Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am substituting here in the environment committee, and it is a great privilege. I was hoping we would be talking about fresh water, but I have to weigh in on this. The NDP will be supporting this motion.
On the first Environment Day in the 1970s, when I was a student, I and six of my friends blocked traffic with our bicycles. We learned two important lessons that day. The first was not to be too quick to pat ourselves on the back about the effectiveness of our actions—and I'll come back to that in a moment. The second was that it's really necessary to bring others along, to get buy-in—not to create anger or fear, but to create understanding of the issues and how we can move forward if we work together.
We're facing, really, an existential crisis on this planet, and it's necessary to bring people along. That's why I'm very upset with the Conservatives' so-called “axe the tax” movement, because it deliberately creates anger in the face of a real threat to our livelihoods and to our future when there is no threat to individual humans or individual families from the carbon tax. In fact, we know that the studies show that, apart from the very wealthiest in this country, most people will be harmed by eliminating the carbon tax, because it is a revenue-neutral measure. That debate spirals us away from what we need to be talking with the public about, and that is how we are a rich and privileged country and how, if we work together, we can meet the challenges we face. However, we can't do that if we focus on anger and division, so it's very disappointing to have what I will politely describe as this obsession with the carbon tax and the misinformation around it continually coming back through the House of Commons.
I want to go back to the first lesson, and that was that we can't be too quick to pat ourselves on the back. Like Madame Pauzé, I'll be supporting this motion, but I don't think that even this motion represents the urgency of the crisis we are facing. There's much more that we have to do. It's important to acknowledge progress, and that's why we'll be supporting this motion—because there is progress. At the same time, it's also important to recognize how much more there is to do and that we know what we need to do and we have the skills, ability and science to do those things. What we need to do is build public support for the country-wide movement we need to meet this climate crisis.
I don't think anybody else here is from British Columbia. I was present in Kelowna during the fires this summer. When people talk about the costs of the carbon tax, let's talk about the costs to families that lost their homes; let's talk about the cost to small business people who lost their businesses; let's talk about the health costs of the smoke damage to the lungs of the people in Kelowna last summer. These are the real costs of not taking action on climate change.
There's much more that we have to do, but I'm happy to support this motion.