Bill C-50

Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act

An Act respecting accountability, transparency and engagement to support the creation of sustainable jobs for workers and economic growth in a net-zero economy

This enactment establishes an accountability, transparency and engagement framework to facilitate and promote economic growth, the creation of sustainable jobs and support for workers and communities in Canada in the shift to a net-zero economy. Accordingly, the enactment
(a) provides that the Governor in Council may designate a Minister for the purposes of the Act as well as specified Ministers;
(b) establishes a Sustainable Jobs Partnership Council to provide the Minister and the specified Ministers, through a process of social dialogue, with independent advice with respect to measures to foster the creation of sustainable jobs, measures to support workers, communities and regions in the shift to a net-zero economy and matters referred to it by the Minister;
(c) requires the tabling of a Sustainable Jobs Action Plan in each House of Parliament no later than 2026 and by the end of each subsequent period of five years;
(d) provides for the establishment of a Sustainable Jobs Secretariat to support the implementation of the Act; and
(e) provides for a review of the Act within ten years of its coming into force and by the end of each subsequent period of ten years.

Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not going to speak about the NDP leader's $30,000 trip to Las Vegas, but I would like to know the relevance of this discussion in relation to the bill. I think it is valid point of order.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I will accept that.

The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate that. It allows me to go back. I was responding to the previous intervention and attack on me by a Conservative, who said that she contested what was said by the Chancellor of Germany to me in a meeting. I was saying that we were meeting with the Germans about energy. The Conservatives went over. We do not know who they met with, but it is worth noting an $818 bottle of wine. There was then a second bottle of wine for $265. That still is probably pretty good. That is not sparkling Baby Duck—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

We have a point of order from the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly will not speak to the NPD leader's ethical violation as it relates to a gift he received. I want to know what the relevance is to the bill we are debating.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I urge people to have a look at the Speaker's ruling from yesterday. Again, page 8 reads, “This includes coming up with fake titles for members in order to mock them or making comments that question their courage, honesty or commitment to their country.”

There is a lot of that in debates lately, so let us try to bring that debate further up. I know the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay is really wanting to talk to the bill at hand.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think I am getting so much interference because I am getting to the punchline. Then, I will move on, but I think it would be unfair to intimidate me and have my ability to speak circumscribed, because it is about what our priorities are. Our priority, as New Democrats, has been workers, and particularly people from the natural resources industry, like where I come from. I live in a mining town that is looking for the clean energy future, and nobody in my town would be given a $719 bottle of wine. What was in that wine?

I am coming to the conclusion. At the end of this night with these four Conservatives, paid for apparently by my cousin Dan McTeague over in the U.K., meeting somebody we do not know, they had a bottle of champagne for $1,791 Canadian. That is obviously not sparkling Baby Duck. I do not know who bought that for them.

I ask that, because what we are talking about is the insecurity of workers at a time of transition. Do we wish there was a transition? No, we do not. We are used to living the way we have lived. I have lived through transitions, and it is not pretty. Cobalt is where we lost every single silver mining job in one summer. When our iron ore mines shut down, there was no future there. We know the word “transition”, and we know it is not pretty. This was something we heard from workers in Alberta and other regions. They asked what is “just” about a transition and how we could make it so they have some place to go. This was the New Democratic plan from the beginning, which we negotiated with the Liberals.

The Liberals initially said that they were going to put a jobs centre as their solution. We said that a jobs centre sends a message that we are turning out the lights and leaving. Where are we going to put those jobs centres? Are we going to put them in Fort McMurray or Saint John's? We needed something broader and something bigger, so we pushed for the sustainable jobs legislation that would serve as the framework. This is the important thing: We need a framework around how these tax credits would be implemented. We know that if we do not have a plan, it will be just a gong show of friends, pals and lobbyists who are going to be sucking up this money, as unfortunately happens all too often in Canada.

We need to compete the way the United States has. They brought an all-of-government approach to make sure they were making a truly transformative revolution.

I will say another thing they talked to us about when we were in Germany. The Germans were very concerned about the IRA, because of the competitiveness. Over in Europe, 3,000 or 4,000 kilometres away, they were concerned about how they were going to compete against Joe Biden and the massive amount of investment that is moving out of Europe and moving to the United States. We are right on the American border, so when $33 billion gets sucked out of Alberta, it goes stateside.

In my region, talking to miners and mining companies, the first thing they said to me was, “Did you see the tax credits Joe Biden put in? They are really interesting to us.” We have to be able to say that we are here too, we will compete and we will make sure that the investment stays here.

Again, I am dealing with the Liberal government. We are trying to make this work. We are saying, for example, that there are a lot of things missing in this plan. What is the sustainable jobs secretariat? Is that just going to be some desk in some minister's office, or is it going to have a true mandate? What is the partnership council? Are we actually looking at something credible here?

What we are going to be insisting on, while the Conservatives try to filibuster that committee and that legislation, is checks and balances to make sure that regional representation is there. We want to make sure that labour is there with enough voices representing enough regions of the country, because they are the ones who are going to be dealing with the implementation of that, not us. We want to make sure that indigenous rights are fully respected and implemented, and part of that is in the tax credit incentives. They are going to be different in different areas, and they are certainly going to be different in the opportunities for indigenous people. We need to make sure they are front and centre.

The other thing we really want to know is that we have a youth voice on the stewardship council, because we want to make sure that those who are being most affected by the climate disaster that is unfolding have their future interests at stake. We need to make sure that the tax credits work, we need to make sure that they are being implemented and we need to have better data collection. What the Liberals are offering us on data collection is insufficient. There would not be a job left in Canada by the time they report back.

There need to be mechanisms that come back to Parliament to tell us if this is working. If it does not work, it is is going to affect our environment, number one, but it is going to affect working-class families from one end of the country to the other.

What we were really surprised by, again, with the all-of-government approach taken by the Biden administration, is that we have seen, in one year, a staggering turnaround in terms of projects getting off the ground, in terms of jobs, in terms of commitments.

That is where we are at as New Democrats. We believe that we have a huge opportunity right now. Is this bill perfect? It is far from perfect. What we can do in a minority Parliament is come in with good plans and good amendments to make it happen, unlike our Conservative colleagues, who want to go back to the 19th century.

It is not going to happen. I am sorry. That world is gone. What we need to do is to say that we have an opportunity and if we do not compete, we are going to be at the side of the road because the United States is moving ahead.

I will just conclude on this. Let us consider Texas. Texas, politically, is about as out there and as right wing as the Conservative backbench and yet 890,000 clean-tech jobs are in Texas right now. There is no other jurisdiction in the world right now that has invested as much in clean tech as Texas. Texas came through the most brutal heat wave, killer heat wave, able to turn on all of their air conditioners.

Meanwhile, Danielle Smith was going around saying, oh my God, if we have clean power, we are going to have to turn the power off. She was paying for these trucks to drive up and down Ottawa saying, my God, if one invests in Canada, we are going to run out of energy. What kind of premier goes around advertising, in an energy-rich province, that the lights are going to be turned off?

The reality is that if we get these clean energy projects off the ground, it is going to dramatically decrease costs for families. It is going to give the working class and middle class steady jobs and it is going to save our planet. We will go to these hearings and we will push for strong amendments.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member from Timmins—James Bay today. There was that one exchange between him and the member for Sarnia—Lambton. She started to claim that she was not a climate denier, which I found very fascinating, because, only moments before that, when she was giving a speech in this House, she made some pretty wild claims, stuff that one sees from Russian bot memes on Facebook.

She said that only 7% of the population wants to have an electric car, yet in 2022, one out of every 10 vehicles was a plug-in vehicle in Canada.

She also said that no one wants to be trapped in a snowstorm at -30° because the batteries do not work. This is completely untrue. I have been driving electric vehicles here since I was elected in 2015. They work in the winter.

She also said, and this is the best one, because this is the meme that one always sees, “They catch fire”, as though we should be afraid of an electric car because the battery is going to catch fire.

The outrage and the misinformation that is being distributed by Conservatives is what gives them the reputation that they are climate deniers.

Would the member for Timmins—James Bay agree with that?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my deep tradition in Parliament to not cast aspersions on any but to only speak to facts, so I will only speak to facts.

The member for Sarnia—Lambton lives on Highway 401 and Highway 401 is the heart of Canada's auto belt. Canada's auto belt has gone all in on EV technology. Here is the simple thing. Those jobs could go to Ohio or they could stay in Canada.

We see the Conservatives do misinformation after misinformation about EV, about critical minerals, about battery technology, as if our workers cannot make proper cars.

I am sorry. Canadians can make the best cars on the planet. The Conservatives and the Conservative leader attack EV technology and the battery technology, but my region is dependent on those jobs. We are going to get the critical minerals out of the ground. We are going to work with the companies on Highway 401. We are going to make the cars in Canada and make them sustainably.

The Conservatives do not have to drive them. They want to go back to the days of the horse and buggy, so let them.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed that the hon. member spent a lot of time on sponsored travel, so I would like to ask him a question. In 2022, he took a trip to Berlin, Germany that cost $10,500. The trip was paid for by the FES, partnered with politicized NGOs, to attack Israel, SHAML, a radical anti-Israel NGO, and Mossawa, which is one of the main Israeli Arab NGOs involved in the political demonization of Israel.

He held a joint press conference with Hezbollah in 2004 and HDIP, which promotes international political attacks on Israel.

How could he justify that?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as we saw earlier today, the Conservatives attempted to use the horrific kidnappings by Hamas to promote the oil and gas agenda. I do not say these things are lies. I do not need to. I do not even need to respond to that kind of gutter talk.

The fact that the Conservatives would say that going to meet the German Chancellor and German parliamentarians about energy was somehow tied to the terror attacks in Israel shows how marginal they are and how deplorable the actions are of a party that will say anything, do anything and misrepresent anything at a time of such horror, tragedy and killings. I would tell the member shame on him.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I would like unanimous consent to table the member's sponsored travel.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I am already hearing a number of noes.

We have a point of order from the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am more than willing to put out our sponsored travel. Are they willing? The member for Cumberland—Colchester had the $1,800 bottle of wine. Would they put the documents on the table and tell us who bought that wine?