Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 16th, 2023

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

I'm not debating. I'm giving the rationale for the further discussion—

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

You're debating the rationale of the motion.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

—I will move on the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

The only issue is that the motion that you have presented was not provided in time to the clerk. It was provided this morning, so it can't be moved today at this meeting unless we have unanimous consent because of the timing requirements of this committee that we need two sleeps, two days' notice. The notice was provided to the clerk but not in accordance with what we have on the committee. It was registered today and sent out this morning to committee members.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

That's another one I will speak at length to later.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

On this specific motion, we cannot move the motion today unless you have the unanimous consent of committee members.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Given that I would anticipate that every elected member of this committee would see the utter indictment by the Supreme Court of Bill C-69, which has been in place as law for five years, I absolutely imagine members will give us unanimous consent to prioritize this topic.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Go ahead, Mr. Angus.

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

I vote to adjourn debate. It doesn't fit. It's not in order. I vote to adjourn, so we can hear from our witnesses, some of whom have travelled a great distance.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mr. Angus, we need unanimous consent to adjourn debate. However, the motion is not up for debate yet, because we do not have unanimous consent to debate the motion. I will go to the floor.

Do we have unanimous consent?

No, I do not see that we have unanimous consent.

Mrs. Stubbs, your time for questions is up.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

We will go to the next round of questions.

Go ahead, Ms. Lapointe.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Vaillant.

I think we can all agree that, globally, this past summer was undeniably an extreme confirmation of the damage of climate change. On one hand, we had those horrific natural disasters playing out, and with that comes a sense of urgency to make great changes. On the other hand, we have families, communities and towns that are currently reliant on an energy source we know to be dangerous to the planet.

What do you recommend to the members of this committee—to us as legislators—in balancing those two opposing realities?

[Dr. John Vaillant]

Thanks for that question. That's the nut we have to crack together.

What we need, first, is a good-faith recognition from the fossil fuel industry that it is fundamentally lethal to the planet's stability as we know it. If you look at every single metric of climate distress, whether it's Antarctic ice, glacial melt or the state of sea surface temperature—which is several degrees above normal all over the world right now.... You have massive coral die-off and dolphins literally dying of heat in the Amazon River as it evaporates.

We are in a crisis now. Ecosystems are literally collapsing all around us. That affects all of us. We are part of the ecosystem. That is something the fossil fuel industry and the financial industry have difficulty reconciling with: that we are beholden to laws greater than the law of supply and demand. We are beholden to the laws of physics and chemistry. That is humbling, but we have to focus on that.

Right now.... What I've heard for the past hour and a half is a negotiation that wants to leave the climate impacts, or the physics and chemistry that govern our lives, out of it and just focus on maintaining the status quo with a few little tweaks.

That won't do it. We have to embrace, wholeheartedly, a transition to reduce carbon immediately.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Your time is up. Thank you.

Mr. Simard, you have two and a half minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Séguin, I understand the green paradox principle, but I'd like to ask you a question about something else.

I've learned that the Pathways Alliance is willing to invest $24 billion in reducing the fossil fuel sector's carbon intensity by 2050.

In your opinion, will this commitment have an impact on prices at the pump?

[Dr. Charles Séguin]

It very likely will, yes.

It's hard to imagine a situation where investors wouldn't try to recoup their investment from the income generated by the product they've invested in. It remains to be seen what the various trade-offs will be, and what the volume of demand will be for oil and gas sector products given the additional costs that are going to be generated by the carbon capture and storage technologies that will be put in place.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you very much.

So if someone opposes the clean fuel regulations saying that they are a tax, even though they aren't a tax, and that they will involve an additional cost, that individual could be expected to oppose carbon capture strategies, which carry an additional cost as well.

Do you agree with me?

[Dr. Charles Séguin]

I tend to agree, especially since, when it comes to carbon capture and storage strategies, it seems they are mostly banking on government subsidies. The subsidies must come from government revenue, which is financed through taxes.

The costs have to be borne by someone, at some point. There's no way around it.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you very much.

Quickly, Mr. Cameron, do you agree with the clean fuel regulations?

[Mark Cameron]

Clean fuel regulations would require the government to contract for 26 megatonnes of emissions reductions by 2030 through different sources like biofuels and all kinds of different sources that are decarbonizing the fuel supply.

Carbon capture is only one of those technologies. In fact, the Government in Canada does that to eliminate the ability for any carbon capture that is used for export to receive those supports. Really, only a small percentage of the carbon capture that is performed by Pathways would be eligible for support under the clean fuel regulations.

Oil and gas are a globally traded commodity. We don't set the price of oil. The price is set globally. We don't get back the costs that we spend for environmental measures.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Yes, absolutely—

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

That's time. Thank you, Mr. Simard.

Mr. Angus, go ahead for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you.

Thanks to our guests.

Mr. Vaillant, I read Fire Weather, and I must say that I haven't been as frightened in almost my whole life from reading a book. I live in the boreal forest, and I thought I knew fire.

You write about the heroism of the people from the Slave Lake fire, who, at Fort Mac, literally put themselves on the line to get people out and keep them safe. You mentioned the Chisholm fire that had the radiant capacity of a nuclear bomb. It's something I can't even begin to imagine.

I know that Danielle Smith and my Conservative colleagues are always blaming arson. That level of arson would only be possible at a corporate level—would you not agree?

I just want to ask this, because you mentioned the fact that the fossil fuel industry is a fire-creating industry. That's fundamental to its production. You heard Mr. Kruger today. Mr. Kruger seemed really surprised, as a former vice-president of Exxon, that there were thousands of documents that would have been generated on his watch about the arson power of his industry. Could you reflect on what you heard and what you think we as legislators need to do?

[Dr. John Vaillant]

I think the incredible work that Exxon did in the 1970s and 1980s on climate science, which was absolutely cutting-edge, creates enormous dissonance for people in the petroleum industry now, because it was stated, it was shared and it was known. Then it was consciously and systematically disavowed and undermined. We are still living in that era of greenwashing, gaslighting and disavowal. It's causing enormous harm.

It really doesn't matter whether the fire starts from an ATV or an arsonist when the climate has been altered to the point that it holds and reflects heat that much more powerfully. I could have thrown a match on the forest in the 1980s and I might have lit the forest up, but I wasn't going to get temperatures of 500°C. I was not going to get a firestorm. I was not going to get a fire tornado like the one they had in Redding, California. It was an EF3 fire tornado. There are photographs in the book, if you want to see what that does. It looked like Nagasaki when I walked that ground.

That's what's different. We have to realize that, as humans, we make a difference. The fossil fuel industry—which is a fire industry and a CO2 industry—has made a difference in our climate.