Environment Committee on Dec. 5th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Hold on a second, Mr. Mazier.

Mrs. Chatel, you have the floor.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Are we talking about the motion that was just introduced, or are we talking about the minister's involvement in—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We're talking about the motion that was introduced.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

The motion is from December 1. It's asking for documents.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The motion asks for information related to the minister's trip.

You may continue, Mr. Mazier.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

I'll start over again.

The environment minister has jetted off to Dubai, leaving Canadians out in the cold. The hypocrisy is astounding. Minister Guilbeault has no shame in punishing hard-working Canadians with a costly carbon tax. He has no shame with increasing the cost of gas for the mother who drives her kids to hockey practice. He has no shame with increasing the cost of groceries or taxing the farmer who grows the food.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

A point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Mazier, I have to interrupt you because we have a point of order.

Go ahead, Mrs. Chatel.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I don't see how my colleague's comments have anything to do with the December 1 motion, which I have before me. It doesn't talk about hockey or anything like that.

Can we proceed with debate on the motion, please?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

It's true that it's not really relevant to the motion. From a technical point of view, the motion asks that the minister or his department make public certain details after the trip, which is still ongoing.

I would ask Mr. Mazier to stick to the motion and perhaps talk about the relevance of the information being requested from the minister.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

The relevance is what the impact of the carbon tax is costing.

I'm getting to the point here. It will be really brief.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The motion doesn't deal with carbon pricing, but with travel expenses. Those are two different topics, I believe.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

We're talking about what is going on in Dubai, and what he's talking about.

I'll finish up here, Mr. Chair.

He has no shame in increasing the cost of home heating for a senior trying to stay warm this winter, but when it comes to him, he has no shame about jetting around the world, releasing more emissions in two weeks than most Canadians will in a year. Canadians deserve to know the details of Minister Guilbeault's trip to Dubai, including how much it's going to cost.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead, Mr. van Koeverden.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

I'll withdraw. I think we should vote on this motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Ms. Pauzé, you have the floor.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, Mr. Leslie's motion should simply be an order paper question, and if ever Mr. Leslie were not satisfied with the answer he received, he could bring this up again by introducing his motion.

Furthermore, I remember that a few weeks ago, we voted on a motion similar to his. It wasn't about COP28, but it was about questions to be put to the minister. At that time, we voted to permit everyone to ask the minister any questions they deemed relevant when he appeared before the committee. I stand by my position on that. When the minister appears before the committee, if the Conservatives want to ask him a question about COP28, they can do so. The Liberals can ask him questions on other topics, as can I or Mr. Bachrach.

So I would urge Mr. Leslie to put a question on the order paper to get those answers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay.

Mr. Bachrach, the floor is yours.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I came into this debate with an open mind. I think it is worthwhile to know who the minister is meeting with at COP. That's important disclosure, given the significance of the deliberations that are happening there. However, listening to the Conservatives' debate, it seems that their intention here is to somehow criticize the government for travelling to an international meeting to discuss a globally existential threat.

Given the fact that the climate crisis is a collective action problem that affects every single country around the world, we can't solve it without talking to each other.

I would bring us back to the debate about a hybrid Parliament and the indignation with which the Conservatives argued that the only way we can have Parliament function is if we are there in person. It's an assertion that I actually agree with, as someone who would benefit greatly from being at home more, seeing my kids and sleeping in my bed more than two nights a month.

The point of going to COP—at great expense, granted—is so that leaders can sit down with each other, look each other in the eye and talk seriously about how they're going to solve this problem.

The rhetoric around jet-setting around the world and sitting in air-conditioned rooms frankly diminishes the seriousness of the debate. I'm all for people having different opinions and different perspectives, but I think Canadians deserve for us to be serious on this issue. This is an issue that affects every single one of us. It affects our kids. It affects our grandkids. It affects our economy. It affects our country, yet to just talk about “how dare someone sit in an air-conditioned room” reduces us to the level of grade school nattering. This is not a serious conversation.

We're sitting in an air-conditioned room right now. In fact, most of the rooms we sit in on Parliament Hill are air-conditioned. Those of us who live more than a couple of hours' drive away fly to Ottawa to engage in Parliament—and yes, that releases emissions. It's one of the realities that we have to grapple with, because the status quo.... We can live in a system and work to change the system at the same time. The idea that we somehow are hypocrites because we exist in modern society is, frankly, ridiculous.

I have huge challenges with the way the COP conference has evolved, with the fact that it's crawling with oil and gas lobbyists, the fact that it's ballooned to 50,000 delegates and the fact that it's being chaired by an oil baron, who's using it as a venue to make oil and gas deals. All of these things are patently absurd, and I think deserve scrutiny and criticism, but it is vitally important that global leaders, elected officials and civil society come together on a regular basis to talk about how we're going to fix this problem.

Underlying the Conservatives' critique of this—underneath it all—is the fact that they don't believe that we should be having a serious conversation about the climate. They want to undermine the very conversation about this existential threat, because they don't take it seriously. I think that's really what we're seeing behind all of these interventions, all of these motions—a lack of seriousness on the issue of our time.

I won't vote to support this motion, as much as I want to know who Minister Guilbeault is meeting with at COP. Listening to the debate...it's not a serious debate. It's not about transparency. It's not about getting to the bottom of how many oil and gas lobbyists the minister's meeting with or how many environmental groups or what the substance of those conversations is. It's an attempt to discredit the entire global effort to get at how we're going to tackle this collective action challenge that we face.

I would note that, if you look at the delegations coming from Canada to COP, you see it includes lots of folks who have a pretty different perspective than I do on the climate challenge and the climate crisis.

I'll leave it at that. I spoke about 10 times longer than I intended to, Mr. Chair, but obviously I have some strong feelings about the disingenuousness with which this motion has been brought forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. van Koeverden, you have the floor.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I could not have said it better. My colleague expressed exactly what I was thinking over here.

The premise of the motion is fine. Accountability and transparency are good, but when Mr. Mazier went on a tirade about the legitimacy of flying to a meeting, when we all flew here, I'm pretty sure, except for maybe Madame Chatel.... Ms. Taylor Roy drove. I drive sometimes too, and I'm lucky. Gérard Deltell has an electric vehicle, I might add, because he's an environmentalist in his own right. We're not counting carbon credits over here, but my point is that in order to have an impact....

Canada is responsible for 1.5% of global emissions. That's something that the Conservatives love to remind folks, “We're just a small player in the emissions world.” That might be true. I would also add that we're 0.5% of the global population, so it means that, on average, each of us sitting here has triple the carbon footprint of an average global citizen. That's significant.

Why do we show up to these meetings? It's leadership—because we can have an impact if we're in the room. Yesterday, instead of being here, as the member so eloquently put it, the minister announced that Canada was the first-ever country to commit to reducing our oil and gas emissions, with respect to methane, by 75%. That's a global first. Canada stood up. We took credit. We were given a lot of credit, and a lot of organizations out there in the environmental non-governmental organization space are saying Canada's on the right path.

Other countries are going to follow suit. If the United States does the same thing, as it has indicated it might, that's massive. Do you know why? It's because the United States is responsible for 30% or 40% of global emissions and a lot of methane. Methane's 80 times worse than CO2 when it's put into our environment. Thankfully, it doesn't last as long, but it's really bad for global warming. It has a negative impact on our environment.

Why do we show up to important meetings? We do it to be leaders. We already know that the Conservatives do not want to lead on climate change, despite having run their last election on a promise to price carbon. After that election, they lost, and members of their caucus flew on airplanes over to Europe to meet with the Danube Institute—which is a far-right group, a bunch of climate deniers—to eat chateaubriand and oysters and porterhouse steaks paid for by climate change deniers in the Danube Institute, in a far-right context.

Mr. Chair, we all have a carbon footprint and we all have an obligation to lower it. By showing up, Canada was the first country in the world to set this ambitious target to lower our methane oil and gas sector emissions below 2012 levels by 75% by 2030. That is significant progress.

I'm willing to stake a chateaubriand dinner, if you like—maybe on Sparks Street—on the fact that he's not done yet. He's over there to continue to lead, and I for one am really proud that we have an environmental activist as an environment minister. When I was a kid, I grew up watching David Suzuki on TV. I grew up reading Owl Magazine and I grew up wanting to be an environmental champion.

On this side of the House, we can confidently say that we are. The Bloc can say that, so can the NDP and so can our Green members. The Conservatives cannot.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Deltell, you have the floor.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Yes, we can, but the point is, Mr. Chair, that it's very easy to set big, ambitious targets when you never reach them. This is exactly the track record of this government. They have never gained, never attacked....

The Liberals never got to where they should be. We are the only G7 country whose emissions have gone up rather than down. That is the track record after eight years of Liberal governance.

Need I remind you that, last year, the UN concluded that, after eight years of Liberal governance, Canada ranked 58th out of 63 countries in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? The only times that the targets were met, or rather that we experienced a reduction, was during the COVID‑19 pandemic. I am sorry, but if anyone wants to shut down the economy once again, we will not be on board. That said, everyone has their own approach.

The Liberals spent eight years using rhetoric and lecturing others around the world, but nothing came of it. That is the Liberal track record.

Yesterday, the minister made an ambitious announcement saying that the government had a very high target and that, in that respect, Canada was a world leader. That's all well and good, but it may be more credible if it were a world leader in results, not in announcements. Again, everyone has their game plan.

Concerning methane, I want to say that last week I met with a group of people who are working on that source of pollution. I assume that I am not the only one, by the way, since they were in a meeting. This is extremely interesting, especially since the federal government studied their proposals and came to positive conclusions. It's the same with the provincial government—

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I have a point of order.

Are our witnesses waiting online, or are they in person?