Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis.
“It is an emergency”, the government realized on May 6, the day the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith was elected, doubling the Green Party caucus. “It is an emergency”, the Liberal government said on May 16, over a month ago. In that month, have all the business items the House has dealt with been an emergency? Suddenly, it is an emergency today. The Liberals have moved closure on it and we will vote on the emergency motion introduced four years into their mandate. Only now do they suddenly realize this is an emergency.
If there is an emergency, is it that the Liberals did not realize they would not meet their Paris targets? Is it that they are not in a position to be calling for more ambitious targets?
I remember very well that in 2015, the Liberal government said that the targets of the Conservatives were the floor, not the ceiling, and they were not even on the same story of the building; they were in the basement. The Liberals have declared a climate emergency, but the Conservatives see it for what it is. It is a cynical ploy by the Liberals, who are desperate to distract from not only their own climate failures, but from their many scandals.
This spring has been a rough one for Canadians and for the trust and confidence we have in our institutions. We have the SNC-Lavalin scandal. We have the coordinated and sustained attempt to interfere in the judicial process in Canada. We have the undermining of the rule of law with the concerted effort to destroy Vice-Admiral Mark Norman and his reputation as a way to protect Liberal insiders, which is a trend in both the SNC and the shipbuilding gerrymandering we have seen.
There are a lot of emergencies the Liberals are faced with, but the climate is not one. Certainly their actions demonstrate that to us. We know that real efforts need to be made. We know we need an environmental plan. However, that is not what we got from the Liberal government. We got a tax plan from it.
We know the Liberals will put an unmanageable burden on Canadians. We know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that this burden is going to increase greatly. We know that the price of gas we see at pumps today, which Canadians are struggling to pay, will need to go up almost another 25¢ a litre for the Liberals to hit the Paris targets, which they said were the floor not the ceiling, even though they cannot even come close to them.
There is a lot of flailing coming from the government side of the House, but Canadians should fear not, as help is on the way. A credible environmental plan will be put forward by the Leader of the Opposition this Wednesday. We are very excited. Canadians will be able to see what a credible plan on the environment looks like. They will be able to see what real leadership looks like, not virtue signalling and jet setting. It is an emergency.
The Toronto Raptors won the NBA finals. Carbon footprint aside, the Prime Minister is going to address the emergency in person this very day while we debate the emergency motion? He flew by chartered aircraft to Toronto. Then he flew back. I think he is also flying to Montreal today and then he is going to fly back.
I hear from the government side—