Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.
I am happy to speak this afternoon to this motion. On its surface, it would seem to be about holding the government to account to commitments for openness and transparency. My two NDP colleagues, who spoke earlier, spoke to that theme of transparency. I have to thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for pointing out the delicious irony of a Conservative motion asking for more openness and transparency.
There is another irony in the Conservative debate, and that is the focus of standing up for low-income Canadians. The first two speeches we heard from the Conservatives told stories of low-income people in Ontario who literally had to choose between heating their home and eating, or even being able to afford to keep their home at all. These stories say more about the low incomes of these citizens after years of unreasonably low pensions for seniors and people with disabilities, restrictions on employment insurance, bungled energy pricing, and a complete retreat from affordable housing than they do with any inflated fears about what carbon pricing might bring. Too many Canadians live below or near the poverty line, and we all should all be constantly working in the House to change that shameful record.
While some Conservative speakers have insisted that this is not an indictment of carbon pricing, it is clearly a tactic to attack that policy.
I want to spend much of my time talking not about the costs of climate action but the costs of inaction.
On a global scale, The Economist published an analysis that said that an increase of 5°C would cost at least $7 trillion. That is where we are headed if the world follows the policies of this and previous Canadian governments on climate action. That is more than the capitalization of the London Stock Exchange. Imagine the London Stock Exchange collapsing. That is what we are facing on the global front. Citibank has come up with an even more drastic cost estimate of over $40 trillion over the next 40 years.
In Canada, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy came up with estimates of the price of inaction back in 2011. That price for Canadians was put at $5 billion per year, and would rise to $43 billion by 2050. That estimate has not been updated lately because the previous government disbanded that round table, which did such good non-partisan work on this and other issues. Another thing the Liberal government could do is bring back the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
The federal government does come up with cost estimates as well, although they tend to be hidden as footnotes in other reports, as we have seen today. The latest figures are about $40 per tonne of carbon now, which would rise to $75 per tonne by 2050. These costs are still higher than the revenues brought in by any carbon pricing scheme in Canada.
Many of the costs of inaction are not well represented by dollars alone. The catastrophic fires at Fort McMurray last year, and those in my riding around Rock Creek, British Columbia the year before, forever altered the lives of thousands of people. Floods in Calgary had a similar impact. Calgary faces the opposite effect over the long term as the glaciers in the Rocky Mountains, the sole source of water for that city, disappear over the next century.
Ocean acidification is already impacting shellfish farms along the B.C. coast.
Forests are being devastated by more frequent fires and insect outbreaks across Canada, both driven by climate change. It is hard to come up with a cost for the mountain pine beetle epidemic that killed more than half of the pines in British Columbia in a few short years. Those beetles took off during a long period of year after year hot, dry summers and warm winters. That epidemic changed the forest industry of B.C. forever, hollowing out communities across the interior of the province, and is now threatening the Alberta forest industry.
Now that the salvage operations are over for the beetle kill, allowable cuts will be lowered significantly in B.C. over the next few years, exacerbating the economic impact. We are now facing spruce beetle epidemics in B.C. that are taking advantage of similar climate patterns.
Finally, there are deep cultural impacts that climate change is having, and will continue to have, in communities throughout the Canadian Arctic. These communities and cultures have developed over millennia, with traditions dependent on seasonal patterns of sea ice. Those patterns are changing quickly, and even disappearing. The effect this will have on Arctic communities is difficult to assess or even put into words.
The price of inaction is astronomical. We must look for ways to minimize these unacceptable costs. Pretty much any economist from any country in the world will tell us that the cheapest way to tackle climate change is to put a price on carbon. That action would minimize the ongoing impacts of climate change, both financially and socially, on all Canadians.
There are other actions that would help as well. One expert I recently talked to told me that efficiency is the best new fuel, so one easy action for the government to take would be to bring back the eco-energy home retrofit program. This popular program ran from 2007 to 2012 and helped hundreds of thousands of Canadians retrofit their homes, lowering their energy bills by 20%, creating thousands of good local jobs, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by three tonnes per year for each house. While the program cost the federal government $900 million over about five years, it leveraged more than $4 billion in retrofit investments by Canadian families. When homeowners invest in new windows, insulation, and other energy-saving projects, that money circulates through communities across the country. The program combined everything that the Liberal government likes: leveraged infrastructure investments, carbon emission reductions, and helping the middle class and those struggling to join it.
The Conservatives, who usually champion policies that help the financial bottom line of Canadians, should get behind the price on carbon. Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing Canadians in the global community, and avoiding action now would cost all of us significantly in the long term.
I would remind the government that it promised to be open and transparent with Canadians, and it is beyond time that it clearly articulated how it will address climate change with a real plan. We have heard a lot about real change. Now we need a real plan. Several provinces have introduced measures to help low- and middle-income households adapt to measures to combat climate change, but there is no sign of federal leadership to ensure that fair programs are in place across the country.
We in the NDP want the government to build a just transition to a greener economy, one that creates good jobs across the country. That is what Canadians expect from the government, not foot-dragging.