Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand here today to reaffirm the principles and values of progressives and new democrats, the people who put their trust in the NDP in our collective fight against climate change and the warming of the planet. That is why I am announcing that the NDP will oppose the Conservative motion, which looks strangely like a fox trap inside a bear trap, an expression from a movie that I liked a lot when I was younger, The Dog Who Stopped the War.
In fact, the Conservative Party is trying to do indirectly what it cannot do directly. It is using the virtue and positive value of transparency as a pretext for attacking the fact that we need to set a price on carbon emissions in order to gain the necessary tools to reduce our emissions and do our part, as an industrialized nation, to meet our objectives under the Paris agreement. It is the most recent and most comprehensive agreement regarding the greatest challenge facing our planet, which is the possibility that temperatures might rise to a point that they will cause natural disasters, major geographic changes as well as extremely serious geopolitical changes.
There is a reason Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the environment; a rather clear causal link has been established by 99% of the world’s scientific community. There are several ways we can reduce emissions. In fact, there are two great tools: a carbon market and a carbon tax.
The NDP has always favoured the carbon market tool, which has deeper structural effects over the medium and long term. However, a carbon tax is also a viable option. It also makes it possible to use market forces to apply economic and financial pressure on businesses and individuals so they will make the best choices and use the best methods in order to make this green shift towards renewable energy that just about everyone supports.
Let us go over some recent facts about the Paris agreement. It was ratified by 195 countries. Though legally binding, it uses broader brush strokes than previous agreements such as Copenhagen and Kyoto, which only involved 15, 20 or 30 countries.
The primary objective of the Paris agreement is to limit global warming to well below the 2% threshold. There is a broad consensus that, compared to pre-industrial temperatures, this would be the point of no return. The changes that would affect our communities, our country and our continents would become irreversible. This is obviously a scenario that everyone wants to avoid. This is not the kind of environment I want to leave to my children. If we don’t succeed, we will have truly failed future generations. The Paris agreement also sets a warming threshold of 1.5%, but clearly, that is a bit more ambitious.
This agreement is based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. This is not “one size fits all”. Developed countries do not have the same objectives as developing countries. Industrialized countries have an absolute responsibility to reduce carbon emissions, while developing countries must increase their efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
There is also a contribution from the richest countries to the poorest countries. The argument by poorer countries is clear and logical: today’s rich countries are those that have most rapidly industrialized and that have polluted the most. It is difficult to deny poorer countries the same kind of industrialization. Funding of $100 billion per year is planned until 2020 to help them make this transition and allow them to continue to grow, which is entirely legitimate and normal. We did it, too; we had no qualms about it.
The goal is to have a carbon-free world by 2100. That is not to say that there will be no more greenhouse gas emissions, but we hope that new technologies and renewable energy will sufficiently reduce carbon emissions so that the natural environment and carbon sinks will allow us to achieve a balance by 2100.
The Paris agreement is interesting, because it is a dynamic agreement that will be reviewed every five years. Representatives from each country will have to gather together and report on their performance, their progress and their action plan.
The federal government decided to put a price on carbon and concluded that it was good thing. I would remind the members that, unfortunately, the price set by the Liberal government will not allow Canada to meet its targets under the Paris agreement, which is problematic. Any action so far has been extremely modest.
I urge people to try to come up with other measures that would allow us to honour our international commitments. The government is not walking the talk right now. Here is what Greenpeace had to say:
...the framework announced today point[s] in the right direction, but we won’t free ourselves from fossil fuels fast enough to avoid dangerous levels of warming if we allow oil companies to build new tar sands pipelines and liquefied natural gas export facilities that [pollute]...for the next 50 years.
I would add that this is especially true if we continue, as a society, to subsidize oil and gas companies, which are the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Something just does not add up here.
Speaking of not adding up, the Conservative motion includes two extremely impractical aspects. It calls for an annual report on the impact of the carbon tax, a federal tax that will not be imposed on the provinces that already have measures in place.
British Columbia and Alberta already have a carbon tax, one that is tougher and more rigorous than the one announced by the current federal government. Ontario and Quebec already trade on carbon markets. The federal government's carbon tax will apply to six out of 10 provinces at this time, because four provinces will be excluded.
It is therefore very difficult to see how the Conservatives can expect an annual report, when the four largest provinces would not be included in the findings. They would have to be taken out of the equation to have any meaningful data. There is an incongruity here that the Conservatives simply did not think through.
The second thing that makes the Conservative motion absolutely unworkable is that it calls for a dedicated line item on invoices and receipts. I can see how that might seem like a good idea at first. However, imagine going to an appliance store to buy a washing machine or a fridge made with many parts manufactured by companies from all around the world shipped by multiple modes of transportation. On an administrative level, it would be absolutely impossible to indicate on the receipt the direct and tangible impact of a federal carbon tax, which, by the way, would apply to 6 out of 10 provinces only.
That is a bit rich coming from a party that advocates cutting red tape. Now, it would create a monster. I cannot imagine a cash register being able to make such a calculation. This is nothing more than an illusion, an intellectual conceit.
That is why the NDP will oppose the Conservative motion.