Mr. Speaker, we are having this debate this evening because the IPCC report tells us that we need to do twice as much and fast. We are here this evening to say that we have to have political courage. We are not here this evening to say that we are doing enough. We are here this evening to say that we have to change course.
My NDP colleagues know that I am an eternal optimist. I will tell a story, that of elected members who had political courage. Before becoming an MP, I was a municipal councillor at the City of Saint-Hyacinthe for six years. I was the chair of the advisory committee on the environment. I had a front row seat as a municipality made the decision to face climate change with political courage.
I arrived at the municipal council in 2009. The previous municipal council had decided to invest $10 million. For a municipality of 50,000 people, investing $10 million without subsidies takes political courage. The municipal council decided to invest in a bio-digester to convert sewage sludge into biogas.
I had just been elected and toured the inside of a bio-digester to see how it works. The process is quite simple. The City of Saint-Hyacinthe decided to transform organic matter into biogas. Organic waste is placed in a silo with water. The biogas produced heats the hot water pipes around the silo, which heats the entire plant. Then, the bacteria does its job.
Saint-Hyacinthe is an agri-food technopole. It has had a triple stream waste collection system for more than 10 years. People were already used to collecting organic matter. However, the municipality noticed that we also had several industries that produced organic matter. Cheese and yogourt manufacturers produce whey and slaughterhouses produce animal fat. The municipality had a lot of raw materials and could do much more, so municipal officials toured biomethanation plants in Germany. The town designed its own plant. It obviously had help from the provincial and federal governments, but it was an $80-million project for a municipality with a population of 56,000. That takes political courage.
We need to opt for renewable energy. As others said earlier, we need to change our habits. The people of Saint-Hyacinthe have changed their habits by diverting organic materials. Businesses have changed their habits by setting up procedures to separate organic waste from other waste and take those organics to the biomethanation plant. Municipal employees have changed their habits.
Yes, governments need an integrated approach to tackling climate change. In Saint-Hyacinthe, people across many sectors, from finance and the environment to public works and urban planning, all worked together to bring this project to fruition. Our municipality of 56,000 is now home to the world's fifth largest biomethanation plant. Saint-Hyacinthe is the first municipality in North America to have one. That is the definition of political courage: working together to make something happen that seemed impossible at first. That is what it means to have political courage, and that is how we can change people's habits.
I am not suggesting that all municipalities should do what Saint-Hyacinthe did. Earlier, people were talking about how other countries are doing this or that, but that is not the point. We need to figure out what we can do better because of who we are and what we have.
Saint-Hyacinthe took this approach because, as an agri-food technopole, it has a larger supply of organic material than most municipalities. Everyone—every government, every individual, every business—needs to figure out what it can do because of what it is, what it has, and how much it wants to take action.
The NDP made a clear choice to make the environment its priority. On Saturday, I was at our Quebec section convention, where we confirmed that the environment is a top priority. That was the theme that day. We talked about Saint-Hyacinthe and its biomethanation project because we want other municipalities to know that they can take on similar projects and opt for renewable energy. Now is the time to think about that.
It is often said that we cannot move straight to renewable energy because of all the cars on our roads. That is yesterday's way of thinking. If we want to begin the transition immediately, we need to think about when there will be fewer cars and when they will be able to run on biogas. The biogas produced in Saint-Hyacinthe is used to run the municipal government's vehicle fleet. Biogas heats municipal buildings. Eventually, all buses in the region will run on biogas. What is more, we have a surplus, which we sell to natural gas vendors. Something that originally cost the City of Saint-Hyacinthe money, namely, disposing of sewage sludge, will in time become a significant source of revenue that will allow the city to go even further in its use of renewable energy and come up with other projects. That is how we need to think, and that is what we need to consider when determining whether something is possible or not.
That is the point we are at, and that is the reason for tonight's debate. It saddens me to hear the Minister of Environment and Climate Change say that what the government is doing is extraordinary. No, it is not. Instead, I wish I had heard her say this evening that, after reading that report, she now wants to do even more.
She said she had heard from groups and met with organizations. That is all well and good, but I would have liked to hear her say that she was shaken by the report, that she wanted to do more and take things further. That is what I would have liked to hear this evening.
We have to leave this debate saying yes, we will go further and yes, that is what we want to do. The NDP is clear on the fact that we want to make the environment our priority and will stand with a government that wants to be bold.
We will ask what we can do to help and to sit down with the provinces and what we can do to keep this going at the riding level. We will ask how we can rally the public, help them and convince them to change their habits. It is a lot of little things combined that will get us much further.
This desire to do more did not really come across this evening. I would like to hear even more of that. The debate is not over. I will give my colleagues a chance. We still have time, and we can continue. We have to have political courage. The NDP has it in spades, because we are making the environment a priority and we will present a plan to transition to a greener economy.
We really have to think about how our society works as a whole. Earlier my colleague, whom I admire very much, talked about a societal undertaking. I am an eternal optimist, as I said at the outset. I think people really want to have a societal project that gets them excited. I think people really want to hear from politicians who have a vision. That is why I got into politics, because I was sick of people's cynicism towards our democracy and our politicians.
I think that if we have a vision, if we have a societal project and if we can inspire our constituents, they will support us in making bold choices in order to meet our obligations and tackle climate change.