Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think, to Mr. Barsalou-Duval's comments, no one is disputing that thermal coal is on the way out. He talked a lot about the one mine in Alberta. The majority of this coal is transiting from the U.S. through our ports to China and the Asia-Pacific to be used there. We know that's on the way out. He accused us of being hypocrites on it for some reason. We've been very clear that we support the use of Canadian LNG, liquefied natural gas, to displace coal that's being burned right now at an unsustainable rate in China.
Anyone who has done any work in China.... I went to China with the late Jim Carr. We were there for a natural resources clean energy ministerial. The Chinese government indicated that while it was investing heavily in renewables, at an unprecedented level, it was also going to burn billions of tonnes of coal into the future. I think the number they had was 12 billion tonnes of coal, going out past 2050.
Our position has always been that we should displace that coal with clean-burning liquefied natural gas. That's why we were so disappointed when countries came begging for liquefied natural gas over the last number of years to Canada—countries such as Japan, Germany and others. They said, please, will you sell us liquefied natural gas? The government said, there's no business case for it. You don't actually want that. That was, quite frankly, outrageous. Again, it's another slap in the face to workers in the natural resources sector.
I would be happy to have the Bloc Québécois get on board by promoting clean LNG as an alternative to having China and other countries burn coal. We want liquefied natural gas to be the next fuel that is used to provide baseload power to the world. We have it in abundance. It is something that we absolutely believe we need to promote. I would welcome the Bloc joining us in calling on more LNG to be developed and more LNG shipping to be available to get this product to places around the world that can use it to displace thermal coal, which, as we know, is much dirtier than LNG.
To then rail about how thermal coal is such a dirty fuel and also in the same breath talk about the need to shut down nuclear power.... Talk about a misunderstanding of where the world needs to go. We heard President Macron talk about it this week. There is no world in which we can meet our international climate targets, or that the world can address the targets that have been set, without embracing safe nuclear energy.
On the idea that we should be shutting this down.... We saw the catastrophic results of that type of policy in Germany. Germany has now fired back up its coal-fired power plants, because it had shut down some of the best nuclear power plants in the world to virtue signal and to provide political sop to a certain portion of it's electoral base. Now they're paying the price for it. They're literally paying through the nose to burn coal, where before they had emission-free nuclear power and some of the best plants in the world.
We can't beat our chests and talk about how we're here to save the environment by accelerating a phase-out of thermal coal and at the same time talk down the power sources that are cleaner burning. I would welcome the Bloc to become a champion for clean-burning Canadian liquefied natural gas and to support the nuclear sector in this country. We've seen investments being made in small nuclear reactors to displace things like diesel-powered gensets in the north. We think nuclear power has to be part of the solution when we talk about improving emissions and meeting our targets.
I also take exception to Mr. Barsalou-Duval's saying that this is nothing major. This is nothing major, he said. It's major to every single family that would be put out of work by this accelerated phase-out. It is a major deal for people who have family-supporting jobs. These are well-paying jobs for people who keep our ports moving and keep our supply chains moving. To just backhand away....
We don't even know the number. We know the number at Westshore Terminals, perhaps. We have a range there. We don't know how many will be affected in Prince Rupert. We don't know how many will be affected in Thunder Bay. To just backhand those away and say that it's nothing major, that they can pay the price so that the Bloc can pat itself on the back for accelerating an already agreed-to phase-out....
I just have to reiterate that Westshore Terminals and even the Vista mine are not disputing this. They are well aware that there is a limited time frame for this commodity. They are actively working as fast as they can to transition away from it. In the case of Westshore Terminals, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of investments that they won't see a return on for decades. Again, to Mr. Muys's point, these decisions have to be made decades in advance. To simply say that it's a negligible impact on the economy, that it's nothing major, is an insult to every single worker who will find themselves without a job.
That's the problem with this. We did a study at this committee about labour shortages that are affecting our supply chains. When you chase away a worker or tell them that they don't matter and that it's nothing major when they lose their job, they will leave the sector. They have to leave the sector to support their family. Do you think you can just walk away from a six-figure job in Delta or Ladner or Tsawwassen when the price of a home is $2 million? This is not something that should be taken lightly.
We are not the ones inventing these numbers. These come from ILWU. These come from the terminals themselves, which say that this will be the impact. To say that it's nothing major is an incredible insult to each individual worker—hundreds of workers, from what we're hearing, up and down the B.C. coast, as well as in northern Ontario.
He talked about risks in a legislative environment as though companies that make investments in jobs should just accept the fact that even if the government was telling them two weeks ago.... Even if on December 1 you come to Ottawa, you have meetings, you sit down with Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada, you can't rely on that. There are risks. “So we told you two weeks ago that it's 2030. Well, maybe today it's 2026.”
That's outrageous. It's unbelievable that we would even be talking about that as an acceptable risk to workers and the companies that provide those jobs, negotiating in good faith and planning a transition that's already under way. That's the part of this that, again, I....
The Bloc is the third party in the House. They have no power to pass this amendment without government support. The Bloc can propose this. The government should join us in voting it down and simply relying on its own current process. By voting in favour of this, government members are condemning their own process. They're saying that their own process, which our environment minister is undertaking, has loudly proclaimed and is probably talking about after he flew to COP28, has been undertaken because it's in his mandate.
The Liberal members on this committee, by endorsing this Bloc Québécois amendment, are saying, “We don't think our environment minister is going to get this done. We don't believe in our own process. We don't believe in the honour of our bureaucrats and our ministers when they talk to stakeholders. We don't believe in supply chain reliability. We don't believe in having a predictable regulatory environment. With the snap of our fingers, that amendment looks good. We haven't thought about it. We've done no analysis of it as the government, but we're going to support it anyway because we don't want Mr. Barsalou-Duval to accuse us of hypocrisy.”
Well, stand up for the workers and trust your own government. It's quite something to have members of the government on this committee saying, “Well, we can't trust Environment Canada to get this done. We've got to do it through the back door, through the Canada Marine Act.” It's ridiculous.
I want to turn to some technical questions that I have, and this might be for the legislative clerk. I'm not sure.
When we proposed our amendment, which I read into the record last meeting, we wanted to bring in a coming into force provision that would ensure that the timeline that had been communicated to workers, companies, stakeholders, the railways, our partners, the contracts and the Americans—all of that timeline that's been part of the negotiations and a part of the transition.... We said that we wanted to bring in our amendment, which, again, is in clause 125, and it says that subsection (1.1) comes into force on January 1, 2031, which gives all of 2030 as part of this transition.
Concerning “by 2030”, I guess we can go round and round about what that means. Does it mean by the beginning of 2030, during 2030 or by the end of 2030? I think it's something that we will have to discuss.
We were told to put that in section 125, so I guess I have a question, and then I'll have some more, but I want to start there.
When we wanted to ensure that the timeline would be respected through a coming into force provision, we were told to do it in section 125. How is it that the NDP subamendment was allowed to be moved in section 120?