Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple of things.
My friend opposite may be surprised to know that his home province of Ontario also has a 100% EV mandate by 2035, so he may also want to have this discussion with, arguably, the most popular Conservative in the country: Doug Ford.
I know there's a lot of grasping at straws, on the other side, for meaning. One area of meaning might be to reflect on why Canadians from coast to coast to coast elected a Liberal government.
He's using words like “out of touch”. The reality is that the party that is out of touch is the party that has no interest in dealing with climate change. It's the party that has clearly proven it has no understanding of where the will of the voters actually is in terms of the agenda to build a stronger country with investments in the type of infrastructure this country requires and needs, in partnership with provinces run by Conservatives like Doug Ford, who have an eye on building a strong economy and helping to deal with climate change; New Democrats like David Eby in British Columbia; and the Premier of Quebec and his government.
One of the key elements of federal laws and federal rules is to reflect what is actually happening in provinces. We're going to talk about jurisdiction. Power grids in this country are supplied by provincial power suppliers. If we're going to be talking about research in that area—and that seems to be what the member opposite wants to do—I would encourage him to talk to the Doug Ford government, given that he represents a riding from Ontario. If he has concerns about what Quebec is doing, work with his Bloc colleague to interrogate what the Government of Quebec is doing.
The reality is, as Madam Jaczek pointed out, that this committee is not where we need to be having this discussion, first of all.
Second of all, if we're going to have a thoughtful, intelligent discussion about electric vehicles in this country, why don't we actually think about the way in which Canadians have overwhelmingly chosen to make these moves? Why has battery production become something this country has begun to lead on?
What Conservatives are trying to use this committee to do, Madam Chair, is to play gotcha politics with science. The reality of the way the world is moving is that electric vehicles—electrification—are not, or should not, be a partisan issue. If Conservatives in Ontario, New Democrats in British Columbia, the Government of Quebec, the Government of the United Kingdom under both Conservatives and Labour, and the European Union, where you have a wide range of political views represented.... My goodness, even India and China are talking about moving aggressively towards electrification and electric vehicles and putting in mandates that are far more aggressive than the provinces and this country have done. I think the real question we need to be asking is why Conservatives don't see this as an important move forward.
Again, we're talking about the motion yesterday—the gotcha policy. The motion was defeated by members of Parliament who represent every single province and territory of this country. If we're calling all of those folks out of touch, that's remarkable.
We're at a place right now in this committee where we have the choice to decide whether we want to entertain motions that are going to be gotcha politics or we actually deal with the types of science and research questions that this committee has done in the past, which I know the Bloc member is very interested in conducting, which we are certainly interested in doing and which members of the Conservative Party who are not ideologues would also like to see being done.
Madam Chair, in the first instance, this motion shouldn't be in this committee by the very nature of the way it has been presented. There's also a philosophical question about why we're trying to avoid a jurisdictional conversation when, in fact, the reality of this motion presents us with the requirement to interrogate Hydro-Québec, Ontario hydro and BC Hydro, and to call into question the policies of the Government of Quebec and the Government of Ontario. I suspect a whole lot of Conservatives aren't super happy with doing that.
If that's what they want to do, Madam Chair, that's great, but I certainly don't think that's the will of this committee. I don't think it's the mandate of this committee, and I'm fairly certain it doesn't reflect the overwhelming majority of where Canadians placed their votes in the last election.