Hon. Raymonde Gagné (Legislative Deputy to the Government Representative in the Senate): Honourable senators, I rise to speak to Motion No. 7 moved by Senator Galvez.

This motion calls on the Senate of Canada to recognize that climate change is an urgent crisis that requires an immediate and ambitious response. Honourable colleagues, as you know, the Honourable Catherine McKenna, the then Minister of Environment and Climate Change, moved a similar motion at the other place on May 16, 2019.

At the time, the minister’s motion noted the impacts of climate change, such as flooding, wildfires, heat waves and other extreme weather events, as well as other concerns, such as the fact that climate change impacts communities across Canada, with coastal, northern and Indigenous communities particularly vulnerable to its effects.

The disastrous flooding in British Columbia should serve a reminder that climate change is real and that governments around the world must act quickly and decisively. Inaction is no longer acceptable.

As the new Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, said, Canada is doing its part and has taken the following measures.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the government put a price on carbon pollution and set a price trajectory out to 2030 that is one of the most ambitious in the world.

The government is also offering support to help homeowners improve their home’s energy efficiency and help drivers buy zero-emission vehicles.

The government is accelerating its plan to phase out traditional coal-fired electricity generation and is offering industries incentives to decarbonize and develop clean tech. The government also introduced regulations to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, and it is committed to doing the same for the entire Canadian economy.

Alongside that, the government is committed to protecting 25% of our land and oceans by 2025. That is why it earmarked $4 billion to support natural climate solutions, which include an initiative to plant 2 billion trees over the next 10 years.

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Honourable senators, finding ways to speed up climate change action can be a frustrating experience for many of us.

As early as 1973, when many of us might have been learning of ecological problems for the first time, in his classic work Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher wrote of:

An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth — in short, materialism — does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited. Already the environment is trying to tell us that certain stresses are becoming excessive.

Nearly 50 years later, these environmental stresses have only increased. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change constantly reminds us — and more recently at COP26 — we are now reaching points of ecological exhaustion in several areas.

Before concluding, I want to commend Senator Galvez for tabling this motion and for her relentless climate change advocacy.

Here at the Senate, as elsewhere, we need to tackle climate change on a number of fronts. We are up against a problem of titanic proportions that requires all hands on deck if we are to avoid the proverbial iceberg that is now well within sight.

Senator Galvez’s motion is an important action but, of course, more needs to be done. In this chamber, in committees and individually, we need to be creative and innovative in contemplating how we can act to increase greater climate action for today and tomorrow.

Thank you, meegwetch.