Natural Resources Committee on April 6th, 2022

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

In three years—

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Yes—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

But Bay du Nord is not going to come on for three years, so you guys seem to be at cross-purposes.

I want to ask you another thing about the IPCC—

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

No, under the cap...it will have to fit under the cap.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

But we don't have a cap. This is what I want to get to because the UN Secretary-General said this week in response to this that “Some government & business leaders are saying one thing, but doing another” on the environment. He said that government leaders are, in his words, “lying” and that the response will be catastrophic.

You went to COP26 and promised an emissions cap. We're still here waiting to see it, but what we've seen in the meantime is 300,000 barrels last week, 200,000 barrels this week, in perpetuity for at least 30 years.

Would you feel that the IPC—

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

IPCC.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Yes, IPCC. I'm sorry, I'm so dyslexic with that.

Would the UN Secretary-General have been unfair in saying that government leaders who come to COP26 and make these promises are “lying” and that they go back and then it's business as usual?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

We have an expression in French, and I don't think there a good translation, but it's the following:

“If the shoe fits, wear it.”

I don't think the hat fits for us, because we're doing exactly what the IPCC says we should be doing. We're capping emissions and reducing them. Our emissions have started reducing in Canada. We have projections for every sector between now and 2030. We have a price on pollution, which is saluted globally as one of the most effective tools to tackle climate change.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Yes, yes, I get that and, by the way, Bob Marley would say, “And who the cap fit, let them wear it”, so I'm just wondering whether you should be wearing the cap, because in January—

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

An experienced parliamentarian like you knows that we can't do new regulations on the corner of a table—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I get that—

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

—that we have a duty to consult, including—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

—but where did you consult on Bay du Nord?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

—with indigenous peoples—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

With the industry....You guys have 1,600 meetings with the oil lobby. If you announce Bay du Nord, you are contradicting the promises that you're making, so let's go back—

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

You've made a number of—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Just let me finish here, I haven't gotten to my question yet.

If you are consulting, I would point out that the issue is that 400 scientists wrote and said not to fall for the plan that the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is pushing on “carbon capture”. They said it's “financially risky”, it's not “proven at scale” and it's not “verifiable” for actually storing CO2, and then the kicker is that it's not going to come on stream for six to eight years.

When I read your plan, which is heavily dependent on carbon capture, if it's $15 billion or $75 billion that you're going to give them, if it's not coming on stream for six to eight years, you're not meeting your 2030 targets, right? Why don't we just say that “this is what we're going to invest in big oil, we're going to continue to promote Bay du Nord and we're not going to meet those targets”?

It would be better to just be honest on this than to claim that you're going to miraculously meet these targets while within the space of a week you alone have signed off on half a million new barrels a day of production, and you're telling us that the CER, which is saying that it's going to be over a million barrels a day, that that's on your plan as well....

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

I'd like to quote directly from the IPCC report on it—they call it “CCS”, they don't call it “CCUS”—at paragraph C.4.6, where they referred to CCS as being a critical “technology” needed for the world to achieve the emission reduction—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

So the scientists in Canada were wrong when they said that this is unproven and unverifiable...?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

I'm quoting the IPCC here—

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Let's just be clear, Charlie: The 400 were not experts in the field.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

They weren't...?

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

There were very few people who signed that letter that were experts in the field. If you look at the—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

As compared to the experts at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, I can see that—

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

—the IEA, if you look at the IPCC, if you look at the International Renewable Energy Association, and if the work that's been done in Norway, Australia, and in a number of countries around the world, what you've just said is full of factual errors.