, I must say that the debate before us is really a colossal waste of the House of Commons resources and the valuable time that we have in this chamber to debate urgent issues and situations. Why do I say that? The motion the Conservatives tabled is effectively calling for the government to table a set of data by June 17, 2024. What we do know is that the government did table a set of data. In fact, the Liberals tabled it today, albeit they should have made the information available right from the outset and should have been transparent with it. Notwithstanding that, that information is now before us. It begs the question why we are here debating a motion that is, frankly, not relevant anymore. It has already been addressed. In the meantime, what is happening in our communities? We have a situation in our communities, which is a housing crisis from coast to coast to coast. In fact, just today, I tabled a private member's bill to call on the government to use a human rights-based lens in addressing the housing crisis, something that the Liberals say they will honour under the National Housing Strategy Act. However, in reality, we know that is not being done. In fact, there are encampments all across the country where people cannot access the housing they need, adequate housing that they need. My private member's bill calls for the government to incorporate into the National Housing Strategy Act provisions that would disallow decampment on federal lands and to work collaboratively with other orders of government, other levels of government, to properly address the housing crisis. That is perhaps what we should be doing: focusing on how we can truly address the housing crisis, instead of having the Conservatives putting forward motions that are moot and have been made irrelevant already. I would also say that we have a situation with the immigration system, where there are a lot of issues. The government decided that it would bring in a cap on international students very suddenly, impacting international students who are now caught out in a very bad way. They would not be able to renew their work permit or their study permit because of the cap. Some of them are being exploited and taken advantage of. I just got an email from someone who told me that they were advised to go and marry someone, engage in marriage fraud, in order to find a path to stay here in Canada. That is not the path forward. We know that international students are struggling. They contribute, by the way, to Canada's economy, to our economic, social, cultural and educational communities. They should be valued instead of being blamed for the housing crisis that both the Liberals and the Conservatives have caused. It was the Conservatives who cancelled Canada's national co-op housing program in 1992. It was the Conservative leader who sat at the table and saw the Harper government lose 800,000 units of affordable housing for Canadians. Then it was the Liberals, in 1993, following the Conservatives, who cancelled the national affordable housing program. They also added to the loss of affordable housing in our communities. Therefore, instead of talking about a motion that is no longer relevant, we should be talking about how we are going to earnestly address the housing crisis, how we are going to ensure that those who are unhoused can live in dignity and how we can ensure that Canada will not only build more housing faster, but also build the kind of housing that Canadians can afford and can live in with dignity. We should be talking about how we should not allow decampment to take place, to further displace people who are unhoused in our communities, to marginalize them and to further put them at greater risks. If we want to, and we should, talk about the climate crisis, we should not talk about how we can enable the climate crisis to further escalate. I do not know if the Conservatives are blind to the fact that we have a climate crisis. They cannot continue to stick their heads in the sand and to deny this reality. In my community, in British Columbia, we had a weather-related crisis that happened in the heat wave that killed over 600 people. We had a fire that burned down an entire town, a flood that followed and a mudslide that continued to further escalate the climate crisis. We cannot pretend that this is not happening and that somehow the carbon tax is to blame. Let us just be clear about who is to blame and what action we need to take. Big oil needs to take responsibility, and those companies need to be held to account. The government, the Liberals, refuse to take the action that is necessary to deal with the climate crisis. The Liberals refuse to ensure that big oil pays its fair share. The Liberals refuse to stop subsidizing the oil and gas industry. Why are they doing that when the oil and gas industry is actually making record profit. It is to the detriment of everyday Canadians, to our collective detriment. When the earth is burning, and it literally is with the wildfires and the forest fires that are taking place, we cannot just sit in the House and blame the carbon tax. What planet are we from? If we continue to go down this track, we are not going to address the climate crisis, which is desperately in need of action. We should be saying to Suncor that we are sorry, but it has made over $2.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, and enough is enough; we are going to make sure that we stop the subsidies for the oil and gas industry and that the industry is made to do its part to address the climate crisis. Madam Speaker, let me say this. We also have a responsibility in the international community to address the climate crisis because there are more people being displaced as a result of weather-related situations. Therefore, we have a collective responsibility to do what is right. There are many issues we need to debate, and debate seriously, but not a motion to which the very data that the Conservatives want has already been tabled. With that, I welcome questions.

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Mrs. Tracy Gray (Kelowna—Lake Country, CPC)

Jun/13/24 12:26:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know that housing is important to the member, and she spoke about it during her intervention. At the housing committee, just a few hours ago, we heard that higher capital gains taxes will have a negative effect on home building. This was a statement made by the chief economist of Canada's largest construction association. Why would the member, along with the rest of her NDP colleagues, continue to prop up the Liberal government and vote, just yesterday, for tax increases that would hurt home building in Canada during a crisis of home affordability?

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Jun/13/24 12:27:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let us be very clear about the housing crisis and what has caused it. Successive Liberal governments and Conservative governments have helped to create the housing crisis we are in by allowing for the financialization of housing and for big developers to use renovictions to displace people so that they lose their homes. Under the Conservatives, we already know that Canada has lost more than 800,000 units of housing. The Conservative leader called community housing “Soviet-style” housing. That is shameful. The government could address the housing crisis by building housing that Canadians need and can afford.

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Mr. Chad Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Lib.)

Jun/13/24 12:27:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague that today's motion is nonsensical. It is just a regurgitation of the motions we have seen over the last number of months when we could be and should be debating more important issues, like housing and the environment. The Leader of the Opposition was in Hamilton recently as part of his “make Canada great again tour”. He made no reference to, or had no ideas about, how to get out of the housing crisis. He provided no plan as it relates to combatting climate change. I wonder if the member can speak to why it is so important that we provide options and alternatives for Canadians as it relates to those two very important issues.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Jun/13/24 12:28:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the truth is that Conservatives are only focused on slogans. They somehow think that the slogan “axe the tax” will actually fix the housing crisis. It will not. What we need, to address the housing crisis, is for Canada to be, at the very minimum, on par with the G7 countries with respect to our community housing stock. Right now, at 3.5%, it is less than half of where they are. We will not address the housing crisis if we continue to go down this track. Significant investments need to be made. The kind of housing that needs to be built is the kind that Canadians can afford. That is at the core of the issue.

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Mr. Luc Desilets (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)

Jun/13/24 12:29:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague, who is quite worked up today, what she thinks about the motion before us. It is basically a request for information, so I find it rather odd that we are spending a full day debating it. What does my colleague think?

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Jun/13/24 12:30:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today's debate on this motion is an entire waste of time for members of Parliament and a waste of the resources required to keep the House running, because the information the Conservatives say that they want has already been tabled. It makes the entire motion completely irrelevant to this debate today.

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Tabled
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Ms. Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

Jun/13/24 12:30:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Vancouver East, who is a tremendous advocate. I would have to say that I agree with her that this is a totally irrelevant motion because the information has already been tabled. I find that it is another opportunity for Conservatives to axe the facts, including the fact that we are in a climate emergency. Their party is still arguing about whether the world is round or flat. I wonder if the member could speak specifically to how the climate emergency is impacting the folks who are currently unsheltered. I know the Conservative leader talks a lot about tent cities, which he regularly demeans. I wonder if she could comment on that.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Jun/13/24 12:31:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first of all, I want to thank my colleague for her tremendous advocacy and for using a human rights-based lens with respect to everything she does. On addressing the situation of the housing crisis and how climate relates to it, people are being displaced. We had a heat wave in my community of Vancouver East, in British Columbia, and 600 people died. There are people who are unhoused or are living in tent cities because they do not have access to adequate—

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