Bill C-12 (Historical)

Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act

An Act respecting transparency and accountability in Canada's efforts to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050

This enactment requires that national targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada be set, with the objective of attaining net-zero emissions by 2050. The targets are to be set by the Minister of the Environment for 2030, 2035, 2040 and 2045.
In order to promote transparency and accountability in relation to meeting those targets, the enactment also
(a) requires that an emissions reduction plan, a progress report and an assessment report with respect to each target be tabled in each House of Parliament;
(b) provides for public participation;
(c) establishes an advisory body to provide the Minister of the Environment with advice with respect to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and matters that are referred to it by the Minister;
(d) requires the Minister of Finance to prepare an annual report respecting key measures that the federal public administration has taken to manage its financial risks and opportunities related to climate change;
(e) requires the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to, at least once every five years, examine and report on the Government of Canada’s implementation of measures aimed at mitigating climate change; and
(f) provides for a comprehensive review of the Act five years after its coming into force.

The Environment

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his passion about Canada achieving net zero by 2050, which is a commitment the government has made through Bill C-12 that is making its way through committee.

Indigenous knowledge forms a central part of that bill and of the expert committee involved. That is a commitment by the government, and something we will continue to do to ensure that Canada meets its targets of net zero by 2050.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, tomorrow is World Environment Day.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind the House that, when Ottawa announced its new greenhouse gas reduction targets, it promised to give those targets force of law. On April 22, the Minister of Canadian Heritage said, “we will include Canada's 2030 climate change target in Bill C-12”.

Not only did the government not do that, but it is also fighting the Bloc Québécois in committee to prevent us from doing so in its stead. Why is it refusing to include the targets in the bill? Is it because it has no intention of meeting them?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually tonight in adjournment proceedings to address a question I initially asked on April 15 of this year.

People who have been paying close attention to the climate agenda and our rapidly shrinking opportunity to make the difference that we need to make, as time passes and our emissions are still rising, will recall the April 22 climate summit hosted by President Joe Biden, held virtually with leaders from 40 countries.

On April 15, first I noted that our emissions kept rising right up until COVID, with recently announced reports to that effect. My second point was that a report from a news outlet called The Breach said a special cabinet committee had formed during COVID with representation of senior levels of government from natural resources, finance, environment and elsewhere that was actually focused on helping the oil and gas sector. My third point was that our subsidies continued to go up.

The minister's response was that we would see a new target soon. I return to the fundamental question on the not-so-new target now. Since 2015, the Liberal government has proclaimed that Canada is back and clearly understands that the climate issue is real. Has it actually grasped the science? This is my core question.

I will say again that as well-intentioned as the government might be, it does not seem to understand that we must hold to no more than a 1.5°C global average temperature increase above the global average temperature at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Blowing past this target by failing to put in place rigorous targets now will lead us to a place where we do not get a do-over. We cannot fix it later.

From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its special report on 1.5°C, which came out in October 2018, we know that if the world community does not move mountains in this coming decade, it will be too late.

In his book Values, Mark Carney said that understanding carbon budgets is very important. On page 273, he said:

If we had started in the year 2000, we could have hit 1.5°C by halving emissions every 30 years. Now, we must cut our emissions in half every 10 years. If we wait another four years, we will have to halve our emissions every single year. If we wait another eight years, our 1.5°C carbon budget will be exhausted.

The Prime Minister attended the Biden summit. He announced a new target and proclaimed that it was ambitious. It is not. It does not meet the demands of science, and neither does Bill C-12, which we are currently debating in the environment committee. They have good intentions, great press coverage and good public relations, but they fail to do what is necessary.

Years ago, I marched with my daughter in the streets of New York in the lead-up to the COP before the Paris agreement. I saw a sign as we marched that said, “It's time to stop debating what is possible and start doing what is necessary”.

We have to cancel the TMX pipeline. We cannot afford $17 billion on a pipeline that blows our carbon budget. The choices are stark. The government is failing.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this week is Environment Week in Canada. My question to the Prime Minister is this. Would it not be a wonderful thing if, during Environment Week, the environment committee strengthened Bill C-12, the so-called net-zero climate accountability act?

Specifically, one of my amendments has been rejected, and I would be so grateful to know from the Prime Minister why the government does not want the climate targets and climate plans to be based on the best available science. Right now the bill says the best available science must be merely taken into account. Surely we would not just take it into account when we look at COVID. We base our decisions on science.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy being here in the House to talk about various bills. I have to say it has been a while. I feel a bit rusty, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank the House of Commons staff who support us and make these hybrid sittings possible. When we are at home, we can be in our ridings. I am grateful to them because I think it is just incredible that this all came together so quickly. I also want to thank the interpreters. Their work is so important, and we do not say that often enough.

We have waited two years for the Liberal government's budget. Let us not blame everything on the pandemic. Canada was the only G7 country that did not introduce a budget in 2020. All the provinces introduced budgets too. The federal government kept us waiting.

Admittedly, there are some good things in this budget, which I will come back to. However, there are some gaping omissions. The Bloc Québécois has made its position clear on those. My colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean outlined them clearly earlier: seniors and health have been forgotten. It is quite ironic, given that we are experiencing one of the worst health crises in our history. We think that that is where investment is needed, to support the health care systems of the provinces and Quebec.

The government ignored the unanimous request made by the House through the motion that was tabled by the Bloc Québécois and accepted. It also ignored the unanimous requests of the provincial premiers, who asked for health transfers to be increased from 22% to 35%.

As I was just saying, it is inconceivable that we could be going through a health crisis without making the necessary investments in health care. Seniors are not getting enough. We did see a glimmer of hope. The Liberal government got in on a promise it made in 2019 to increase old age security. That is great, but the government is not going far enough. It is forgetting seniors aged 65 to 74 who are also in financial difficulty, just like those aged 75 and over. The government is increasing pensions for seniors aged 75 and over, but only by roughly $60 a month, which we do not think is not enough. We in the Bloc Québécois have been asking for an increase of $110 per month, and we will continue to lead that debate. The House has not heard the last of the Bloc on this issue, because the people of all regions of Quebec deserve it.

This comment comes up a lot in my riding. Grandparents, who have worked incredibly hard all their lives, feel so neglected by the federal government, even though they are the ones who have suffered the most in this pandemic, both mentally and physically. This virus can be extremely harmful to their health. It is appalling that they are being let down like this, when we thought we were making progress with this request.

I would like to talk about the money being allocated to the tourism industry in this budget. For a region like mine, the Lower St. Lawrence and the Gaspé, tourism is extremely important. The fact that some emergency assistance programs, such as the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the rent subsidy, are being extended will certainly help many businesses back home. I commend that, but there are businesses that were in financial difficulty before the pandemic or that were having a hard time finding workers. Some other programs that were necessary for some people, such as the Canada emergency response benefit, or CERB, are now hobbling business owners. It was already hard enough to find people who wanted to go to work, and things did not get any easier once the situation stabilized a bit. There were pros and cons to this program. It is a little frustrating because business owners are the ones paying the price. It is important to have targeted assistance for this type of sector, but that is not really what we are seeing. Yes, a few million dollars has been allocated to the tourism industry, but the devil is often in the details. When we look a bit closer, hundreds of millions of dollars are going into ad campaigns to make sure people go visit the various regions of Canada. That is good, but is that really the way to help our industries and our small businesses? That is the question. I think we can do several things at the same time.

Allow me to share some figures. The tourism industry is a vital part of the economy in the Gaspé region. There are 700 businesses and nearly 7,000 jobs, 50% of which are permanent. This is not just a seasonal industry.

Businesses in the area benefit from tourism year-round, which is good. The region saw around $16 billion in economic spinoffs in 2019, but that figure dropped to $5 billion in 2020. This more than $10-billion drop represents a lot of money, and business owners are the ones taking the hit. It is shameful that they are not getting direct assistance, which we have been calling for since the beginning of the pandemic. The message does not seem to be getting through to the other side of the House, though.

As we gradually reopen over the summer, I truly hope that the industry will recover. However, we must bear in mind that there are still no international tourists or cruises, so we cannot expect to see the same results, the same amount of money coming in. The sector will need targeted assistance from the federal government, and that is what we are calling for.

When I see all the different Canada-wide programs that are being announced, such as the national child care program, I realize that it may be good news for the provinces that do not have this type of program. However, Quebec already has a day care program.

We have heard the Prime Minister speak about an asymmetrical agreement with Quebec to redirect these funds. I do not really understand what is meant by an asymmetrical agreement, but it looks like interference to me. The Government of Quebec has been managing its day care system very well for many years. If the federal government decides to implement a similar program, it must give Quebec the money it is owed with no strings attached. Letting Quebec invest these amounts as it sees fit seems perfectly logical to me.

In regions like mine, there is definitely a shortage of day care spaces. Elected officials and families are saying so. However, it is up to Quebec to decide how to use these funds in its system. I believe that it is in the federal government's interest to redistribute these funds without conditions, but that is not the message we are hearing at this time.

I would also like to talk a bit about the environment. Bill C-30 offers no details about how the government plans to invest the funds announced in the budget. I hope that will be revealed in another bill soon because we are talking about $17 billion in green recovery funding. As I said earlier, $17 billion seems like a heck of a lot of money, but consider this: It is exactly what the government will have invested in the Trans Mountain pipeline alone.

Considering the fact that the government continues to invest heavily in the oil and gas industry, we have to wonder how committed it is to fighting climate change. That is a little frustrating too. The budget allocates a mere $1 billion to climate change adaptation. People in the Lower St. Lawrence and Gaspé are very concerned about shoreline erosion, and they are experiencing more and more floods. Stakeholders in the Lower St. Lawrence and Gaspé have said how disappointing it is to see so little money invested in adaptation. The Conseil régional de l'environnement du Bas-Saint-Laurent has pointed out that rebuilding roads only to have them destroyed again the next year is not good enough. What people need is a multi-year framework and actions that will stand the test of time.

I still have several things to say, so I will say them quickly. In the budget, the government announced that, if all of the proposed measures were put in place, Canada would be able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 36%. However, according to people in my region, that reduction is not enough. The executive director of the Conseil régional de l'environnement du Bas-Saint-Laurent thinks that number is all well and good but that it is lower than Quebec's commitments and the targets adopted by many countries that are parties to the Paris Agreement. The federal government itself realized that several days later and announced a range of higher targets. Ambition is all well and good, but the measures that were announced are not consistent with that ambition. We need to look at how we can align all of that.

Since I do not have much time left, I will close by saying that members are beginning the clause-by-clause examination of Bill C-12 tomorrow in committee. I heard the minister assure us that he was going to include this new target in the bill, but that does not seem to be the case based on what we are seeing in the amendments. I am anxious to see how the government will keep its promise with regard to fighting climate change, because that is the challenge of this century, and we really need to address it.

Finance

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

Madam Speaker, maybe the best place to start is where we left off with the last speaker. Although I admired his quip about the PMO handing me documents, I will assure the member that I have three extremely capable, young, energetic staffers who do the vast majority of my research. Since I am singling them out, I am going to name them: Parth, Kaitlin and Kelly. They are absolutely incredible, and they do amazing work for me. They are the ones who quite often bring these very important pieces of information forward that I can use in debate. I am extremely lucky to have those incredible young Canadians working for me.

To the member's point about fact checking, let us fact check. I will admit I was younger at the time and not as engaged in politics as I am now; however, my understanding is that Paul Martin and Ken Dryden had worked out a deal with all the provinces. That is kind of required in these constitutional things. I know the member completely disregarded that with the pharmacare private member's bill he brought in. Of course, he does not see the need to work with our partners, especially the ones we are constitutionally required to work with.

Nonetheless, Ken Dryden and Paul Martin worked with the provinces and finally got the infrastructure or the programming structure set up so that national child care could be brought into Canada. This is where the budget part comes into it. This member, with the Conservatives, teamed up against Paul Martin and Ken Dryden and took down the government. That is why we do not have national child care. That is the reality of the situation. He should really go and do some fact checking on that, although I assume that he would have known, given that he was here at the time. However, who am I? I was only 29 at the time, and perhaps not paying as much attention as I should have been.

I really look forward to using the remaining 18 minutes of my time to talk about this very important concurrence motion that was introduced by the member for Carleton. He brought in the concurrence motion on the report from the finance committee. It is a very important report, with 145 recommendations in total, outlining the budget consultation process and what the government should be focusing on as it looks toward the budgeting process.

I know the previous speaker said he was very disappointed that the budget seemed to miss the mark on a number of different initiatives brought forward during the time of the consultation. He went to great lengths to explain how the consultation is done.

I would like to highlight some of the recommendations within the report that I thought were very good. Some made it into the budget and will have a meaningful impact on, and beneficial changes for, the lives of Canadians. There are a number of different sections to the recommendations. I will start in the section on health care.

One of the recommendations there, specifically with regard to mental health, was extremely important. We are living in a day and age when mental health is finally being recognized as the health problem that it is. I find it very frustrating that we have always been able to focus on the health issues that affect people's physical well being, and are very quick and responsive to invest money there, but we are not as good when it comes to mental health. I say that as a society. Certainly, there is always more that could be done.

A number of years ago the government brought in big stimulus for research and for helping to give people with mental health issues the supports they need. There is always going to be so much more work to be done, and I am glad to see that the committee came to that conclusion, based on research and recommendations given by various stakeholders throughout the process.

The other item in the health care section that I really liked seeing, and is something that has been talked about a lot in this House lately, was the request for long-term care national standards. What we have realized during this pandemic is that we have failed Canadians. Again, I do not say this as one particular party or another; I just mean society as a whole. We failed our seniors. We did not set up the right systems in order to protect them at a time when they would need it the most. The responsibility for this needs to be shared by everybody, by society as a whole, and we need to do better. If there is anything we have learned from this pandemic, it is that we have an opportunity to do better when it comes to long-term care standards and we need to act on that.

I know there are some members of this House who are very concerned about national standards for long-term care, including my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois. However, I really think that this does not have to be a top-down approach, as they are suggesting it is. It can actually be an opportunity to share best practices, to develop standards that can then be used throughout the country as provinces see fit.

I have said this many times and I will say it again: I compare it to something like our National Building Code. A lot of people probably do not even realize that there is a National Building Code in Canada because provincial jurisdictions use the building code. At least people who live in Ontario or Quebec may not realize that the National Building Code exists because Ontario and Quebec have their own building codes. The rest of the country pretty much uses those national standards. When we think of a building code, we think of the best practices that are put in there. If we compare the National Building Code to Ontario's Building Code, with which I am more familiar than I am with the Quebec one, we will see that the two are almost identical because Ontario is getting its best practices from the national code and I am sure that the national code is also influenced heavily by Ontario's Building Code and Quebec's Construction Code.

Therefore, I look at this as an opportunity to do something very similar as it relates to national long-term care standards. It is to develop some standards, not to impose them and force them upon provinces but to set the standards so that they can be adopted as best practices where provinces see fit.

One of the other sections that I enjoyed seeing in this report was the section on children and families in particular, and talking about a national child care system. Members heard me speak about this at the beginning of my speech and in the questions I was asking for the previous speaker. It is long overdue. I know there is a tendency to say, “What about this? What about that?” The Liberals have been promising it since the early 1990s when I was still in high school. I do not know what the situation is and why this happened, other than what I have been referencing around the Paul Martin time, but, as a parent who has children who have gone through nursery school and day care, I see so many parents out there, more often women, who do not put their kids into day care or child care because it just does not make economic sense. One of the parents, more often than not the woman, ends up staying home and she does not have the opportunity to realize her full potential in the marketplace.

When I talk about child care, it is not just about taking care of children in day care and giving the parents a break; this is about unleashing an economic opportunity here. Imagine what it would mean to put so many more people into the workforce and what that would mean for our economy. If one does not care about the social impact of child care, one should at least consider the economic impact of it. It has the opportunity to unleash new people working in our marketplace, which is only good for the growth of our economy.

I also note that there was a recommendation with respect to domestic abuse victim supports. I liked seeing that. There will never be enough that we can do to support victims of domestic abuse.

When I was younger, in high school in the early nineties, as I alluded to earlier, my mother worked at the Kingston Interval House, which was a special house to support more often than not women who were subject to domestic abuse and give them the support they needed right then and there to help them. To know the committee has heard from people in our country who are advocating for this is important. As we move forward I hope we will see more supports being put into this particular initiative of protecting and giving supports to those who have been subject to domestic abuse.

Another section I found very interesting when I was reading through the report was on employment and labour. There was a recommendation to fund Statistics Canada to make sure it had the funding it needed to do its job. My predecessor Ted Hsu introduced a private member's bill on this particular topic about reinstating the long-form census. Nothing is more important to government, agencies and businesses for that matter than good data. Getting that data and making sure Statistics Canada can compile that data in order for organizations, businesses and government to utilize is truly important for our economy and the social fabric of our communities.

There were also, in the employment and labour section, recommendations on supporting and developing training for green jobs. I talked about this earlier when we were discussing Bill C-12. The opportunity here of Canada being at the forefront of those green jobs and allowing Canadians to really expand their skills as these new industries are created in our economy is truly important, but we need to make sure people, and particular workers, have the skills they need for these jobs.

Along those lines, I know in the education and training section of the report there were also recommendations on investing in young Canadians for skills training specifically. I do not know if anybody has tried to hire a plumber or an electrician lately, but they are not easy to get and can pretty much charge whatever they want.

I come from this generation where my parents are immigrants from Italy and Holland who came here very young. They saw the struggles their parents went through, and the only thing their parents wanted was for their children to be lawyers, doctors and teachers, or “professionals”. That gets passed down to the next generation, and unfortunately, in the process of doing that, we have somehow devalued the core skills of those really important jobs. We made a giant mistake in doing that, as a society, when I say “we”.

To put resources into making sure that skills training can continue and people can get trained for those skilled trades jobs in particular truly is important in this day and age. If any of my three children come to me and say they want to get into a skilled trade, I will be beside myself and excited by this because I know they will be set for life and will be making money taking care of everybody else's problems for years to come.

There was also a lot in the report about arts, culture and hospitality. I come from a riding that really needs a lot of supports right now. About 11% or 12% of the economy in Kingston specifically is in tourism. These industries are struggling right now. We have a number of museums in Kingston, which make up the tour in Kingston, that literally have been sitting empty for a year, and these museums and cultural amenities that exist throughout the country really need the supports to get through this particular time so we can still have those cultural assets when we get through this pandemic. I was really happy to see that recommendation in there.

Perhaps the part of the recommendations I liked the most were the last five recommendations of the report, which focus on electric vehicles. I think there is such a huge opportunity here, as we discover that we will transition to electrified vehicles. There is no stopping that. It is going to happen. I genuinely believe we have passed the tipping point. It is really going to take off, and it will do so at a much more increased pace than it is now.

I heard a member from British Columbia, I believe it was one of the Green Party members, indicate that B.C. is now selling approximately 10% of its vehicles as electric vehicles. This industry is really going to take off, so putting investments and incentives into research and development, which is what one of the recommendations calls for, makes me wonder about what that will lead to.

When NASA does research to build new things for space, quite often we get a ton of spinoffs that end up becoming new products, which become available for more residential and commercial uses. Therefore, the spinoffs that will come from research and development in electrifying vehicles, for example, will be tremendous.

I also think there is a huge opportunity here. We are starting to see electric vehicles get to the end of their lifespan, as some have been around for a good 10 or 15 years now, and there is an opportunity to do a lot of research and development in what to do with an electric vehicle when it gets to the end of its life. I think there is a huge opportunity here, and I am really glad to see that was in one of the recommendations of this concurrence report.

Of course, there was also another recommendation in that same section on incentivizing the purchase of electric vehicles. I think it is extremely important to do that, but I know there are a lot of people out there who criticize the incentivization of electric vehicles.

I will be the first to admit that I have taken advantage of those incentives in Ontario on a number of occasions. We are on our fourth electric vehicle. People who are overly critical of these incentives are being very short-sighted on how much we actually help the fossil fuel industry in Canada, in particular with the incentives that are out there and the credits that are being applied to the fossil fuel industry.

Of course, there was another recommendation to increase the electrification of the federal government fleet dramatically. That is something I am very encouraged to see. It is another great recommendation, which I think the government should act on. We need to be leaders. If we are going to convince other people to buy an electric vehicle, the government needs to introduce a lot of electric vehicles into its own fleet.

I made a comment earlier about electric vehicles being an industry that is evolving. I can tell members that our first electric vehicle we had was a Chevy Volt. We could get 40 kilometres after plugging it in, and then we were using gas after that. We now have a Chrysler Pacifica, which is a minivan. We get about 60km and then use gas.

Then we have a Hyundai Kona, which I get about 400 kilometres on and which I drive to and from Ottawa. To see the evolution, just from my own limited experience of how these vehicles have changed in such a short period of eight or nine years, is truly inspiring. I know it is only a matter of time before they are flooding the market and everybody will be driving electric vehicles.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, right before we started the debate to concur in the report from the finance committee, we spent most of the day today debating the government's bill, Bill C-12. I think there is widespread agreement that the bill needs some strengthening at committee.

I specifically notice recommendation 66 of this report to increase serious investments in infrastructure for fighting climate change. That is a very worthy initiative, and I do not think we will find any disagreement on that. However, what does the member think when we see a recommendation like that but then contrast it with the fact that the Liberals spent billions of our taxpayer dollars on buying a bitumen exporting pipeline? Of course, they are now spending billions more trying to upgrade its capacity. We are all being warned that this is the most serious decade for us to get real climate change action coming from the government.

I wonder if my hon. colleague has any comments on the actual infrastructure spending that is going on versus what is being recommended in the finance committee's report.

Business of the House

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Louis-Saint-Laurent.

This afternoon, we will continue the debate on the opposition motion moved by the Conservative Party.

Tomorrow we will start with the vote on the ways and means motion to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 19. We will then move on to second reading consideration of Bill S-3, an act to amend the Offshore Health and Safety Act.

On Monday, we will return to the second reading debate on Bill C-12, an act respecting transparency and accountability in Canada's efforts to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.

Tuesday will be an allotted day.

Finally, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week will be dedicated for debate on the budget bill.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, climate targets are not about politics, they are about science, and even though Canada has improved our target last week at President Biden's climate summit, we are not aligned with the science. Speaker after speaker at that summit made it clear that we must achieve the bulk of reductions this decade if we are going to hold to 1.5°C.

Will the minister and the Prime Minister be open to changing Bill C-12 with a specific target due in 2025 baked into the bill?

Bill C-12—Time Allocation Motion

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Madam Speaker, certainly having a robust and comprehensive climate plan is the first step. Canada has that, developed through the pan-Canadian framework and the strengthened climate plan we announced in December. We have added to that with additional investments made in the budget, as well as with the work we are doing with the Americans on a continental approach in a couple of different areas.

Certainly, it is the most detailed climate plan, or one of the most detailed that exists in the world, and Bill C-12 is an important part of that. It would provide transparency and accountability. As I have said, we are open to constructive amendments at committee as to how we can further improve it.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, the minister was in this place and promised to work with all parties on Bill C-12. At that time, we gave the suggestion that perhaps there needed to be industry representation to make sure that critical industry voice was heard. What did the minister do? He promoted people who have said things on social media like, “At Davos we will tell world leaders to abandon the fossil fuel economy.” Another one stated, “[Canada] must demonstrate how a major fossil fuels producer and exporter can transition away from these pollutants”. He did the exact opposite.

If the minister wants to know why we have reversed our position, it is because he broke trust. No prime minister, and no government, should be divisive and try to tell a particular region or province that its aspirations have to take second to their own Davos crowd.

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-12 has a legally binding process for the federal government to set climate targets and bring forward plans to meet those targets. It has rigorous ongoing process reports, yearly reports by the independent advisory body and ongoing audits by the Office of the Auditor General. Additionally, we proposed embedding Canada's new NDC for 2030 directly into the act as the target for 2030.

With respect to the comments on the climate plan, I would ask the hon. member to have a word with former B.C. Green Party leader and leading climate scientist Andrew Weaver. Last week he said, “For the very first time, I am now hopeful that the world will come together to dramatically reduce global GHG emissions,” and that the United States and Canada were providing important leadership.

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Madam Speaker, as I said, this bill is now up for its fifth day of debate since November. I am not sure why the hon. member would not see that committee discussion and debate would further that debate in public.

I note the Conservative Party used to support this bill. The member for Abbotsford indicated Conservatives in the House support this legislation. The member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola said that his party would be supporting this bill at second reading.

The Conservative Party reversed its stated position in the House of Commons to support Bill C-12 with its motion last Friday to effectively kill the bill. It did not include a 2050 net-zero commitment in the climate pamphlet it released a couple of weeks ago. It is important for us to move forward. Canadians want us to address climate change. They would like to see a Conservative Party that actually believes in climate change.

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, Minister of Environment and Climate Change]

Madam Speaker, the bill is now up for its fifth day of debate since November. We have already had important conversations since the bill's tabling and we are very much looking forward to having further debate at the next stages of the bill.

I would note that the Conservatives have reversed their stated position in the House of Commons to support Bill C-12, with their motion last Friday to effectively kill the bill, and they did not include a 2050 net-zero commitment in their climate pamphlet. They announced that they would cancel Canada's new nationally determined contribution, and today, they tried to block debate on the bill yet again.

It is time for us to move to committee to ensure that we can have a robust discussion of how we—

Bill C-12—Notice of time allocation motion

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Minister of Small Business]

Madam Speaker, an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the consideration of the second reading stage of Bill C-12, an act respecting transparency and accountability in Canada's efforts to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.