Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with an hon. member who is speaking tomorrow to this debate that is being held over three days. This debate is very important for the future not only of our country, but also of our society and of our young people, our children and grandchildren.
I am pleased to speak to this motion to ratify the Paris agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This agreement was signed by Canada in New York on April 22, 2016. Then there was the Vancouver declaration on March 3, 2016, when the Prime Minister met with his provincial counterparts.
Unfortunately, while provincial ministers were gathered in Montreal today, the government made an announcement without having consulted them. It is hard to believe, and I am sure that they were shocked when they found out. That is a poor way to engage in politics if the government wants to sit down with its provincial counterparts and make progress. The Liberals said they wanted to do politics differently.
The Paris agreement and the fight against climate change are of vital importance. Earlier, several reports were mentioned, including the report set aside by the Conservatives. Unfortunately, the Conservatives disbanded the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. The only table that for years brought together the economy and the environment was abolished. It had reported that inaction on fighting climate change could cost up to $50 billion over the coming years.
There have been droughts, forest fires and floods. Unfortunately, there was a flood in the municipality of Drummond this summer that resulted in huge costs not just for citizens, but also for our towns and society as a whole. We are under tremendous pressure to adapt to climate change.
That is why we have to take the bull by the horns, to take our medicine, as I always tell my girls. Though they may not like the taste, we have to find an effective remedy for what ails them.
This is not the first time that the NDP has called for real measures to combat climate change. In fact, we are pioneers in this area. A famous and honourable member of this place, our late leader, Jack Layton, introduced a bill to combat climate change on two occasions. The second time, in the mid 2000s, the House of Commons passed the bill.
Jack Layton tried to pass the climate change accountability act on two occasions, and the Liberals were in agreement at the time. However, when the bill went to the Senate the first time, it died on the Order Paper when an election was called.
The second time, the bill was killed by the Senate, the chamber of unelected senators then dominated by Conservatives. It was scandalous and Jack was furious. It was a truly unique situation that we never want to see repeated in the history of our modern democracy.
Unfortunately, it did. Matthew Kellway, who was my colleague, introduced this bill again. Everyone agreed to support the bill, but, unfortunately, we did not have time to get through all the stages and pass it.
What did the bill that the Liberals supported several times say? It set out the commitments that we need to make if we are taking this issue seriously, and they are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050 or by 34% by 2025, compared to 1990 levels. I am talking here about old dates, the old Copenhagen targets that the Conservative government was aware of. I will come back to this.
I am going to engage in a bit of whimsy. Let us imagine that, in 2015, Canadians voted for an NDP government. Our leader would have gone to Paris with the other leaders or delegates of the opposition party. We would have said that we were very happy to limit global warming to below 2°C and even better if it was below 1.5°C. Then, we would have come back here to the House of Commons and ratified that agreement. We would have re-introduced Jack Layton's climate change accountability act. We would have been happy to do this because we would have been serious about it, we would have had serious targets, and we would have led the way.
However, the people chose a Liberal government. That is democracy.
At that point, we told ourselves that the Liberal government would practice politics differently, that it would have a different way of doing things, and that it would set much higher targets. However, from looking at the targets, we see that this government is still going forward with the target from 2005. It is no longer the 1990 target. It is the target that the Conservatives set in 2005 to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030.
We do not understand. What happened? Was it the Liberals or the Conservatives who got elected? We are thoroughly confused when it comes to the target. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other. It is the same old story.
This is so disappointing. We recently got some bad news on the climate change front because the Liberal government had promised that major projects would be subject to a proper environmental assessment going forward.
I was a member of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in 2012 and the years that followed, during which time draconian changes were made to environmental assessment. For one thing, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act was totally gutted. It was stripped of its teeth, its soul, its energy, its power, and its credibility. The Liberals told us they would fix the problem, but major projects are still being assessed using the Conservatives' process. Greenhouse gas emissions are still not part of the equation.
Recently, the Liberals' application of the Conservatives' process resulted in approval for Pacific NorthWest LNG, a liquefied natural gas project. Actually, not natural gas, but rather gas extracted by hydrofracking. There was a big debate about this in Quebec. Our leader has long been calling for the secret ingredients that go into frac water to be made public. Knowing what comes back out is also important. The water that comes out has created some huge pollution problems.
I will close by saying that we still have a lot of work to do. We will support ratification of the Paris agreement, but so much more must be done. For example, it is urgent that we change the environmental assessment process for major projects.