Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak against the opposition motion on the floor of the House of Commons today.
One of the issues I have with the motion, which purports to discuss the role of corporate Canada in Canadian politics, is that it entirely misconstrues our government's agenda and tries to paint, with one brush, an entire group of parliamentarians who are concerned about the well-being of Canadian families and ensuring the Canadian economy works for everyone and not just the wealthy few.
Before I get into my remarks, I have some real concerns about a democratic deficit we have in the chamber. We like to label one another with names or pretend that other parties may disagree with us with respect to our substantive ideas. However, I think every member in the House and all parties sincerely care about people and want to serve their communities well. However, the political narrative that the NDP are trying to put forward, that somehow the Government of Canada does not carry about families as much as it cares about corporations is bizarre. I hope to cover a bit of this in my remarks.
I do want to focus about the portion of today's motion that concerns itself with one investment we have made, given my role in the environment portfolio. I also want to dig in a little more on the nature of the political conversation we are having versus the one we could be having.
When it comes to the investment at issue that the NDP would like to reverse, I would like to lay out a little for the members where this came from. The starting point for me is that most members in the House would recognize that climate change is real and that we have an opportunity and an obligation to do something about it, not just to do something but to do the most effective things we know how.
Our plan to fight climate change includes things like putting a price on pollution, ensuring it is not free to pollute anywhere in Canada. By 2030, we expect to have 90% of the electricity generated in Canada come from clean sources. We are making the largest investments in the history of public transit in our country to encourage more people to take their cars off the road and take mass transit. We are phasing out coal by 2030, more than 30 years ahead of the previously scheduled date. We are investing in green technology and green infrastructure as well as energy efficiency.
Before I discuss the specific investment that is the subject of today's motion, I want to point out that our investments in energy efficiency are not limited to large organizations. In Nova Scotia, I personally made an announcement of the province's share of part of the low-carbon economy fund that was directed toward energy efficiency initiatives, which benefited home owners who were retrofitting their homes, making it cheaper for them to buy things like smart thermostats, more energy-efficient refrigerators and other equipment or technology that would help reduce their carbon footprint and, importantly, reduce their monthly home heating bill.
We are also setting funds aside to help small businesses with the cost of becoming more efficient. Through the low-carbon economy fund, large organizations were eligible to apply to certain components of that fund. In particular, part of this $2 billion fund had $450 million set aside to identify certain projects that would lead to the greatest amount of emissions reductions at the lowest cost to Canadians. Officials from the Department of Environment and Climate Change Canada assessed the applications that came in and selected the best projects that would make the biggest difference and have our dollar provide the greatest return on investment.
Fifty-four projects were identified as being successful through the fund. These are projects like energy efficiency at McGill University. These are projects in cities like Calgary and, I believe, Regina that will help them do really interesting things with waste diversion and create more environmentally-friendly fuel by the way they deal with their waste. In addition, the $12 million investment, which is the subject of this motion, will go to leverage $36 million to help make refrigeration in one of the largest grocery retail organizations in Canada more efficient. However, it is important to dig into this a little.
One of the things I think people do not appreciate is that hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, found in refrigerants are one of the fastest growing contributors to climate change worldwide. I note in particular that our government entered into the Kigali accord to the Montreal protocol to deal with the proliferation of refrigerants across the world. The measures it found in that document are expected to prevent 0.5° in warming across the planet as a result of the measures that will be implemented.
The investment at issue is not only going to help bring down the emissions across the entire country; it is going to impact 370 communities. The equipment that is being purchased is from a supplier in Mississauga, which is going to create jobs at that company. It is going to create jobs for skilled workers who install the units at 370 different franchises across Canada. The fact is that this was motivated by the finding of the Environment and Climate Change Canada officials that this project was one of 54 that would have the greatest impact on our emissions for the lowest cost.
While we are on the subject of climate change, I have sat on panels with members of the NDP who tell me they support investments in energy efficiency, yet when we actually start making them, they find a reason to oppose them. I would be remiss if I failed to point out that on the Conservative side of the House, it has been a year since the Conservative leader promised he would introduce a plan to combat climate change. Despite many objections to our plan, the Conservatives have yet to put one forward.
The fact is that our plan includes over 50 different measures, and I have laid some of them out: putting a price on pollution, having 90% of our electricity generated from renewable resources, making the largest investment in public transit in our history, phasing out coal, investing in green infrastructure, green technology and in energy efficiency. These are meaningful pillars to an important plan that will see the most aggressive action on climate change the Government of Canada has ever put forward.
However, one of the things that really bothers me is the severe effort the NDP has gone through to ignore the facts around our plan to help Canadians and to build an economy that works for everyone, not just for the wealthiest members of society.
Our record includes investments like the Canada child benefit. It has lifted 300,000 children in our country out of poverty. It is unconscionable to me that in a country as wealthy as Canada there are still kids who do not have enough food to eat or have a roof over their head. This is putting more money in the pockets of nine out of 10 Canadian families. We have stopped sending cheques to millionaires, who, frankly, did not need the money. In the area that I represent, this is sending $48 million into the communities each year. This money is going straight to the pockets of families that could use the money. It is helping over 12,000 kids. This is serious policy that is making a tangible difference for the people who live in Central Nova.
It is not a single policy that is going to shift the economic benefits of the global economy to those who need it. There is a suite of policies that we need to put forward. For seniors, we have rolled back the age of eligibility for the old age security, from 67 to 65. We have beefed up the guaranteed income supplement so the most vulnerable low-income single seniors will have almost $1,000 extra each year. We created a new tax bracket for the wealthiest Canadians, who will pay more, so we could cut taxes for nine million middle-class Canadian families. We are investing $40 billion, along with provinces and communities. It is part of a national housing strategy that will help people who do not have a place to sleep at night or who are potentially underserved in their housing needs.
When I look at some of the investments around health, which are criticized in the motion on the floor today, I can see that in my province not only are we making the largest single transfer of funds to the Province of Nova Scotia to help with care at home, we have set aside $280 million to go to two key strategic areas, in particular mental health and in-home care for seniors. We are moving forward with the creation of the Canadian drug agency, which will help bring the cost of prescription drugs down. We have appointed Dr. Hoskins to lead a committee on the implementation of a national pharmacare in our country, a fact that is conveniently left out of the motion on the floor.
We have made investments in students and universities. We have made investments in communities through infrastructure to create jobs. Does that mean we are beholden to the interests of students or academia or to the interests of communities and job creators? This does not sound like a scandal or some nefarious political narrative; this sounds like good governance to me. This is thoughtful policy that has been developed with the feedback of stakeholders and is making a tangible difference in the lives of the people whom I represent.
The good news is that the investments we are making are working for our economy as well. Not only are people better off; there are more people working today. Since we took office in 2015, the Canadian economy has added over 900,000 jobs. These are having benefits in provinces like Nova Scotia and in fact from coast to coast to coast. Our unemployment rate is at the lowest it has ever been since we started to keep track of those statistics over 40 years ago.
There are more people being lifted out of poverty every day as a result of the measures our government has implemented.
I note that the NDP has criticized us for failing to take action on loopholes that exist for the wealthiest. The fact is that we put forward a number of measures, and the CRA is cracking down on people who are trying to evade those taxes. It is charging, prosecuting and convicting people who are evading taxes in Canada contrary to the principles of law that apply in our land.
I worry about the discourse in this chamber and in Canadian politics. We have motions being tabled that ignore facts to create a political narrative, but facts can be very stubborn. It is important that we engage in debates based on facts, science and evidence, not on what we want people to believe about one another. Every party is guilty to some extent of doing this, and we all have to commit to be better.
In question period, I find that we have an exercise of talking past one another and seeing who can yell loudest to get attention in the media. I find people scrubbing through the video clips from this place to get that perfect clip that makes them look good on Facebook, rather than developing policy that would help people who live in our communities.
It is essential that we try to engage with each other in a thoughtful way, and with respect to the colleagues who are making comments across the way, that we speak when it is our turn so we can listen and understand where others are coming from and respond with thoughtful questions or comments.
I sincerely wish that Canadians could see us when we turn the cameras off. When I have a conversation with the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley about a private member's bill he wants to put forward that came from one of his constituents, I seek to understand what it is and commit to going to officials to see whether they have identified any unintended consequences of the policy. If people at home knew that this is the kind of engagement that takes place when the cameras are not watching us, I think they would be pretty happy with us. It might be boring, but it is effective.
I wish people would show up at committee meetings when the cameras are not on or when a minister is not in the room, when we have thoughtful engagement about whether a particular policy is effective or is going in a different direction than we think is right for Canadians. It might be boring, but it is effective.
The level of civility sometimes disappears here. I know we are all probably guilty to some degree, but I want to communicate that this motion on the floor today is trying to develop a whole narrative about being beholden to the interests of some big, bad corporate executive who sits in the top floor of an office building in a big city. The fact is that our mission from day one has been to create an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthiest Canadians, one that will have a meaningful impact on our environment by reducing our emissions so we can preserve our natural environment for future generations.
I want to communicate that it is essential that we take action on climate change. It is essential that this place include investments in energy efficiency. It is one of the main reasons I am going to oppose the motion. In addition to the component that deals with climate change, it is essential, before we start trying to label one another as being one kind of party or another kind of party, that we realize that everyone here is in it for the right reasons: to try to help people who live in our communities, to make life a little better and to use the platform we have been given to advocate for positive social change.