Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Victoria.
Because climate change is the challenge of our time, I stand in support of ratifying the Paris agreement. Here is why action is so badly needed. Climate change impacts are already being felt in my riding. We already see hotter water harming chum, chinook, and coho salmon returns on the Englishman, Cowichan, and Nanaimo rivers and at Mill Creek. Salmon are also harmed by drier rivers resulting from reduced snow pack.
Two decades of pine beetle infestation in our province have led to dozens of mill closures and tens of thousands of job losses. Ocean acidity has increased 30% and is expected to increase up to 150% by the end of the century. Worldwide, since 1975, oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat from global climate change.
This has already had big economic costs for us. B.C.'s $2.2 billion fishery and aquaculture sector, with its 14,000 jobs, is at risk. Worldwide, fisheries stand to lose $10 billion of their annual revenue. Climate-change-caused ocean acidification killed 10 million scallops just north of my riding. That was three years' worth of production, and the CEO of Island Scallops Ltd. said:
I'm not sure we are going to stay alive and I'm not sure the oyster industry is going to stay alive.
Power generation is affected too. In 2009, we saw the lowest water inflows in 46 years at Vancouver Island power plants.
Forest fires cost British Columbia $877 million over the last five years.
Drought, disease, and pests threaten food security on Vancouver Island, which already imports 95% of its food.
The good news is that acting on global climate change can boost small business and good local jobs. Climate action is a win-win for our local economy and our global environment. We are already innovating and cutting greenhouse gas emissions in my riding and are adding good-paying, sustainable jobs.
Nanaimo Harmac Pacific mill is energy self-sufficient and uses biofuels, including wood waste, to generate 55 megawatts of power.
The Greater Nanaimo Pollution Control Centre captures methane to convert to electricity, and it is powering 300 homes.
Nanaimo is home to Canadian Electric Vehicles, which for 25 years has been making industrial vehicles, from electric trucks to Zambonis to electric bobcats.
Two groups are right now building energy conservation affordable housing in Nanaimo. Low energy use equals low operating costs equals greater affordability.
Vancouver Island University carpentry students dedicated 5,000 hours of volunteer time to building Habitat for Humanity's most recent build.
Nanaimo Aboriginal Centre is building affordable housing right now using passive energy designs, which use 80% less power than normal.
This is good news countrywide. Canada's green-building sector has $128 billion in gross annual output, and it employs more direct full-time workers than the forestry, mining, and oil and gas industries combined. We need our government to support local initiatives and remove barriers to innovation right here at home.
We have the know-how here in our communities. We want climate leadership that supports, and does not impede, cutting greenhouse gas emissions right here on our coast.
I talked with Nanaimo renewable energy entrepreneurs at the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance Summit a few years back. They said that the Harper government and our B.C. government put up more barriers to their industry than anywhere they know in the world. They are both manufacturing and selling outside our community and outside our province. That is a lose-lose for the environment and the economy.
Canada cannot afford to stand on the sidelines when it comes to tackling climate change and transitioning to a cleaner, greener economy. With 50,000 people employed directly in more than 800 clean-tech firms, Canada could be a global leader, but it needs federal government financing and policy support.
It is time we had a truly balanced, sustainable approach to developing our energy resources in Canada. This means creating lasting, sustainable prosperity while making Canada a global leader in the clean technology sector of tomorrow.
The bad news is that it feels as if the Liberals are repeating their old pattern of breaking promises. In the early 90s, I was involved through the environmental NGO community with a group called the Economic Instruments Collaborative. We were working with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, TransAlta, and Lafarge cement. These were the biggest polluters in Canada. We were working together to try to design economic instruments to deal with air quality problems, one of which was global climate change. The Liberals at that time had been elected in 1993 on a platform to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2005. Instead, the Liberals ignored the collaborative regulatory design on which we had worked together and had achieved this amazing consensus between disparate groups. They chose not to implement that. Instead, emissions increased by over 30%. By 2005, to our shame, the United Nations reported Canada's pollution had increased more than any other signatory to Kyoto.
Therefore, while the New Democrats support the ratification of the Paris agreement, we are concerned that the Liberals have shown no plan and no real effort toward achieving its targets.
Canadians elected the Liberal government on the promise to establish national emission-reduction targets. That was in the Liberals' platform. Now in government, they are backtracking to what they used to call “catastrophic” Harper targets, and Canada is still without a national greenhouse gas reduction plan. All spring, Liberals in the House kept telling us we have committees. However, committees do not reduce emissions.
Carbon pricing will not guarantee a greenhouse gas reduction either, and it will not meet the Paris targets. Carbon pricing without emission reductions leaves it to the market to decide how much pollution we get; and leaving it to the market is how we got into this mess in the first place.
Conservatives compounded the mess. There is no question. They disgracefully put Canada on the climate fossil map, as the first signatory to withdraw from Kyoto. They defunded the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, a group we sorely need right now. They failed to monitor or regulate emissions from the fossil fuel industry. Also, they continued to give their corporate fossil friends billions in annual tax breaks.
Liberal decisions are not looking very climate friendly right now either. Approving the Pacific NorthWest liquid natural gas project is inconsistent with the federal government's commitment to lead on climate change and clean innovation. At 10 million tonnes, it will be one of the largest carbon polluters in the country. There was no meaningful consultation and accommodation with indigenous communities. That feels to us like the Site C dam problem as well. This summer, at the site of the proposed dam, indigenous leaders showed me B.C. Hydro pulverizing old growth forests and mulching a carbon sink during reservoir preparation, and this is all to power further fossil fuel production. It is an embarrassment for us.
We are looking for real climate action. We are looking for ratification of the Paris accord, but we need regulation, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and support for innovation to create sustainable jobs.
As legislators in the House, we have a sacred duty to future generations, to the people, to the animals, to make it right for our planet, and for the first time in Canadian history, to actually lead on climate change.