Mr. Speaker, I am happy to talk about this alleged just transition legislation brought forward by the Liberal government. Before we talk about this legislation, we should talk about the success of the Liberals with just transitions in the past, because they promised a just transition for coal workers. They said they were laser-focused on it and that anyone in the coal industry who was going to be displaced by their policies was going to get a just transition. They kept saying this, repeating it over and over again, making these false promises to coal workers.
Can we guess what? Those fake and false promises were actually discovered in the commissioner of the environment's independent auditor's report called “Just Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy”. The Auditor General looked at the just transition Liberals gave to coal workers, and let me summarize that it was garbage. They did absolutely nothing for coal workers.
Let us look at a couple of the excerpts in this report. One reads, “Overall, we found that Natural Resources Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada were not prepared to support a just transition to a low-carbon economy for workers and communities.”
This is what Liberals do. They try to beat up on energy-producing provinces with punishing policies, but then they say not to worry, that they are going to be there for them and that they are going to make sure it is a just transition. Those are false promises, much like Liberal promises on housing. They say that they are going to solve housing and that they have a housing accelerator, which is going to accelerate something. However, it accelerates nothing. Liberals come up with other programs where they just line Liberal insiders' pockets with gold, all at the expense of taxpayers, because they actually do not give a darn about the workers' jobs they are going to displace.
The Auditor General was really clear about this. Liberals had years to deliver a just transition for coal workers and did absolutely nothing. The Auditor General's report also states that the analysis is there was “No federal implementation plan”. Liberals said they had a plan. No, they misled Canadians. The Auditor General said there was no federal implementation plan.
The report also said that there was “No formal governance structure”. When one does not have a plan, there is actually not going to be any formal governance structure. They should have just said they have no plan, much the same as they have no plan on housing, the economy or combatting the opioid crisis. This should actually be called the “no plan transition”, because there is zero plan. The terrible thing is that there is also almost zero accountability from the government.
The final thing the Auditor General report stated was that there was “No measuring and monitoring system” put in place. Again, when one does not actually have a plan, when one just says to coal workers that it is too bad, that they are out of a job and that we do not give a damn, of course one does not put in a formal governance structure. One has no system to measure and monitor.
Then the Liberals have the audacity to come back to this place and say to Canadians that they have new legislation, because they care about workers and are going to give them a just transition. The only transition they gave to coal workers was to be out in the cold without a job. That is their plan as they once again beat up on Alberta and Saskatchewan and say that they are going to transition their workers out of jobs, but they are going to have some grand transition plan to take care of them. They did not take care of a single darn thing with coal workers.
Let us look briefly at something the Liberals say about this grand transition plan to take care of workers. They say that they are going to set up a council, to be known as the sustainable jobs partnership council. Its mandate is going to be providing the minister and specified ministers with independent advice through a process of social dialogue. That and $1.50 will buy a double-double at Tim Hortons, which is effectively what workers are going to get with this piece of legislation. The Liberals are going to set up a council. Wow, that is really ambitious.
I do not have a lot of faith in the government, because with anything it touches, it has the opposite of the Midas touch. Do members remember the Midas touch? It turns everything to gold. Everything those guys touch turns into garbage. They say they are going to set this up. I say, “Yeah, right.” They say they are going to do it in a couple of years. I say, “Yeah, right.” I can go back to how they treated coal workers. They treated them as I would not treat my worst enemy. They were indifferent. They set up no program, all the while saying that they were setting up a program and that they were going to take care of the workers.
That is called “gaslighting”, and the Liberals gaslight Canadians constantly. They actually do it on housing, too. We talk about housing, and the minister pops up, puffs up his chest and says that no one has done more for housing, that they have a housing accelerator and that they have this program and that program. However, housing prices have doubled. Rents have doubled, so when the Liberals say they are going to do something, we should actually believe that what they are going to do is cause harm. The policies they have brought in across this country are harmful, including the revolving door of the justice system. It does not really matter what crime someone commits, they are going to be out, because the Liberals reformed the bail system.
People who shot up the street one day are out a couple days later, because the Liberals changed bail. They said they were going to reform it to make things better. Now they want us to believe they are going to have a just transition that is going to make things better for oil and gas workers. No one should believe them, and that is not just because of their absolute failure on other things such as housing, criminal justice, the opioid crisis or the mental health crisis.
I remember when my colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo had a bill to implement a three-digit suicide prevention number. The Liberals said they were going to help. It took two years to come up with a three-digit number. I know it is hard; it is three digits. They could not do it in two years, but now somehow they are going to plan a just transition with this unbelievable plan, the sustainable jobs partnership council. It is going to have some meetings, and it will be filled with Liberal list donors, just as they stack all the courts in this country with Liberal list donors. We can bet there is not going to be one person on this council who gives two craps about the oil and gas industry.
It is going to be packed full with their radical left-wing environmentalists. They will probably get the radical environment minister to put a bunch of his cronies on it, who will say they can heat their homes with hot air, like the hot air that comes from the government. They will not need oil and gas. We certainly will not have the electricity, because they do not have a plan to expand electricity generation or electricity distribution as they wipe out the oil and gas industry.
There will be no just transition for a single worker in this country under the current government. When the common-sense Conservative Party has a government, oil and gas workers will not have to be worried about being left out in the cold by a tyrannical, uncaring government. I can assure everyone of that.
Let us go back and look at some of the results from the Auditor General on the “Just Transition for Canadian Coal Power Workers and Communities”, because it is a page-turner of absolute incompetence. The government is incompetent in almost everything, but its members really took it to a new level. They worked hard to be extra incompetent for coal workers, and I should give them credit, because that level of incompetence is hard to get to.
Let us look at a couple of things. The Auditor General went through the federal commitments and programs the Liberals said they were going to do. There are 10 of them. Does anyone want to guess how many they actually came through on? It was four out of 10, and they are not even the ones that would actually do anything for workers; they are the easy ones such as having an interdepartmental meeting to talk about something.
As I just said, the Liberals then have the audacity to tell Canadians they are going to plan this transition for oil and gas workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where they basically have no seats. They do not care about the people there. They say they are going to plan the transition for them out of oil and gas, even though they left coal workers out in the cold, but they say not to worry because they are going to take care of it this time.
The finding under recommendation one was, “Natural Resources Canada had not led on the reporting on just-transition activities for coal workers and communities.” The Liberals did not report on the just transition activities for a single community. That is the first thing they did not do. Oil and gas workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan should get ready.
Ronald Reagan said the scariest words that anyone can hear are, “I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.” If Ronald Reagan were alive today, living in Canada, and heard the words of the Liberal government, he would be bloody terrified. When Liberals say they are coming to help, people should run in the other direction. Oil and gas workers know not only that the Liberals do not have their backs, but also that they are going to push them over the cliff.
The finding under task force recommendation two said, “Natural Resources Canada had not yet developed the just-transition legislation.” Liberals were supposed to do it in 2019. Now they have done this great thing in 2023, four years later, the sustainable jobs partnership council, which they get two years to set up. They are four years behind, and they are going to set up a council that is going to take two years because that is really hard. Setting up a council is hard work. We know how hard these guys work. It is going to take two years to get that set up. It is unbelievable.
We also know that no one on that council is going to care about oil and gas workers. No one on that council is going to care about the effects on the economy for Alberta or the effects on the economy for Saskatchewan. The council is going to be packed with Liberal donors.
With judicial appointments, there is really one qualification to be a judge in Canada right now with the Liberal government, and that is whether the person donated to the Liberal Party. The Liberals check the list and, if a person donated, that is great, he or she is in. On something like this, hard-core Liberals, anti-oil, anti-Alberta and anti-Saskatchewan people are what this sustainable jobs partnership council would be stacked with. The Liberals were supposed to get it done four years ago, but it is going to take another two years, so we would be at six years.
Recommendation three was, “Establish a targeted, long-term research fund for studying the impact of the coal phase-out and the transition to a low-carbon economy.” The Liberals did not do it. I know everyone was holding their breath thinking maybe they did something, but they did not do it. Will they actually do anything in this legislation? This is the question we have to ask ourselves.
Human nature is that we look at the past record to determine what the future performance will be. As the Liberals did absolutely nothing for coal workers, we can anticipate that they will do absolutely nothing for oil and gas workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Why would they? Why do they care? They have absolutely no representation there. Well, they have one MP who seems pretty anti-Alberta from some of the statements he makes, so he might want to try to get a seat in Toronto Centre—Rosedale or something like that in the next election.
Recommendation five of what they were supposed to do was to “Create a pension bridging program for workers who will retire earlier than planned due to the coal phase out.” Did the Liberals do it? No, they did not. Coal workers get phased out, their pension is now going to be less, much like many of the Liberals' pensions are going to be less when they lose in the next election, but has anyone in the Liberal Party on that side apologized to coal workers, saying they promised they would bridge coal workers' pensions when they phased them out and they did not? Did they ever apologize? No, they did not. Why? They do not care because they are energy workers.
Now when Liberals tell energy workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan that they are going to phase them out, but not to worry because they will be there for them, I say that is a load of hooey. There is no way Liberals are going to be there for anyone.
Imagine the devastation for a worker in the energy sector who is phased out and then their pension is not bridged. That is bad enough, but guess what, when we look at a detailed, publicly available inventory with labour market information pertaining to coal workers such as skill profiles, demographics, locations and current and potential employers, since the Liberals ripped them off on pensions, they say that they are going to put together this database so that they can transition workers into new employment. That is okay, because maybe they'll get to punch in somewhere else. However, did they actually do that? No they did not. They stand here in this chamber, Liberal member after Liberal member, parroting that this is great. They bring in time allocation on debate on this after they literally screwed coal workers, and I tell members that they are going to do it again.
