Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 30th, 2023

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I have a quick point of order, Chair.

I'm just wondering if you could enlighten the committee as to who the next four or five speakers are for the subamendment here. That would be beneficial to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Colleagues, as mentioned previously, the speaking order can change if members are present or not present, or if people waive their place in the order at that point in time.

After Ms. Dabrusin is Monsieur Simard, and then I have Mr. Aldag, Mr. Genuis and several others. I believe everybody from your side is also on the speaking list.

Monsieur Simard, the floor is yours.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you.

As my colleague Ms. Dabrusin pointed out, we've been caught up in a never-ending tangle since October 30. We've spent a month trying to determine who should be able to speak. We spent a month discussing a subamendment that is perhaps there just to frustrate Mr. Angus. I may not be Mr. Angus's greatest admirer, but the purpose of this subamendment is simply to annoy him by saying that he's not prepared to support witnesses from his region and his riding. It's a political ploy like any other, but I don't think it contributes at all to the public debate.

I have a confession to make, Mr. Chair. My son is a political science student who listens to our debates. The idiotic things he has tuned into in recent weeks were discussed in one of his courses, in connection with how elected representatives can paralyze the democratic system, sometimes, I believe, with questionable intent.

Mr. Chair, I'm telling you this because people do watch the debates we are currently having. I know this because I've taught political science and studied politics for over 20 years. People are getting more cynical about politics. What they might be watching here over the past month would do nothing to reduce the level of cynicism about politics. I don't agree with anything in Bill C‑49. Nor do I agree with anything in Bill C‑50. In fact we voted against the latter in the House.

On the other hand, on what grounds could I possibly express my disagreement with these bills by attempting to obstruct committee studies? I believe that in doing so, I would be acting irresponsibly. I won't be taking that approach, and would rather try to improve the bills to make them acceptable to me. If that proved to be impossible, I would just vote against them. That's the straightforward democratic principle.

I am therefore hoping that we'll be able to quickly finish debate on this amendment, because I don't see what it has to offer. We can invite anyone we want to testify before the committee. It's up to the members to suggest which witnesses they would like to hear from. I don't see what that would contribute, other than causing us to waste valuable time. I would ask my colleagues to show their integrity. People can disagree with bills that are introduced, but at the very least, we can hear what the witnesses have to say and allow the democratic process to proceed freely.

I would ask you to vote as quickly as possible on this amendment so that we can return to what's on the table, meaning the study of two bills that are, after all, rather important, even though we may disagree with them. That's what I encourage everyone to do.

I'll conclude by pointing out that everything we do has an impact, and that people are watching us on TV. People can see what has been going on for the past few weeks. It has been a free-for-all shouting match over whose turn it is to speak next. I don't think that this is helping to advance the democratic process.

Let's be responsible. Let's say what we think about the amendments before us and stop wasting everyone's precious time.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Simard.

We'll now go to Mr. Aldag.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's a wonderful thing to be able to speak. It's something we haven't had a lot of opportunity to do. I am grateful that we are able to weigh in on the subamendment we have today, as well as the amendment and, ultimately, the main motion.

Like my two colleagues before me, I would like to encourage us to move forward as expeditiously as possible. We have two very important pieces of legislation before us. I'm hearing from thousands of Canadians in my constituency office about the importance they see in Bill C-49 and Bill C-50. There's an appeal that we get on with this, and in large part, that we make room for labour at the table.

I need to reflect on the fact that it is interesting how our Conservative colleagues, particularly the leader, talk about being friends with labour; yet, every chance that the leader and his caucus have to prevent things from moving forward, they seem to take that opportunity.

We're seeing it with Bill C-58 and Bill C-50. I really would hope that.... We have these important pieces of legislation before us, and I'd like to see us actually move forward for the benefit of Canadian workers.

We've heard a lot of discussion about whether this is a programming or schedule motion. I'd like to remind all my colleagues here that the original motion, when we finally get to it, will allow us to deal with both Bill C-49 and Bill C-50 concurrently. I think that's a really wise way to go. It would allow us to have witnesses, the minister and others to deal with both pieces of legislation, so we can get them back to the House in a timely manner.

I won't take up a lot more time. I'm ready to move forward with the vote on the subamendment and, hopefully, a vote on the amendment, so we can get to the main motion as soon as possible. We can build on the work that our committee did previously when hearing from many witnesses on Bill C-50 and Bill C-49. We have the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia asking us to move forward with those pieces of legislation as well.

The motion we have from my colleague is a very good motion that will help us advance both pieces of legislation and, ultimately, get them back to the House, so the House can do its job and move forward with the legislation.

That's my intervention on the subamendment we have before us this morning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Aldag.

Ms. Jones, do you have a point of order?

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

No, I don't. I just want to get on the speaking list to speak to the amendment and move forward with the bills we need to debate.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Chair, I have a quick point of order.

Obviously, Mr. Genuis is not here. I'm curious to know.... You alluded to the fact that the next speakers after him were, it seemed, all on our side here.

Could you give us the breakdown of who the next three or four speakers are?

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Because Mr. Genuis is not here, the next speaker is Mr. Dreeshen. After Mr. Dreeshen, we will go to Mr. Falk and then to you, Mr. Patzer. After that, I have Mrs. Stubbs and some others.

Mr. Dreeshen, the floor is yours. Thank you for waiting patiently.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I, too, have been waiting for this opportunity to speak and to discuss some of the significant aspects of what we have before us, including, as other speakers have just mentioned, what the order should be as far as Bill C-49 or Bill C-50.

Of course, I think many people are aware of the major concern with Bill C-69, which of course affects all ridings. It affects Timmins; it affects my riding, and it affects every one of the 338 ridings in the country where the Supreme Court has found that there are aspects of Bill C-69 that are unconstitutional.

We then look at Bill C-49, which has, at initial count, 33 references to the points in Bill C-69 that have been deemed unconstitutional. Therefore, the suggestion is made that maybe we should actually look at that which the Supreme Court said was so egregious before we as a committee...or for that matter before the government decides to push forward with legislation that it knows is formed on something that has been challenged.

This, I believe, is the critical aspect of the discussion. When we say there is something that the people in each of those 338 ridings need to be aware of, it is the court's decision on those parts of Bill C-69 that have already been made to the citizenry. How then can we justify dealing with legislation until that has been dealt with?

How is the government planning on dealing with that?

We listened to the Minister of the Environment basically saying that he doesn't think they're right, so we'll just kind of shuffle it around a bit so that we don't have to worry about that.

Well, that isn't exactly what the Supreme Court suggested as the solution to the fact that these points were considered unconstitutional.

We have seen the same attitude since then. The point I want to make has to do with attitude. That is with the plastics ban. Again, the Federal Court is saying that this, too, has remnants that are unconstitutional. The suggestion is just that we'll run roughshod over this, too. It's not an issue.

Of course, then we come back to the stage where we say that this is natural resources, so the fact that the Minister of the Environment chooses to get engaged in that discussion and so on.... Maybe we should just deal with what the Minister of Natural Resources has to say. Of course, we've made reference to having both of them, and even others, come to speak to the committee.

I made a very significant point, when I was on the environment committee, of looking at the mandate letter of the Minister of the Environment. Then, when I moved here to natural resources, I made a special point of looking at the mandate letter of the Minister of Natural Resources.

I challenge people to find where the major differences are. When we have a Minister of Natural Resources who has not been charged with finding the very best opportunities for every one of Canada's natural resources and when he is using the same set of metrics he had when he was environment minister or when the new environment minister came into play, how does that become significant as far as natural resources are concerned?

We have heard, through our discussions in the past, that parts of their legislation have been unfair. It has been unfair to regions. It has been unfair to provinces. Quite frankly, after the many years I spent on aboriginal affairs and northern development, I know it has been unfair to our indigenous communities, because they have a lot of money already in the game of natural resources.

We talk about some of the other features of how the government looks at our natural resources and how we, as a country, can manage them.

I'll go back a number of years to a meeting with the OSCE in Berlin. At that time, there were discussions and different things taking place. Of course, the environment, science and technology were some of the main features there. The contribution Canada brought to the table in an amendment to one of the major supplementary items being discussed on the floor among this group of 50-something countries—it is beyond the European Union—was that.... They wanted that group to more or less rubber-stamp the fact that Canada believed a carbon tax was the very best solution for managing environmental concerns. That was our contribution to the discussion. We had others: some workings on helping women be involved in parliamentary associations and that type of thing, and on helping out journalists who were being attacked. There were a lot of other things there, but that was our contribution—

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mr. Dreeshen, we have a point of order by Mr. Simard.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Out of curiosity, I'd like to know what Mr. Dreeshen's comments have to do with the subamendment.

I'd like him to tell us, because I can't see how what he just said is related to the subamendment. I'm just asking. I simply want to remind him that we're discussing the subamendment.

if he wants to speak about something else, he can wait until we have finished with the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Simard, for your point of order.

I would ask colleagues to keep the debate relevant to the motion at hand.

Mr. Dreeshen, the floor is yours, sir.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much.

I guess I could go back to the point where I said that we have 338 ridings where this is significant. We need to talk about the concerns that Canadians have, that regions have and that provinces have about how things are dealt with. We need to look at how industry is managing this, and the only way you can do that is to talk about the way the government has put obstacles in the way of industry and set up barriers where one part of the country is working against another part of the country. That is my rationale, and that is where I will continue from.

This contribution we had in Berlin was probably one of the first times where I had to sit there and say that I have to speak against this, because this was not the best way. It was obvious that it was simply presented to the group as window dressing to say, “Hey, this is what we're doing, so we'd sure like to have this other group on our side to do this.” It did pass, especially at that time—that was about six years or so ago. They were about as Conservative-minded as they are now, so it did pass. Therefore, we could merrily come back and say that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe also believes the carbon tax is a significant part of this.

We have that in a couple of different regions. For example, if you are going to be in the club of the European Union, you have to commit to some sort of engagement with and development of a carbon price, which kind of ties into what Canada said a number of years ago in Berlin. I can't see why Canada would be the one pushing it, but I can see where that discussion would come into play.

We can fast-forward to a McKinsey report that came out in 2019 and talked about carbon pricing in Europe and the engagement associated with that. I believe it was Poland that was at the rate of $1 per tonne at that time. I think Sweden was at $159 or $179 at that time, and we had Ukraine at 38¢, so that was it in 2019. To be fair, in 2019, Canada's carbon price was $20, so there was a 56:1 ratio involved there. Yes, Ukraine said, “Okay, to be part of this group, we're part of the carbon tax.”

If you look at where we are now, it is $60, and I believe Ukraine is around 83¢, so that is probably closer to a 75:1 ratio as far as the tax is concerned. Where does that put us? We know we want to help. That's what the OSCE was about. It speaks about food security and energy security, and, at that particular point in time, with Russia's incursions into Georgia and other places, and Crimea as well, all of those things were discussion points.

We can fast-forward to Birmingham in 2022, and we have similar arguments, except this time Canada came with a plan for the transition away from hydrocarbons. Again, it's very confusing as to why the greatest developer of hydrocarbons on earth would go there with its hands up and say, “Handcuff us. We're ready to show just how committed we are, because we know how committed our environment ministry, our natural resources and our Prime Minister are to respecting a signature that says if something is going to be done, it's going to be done by us first, and we will lead the charge.”

At the meeting where we were presenting this, the Czech Republic presented a motion, more or less saying, “Well, that's great. We want to talk about that. However, we would like to have respected the types of energy sources that we have in our boundaries, so that we are not bound by such stringent rules that indicate how great it would be if the world could get off hydrocarbons and how quickly they could get off hydrocarbons.” It was presented.

Once again, in order to make the changes that were associated with this amendment—and there were a few other changes there—the only way would have been if they had unanimous consent to do so.

I feel bad, but I had to make sure we did not have unanimous consent to do that. I know that people I care about a lot probably looked at me and asked why I was doing that. The reason is that you had the Czech Republic, along with many other countries in Europe, saying, “With the conflict that we have here in Europe, we need every sort of fuel we can get. We need to go back and reconsider the plans to mothball nuclear. We know that we're going to be doing more deforestation. We have those areas that had oil and gas.”

They didn't want to upset the organization they were with, but they wanted to be respected. That was the rationale and the reason for doing what I did.

It's difficult when you're put into that position, and it's more difficult when you come from a part of the country where, in the 15 years that I have been a member of Parliament....

I remember the very first time, when I was just running.... This guy came to me and said, “I want you to know that Alberta's and Canada's oil and gas industry is the very best in the world.” The only place that was coming close to it, he said at that time, was Australia. He said it was because they had taken what we had done and implemented that into their procedures and regulations. That made me proud.

It made me proud to stand up for our indigenous groups who were engaged with oil and gas. It made me proud to stand up for those in my community who work so diligently on oil and gas. Quite frankly, it gave me a sense of pride. I knew that I could go to other parts of this country, as a member of Parliament, and speak highly about what we did and therefore speak highly about what they do. We could all work together. As Canadians, we are experts in that field, as we are experts in other fields.

That's what we're dealing with right now.

It saddens me to look at the last five or six years and see serious division. I've seen division between groups. The biggest thing we do in this place.... When I first got involved in politics, I said that the worst thing you can do is to label people, label groups, label organizations. That's cheap and easy, and it doesn't show that you actually care about knowing more about what is taking place.

When we think about Canada and how we can take our natural resources.... I remember being part of ParlAmericas, and I remember going to Mexico. I believe we were in Mexico City. We had, at that time, the Bloc with us, and we had the Liberals with us and the NDP with us.

I might have said some things that were not exactly nice about the government in Europe. I suppose I learned that from some of my Liberal colleagues who were with me in Mexico City. However, leaving that aside, I remember a person from the Bloc. What they said was, “I love Canada”—

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mr. Dreeshen, could I ask you to pause for a moment, please?

I have Mr. Sorbara on a point of order. Go ahead, Mr. Sorbara.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I just want to ask Mr. Dreeshen.... I am very much enjoying hearing your thoughts on a lot of issues, but I want to ask on this tangent here what the relevance is, please.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you for your point of order, Mr. Sorbara.

I would ask colleagues to ensure that we are staying focused on the subamendment at hand and to make sure that the debate is focused on that.

Mr. Dreeshen, the floor is yours.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Again, as we speak about various parts of the country, whether they be provinces, regions or each and every one of our constituencies, this is the point I wish to make, and I'm about to make it with regard to the dear friends from the Bloc that I had with me in Mexico City.

As I said, the public comments were these: “I love Canada. I love Quebec. Two great countries.” I didn't see eye to eye with that part, but nevertheless, that was what was being said.

I realized that they wanted to make Canada strong because it gave them an opportunity to be strong within a Canada that was going to be able to go around the world and be beneficial and that then they would be able to work well within that in their aspirations on sovereignty and so on—because it was the Bloc—and that it would have gone someplace for them.

Now when I listen to my friends from the Bloc, their commentary is this: “This country is so dysfunctional that we can't wait to get out of here.” It's quite a change in 12 years from “We love this country, we love your country, and we want to work together because we can see that it's positive” to the labelling and the pitting of one group against another. Believe me, it has done a lot of damage to this country.

I can see what the Bloc would do with that and how they would simply ask, “How do you expect us to want to be part of this group? You guys can't get along. It's east against west.”

Let's talk about a language against this and about the different types of energy. I would love to for us to be able to work through with the energy we have. Getting back to the natural resources side of it, I am happy that we have the great ability of this country to have so much of our electricity coming from hydro power. The point that gets me—and many people have heard me say this—is that those dams didn't just happen. The environmental damage that is associated with flooding vast sections of Canada in order to ensure we have electricity is something.... I've always said that you have to measure the environmental impact from the first shovel you use to dig something up to the very last shovel you use to cover it up.

Now, when it comes to hydro power, it's going to be a long time before we cover it up, but we should recognize that which is there. I can go through all the scientific aspects of it. I know a little bit about science. I can go through all of that, but that's not my point. My point is the metrics of analysis. When we then talk about, for example, nuclear energy.... Again, I'm dealing with this because we're part of natural resources.

Thankfully, with all of the discussions we have had over the last number of months as we've had the nuclear industry here and they've been chastised for all of the different things and so on, finally they got some recognition, recognition that if we want emissions-free electricity, then we shouldn't be damning the nuclear industry in the same way that we're putting the oil and gas industry in the crosshairs. Thankfully, that has happened. I'm happy to see that, for many different reasons, but we still have this....

I constantly hear from people I know, who know better, that what we must do is minimize and get rid of our hydrocarbons. Well, when I fly to Vancouver, I take a look at where they load all of the coal. I know where it's going, as does anybody else who flies in and out of Vancouver.

That's okay. However, if you fly over Fort McMurray, it's not okay. All this oil that has been seeping into these rivers in northern Alberta for millennia.... We've now put a stop to it. We collect it and sell it around the world, but this has been demonized. I keep telling people that the oil and gas industry hurt itself with this. It felt, “Well, anybody would understand what we're doing and how much better we are doing it than any other place in the world.” They didn't do a very good job of selling that. Therefore, it was easy for groups, especially from Europe—although we certainly have groups here in Canada—to say, “You know, the tar sands campaign”—of course, tar is something you get from a process, not what we have there—“will be something we can get a lot of money out of.” That is exactly what took place. It took place for decades. It's pitting one group against another.

I know the massive dams on these rivers are going to look like that for hundreds of years. When a pit has been completed in Fort McMurray, within 40 years, you cannot tell the difference between it and any forest that would be there. Actually, after 20 years, you can't tell the difference, except the Alberta government won't allow a complete reclamation—or whatever the term is—until after 40 years. That's what you get in Alberta. You don't get that in Venezuela. You don't get that in Nigeria. You get it in Alberta.

I have to listen to different groups demonize the oil and gas industry in my province—and worse than that, in my country. That's the part I believe is very important, which is why, when I look at what is happening with Bill C-69, I believe it is rather important that we respect that process and work from there. Those are some of the things I believe we should be paying attention to.

Talking about our own constituencies, I know oil and gas found disfavour, because it was easy for environmental groups to get money to demonize it.

Look at our agriculture area. I've been a farm kid since I was born, and I still continue to farm. I know we have a tax on agriculture as well. We do a great job. That's why, when I was at the OSCE, we talked about food security. When I went to Asia Pacific and the ParlAmericas and so on, food security was critical. I could tell them what we do in agriculture—the significance of Canadian agriculture and of what we sell. I also tied in how that's what we do with oil and gas.

The next part of it is this pass we seem to give the mining industry. Here we have an opportunity to do mining for rare earth minerals and that type of thing. We believe the people who made all their money going against oil and gas and conventional agriculture are going to let mining get this great pass.

When we talk about what is happening in Timmins or in Sudbury or in my riding, it's “Don't worry about that. That's for the greater good. That's for electric vehicles or that's for some other type of thing we have. We'll be fine. Just you guys stop with this hydrocarbon development, because we believe that's a problem”—“we” being the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Natural Resources.

That is the reason I am so concerned about the way we are going in this country. We are looking at ways that we could pit one group against another. I do not believe that it will change with this present administration, and that is something that bothers me.

I would think that somewhere along the line, people could look at what we do and what Canada does, be proud of that and speak about the things we do together, rather than people such as me having to go to international fora. I listen to our government talk about how embarrassed they are that we are a major oil and gas-developing nation and that with any luck they will be able to come up with another plan. Those are the things that concern me.

There are other aspects when we speak about Bill C-50 and the transition away from traditional oil and gas jobs, about how things are going to be so much better if we can just tie into the new world order that we see and be prepared for all of us to use a new energy source and change our way of doing things.

Depending upon which way the earth is turning, it takes me four hours on average to get from Alberta to Ottawa, which is about the same amount of time it takes if I want to fly to Mexico. We have six time zones in this country. When I look out the plane window, I see the amazing things we have, the natural beauty and the water. I know that we have minerals there. I know the other things that are associated with it, and I am proud of every part of this.

My wife's family came from Prince Edward Island. They were there in the 1800s. They were mariners. I have a great sense of pride for that part of the country and for the Maritimes. I have friends I went to school with who are from Quebec. They are great, hard-working people. Then there's Ontario and all of the western provinces.

In my role with indigenous affairs and northern development, I have met some amazing individuals in that community. Believe me, I would tell people that if they wanted to find a CEO to come and work in their company, they should talk to these people. They understand what's going on. They know what is taking place.

My thought when I became an MP was that we would find ways of bringing this country together and be proud of it, rather than finding ways of dividing. Sadly, we seem to make sport of that. That is something that I feel is not standing us in good stead.

I've been fortunate in that I've spent time on the agriculture committee. I've spent time on public accounts, so I understand how the funding of government goes. I also understand what happens when things go awry with government. I've also been on international trade, so I know how important it is to trade our goods around the world. I know how well respected our goods are around the world.

I've been in South America, talking to mining companies there that are Canadian. We have a lot of Canadian mining companies. Yes, sometimes they take over a mining operation that was not looked after very well, so we have groups here in Canada that will attack them.

I remember one group—I believe it was in Colombia—that basically made a point. They said they needed consultants. Here's how they were going to use consultants: They weren't going to take some American consultants who came down, or somebody from Canada. They were going to go to the local colleges in these countries and bring these people to be their consultants so that they could have respect and talk to the priests, the community leaders, the government, the environmentalists, the farmers and everybody. That's how they were going to deal with that.

They brought the groups together. These Canadian mining companies basically said that they needed to do that to gain trust, so that's what they did.

At the same time, I remember that here, we had motions coming to the floor from the Liberals that were basically criticizing our mining companies around the world. By extension, then, that would include these that were doing a great job.

It gets a little frustrating when the mindset is, “Let's be critical”. The mindset is to look at these things and find out just what to do to minimize the efforts of expert Canadians.

I suppose I'm going back to my 34 years as a teacher in math, physics, biology and chemistry—primarily math and physics. The problem is that we have preconceived notions of what is happening in the world.

One book I've been looking at is called Factfulness by Hans Rosling. He was a medical doctor as well as a statistician. He goes through a series of questions that he would ask the public. They're simple types of things. I'll just take an example. I think you'll be curious to see this.

In all low-income countries across the world, how many girls finish the first five grades of school? Here are the options: (a) 20%; (b) 40%; or (c) 60%. In low-income countries around the world today, how many girls finished the first five grades of school? I'm not a teacher anymore, so I'm not going to make a test out of it. It's 60%.

That's not what the results were when they gave this question to the general public, to people we depend on in different world-wide organizations or to academics. They got less than what it would have been if they had randomly chosen it.

Another question is, “In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has...”. The options are “almost doubled”, “remained more or less the same”, or “almost half”. Well, most people think poverty is getting worse, but no; it's half of what it was before, because of different things that we've done.

For life expectancy in the world, they had a) “50 years”; b) “60 years”; and c) “70 years”. This is in the world. It's 70 years. That's what it really is.

I don't want to belabour it, but my point is that people like me have these preconceived notions of what is taking place. I grew up in the sixties, and these were the things that we were all bombarded with. We teach teachers—the older ones teach the younger ones. This is our preconceived notion of what is taking place in the world, so that is something we present.

However, when we look at it statistically, we see that we've been wrong. Governments bring together their sayers of sooth, but they're wrong, and we make decisions and policies that are related to that. The only thing on which they agree with us is the 13th question.

Actually, I want to go to the 12th question. It asks, “How many people in the world have some access to electricity?” The options are 20%, 50% or 80%.

Well, it's 80% of the world that has access to electricity.

Another one asks “How many of the world's 1-year-old children today have been vaccinated against some disease?” Option a) was 20%, b) was 50%, and c) was 80%.

The answer is 80%.

We don't think that way. We don't look at those statistics. We believe the things that we are told through social media, through reports that we see on various news agencies. I won't go into the ones that I think are somewhat off.

The only one on which it seems that we have it right says, “Global climate experts believe that over the next 100 years, the average temperature will: a) get warmer, b) remain the same, or c) get colder.”

Well, it is true that global climate experts believe that it will get warmer.

Again, I mentioned that it was the sixties when I grew up. It was a little before that when I was born. However, I remember all of these different stages—here is the next ice age; here is what is going to happen with our ozone layers; this is going to happen here, and everything is going to be flooded. It was all of these problems. We are going to have massive hurricanes. We are going to have massive forest fires. We are going to have all of these types of things. If you believe that narrative, then you are prepared to make statements that say that the Earth is boiling and you will believe somebody who says that.

The facts don't bear it out. The sad reality is that one of those other groups that have been criticized for not doing their job has been forestry. Of course, forest communities live around the forests. They have not done those things that were necessary for them to be able to protect themselves. The opportunities are there, but they just have not used them.

How can we here, in Canada...? We've had some terrible things, and I know people who have lost homes and so on. We have people who categorically will state that it is all because of climate change. Well, the U.S. doesn't have a carbon tax, and this last year has been one of the least severe fire seasons ever—with no carbon tax.

I know that this correlation doesn't make sense, any more than the correlation makes sense that if you charge a carbon tax, you're going to be able to solve these problems.

The correlations don't make sense, but they sure make good clips in the House of Commons. They make pretty good clips when you say, “This person here is a climate denier.” I've had that accusation.

All I simply said is that I remember going to Drumheller Valley and looking at a sign that said that 10,000 years ago, we were under a kilometre of ice. Yes, there has been global warming. At that time we were only under a kilometre of ice. Montreal was under two miles of ice, so they had even more hot air there as things changed.

I don't know how many people know about Lake Superior. It wasn't there about 15,000 years ago. It was carved out of the glacierization. The fact is that as massive dams of ice broke as the climate started warming, the Great Lakes were formed. That's the reality we have, but nobody pays attention to those things because they'd sooner talk about somebody being a climate denier or this sort of thing. There are all these things that nobody pays much attention to, so it's important that if we're going to make up policies, we take a look at all politicians who give that simple argument as to how this can happen and how that can happen.

In our case, it's how far down the road we are going to be before we can fix some of the problems we see, and there are a lot of them. The main one is that we have such wealth in this country. We have so many unique innovators in this country. We've heard—and I can't remember whether it was here in the natural resources committee or back in the environment committee—about a group who built hovercraft in Ontario. In order to get funding to proceed, they had to go through the U.S., and where did they get their funding from? It was Canada pension plan. That's where the money came from when they went to the States to be able to develop the programming they had.

It seems a little odd to me that we can't figure out a way to make those types of things happen. Nevertheless, that's what we are dealing with when we have ideologically driven leadership, because they stop thinking.

We talk about how every one of our communities is affected by the IRA in the U.S., which Biden has signed on to. We are expected now to change all of our rules for our investments and all of the things that are taking place.

The first thing that the Biden administration did when they came in was to shut down Keystone XL. When they realized that they needed a little bit of diesel and they needed a few other things, they asked where they were going to get this from. They made deals with Venezuela to get their heavy oil.

Again, not a lot of people understand the science of all of this, but heavy oil has all of the different things you need. It has what you're going to use for asphalt and it has what you're going to use for diesel. It has the gasoline, and you have the propane. You have all these things.

It all comes out of one pot. It's how you deal with it that is important, but we seem to forget that. We seem to forget how much of what we do and what we use is actually coming out of the hydrocarbons that we have. That's why these different regions get a little upset when someone does not respect those parts of the country that champion these new technologies.

Before people just say, “You don't like the concept of a carbon tax” and all this other kind of stuff—because I know I'll get that—Alberta has had a fee for heavy emitters for close to 20 years. There was no way that each and every one of those businesses could take an amount of money and efficiently fix or change their industry, so they put it together into a fund, and that fund, as it grew, was then able to fund industry-wide solutions, such as carbon capture utilization and storage, such as taking nanoparticles of carbon and putting them into different types of products, whether it was steel or whatever. Those are the things that are done if you are wise.

How do you get to the stage where you can afford to be wise? You take a product you have, make it the best in the world, sell it and get tax dollars to build schools and hospitals in your province. You have tax dollars that go to helping other provinces in this country. You have tax dollars to help with all the needs the federal government has, and you have tax incentives and dollars to make the environmental aspects of what we have in this country even better. What can you do with that? You sell it around the world.

What are we going to do with things the way we have set it up? We will chase that innovation out of this country, similar to the hovercraft, and then we will buy it back from others around the world. Where is the logic to have other provinces suggest that Alberta is doing all this damage to the world and that they are going to do all they possibly can to stop it? Where is the advantage to having political parties that believe it worked for Greenpeace and for all these other groups? Lots of money comes in if you fight them, so that's what they will do again. Where is the advantage? How does that build a nation?

As I mentioned earlier, I can see where the Bloc would look at it and say, “Who cares? We don't want you guys to build a strong nation. We have an exit strategy.” However, it should matter to my friends in Quebec. It should matter to my friends in the Maritimes. It should matter to my friends up north. It should matter to my friends in Ontario. It should matter to my friends in the west, and it should matter to my friends whom I have met and have spoken with for many years around the world when I say, “If you would just come to Canada, and if you would just look at what we produce, how we produce it and why we would do it this way, you will be impressed.” That would mean there is no better place for you to invest. Certainly, if you need products, take a look at Canada and what Canada has to offer. That's where I'm going with this.

I believe that such an amazing country, with 338 ridings at this point in time that depend so much on oil and gas and its byproducts.... We look at the things we have around this table and at the things we wear. All of those things are critical. Why would we want to go someplace else or not have that opportunity to at least sell and buy that product? Those are some of the things that I'm extremely concerned about.

As I've said, on the world stage, we have lost our way. I can't believe the way in which we are portrayed around the world at this point in time. I have friends who have been in India, Asia and so on, and when I was on the international trade committee, we spent time with the ASEAN countries and talked to them. This was at about the time when the Prime Minister went to India with his family and sort of embarrassed things a bit. Maybe some people didn't think so. Nevertheless, even Liberals who were with me on that committee—I won't name names—were scratching their heads as to what was taking place.

We had the same sort of thing happen with trade developments. When we talked about CETA, the ball had already been hit out of the park. All this Prime Minister had to do when they brought it back to home plate was to put his signature on it. That is how far CETA had been. Then, of course, he decided, “Well, there are a few other things I'd like to see added to this thing, so let's open this up.”

The same kind of thing happened in Vietnam in the meetings there: “If I show up on time, it's probably because I've been working on these great things to add a few more letters to the agreements.” The people who were there would look at it and say, “Well, why? Why would you do that? I thought we were talking about trade. I thought that was the rationale. I thought that was the reason we had.”

Again, on this latest issue they're trying to say, “Don't you know that Ukraine has a carbon tax?”, and all of this kind of stuff, thinking that they've really found something special to hang their hat on. Well, when you go from a 56:1 ratio to an 80-some-to-one ratio, of course people knew that they had to sign on to an agreement to be part of the EU, but when you take a look at the other aspects of it, again, it's back to the history of what happened in Berlin.

Canada was saying, “Hey, we're going to do this carbon tax, so why don't you guys get on our side and make it so much easier?” In Birmingham they said: “Well, we've even gone a little further because we have a Minister of Environment and a Minister of Natural Resources who just love this stuff, so we're going to say that as Canadians we are going to do all we can to limit the expansion of hydrocarbons, even though it's here in our country and it would really hurt us more than anybody else.”

That's really where we're at. Those are the reasons I am so concerned about how each one of our ridings is going to deal with the issues that are taking place. Again, I go back to what I said about from the first shovel to dig something up to the last shovel to cover it up.

I know that there was a great discussion having to do with biodiesel or ethanol and those types of things as farm products. All I can say is, that's great. I know we can do these things. As a matter of fact, probably 30 years ago I was approached by a group to commit about 500 acres of barley to a project that would have turned the barley into ethanol. Then you would take the ethanol and move it off, and then you would take the mash and you would feed it to animals. Then you would take the methane you would have from those animals and that would help run your system.

There were two things.

First, it would have probably been useful. The only thing was that they said it would work dependent upon subsidies that we could get from the Alberta government. Well, I look at subsidies as “that's my tax dollar” and “that's my neighbour's tax dollar”. I can't do something just because it came from my neighbour's tax dollar. It has to do something on its own.

It would have been a neat thing to do, but I didn't feel that it was right. It got to the stage where we talked about zoning and how we would do all of this stuff, and how it was a “good idea”, but it wasn't the right thing at the right time.

If I were going to deal with what I was getting out of this, I would have had to look at how much fuel I was going to use for this 500 acres of barley that I had to commit, so I would have had to treat it in exactly the same way and manage it and analyze it in exactly the same way I would if I were selling it for cattle feed. I'd have to do that. I'd have to then look at the cost of the facility and the cost of everything else associated with that, as well as the trucking. Those were some of the metrics I looked at.

We need to do that for everything else we do. When we say, “Oh, I think we'll go to Timmins and we'll start digging up there, and everybody's going to be happy.” Well, that's not likely. We can try to find all of the rare earth minerals around Canada, and it's not that we can't do it, but at what cost?

Right now, we're still sending coal to China, and if they're producing and mining in their country, where are we going to buy these things from? We're going to buy them from them, because they are part of that supply chain. With them as part of that supply chain, we will not be able to compete. We will not be able to compete with the way in which they have taken over African countries and the way in which they get cheap labour in order to produce these products that we all seem excited about having.

We're going to say we're going to do it and we're going to say because the U.S. is doing this, we have to make sure we get in on it as well. Again, as I mentioned before, sometimes we hear things and we think that we know everything, so I'm going to preface some of this.

When we hear that companies in Europe—GM, Ford, Stellantis and so on—are actually cutting back on their electric vehicles because of the supply chain, the costs, the high electricity rates, then we start to think that yes, this was a good idea, but how do we make it work? How do we measure the environmental impact as we do the mining in our region and do all of the other things that are there?

We, as Canadians, go over and above everything to make sure that we have satisfied any group that wants to send in a brief or have a discussion, and we do that. We encourage it, so we should actually listen to them when they come.

That's the issue we have right now. That makes it kind of difficult for us to proceed.

As I mentioned before, if you have billions of dollars of subsidies to these companies, even if they're suspect as to how they might get built and by whom, still it's $15 billion from Canadians for this kind of a project. Wouldn't it better to look at the strengths we have and take vehicles, as we have, that have gone from 10 or 12 miles per gallon to 30 miles per gallon? Wouldn't that be a better way?

As we purchase this fuel that we have, we then put that money into our schools, our hospitals and our national defence and into all of the things that Canadians need. We help out those provinces that for some reason or other have a different way of analyzing their balance sheets. I would think that would be a wise thing to do.

How do you do that in a country that pits one group against another? How do you that when the mandate letters for the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Natural Resources just cut and paste from one to the other? How do you look at a department?

I understand government. They are beholden to the thoughts and ideology of a government. I understand that's how it's done, but how do we find our way through when this is what we are doing to this wonderful nation of ours?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Dreeshen.

We will now move to Mr. Falk. Mr. Falk, the floor is yours.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank my colleague, the member for Red Deer—Mountain View, Earl Dreeshen, for a wonderful explanation of why we need to consider this subamendment. He really created a great platform to help Canadians who are watching on TV understand what this is really about, the importance of the work this committee does and the importance of the order in which we do things in this committee.

Thank you, Earl, for doing that. You've helped, I think, all of us around this table, and certainly viewers who are watching, to understand the importance of the work that we're doing here, as well as the importance of the sequence of the work that we're doing.

Getting back to the subamendment, which was to make sure that this committee will be hearing from witnesses from Timmins—James Bay, someone might ask questions. Why Timmins—James Bay? What is so important about Timmins—James Bay? Why do we need to hear those witnesses?

It is quite simple: There is a lot of natural resource activity in that particular constituency of the country.

I acknowledge that there are 338 constituencies in Canada, many of which have natural resources. Mr. Dreeshen talked very articulately about the natural resource sector in northern Alberta, but Timmins—James Bay has forestry and lots of mining. Some of the bigger mines there are the Alamos Gold project and the Victor Mine. We hear lots of the big names fairly regularly. They come to Ottawa and solicit tax dollars for consideration, but there are a lot of others.

The concern is that we're going to be looking after labour there. That's why they want to discuss these bills, both Bill C-50 and Bill C-49. They cite the concern of wanting to make sure that labour is properly addressed there. We know there is labour involved in mining activities.

I also want to point out to folks who are watching, and to this committee, that there are lots of junior miners we never hear about that also have employees who also need to be able to count on that paycheque coming every two weeks so that they can feed their families, heat their homes and put fuel into their vehicles. These are all things that have been very negatively impacted, Mr. Chair, by a carbon tax. We've seen the price of all of those things significantly increased by a carbon tax.

It's interesting that this Liberal government carved out a geographical area of our country and gave it a carbon tax exemption or holiday. It's very interesting, because apparently it's an ideological platform of this government to have a carbon tax, and now it's carved out for a geographical area—Atlantic Canada—a carbon tax exemption to make life more affordable there.

None of the other areas of Canada received that same exemption. They didn't receive it because they're heating with more fuel-efficient methods, like hydroelectricity or natural gas from Alberta. They experienced the same cost increases due to the carbon tax, yet they did not get the benefit of that carve-out exemption that was provided to Atlantic Canadians.

We know the reason that happened. It's because the Prime Minister's polling numbers were plummeting in Atlantic Canada, and he tried to address that by throwing them a bone, as we would call it in the industry. Maybe it was keep them happy and get their support onside.

There are people in Timmins—James Bay who have experienced the same increased cost of living in heating their homes, putting fuel in their vehicles and buying groceries at the grocery store, all of which have been impacted by the carbon tax. That's no small matter here. I think this committee should be seized with the cost that carbon tax has added to everyday living.

I want to list some of the junior miners that find themselves domiciled in Timmins—James Bay. I went on the Internet to get a list of the junior mining companies in Timmins—James Bay. I would like to make mention of them, because they're why we need witnesses from these mining companies.

They include Patriot Battery Metals, Osisko Mining, Li-FT Power, Critical Elements, Lithium Royalty, Brunswick Exploration, Fury Gold Mines and Arbor Metals.

As well, we have Azimut Exploration, Benz Mining, Power Nickel, Midland Exploration, Vanstar Mining, Max Power Mining, Superior Mining, Champion Electric Metals, Ophir Gold, Consolidated Lithium Metals, Hertz Lithium, Comet Lithium, Sirios Resources, FE Battery Metals, Targa Exploration, Harfang Exploration, Quebec Precious Metals, Canadian Critical Minerals, Lithium One Metals, ALX Resources, Stelmine Canada, Dios Exploration, Niobay Metals, Medaro Mining, Opus One Gold, Green Battery Minerals, Mosaic Minerals, Stria Lithium, Genius Metals, SPOD Lithium, Metalex Ventures, Battery X Metals, TomaGold, Clarity Metals, SLAM Exploration, Durango Resources, Lancaster Resources, Rockland Resources, Arctic Fox Lithium, K9 Gold, QcX Gold, Bullion Gold Resources, Victory Battery Metals, Brigadier Gold, Lithium Lion Metals, Musk Metals, MegaWatt Metals, Fabled Copper, Nordique Resources and Q2 Metals.

That's the listing that you can find on the Internet, Mr. Chairman, about junior mining companies in the James Bay area. There's a whole host of them there, and all these mining companies have employees who work in that area and are dependent on their paycheques. What we do in this committee matters. It matters greatly, and that's why it's so important to hear from them.

However, we also need to go back and look at the platform this premise is based on and why we need to reconsider, very carefully, whether we're addressing things in the right order here. We know that the Supreme Court issued a reference on Bill C-69, which is the impact assessment legislation this government passed, which has also been referred to in the industry as the “no more pipelines” bill. We know that there was a referral that struck down about 80% to 85% of that bill as being non-charter compliant or constitutionally challenged.

This committee should be absolutely seized with getting that legislation back here to committee and identifying the areas that the Supreme Court has referred to as not being compliant with the Constitution. We should be looking at those areas and correcting them, if they can be corrected. I suspect that in a lot of instances we're going to have to just discard big segments of that bill, because it just doesn't pass the litmus test.

I think it would be very wise of us to conduct a study on that bill first and to bring in witnesses from Timmins—James Bay and see how that particular piece of legislation has impacted their companies and impacted their employees, because the Supreme Court says that it doesn't work. Then, also, the Federal Court recently ruled that the ban on single-use plastics also wasn't constitutional. I know that the NDP-Liberal government is moving ahead with contesting that further and challenging that decision. I know it is a very welcomed decision from the Federal Court.

Mr. Chairman, I get into my riding very late in the evening when we're done here in Ottawa, and I like to treat myself. I swing through McDonald's on the way home and pick up a strawberry milkshake. I have about an hour and a quarter drive to my home from the airport, so I do that quite frequently. I was reminded again last week when I went home that I put that paper straw into the strawberry milkshake and started sucking it. Well, that just doesn't work so well. You have to look at the cost-benefit aspect, and with a paper straw, the suction that you need to get that triple-thick strawberry milkshake from McDonald's up the straw and to your palate takes an incredible amount of work. We very much welcome the decision from the Federal Court to strike down this plastic straw ban.

That decision is going to be welcomed by Canadians as they go to have their strawberry milkshakes, which are an important staple here in our Canadian diet. Both of these decisions are important to this committee. Our committee should be consumed with addressing these two pieces of... One is a regulation that came out of cabinet, I suppose—the plastic straw ban—but certainly the decision of the Supreme Court on Bill C-69 is something this committee should be bringing back and studying.

Why is it important to prioritize that? It is because both Bill C-49 and Bill C-50 reference Bill C-69, which the Liberals have proposed as the next pieces of legislation on our work schedule here at this committee. If they're referencing a flawed piece of legislation, we know in turn that this legislation is also flawed. That gives us many reasons that we should be prioritizing the study of Bill C-69 over Bill C-49 and Bill C-50. Let's get Bill C-69 right, or let's actually recall all of Bill C-69 and discard it and present legislation to this committee that will give Atlantic Canada a regulatory platform for tidal power.

We could talk more about Bill C-50, which was at one time called the just transition, and then industry referred to it more as an unjust transition, which probably more adequately described the intent of that bill. The Liberal government, in an effort to try to save face, renamed that bill “sustainable jobs”, when the sustainable jobs were already there. They're in oil and gas. They're providing above-average income levels for the families involved in that industry, and in the production of the world's cleanest and safest fuels by way of diesel fuel, gas, aviation fuel and liquefied natural gas.

When this Liberal government came to power back in 2015, there were 18 LNG projects on the board. Do you know how many of them have actually been built and are in production at capacity? Zero. Zero projects have been completed. It's important for Canadians to know that. The Liberal government has either been the cause of these projects being cancelled or of their not being completed.

Meanwhile, the Americans, whom we refer to a lot around this committee when we talk about the IRA.... To folks watching on TV, the IRA is the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden has implemented in the United States. It's a massive spending bill. We always seem to want to compete with that piece of legislation on the Canadian side. I don't know why we're so eager to race to the bottom with Joe Biden, but for whatever reason, that's the direction the Liberal government has decided to pursue.

In spite of the IRA, and in spite of the massive spending and tax credit regime the Americans have created south of the 49th parallel, they have still built and completed almost half a dozen LNG projects. Canada had opportunities in Europe and Japan to sell our liquefied natural gas, coming from the cleanest processing plants the world has ever known. Our gas and oil industry has the cleanest and safest energy model. Instead of our being able to capitalize and sell to countries like Germany, the rest of Europe and Japan, our clean LNG products are now being sold by the Americans. That's another opportunity that has been missed by the government, while at the same time it wants so desperately to compete on so many levels with the American government on its IRA.

I guess another example of that is the massive amounts, the billions of dollars—I think it's close to $31 billion—that this government has committed to large multinational corporations that want to build battery production facilities here in Canada. We're going to be giving them $31 billion of taxpayers' money.

I think Canadians need to understand what this Liberal government has committed to here, because it is no small sum. It will create some jobs, but by the way, 1,600 of them, we're told now, will come from Asian countries in the form of temporary foreign workers. When Canadians were first told about the investment into these lithium battery manufacturers, I don't think they were told that these temporary foreign workers were going to be the mainstay of the employee workforce. That's something on which we haven't seen complete integrity and openness from this government, but it's come to light now. Many of these workers who are going to be employed in these battery plants that are being built on taxpayer dollars here in Canada are actually going to be foreign nationals. That's another aspect of trying to compete with the Americans on their IRA, on their Inflation Reduction Act. I think, Mr. Chairman, that's just a race to the bottom.

I think we, as Canada here, are incredibly blessed with our God-given natural resources, whether it's oil and gas, whether it's in our mining sector, or whether it's in our forestry, all things that this committee should really be studying. We need to develop these resources. They weren't given to us just to keep in the ground and stay buried, covered in a pile of dirt.

No, we have these resources, and we've been given these resources to be good stewards of them. I think the mining industry and the oil and gas industry have shown that they're responsible and that they are good stewards of the resources that we have here in this country. We have a phenomenal amount. We're the envy of the world.

We also have clean water. We probably have the largest amount of clean water resource on the globe, and I think our natural resources companies have been great stewards in protecting the integrity of our clean, fresh water resource that we also have here.

However, there's mining that needs to happen, and we know that Bill C-69 has made mining very difficult. It's happening in Timmins—James Bay with the regulatory process that's necessary to open up new mines and to continue to develop existing mines. It's very difficult, and that is something that needs to be studied.

Just recently someone pointed out to me—and it's not a recent fact but an age-old fact—that when we look at the air that we breathe, the composition of that air.... We hear so much about carbon and the need to reduce the carbon input and we hear that we're responsible for creating all this carbon pollution everywhere. It was pointed out to me that 78% of the air that we breathe is nitrogen and 21% is oxygen, so 99% of the air that we breathe is nitrogen and oxygen. The other 1% is comprised of argon and carbon, and 0.03% is carbon.

I don't have the data to show that it's true, but some folks say that the impact of the carbon in the air could be manipulated by about 20% by human activity. If that's true, then it would be 0.006 of 1%. That's six one-thousandths of a per cent of impact that all human activity could actually have on the quality of the air we breathe in relation to carbon. Those are things that we need to consider before we light our hair on fire talking about carbon pollution.

Do we still want to reduce pollution? Absolutely, we do. Do we still want to find out more efficient ways to burn hydrocarbons? We've seen the industry really step up and do that. We've seen miles per gallon per vehicle significantly increase in the last two decades.

I remember growing up in the 1970s. I'm a little behind my colleague Earl here, from Red Deer. He grew up in the 1960s and I grew up in the 1970s. I was really fond of muscle cars.

Some of the muscle cars that I owned at that time.... The very first one I ever bought was when I was 16. It was a 1970 Mustang Mach 1 with a 351 Cleveland automatic. It had a shaker hood. It had the louvres on the rear window. It was blue with black accents. It was a wonderful car. I would have been very lucky in those days to get 15 miles to the gallon—very lucky. I had an awful lot of fun burning that gallon of gas for every 15 miles I drove.

We have cars being produced today with the same amount of horsepower, or more, that will get 30 miles to the gallon. That's a testament to industry, to how far technology has come. We've reduced the amount of hydrocarbons we consume for the same amount of horsepower that we create, whether that's in gasoline-powered engines or diesel-powered engines. We know this carbon tax is particularly burdensome to our transportation industry, which has some of the heaviest users of diesel fuel in our country. We know that every semi truck driving down the highway is burning diesel fuel. The construction industry also is consumed with heavy equipment that—

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

We have a point of order from Mr. Simard.

Mr. Simard, go ahead.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Just out of curiosity, I'd like to ask my colleague Mr. Falk a question.

I learned that he likes to drink his milkshakes with a plastic straw and that he likes shiny cars, but what has that got to do with the subamendment?

Perhaps my colleague could tell me what the connection is between the subamendment and plastic straws and muscle cars. I don't quite get it.

Maybe I'm a bit dim. I don't know. Can Mr. Falk explain it to me.