Debates of Oct. 15th, 2018

Global Warming

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member basically said the things I wanted to say. However, that is all we have been hearing from the Liberal side. This is an emergency debate triggered by the IPCC report, which says that we have to do something different in Canada and around the world. However, I have heard no admission from the government side that we are in an emergency and have to do something different. Even what the government is doing today will not even get us to its inadequate targets.

Could the member tell us what his government will do to get to where we have to go? How are we going to get to half our emissions by 2030? It is only 12 years away. How are we going to get to zero emissions by 2050? I have heard nothing from the other side that suggests any plan like that.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am more than willing to work with any member in the House to get to these solutions. I did not present my 10-minute speech on what the government's position is. I presented it on what my position is. This is how I feel about the issue and what I think we need to do immediately. We need to do something, and we always need to do more. This is an issue that will never end. There will always be more to be done.

If the member is asking what I am going to do, for starters, I was one of three Liberals who voted in favour of a motion the NDP brought forward last spring regarding climate change. I am willing to stand and talk about this because it is extremely important to me. However, we can do it in a bipartisan way; we can do it by crossing the floor.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, I find it a bit frustrating listening to the continual comments that the Conservatives' do not believe in climate change. That is an easy crutch to go back to every single time we have these debates. It was the Conservative government that initially signed on to the Paris accord, setting targets that the Liberal government just matched. If the Liberals did not like the steps we had taken, why are they following the same path?

The member talked about how important and how imperative it was that we take action against climate change. In their climate change, why did the Liberals include exemptions on the carbon tax for the largest emitters, which have the largest impact on climate change, putting the biggest onus and the largest burden on regular Canadian taxpayers?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I started my speech by saying that I was impressed to hear so many Conservatives talk about climate change. I believe that at least the Conservatives who are here tonight believe in climate change. I will leave it at that.

On the member's second question, which was about the different levels of classification, that might just be the reality of the economic situation we are in. However, if we can get together with other world leaders and agree that we need to do something collectively and collaboratively, then we have the opportunity to mitigate some of those economic challenges that will come through the competitiveness of various national economies.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, to my hon. colleague from Kingston and the Islands, thank you from the bottom of my heart for addressing the IPCC report. You understand it. You spoke to the urgency and you did it with integrity.

I cannot add anything more but another huge thanks and an offer that individual MPs who care about this issue get together and offer the government a plan that would get 45% down by 2030.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the member that she is to address her questions to the Chair and not to individual members.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Through you, Madam Speaker, thank you to the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker,

[Member spoke in Cree]

[English]

The member for Kingston and the Islands reminded me of something that was taught to me just last week by a lady called Cindy Blackstock, who was fighting for children in Canada, indigenous children mainly, looking at children who were in care.

One of the things that Ms. Blackstock said last week in Manitoba, when she came to Winnipeg to accept the Canadian Gandhi award from the Canadian Gandhi association, was that we always needed to look at all government policy through the eyes of children to understand what the impacts would be on children. She did not believe that we did that often enough or we did not mention them enough in our speeches. She questioned how many speeches were given in which the word “children” was used. I am proud to say that the member for Kingston and the Islands used “children” in his speech, so I appreciate that.

One of the things we have in the indigenous tradition is we try to think for seven generations. Thinking about seven generations into the future is extremely important. However, my colleague for Kingston and the Islands said that we were the first generation to feel the impacts and we would be the last generation to have the chance to do something.

I believe that our children will also have the chance to do something about this, that they will have the ability to make a change in this world. It is never ever too late, even though we will see substantial changes in our climates, we will see substantial changes in the ways of life of many people around the world, not only in Canada but in other countries in developing nations. In more developed nations people will suffer greatly because of climate change, but we will always have that opportunity to try to make the world a better place.

I would like to address some of the issues that are facing Manitobans. I would like to talk about the things that have recently occurred.

In the 2016 election, the premier, or the Conservative leader at that time, ruffled some feathers in his own party by putting forward in his election platform that he would have a price on pollution. He decided to put that in his platform because he thought it was good government policy. As I had already been elected to the House, I also thought that was very good. In negotiations in 2016 into October 2017, Premier Pallister finally announced that they would put in place a price on pollution at $25 a tonne. It would also include other measures for energy efficiency, trying to save the environment.

Manitoba, also around this time, released a legal opinion that the federal government had the authority to enact this price on pollution. The government spent a lot of time negotiating that, and I was proud of our Minister of Environment who spent a lot of time on this. We were able to obtain an agricultural exemption for farmers, ensuring farmers would not be adversely affected by this.

Incredibly, just a little while ago, after a meeting with Ford and Moe, the two premiers from Ontario and Saskatchewan, the tone seemed to have changed. Instead of having a tone of wanting to working together, it became one of ideology based not on the needs of our children or the needs of this world, but on the needs of an electoral ideology and political expediency. It is strange that all Pallister talked about was his price on pollution. He knew it was very important and he talked about it. However, he then became upset when we continued to talk about a price on pollution. Perhaps the Premier of Manitoba wants the climate of Manitoba to become the climate of Costa Rica, but at the end of the day we need to ensure we have stable climates around the world for all of us.

In British Columbia, we have seen a price on pollution that is good for climate policy. In 2008, there was a charge that was introduced on gasoline. This led to a reduction by more than 10% per capita in British Columbia in the emissions released into the environment. Incredibly enough, the economy grew even though there was a price on pollution. Unfortunately, it did not continue to grow, but it was still there.

The unfortunate thing about a good climate policy is that it will have no parade. There will be no rally. There is no victory parade at the end of the day because it is not very exciting. It is not something we can stand up and say, “Here, look at this piece of paper. This is what we have done”. In fact, we often look out and it has become something very theoretical.

Sometimes, as my other colleagues from Oakville have mentioned, the fires have destroyed many communities. They have ravaged the lives of many people. That is the thing that people have failed to consider when they think about this.

The Conservatives, last year, in a motion in this House, voted to support the Paris Agreement, but incredibly enough, they are doing everything in their power to stop others from accomplishing the objectives in the Paris Agreement. From what I can hear, all the Tories want to do is make pollution free again. Canadians do not want that. Seventy-six per cent of Canadians want us working together. We need to ensure that they have to pay for pollution. From what I can tell, the Conservatives want to take money out of the pockets of Canadians so that they can make pollution free again.

There was a report that came out by an independent Conservative think tank that said that Canadian households would receive more money back in rebates than they would pay in an actual price on pollution. That was an adviser to the former prime minister, Stephen Harper, who thought that would be an equitable and perfect way for the economy to function.

We saw, last week, that Jason Kenney, the Conservative leader in Alberta, rallied against carbon taxes. This was mere days before the economist, William Nordhaus of Yale University, was named the co-recipient of this year's Nobel Prize in economics, recognizing his work establishing that implementation of a carbon price was the most effective way to fight climate change. Jason was in front of a boisterous crowd of more than 1,000, with Mr. Ford, who was also in attendance. They called that the worst idea ever. This rally was a reminder that even as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which released its report, talks about what we have to do, the world is nowhere near doing enough on reducing or mitigating climate change.

We have, in Canada, a lot of work that we need to get done and we do not need Conservatives stopping us from getting that work done. They are there and they are willing to do that. While it might be great for Premier Ford to fight climate change for his electoral base, CNN recently came out with a little study that said there would be a shortage of beer because 17% of the global crop production goes into making the barley and they would see a reduction in the yields of 3% to 17% because of climate change. I hope this will allow Premier Doug Ford to wake up, considering this will actually impact his electorate as well. There will be less beer to drink and the beer will not be a buck a beer, it will be more expensive.

There is an awful lot that our government has been doing, and I can list off four or five pages here of all the things we are doing on the environment, and maybe I will, because it is important. Let us talk about this: $5.7 billion over 12 years, including $2 billion for the low-carbon economy fund; extending tax support for clean energy until 2025 to encourage investment in a clean energy generation and promote the use of clean energy equipment; launching the $1.4 billion low-carbon energy leadership fund to help reduce emissions in provinces and territories, particularly with investments in using energy more efficiently, which saves people and businesses money; helping build a clean economy and reduce polluting greenhouse gases by launching the emerging renewable power program, which will fund projects on renewable energy technologies; spurring innovation by providing financing to support Canadian entrepreneurs of clean technology firms and attracting new business investments in sectors like clean energy, including $700 million in clean technology financing through an agreement with the Business Development Bank of Canada; and being the model for sustainability with greening government, as we are on track to reduce the government's own greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and by 80% by 2050.

This is incredible, and there are also stronger regulations. We are also doing ocean and sea protection. We are doing research and science. We on this side actually believe in science.

The list goes on about the things we are doing. It is not simply about pricing pollution. It is also about the actions we do to help the environment, to save energy, to give jobs in the economy for Canadians and to do this before any other country does this in the world. If we look at what is going on in the world, most countries are not taking enough action. Canada can be a leader but the Conservatives need to get out of the way.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for treating us to his national insult the premiers tour. This is setting the tone for federalism that we have from the government, whether it is vacation homes or preferred choice of beverages. He really had it all in there. I think what he has to distill from the fact that there are so many premiers that he and the government feels such anger toward is that Canadians are choosing to elect governments from coast to coast to coast whether in New Brunswick with the victory of Blaine Higgs, in Ontario, or the soon to be result in Alberta, and we are seeing clearly that Canadians are rejecting the carbon tax.

Let us put a fine point on it. The carbon tax will lead to investments being made outside the country in less environmentally friendly jurisdictions. It will not reduce emissions but it will reduce economic activity in Canada.

Why does the member want to see more investments made outside the country in less environmentally friendly jurisdictions when we could use intensity-based regulations as we have in the past to encourage economic growth and environmental improvement at the same time?

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, incredibly, in Manitoba, the government had been in place for 17 years before the Conservatives came to power. I think at that point it had been an NDP government that had run out of steam, its members were fighting among themselves, and it was time for a change. It could have been anyone leading that party, but anyone would also understand that we need to be working on the climate change issue and it is simply not just burying our heads in the sand waiting for something to happen.

I think a lot of people in Manitoba were quite disappointed that the leaders of the province of Manitoba did not take the opportunity to continue to implement and move forward to honour their word that they gave all Canadians. They made their word in a throne speech. They promised Manitobans that they would do something on a price on pollution to make a difference for Manitobans, and to make a difference for our children. In fact, they did not do that. They went back on their word, they reneged on what they were supposed to be doing, and as a Manitoban, I am upset.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Madam Speaker, for the first time ever a government has taken the environment very seriously. This is a very serious issue. As my colleague has listed, we have done many things in the last three years, and we are working as fast as possible to try to temper climate change.

This summer, we saw temperatures that were never before seen and tragedy occurred in my home province of Quebec. Due to this heat wave, over 90 people died. Dozens of deaths occurred.

Would my hon. colleague explain to us that if another government in the past had started to tackle climate change the way we are today, maybe these deaths could have been prevented?

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, in 2008, the Conservatives had the opportunity to bring forward a plan, and they did. It was called “turning the corner”, turning the corner into a brick wall and doing nothing for another 10 years. Another decade of darkness.

Incredibly, when we came to power upon election in 2015, we took a leadership role to tackle climate change, proudly playing a stronger role internationally to help negotiate an ambitious Paris Agreement. Unlike Prime Minister Harper, we signed the Paris Agreement and started working to come up with a national strategy to protect the environment and stop climate change. We negotiated Canada's fairest ever national climate plan, the first ever in Canadian history. Stephen Harper had 10 years to do something, but he did nothing. This is the first time anyone has ever negotiated anything related to climate change.

We worked together with the provinces and territories in December 2016 on a plan to meet or exceed our Paris Agreement commitments. Only Conservative-run provinces have not signed on or have reneged on their commitment. Manitoba originally participated, but now it has pulled out. It has reneged on its honourable word, and we are jeopardizing the work of many Canadians who have worked many years on this file, and we are jeopardizing the future for our children.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to be sharing my time with the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, who is flying in directly from Vancouver Island for this debate.

I am really grateful to be allowed the time and space for all of us here to talk tonight on this emergency debate. If there was any emergency that we could talk about, I think climate change is probably the definition of an emergency for our country and our civilization. The scientific consensus about the gravity of this issue has been around for decades, for 30, 40 or more years. However, politicians have been kicking the can down the road, fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We can pick the analogy, they are all as accurate, as painful and as frustrating as the last. Rio, Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris were all perfect opportunities for world action and were all ultimately squandered. We have to change this.

Two weeks ago I became a grandfather for the first time. Before I became a grandfather, I heard all the time that politicians are really very fond of talking about their grandchildren and the future that we will leave our grandchildren. Now that I am actually a grandfather, I can say that having a grandchild really sharpens that perspective dramatically.

Shortly after that, on Thanksgiving Monday, two news headlines jumped out at me, both dealing with our path to a sustainable future. The first announced of course the latest report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is what we are speaking about tonight. That is what has triggered this debate.

The IPCC report states that the world would have to cut greenhouse emissions by half by 2030 and then achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 to meet the 1.5°C target that Canada so proudly proclaimed and led the world on at the Paris Agreement. We are just over the 1°C increase now and under present policies we are headed for 3°C or maybe 4°C.

We have already seen some of the early effects of that 1°C increase, such as more fires, more floods, more heat waves and more extreme weather of all sorts. I have to say that tonight and in previous weeks I have heard some people on the Conservative side say that we should not have a carbon tax because B.C. has had a carbon tax for 10 years and it is still having fires, so what is the use. That is not how it works. It shows either a shocking misunderstanding of how climate change works or just a wanton disregard. If the whole world went carbon neutral today we would be at that 1°C rise. We would still have those fires. We would still have floods. All that extreme weather would be with us. What we are trying to do is save us from a far more frightening future.

The IPCC report states that the hottest days of summer in mid-latitudes could increase by 4°C under a 2°C global increase. That suggests that heat waves in southern British Columbia, where I am from, could easily reach 44°C. We often get to 40°C and it is pretty hot. Therefore, 44°C, for people who are still in Fahrenheit, that is 111°F or 112°F. That is the hottest record temperature Canada has ever encountered, yet that will become commonplace. That is at 2°C, and we are headed for 3°C or 4°C if we do not do something.

Under the same 2°C scenario, coral reefs would disappear from the world's oceans. That part of the report really hit home to me. I cannot imagine my granddaughter only knowing about coral reefs through history books.

The Climate Action Tracker site, which covers the commitments of all the countries signed on to the Paris Agreement, classes Canada's climate action efforts so far as “highly insufficient”. It is like getting a D on a report card. It is easy to think that we are doing well when we live beside the U.S.A., which is listed as “critically insufficient”. I guess that would be like an F. However, we share our highly insufficient grade with some countries many people like to criticize for their carbon footprint, such as China. Most of the developed world, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, all rank above us. One of the countries I often hear held up as a problem on the world climate action scene, India, is actually leading the pack in its policies and accomplishments.

What actions could get us to an increase of only 1.5°C? The IPCC report says that we have to do almost everything possible to reach that goal. One obvious task that is often talked about is the rapid construction of renewable energy systems, such as wind and solar power. These would have to provide 75% to 85% of the world's energy by 2050. World transportation systems must be transformed from fossil fuels to electric to take advantage of that shift to renewables.

In June, I travelled to Argentina with the Minister of Natural Resources for the G20 energy meetings. The theme of the meetings was the grand transition to the carbon-free future. There the Chinese minister talked of his country's bold action, moving directly from coal-fired plants to renewable energy. China has big plans to build ultra-high voltage power lines to bring that clean energy from the deserts of western China to the industrial heartland of eastern China by 2025, and by 2035 it plans to move that clean energy throughout Asia. The German minister agreed, pointing out that we could create clean energy where it is easiest to create, such as solar power in the Atacama Desert of Chile and then transport that power around the world using hydrogen cells. The Japanese minister echoed those statements. The U.K. minister talked about his country's three-point plan of action: legislated targets; significant investments in clean technology, including $2 billion in electric vehicle infrastructure alone; and a real plan to create good jobs in the clean energy sector. However, our Canadian minister talked about buying a pipeline. It was sort of a head-slapping moment.

We can do better. We have to do better. Instead of investing $4.5 billion in an old pipeline, we could copy the U.K. and spend $2 billion on building electric vehicle infrastructure across southern Canada. We could provide meaningful incentives for Canadians to switch to electric vehicles, just as Norway has done. We could invest billions in other clean technology projects across the country, providing good jobs for electricians, welders, boilermakers and steelworkers who would like to work in their hometowns rather than in remote camps.

We often forget that buildings produce 40% of our carbon emissions. We must invest billions in building retrofits. We had a perfect model for such a program, the ecoENERGY retrofit program, which helped hundreds of thousands of Canadians retrofit their homes, lowering their energy bills by 20%, creating thousands of good local jobs and reducing greenhouse emissions by three tonnes per year per house. The Conservative government cancelled that popular program and the Liberals kicked it over to the provinces, very few of whom have picked it up. Ontario picked it up, but, of course, Doug Ford has cancelled it.

These actions are investments. They cost money. As Myles Allen, one of the IPCC report authors from Oxford, stated, “I think we need to start a debate about who is going to pay for it, and whether it’s right for the fossil-fuel industry and its customers to be enjoying the benefits today and expecting the next generation to pay for cleaning it up.”

That brings me to the second headline of Thanksgiving Monday, the announcement of the Nobel Prize for economics. This year's winners were William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, who were honoured for their work on sustainable growth. Nordhaus's work directly links to the IPCC report. He has shown how a price on carbon is the most effective tool to quickly bring down greenhouse gas emissions.

I am increasingly dismayed by Conservatives across this country, provincially and federally, fighting a price on carbon. The parties that take this position are ignoring the fact that carbon pricing is the easiest and most painless way to lower our carbon footprint. It can be implemented and is being implemented without impacting low-income households, despite what we heard from the member for Carleton today and many other Conservatives over the past weeks.

When the Conservatives say they will take action on climate change by other means, they do not tell us that those other means will cost Canadians, individuals and companies more than the carbon price will. They would be harming our economy and our environment at the same time, all for short-term political gain. I worry that they think political gain is more important than the world they will leave our children. I worry that they are simply kicking the can down the road yet again, forcing my new granddaughter and others in her generation to pay for our laziness and greed.

I also wonder if the Liberal government truly understands the gravity of this situation. It is long past the time to act. We can do this. We must act today. We must act together across this country and around the world.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to pose the first question to my colleague from South Okanagan—West Kootenay who, as someone with a science background, is capable of diving into the IPCC 1.5 report, as I have, and recognizing that what it says to us is that we will leave our children an unlivable world, not a world of forest fires and floods, but literally an unlivable world, if we do not grab the chance to hold to 1.5° Celsius.

At what point should the Government of Canada change the old Harper targets to a target consistent with the IPCC advice, 45% below 2010 levels by 2030?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious when the government should change its target. It should change it tonight. It should have changed it in this debate tonight. They should have admitted, “Gee, we were wrong”, that the world's scientists are telling us that we have to do this if we are to do our bit and show the world that we are at least pulling our own weight, if not showing some leadership.

We should change our target to one that would cut our 2030 carbon emissions by 45% from what they are now, and come out with a zero target for 2050 and with a plan that shows us the way there. The Liberals have a lot of little programs here and there. These might not seem very little: $10 million here, a million dollars there, but we need to spend billions. We have spent billions on a pipeline. Liberals showed we have the money to do that. We should be doing this. Other countries are doing it, and that is what makes me frustrated. I go to international meetings and I hear what other countries are doing, and Canada is not doing anywhere near enough.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, a theme of our discussion at different points tonight is pipeline development and the effect that has on climate change. Our perspective is that we can and should be developing pipeline infrastructure at the same time as advancing our environmental objectives. That seems to be the stated position of the Notley NDP in Alberta, who have publicly expressed support for certain pipeline projects. I wonder what the member thinks of that.

Also, let us talk specifically about energy east. It would seem that the choice with energy east was not between using energy or not, but simply whether Canadians should benefit from Canadian energy exported across the country, or whether it should have to travel a much longer distance with the associated costs of energy and emissions coming to eastern Canada from the Middle East. Does the member agree that the environmentally responsible thing to do in at least some of those cases, in the case of energy east perhaps, is to support the development of the pipeline infrastructure?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the drawing card of the energy east project was the fact that we perhaps could have a refinery at the end of it in New Brunswick, which would process the bitumen from Alberta and turn it into materials that we would need in Canada, instead of having to import them from elsewhere in the world. It sounds like a great idea.

One of the first studies we did at the natural resources committee was on the oil and gas industry in Canada. At one point we had witnesses before us from Irving Oil in New Brunswick and asked them point blank if energy east were in Saint John today, when would those refineries be built. The answer was maybe in five years or 10 years, or maybe never. It would depend on the economics of the whole project.

When we talk about whether we want refineries built over there at the end of a long pipeline, the economic argument comes into play. We may never have seen those refineries. The oil might just have ended up being shipped to other countries.

Getting back to the whole pipeline question in general, if we want to talk about the Trans Mountain expansion project, Canadians need to understand, and I do not know if a lot of them do, that it is an expansion project. This is about expanding the footprint of the oil sands in Alberta; it is not about business as usual. This is about expanding our production of oil at a time when the world is looking to decrease it.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was elected to public office because I wanted to fight climate change.

I was first elected to local government in 2002 to fight a natural gas pipeline through the southern Salish Sea and a natural gas generating station that was going to be built by BC Hydro very close to my home. That got me into elected office.

I later became chair of Islands Trust Council, which is a local government with a conservation mandate put in place by the NDP Barrett government in 1974 to preserve and protect. That took us into climate change. Living on an island as I do, we saw the effect of climate change, whether it was drought, the impacts on aquaculture, or ocean acidification affecting jobs in aquaculture. The imperative was real.

Then the Harper Conservatives' dark decade really motivated us on the west coast to beat the Kinder Morgan pipeline. The way to take bold action on climate change was to defeat the Conservatives.

Now, here I find myself thanks to the good people of Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

My goodness, I am sad that we are still so far behind. I recognize that climate change is a long emergency, as I did in local government too. It was the most important thing we were going to do, but an advocate from the homeless shelter who came to the meeting was the one who had the most urgent action, so climate change slid to the background even though we were all good people with the intention of taking really meaningful action on climate change.

Now, here we find ourselves in this country with all of its abundant resources still not doing our share. The Liberal government with the best of intentions still has the same climate change targets as the Harper Conservatives had. They talk a good line but have not taken the imperative action that we need. Just last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proclaimed that alarm.

This is a deep emergency. BC was on fire this summer. The Prime Minister brought his cabinet to my riding and the smoke was so thick in the air that people could not see. Climate change causes wild fires. Climate change is all around us and I hear about it every day from my constituents.

The report released last week pooled more than 6,000 scientific reports. It confirmed that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change and that we must take action right now, making deep cuts now to avoid having the worst, most devastating impacts happen to our the ecosystems and way of life.

Canada has been buffered from this. Ocean currents have kept our air a bit cooler even while the climate continues to heat. When those currents no longer continue in their same pattern, we will get a double whammy. We have not experienced climate refugees the way that other countries have from desertification. We have been buffered because of our abundant natural resources. Climate change is upon us and surely this is the time for us to take deep action.

The co-chair of the IPCC working group, Jim Skea, noted that limiting warming to 1.5° Celsius is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but that doing so would require unprecedented changes.

Jagmeet Singh has asked me to be the women's equality critic for the NDP. We hear that women, elders, and vulnerable poor people around the world are the most susceptible to climate change, but we see this right in our own country, not just from an international perspective.

Women have to travel further to carry water back to their village. That is hard on them physically and it takes away from other opportunities. It also exposes them to great danger, such as rape. We heard a lot about this through ParlAmericas and some of the other international parliamentary associations.

It happens in Canada too. NGOs have been doing studies on this. In Toronto, heat wave shelters are disproportionately used by women because they are the lower income earners. They are the ones who are living in apartment buildings with no air conditioning and they do not have the power to negotiate with a bad landlord. They suffer particularly from extreme heat. They are also more likely to live in basement apartments where flooding, which happens in a city like Toronto, hits them more.

What are the climate change solutions offered by the City of Toronto? There are renovation rebates, but they only apply to homeowners, who again tend to be men because of the income disparities in our country.

Even with our collective commitment to gender equality and fairness, action on climate change is good for women too.

Salmon cannot go upstream to spawn if the water temperature is too hot. This is a big issue in British Columbia. We are highly aware that climate change is reducing salmon returns, and salmon is the basis of indigenous culture and B.C.'s economy. Ocean acidification is affecting aquaculture. There are forest fires.

The things that are particularly important to B.C.'s coast are already being affected by climate change, yet the Liberals continue to delay action. We are still based on the same emission reduction targets the Conservatives put in place. The least the government could have done is commit to deeper cuts and regulate emissions reductions. Simply taxing is not enough. Market solutions alone have not gotten us out of any other social or environmental problem. Putting a price on pollution does not work unless one is ratcheting down emissions and doing it by regulation. My great disappointment is that the government has not done that.

The government has also not kept its promise to reduce fossil fuel subsidies. If subsidies were removed from fossil fuels and applied in other sectors, or if we just did not tax people for them, we would not be artificially stimulating the fossil fuel industry. The Auditor General has concluded that the government is dragging its feet on that promise. The Minister of Finance has refused to reveal the full list of subsidies, and we have had a number of reports in this Parliament expressing that concern.

The environment commissioner, again in this Parliament, found that 14 departments and agencies had no plan to assess the risks associated with climate change. Even the Minister of Environment and Climate Change did not have a plan in place in her department. How much more internal advice do we need to have? The government has the mandate. It is willing to spend money. It is willing to regulate. It calls itself a climate leader. I wish it would act like a climate leader.

I am strangely longing for the days of Stéphane Dion, Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien, but again, those were big Liberal promises not fulfilled. This is an ongoing pattern.

The late, beloved New Democrat leader Jack Layton brought to this House emissions reduction legislation that, with a lot of finagling and a few misses, he did get the majority of this House of Commons to approve. To our great heartbreak, it was blocked by the Senate. It could have been legislation that could have sent Canada in a new direction except for Senate interference.

What do we have to lean on? In my own riding, I am encouraged by the innovators who are taking action on climate change and are creating jobs and making money doing it. Nanaimo's Harmac Pacific mill has a waste wood cogeneration facility, which is capturing what used to be old pollution and generating electricity from it. For 25 years, Canadian Electric Vehicles, in Nanaimo, has been making electric vehicles, including the Zamboni and Bobcats.

The Nanaimo Aboriginal Centre has just built the first multi-family affordable housing in Nanaimo since the early nineties, and it was done with a passive energy design. It is something that was developed and innovated in Saskatchewan, but then the government lost its appetite for that. It was further developed in Europe and imported back to Canada, where now lower-income tenants have an 80% saving on their energy bill by virtue of this fantastic passive energy design.

Canada's green building sector has $128 billion in gross annual income. It employs more direct full-time workers than forestry, mining, oil and gas combined. Why on earth did the government instead choose to invest $4.5 billion in a leaky, old pipeline that risks B.C.'s coast immeasurably and compounds our climate and fossil fuel problem? It is to my great dismay that I urge this whole House to seize the climate emergency as the emergency that it is and to truly be a leader in actions and not only in words.

[Kent Hehr, Liberal, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the hon. member cannot recognize the leadership we are showing on this side of the House. Putting a price on pollution is what Nobel scientists are saying is the best way forward for reducing emissions. I also note that we have a whole-of-government approach to this: our investments in green infrastructure, LRT and transit, and our national housing plan, which is going to see building codes doing things to a T.

Her party's position in the last election was not to run any deficits, and here we are investing in communities and in these things that matter. In fact, in my riding of Calgary, we are going to take 8,000 cars off the road with the LRT Green Line. Does the member see the merit in what we are doing with the whole-of-government approach and that we are taking leadership?

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the environment commissioner says that the government is not taking the leadership it said it would and that its international commitments require. It has a $4.5 billion investment in a dirty old pipeline and uses Orwellian language to say that to be a climate leader, we have to buy a pipeline.

I will relay to my colleague across the way the words of my friend and colleague, Snuneymuxw First Nation councillor Doug White III. He spoke on Tuesday night at a town hall I hosted on Kinder Morgan in my riding in Nanaimo, along with the member of Parliament for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

Chief Doug White, former chief of Snuneymuxw First Nation, described the 160 years the Snuneymuxw First Nation has been fighting the effects of colonization and land-taking. He wrapped it up by saying that the economic model remains the same as it was 160 years ago. It is still rip and ship. You take a raw resource out of indigenous land, with no benefit to the local economy and local people, and then you ship it, unrefined, somewhere else, as it was 160 years ago. This is still this government's proposal.

I was very compelled by my colleague's imperative for the cost to our coastal indigenous communities. Can we not do better as a country?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few disparate points.

I want to point out to my colleague from Calgary, who keeps raising the Green Line, that I am very proud of that project that was announced and budgeted for under Stephen Harper. Certainly it shows the vision the Conservatives had with respect to environmental development. I am sure the member would have to agree that those were the timelines. They are easy to verify.

I agree with my colleague from the NDP that there is an incoherence with respect to the government's approach to pipelines. I might disagree about the best way to resolve that incoherence, but I think we both agree, whether we want the pipeline built or not, that buying it was not a wise way forward.

The member spoke about a colonial mentality in our interactions with indigenous people. I wonder if she agrees with me that the same principle of consultation applies when putting barriers in the way of development, as well. As the government should engage with and consult with indigenous people in the context of moving forward with development, it should also consult before imposing things like offshore development moratoriums.

Finally, I want to ask the member for her perspective on the government's decision to get rid of the transit tax credit. This was a policy of the previous Conservative government. Some might quibble that it did not go far enough in certain respects, but it certainly provided an incentive for transit riders. I wonder if the member thinks that was a helpful policy and what she thinks of the government's decision to cancel it.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, taking the last question first, as a daily user of the public ferry system, we were also hit and discouraged, as commuters who had relied on that transit tax credit. We were very discouraged to see it leave. I will not explain the government's rationale, but I share the member's concern.

I will take this opportunity to say that on Tuesday, I was with the higher education minister in British Columbia, Melanie Mark, who was opening a fantastic new geothermal project at Vancouver Island University. The university has dropped geothermal extraction of the earth's heat into old coal mining shafts that run under the university and under Nanaimo. This is a lovely transition from what used to be a coal economy. Now they are using geothermal power to heat the campus and the buildings. That is an example of innovation, and it is encouraging. We would like to see support and subsidies for that instead of old fossil technology.

[Sean Fraser, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Beaches—East York, who helped get this motion off the ground, as well as my colleagues with the NDP and the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

Before I get too far, I would let you know, Mr. Speaker, that I plan to split my time with the member for Pontiac.

Tonight's debate is extraordinarily important. Most of us who have stuck it out here until this hour of the evening are familiar with what the IPCC report has indicated. To condense hundreds of pages into a simple message, we need to take action now if we are going to protect the planet, not only for our kids and our grandkids but even for people who might be getting into politics at my age, before I have the opportunity to retire. The threat is that soon before us.

The nature of the problem is well understood by Canadians. Canadians expect and deserve a government that takes protecting their environment seriously, and that includes the need to address the looming threat of climate change. Climate change is real and I am pleased that we have not had to spend too much time in this debate tonight on that point. However, the fact is we cannot be having arguments about the source of climate change, we have to be having healthy and rigorous debates about the solutions. I have heard a number of things discussed, but we are short on actual ideas to help us push it past the goal line and get to a place where we know we are not going to suffer the catastrophic consequences that were outlined in the IPCC report. Of course, the consequences were well enumerated in the report: threats to species; threats to our marine environment; and, threats to the livability of the ecosystems that human beings inhabit today and, I hope, will inhabit for generations to come.

One of the things that I really enjoy doing in my role as a member of Parliament, when we have funding announcements at a university in my riding, St. Francis Xavier University, is visiting the labs of the professors who are benefiting from our investments in science. I have seen local climate modelling done by Dr. Beltrami at StFX and I had a lengthy conversation with Dr. Andrew MacDougall at StFX, who led me through a history of climate science. I had it sink in for me that if we suffer some of the consequences of climate change with rising global temperatures, those changes are irreversible. If we subsequently bring our emissions back down, the consequences do not stop there, and that is an important message that we all need to understand.

It is essential that we think not only of the solutions that we might be putting forward to avoid these consequences, but we understand that not doing anything will have the most severe consequences of all. The cost of addressing the problem is far smaller than the cost of ignoring the problem. We have a choice to do something right now. If we continue down our current path, we are pushing $5 billion annually as the cost of climate change. When we look at extreme weather events like floods and forest fires, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes and precipitation, the cost of dealing with these is immense. We have heard them all litigated here tonight. We have seen the flooding in New Brunswick recently. I lived in Calgary when we had the flood in 2013. We know that the heat waves have killed dozens upon dozens of Canadians just this past year alone.

However, there are other impacts that are perhaps a little less direct that also have a very serious impact on our day-to-day. I think it was one of my colleagues from Winnipeg who discussed a recent study that indicated that global barley production was going to reduce by 17%, causing an increase in the price of beer. We are seeing huge changes on the Atlantic Ocean, with warming ocean temperatures and the impact that has on one of our economic and cultural staples, lobster. This is important to me. Right now, we are doing pretty well, but a few years ago the state of Maine was doing pretty well and it has seen a decrease of, I believe, 22 million pounds of lobster because the temperatures of their oceans have changed. I do not want to see our region suffer the same fate. When I see studies outside of the IPCC report that indicate that marine life in the gulf region is potentially not going to be able to exist because of the deoxygenation, I have very sincerely held fears of the consequences that will arise if we do not act right away.

The IPCC report flagged that the isthmus connecting Nova Scotia to New Brunswick is the second-most vulnerable place in North America to the threat of rising sea levels. This sounds frightening, not just because we do not want Nova Scotia to be an island, but the economic impact today of the rail line connecting these two provinces is about $50 million a day. These problems could not be any more serious and could not be any more immediate.

I am pleased that we are moving forward with a number of different actions that will have a very real and tangible impact on the emissions that we produce as a nation, and our contribution to the global community is extremely important as well.

Perhaps what has been getting most attention this evening is the fact that we are moving forward with putting a price on pollution. We have heard a lot of divisive commentary over the course of our debates in the chamber. However, very simply, it is easy to understand. If we take a step back, today we have to understand that it does not cost anything to pollute our atmosphere. In Canada today it costs a business that pollutes the same as a business that has greened its operations. If we think of two competing businesses, one that wants to do the environmentally responsible thing and reduce its emissions and the other that just does not care for whatever reason, we have created an incentive to continue polluting because the latter's competitor in the same industry does not get any benefit despite the fact that it has cleaned up its operations. When we put a price on pollution, we incentivize the ability of companies to become greener, and at the same time we ensure that the benefits accrue to Canadian families so that we do not have everyday taxpayers facing an increased burden as a result of this plan. That is a very important feature. In fact, it was celebrated by Mark Cameron, Stephen Harper's former director of policy, who indicated that Canadian families can expect to be better off as a result of this kind of an approach. Of course, as we heard this evening as well, Professor Nordhaus of Yale University recently won the Nobel prize in economic science for his work leading to a very similar conclusion.

However, it is not just a price on pollution that we are moving forward with, but it is also going to take a suite of measures if we are going to achieve the ambitious targets we have already agreed to, and perhaps do more. We are investing in public transit and getting more people moving within cities and communities, but not in their own vehicles. We are investing in energy efficiency. I made an announcement just this past Friday in Nova Scotia that is going to see a portion of our $56 million contribution to the low carbon economy fund go to making homes more efficient. This is just in Nova Scotia alone. Similar measures in 2017 have had the equivalent impact of taking more than 100,000 cars off Nova Scotian roads. We are investing in clean technology, renewable energy and green infrastructure. We are taking significant steps to improve our conservation efforts to protect wildlife. We have $1.5 billion going toward an oceans protection plan. We are investing in science, which is going to continue to give us the information we need to form policy going forward. The benefits of an approach like this are many, and I will not have time in the remaining two and a half minutes or so to canvass them all.

The environmental benefits of avoiding the consequences I mentioned earlier are certainly at the front of our minds. However, also preserving our biodiversity is important. Preserving coral reefs, where 25% of the world's marine species live, is important to me. However, there are also social and economic benefits. When we get off coal, we see a reduction in the rates of childhood asthma. When we eliminate smog, we have more livable communities that people want to live in. There are food security issues at play. There are recreational issues at play. There are national security and migration issues at play.

There are also very direct and easily observable economic benefits if we move forward with a responsible plan to protect our environment. Mark Carney of the Bank of England has indicated that there is a $23 trillion opportunity staring world markets in the face. I want to take advantage of that locally. There are companies doing this kind of work today manufacturing renewables and investing in green infrastructure. We have companies like McKay Meters in Pictou County that secured a patent to attach electrical vehicle charging stations to parking metres around the world. We have researchers like David Risk at the Flux Lab, who has developed instrumentation that can detect leaks that could not previously be detected from energy infrastructure worldwide that equate to the entire production of the country of Norway. We have companies like the Trinity Group of Companies at home that are not just making homes more efficient, not just saving people money but keeping families together. They told me one story of an elderly husband and wife who suffered some health concerns that they feared were going to pull them out of their home, and the husband had to stop working. To see the joy on the faces of entrepreneurs who enabled the couple to save enough money on their power bill to allow them to cover their expenses is a heartwarming experience that I will not soon forget. They are keeping families together, they are creating jobs, and they are doing the right thing by the environment.

To conclude, the IPCC report is a call to action. We will not be deterred by others who seek to create fear by spreading misinformation about the ambitions we might have. We will not abdicate the responsibility that falls to us by virtue of the fact that we happen to be in government at this time in our collective history. We are going to move forward with an ambitious plan to protect our environment, and preserve it not only for our kids and our grandkids, but also for the people who are sitting in this chamber today who deserve a healthy environment as much as the next person.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague genuinely for his eloquent defence of his position and I agree with many, though not all, of the sentiments he expressed.

I would like to probe his thoughts in particular around the pricing signal that he would like to send and the impact of that. I would contend that the impact of a price signal depends substantially on the relative elasticity of the good being priced. A more inelastic good, obviously, is one where we will see less of a change in purchasing behaviour in response to an increase in price.

My perception is that many of the daily activities people participate in that produce emissions involve things that are, at least in the short term, relatively inelastic. People who live in a particular community that does not have access to public transit cannot choose not to drive. People cannot choose not to heat their homes. Yes, they can buy electric vehicles and invest in major energy retrofits, but all of these are longer-term things that require major inputs of capital. Especially people with limited personal fiscal capacity cannot make those kinds of major up-front investments that allow them to save money.

The effect of a tax on an inelastic good is a higher cost. I would contend there is an alternative path, one which seeks to increase the fiscal capacity of people to make investments in particular in things that will allow them to make the kinds of adaptations that will be advantageous for themselves financially and for the environment, things like an environmentally friendly home renovation tax credit which existed in the past under the previous government.

I wonder if the member agrees with my analysis and thinks there are alternative ways that respond to the realities of the way people have to make these decisions in their lives. They cannot always respond to a price signal if they do not have the capacity to make the kinds of major capital investments in their lives that would respond to that situation.

[Sean Fraser]

Mr. Speaker, although I think the member makes a good point, there is a point in the analysis where I have to break with him.

I do recognize that people, depending on what part of the country they live in, the nature of their community and perhaps their financial means, have the ability to make different kinds of choices. For example, someone who lives in a rural community like I do does not have the same access to a downtown subway system that my colleagues who represent the city of Toronto do. That being said, there are options that we can all make to reduce our carbon footprint, so to speak. One of the key features of putting a price on pollution is making sure that the money is actually returned to Canadians so they are left better off.

The starting point is not that an expense is being foisted upon people that they cannot handle. That is categorically false with the plan that we are moving forward with. If one is being rebated more than the increased cost of living, that person is going to be able to use the money that is rebated to make the choices that he or she is able to make. If I live in a rural community, I might put my rebate toward the cost of living or toward making my home more energy efficient, whereas my colleagues who represent the citizens who live in Toronto may have their constituents take the train instead of driving to work every day.

The fact is that we need to empower citizens so they can make choices that help them in their lives and reduce their footprint at the same time.