Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. She has been such a leader on these issues, and I am really happy to have her here tonight participating in the debate with us. I would also like to begin by thanking the member for Beaches—East York for bringing forward this emergency motion. It is such an important issue and exactly the kind of one that I am so happy to see us all here in the House debating late into the evening. I am happy to have seconded this motion, because this is an issue that touches not only my own heart, but also is important to so many other people in my community and across our country.
It is interesting to have this at the end of our day here in the House because I started my day this morning by meeting with the Citizens' Climate Lobby. I have had a chance to talk with its members several times about their ideas for how to best address climate change. There have been really amazing citizen activists who have been coming out and speaking with us. They advocate in favour of a carbon fee and dividend system, and do tremendous work talking and educating people about how pollution pricing works. They were the ones who came to speak to me three years ago at my office in Toronto. I had conversations with them and am very grateful for their advocacy.
I say all of this on a happy note, yet tonight has been a night of highs and lows. I hope people are watching, or, if they are not watching tonight, that they take the opportunity to go back and see what has been happening. We have really seen the full gamut of the kinds of discussions we can have on this topic. I have heard people who have made really strong presentations about why it is so important that we take action, why we need to take action now, and the importance of the IPCC report in explaining the magnitude of this issue. At the same time, I have also seen a shocking dismissal of the need for action, which has been heartbreaking. We really need to take into account the fact that there have been people who, just moments ago, talked about how we really should not be taking action, asking why we would price pollution or do anything when other people across the globe are not. Well, there we go. If no one else is doing anything, then surely we should not be doing anything here, they argue. How can we ever explain that as a reason for not taking action? That part of the debate has been hard.
That is the challenge, because the report really set out the urgent need for action. This is not something we can keep debating for hours and hours and days and days and years on end. This is now a time for action. At the same time, in my own home province I have seen a premier step away from pricing pollution, step away from actions that were working and were not impairing the economy. Our economy was and is doing well in Ontario, but they have stepped away. It is something that has been very hard to debate. When I look at it, it shows me why we need to take action. It is really why Canada needs to take a leadership role.
The IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a UN body that assesses the science related to climate change. We heard some of the dire warnings in its report, but it assessed the impacts of an increase in temperature of 1.5°C or higher. We have talked about some of them, but for example, 80% of coral reefs would disappear as a result of a 1.5° increase. At 2°, the report finds that pretty much 99% of them would have gone. It is not just that coral reefs are lovely, but also that they support marine life. They are part of the whole ecosystem we depend upon.
Also, the report talked about extreme weather. This is something Canadians might want to note, as Canada is specifically mentioned as a region that would be impacted by increased heavy precipitation from an increase of even 1.5° C. When we look at that degree change having an impact, Canada is thus being singled out as one of the places where the impact would be felt. Even in Toronto, we have seen increased floods. We have seen increased weather events across our country.
This summer, I was in Calgary for a wedding, where the smoke was palpable and heavy from the wildfires in B.C. It was just such heavy smoke. It was something I have never witnessed before and being unable to see far. It was like a fog, but it was smoke in the air that we could smell. We see these kinds of events happening more frequently and they have a cost.
Here, people are talking about the money and cost of pricing pollution, but there is a cost to inaction. We cannot ignore that. It is the cost of responding to these types of extreme weather events. Individually, it results in increased insurance costs. It is not as it were free for us to sit back and do nothing. It is not free. Above all, we need to take that into account.
I want to start talking a bit about how that report provided some hope, because it also shows that if we take action we will reduce the intensity of global warming and allow the planet time to adapt; hence, there is a hopeful pattern set out in this report. As I was reading the report, which is devastating in parts, I was thinking of a movie that came out when I was a teenager called If You Love this Planet. It was about nuclear warfare. I remember being really quite scared and feeling devastated and not understanding what we could do. I needed to see that there was a plan of action, a way to move forward. There is a danger sometimes when we feel overwhelmed by fear that maybe it is better to do nothing because it is just too overwhelming. However, the report does set out some ideas as to how we can move forward.
I was talking with some people who run a group called Climate Conversations in Phin Park, which is part of the Pocket community. They were saying they are trying to bridge the divide in the kinds of difficult conversations that we have been having in the House, where maybe some people feel like they do not want to be feeling shame for doing certain things. They might feel like they are unhappy with the tone of the conversation and so they try to mediate those conversations. That is important because we do need to learn how to talk about this and be better at it. That has been made clear to me tonight.
One of the things they mention is that we have to make these emissions more costly. They do not talk about the individual costs, but that we have to put a price on emissions. In the past weeks, we just saw the Nobel prize going to economists who have singled out pricing pollution as a solution, as a proper way to deal with climate change. That was great to see. Here I have a Clean Prosperity report that shows exactly the same thing, that pricing pollution is a way of addressing climate change. At the same time, the report says that it will not cost individual families more. That is something we have been hearing about, but in fact there are reports that speak against that.
Pricing pollution internalizes the cost of what we do when we go out there, and that is important. It is a market solution and it is something that impacts our decisions to become more efficient. Who does not want to see us to be more efficient in our individual choices and in our business decisions? That is important. I am proud that our government is doing that and we are going to be pricing pollution.
I also want to talk about transit. We are investing in transit. It is something I advocate for because I ride my bike just about everywhere in my community. Active transportation is how we build connected, healthier, safer cities.
In addition to that is the need to invest in clean technology, creating job opportunities and building out. That is the stuff we are doing. Can we do more? Always. I actually believe that is the tone we are adopting, that we need to do more and need to take action. This IPCC report shows us that. I am proud of the measures we are taking and the fact that we are ready to have that brave conversation about taking those further steps. That is why this debate tonight is so important. We cannot allow the answer to be, no, we are not going to pay a price on pollution, but in fact are going to make our grandchildren pay that price because we will not do anything.