Mr. Speaker, if anyone thought that there was no reason to adopt the motion that the NDP is presenting today, which the NDP leader has just spoken to so eloquently, the motion that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Environment and Climate Change declare an environment and climate emergency, if anyone thought that somehow that should not be a priority, that person should talk to the many flood victims we have seen in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick just over the course of the last few weeks.
I visited the Ottawa River last night and, like so many of us, I was appalled by the extent of the damage that we have seen. When we look across communities, and that is communities in all three provinces, what we see is devastation and heartbreak. Families are coming back to homes where all of their possessions, all of their memories, everything they have invested has simply disappeared under the waters and can never be reclaimed.
If anyone in the House thought that we do not need to declare a climate emergency, that person should visit the families of the victims of last summer's catastrophic heat waves. Dozens of people in Quebec, in Montreal particularly, died of heat stroke over the course of that devastating period of record temperatures. As the Quebec coroner has pointed out, so many of the victims who passed away in that terrible heat wave were people living in homes without access to air conditioning and without access to fans. Dozens of people died. Anyone questioning the importance of the climate emergency should speak to the families of those victims.
From personal experience, I can say that anyone who comes to the west coast can see the impacts of the climate change emergency that we are living through, just through the course of the devastating forest fires, which have already started. My colleague from Courtenay—Alberni, who spoke in the House during question period, raised the fact that for the first time ever in the month of May, more than a dozen out-of-control forest fires are burning our forests in British Columbia.
Over the last three years in the Lower Mainland, the month of August has meant unbreathable air. The month of August has meant the sun literally disappearing under the heavy weight of clouds as the forests all around us burn. Can anyone think for just a moment that we are not living through a climate emergency, let alone the devastating typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes that we are seeing? Categories that did not even exist a decade ago now exist and are carrying devastation throughout coastal areas. We see the rise of sea levels and the fact that some countries are now planning for a time when they will no longer exist because they are at low levels, like the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
We do not need to look at the international examples to understand how vividly climate change is transforming our planet. As Bill Nye said this week in a social media post that has been seen worldwide, the planet is literally burning.
The question is, as members of Parliament, what do we do? We have a motion before us that talks about concrete action. We know from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the Paris Agreement is nowhere near enough now.
As the leader of the NDP mentioned just a few moments ago, the Liberal government's current approach to climate change means that even those targets that are no longer adequate will not be reached for 200 years. We went backwards last year. There are 12 million new tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions put into the atmosphere under the Liberal government. We do not have the luxury of delay. We see the impacts on the ground, and the IPCC has made it very clear that we need to take action.
Tragically, and that is why the motion speaks very clearly to fossil fuel subsidies, as Oil Change International has pointed out, over the last five years under the former Conservative government and the current Liberal government, we have seen an unbelievable $62 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry, largely through EDC.
These are scant resources devoted to renewable energy, yet the climate burns, and Canada fails in any way to meet its obligations.
I blame the former Conservative government, which prioritized pipelines. It tried to build the energy east, Trans Mountain and Keystone pipelines. It wanted to build pipelines all over the place instead of investing in renewable energy, where the jobs of the future will be.
I blame the former government, but I also blame the current government, which is prepared to give $12 million to Loblaws and push forward on the Trans Mountain pipeline even though British Columbians do not want it and it will significantly increase the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing our planet so much pain.
I blame these governments. All the disasters I just talked about created victims, from the record flooding in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario to last summer's heat wave, which killed over 60 Quebeckers.
The victims tend to be young people who are poor, disabled or struggling to find a decent place to live.
I blame these two governments for refusing to implement an action plan. Every year, British Columbia sees forest fires that blot out the sun and make the air unbreathable.
What is most important is that in this tragedy, this unrolling catastrophe so many Canadians are now living through, there is so much opportunity. If we have a government that is willing to show leadership, and if members of Parliament adopt the NDP plan in the next few days, we will see action that will allow us to create literally millions of jobs in this country.
I give that figure because Canada's Building Trades Unions have evaluated what an action plan on climate change would mean for the Canadian economy. Currently, it is costing us $5 billion a year, which is rising incrementally. It will cost us up to $40 billion to $50 billion a year in just a few decades.
However, if we make the investments, Canada's Building Trades Unions have said that we could create up to four million jobs over the next 30 years in this country. Imagine a young generation of workers who could go to work in the building trades building renewable energy, building regional and municipal heat plants and building all the infrastructure needed to address this climate crisis.
It is not just reducing subsidies to oil and gas; it is making the investments. As I mentioned, $62 billion in the oil and gas sector has not created the jobs that $62 billion in renewable energy would have created. These are the kinds of investments that will make a difference.
There is a dream behind this that most Canadians share, those Canadians who have suffered through the increasing number of climactic climate change events. Their dream is that parliamentarians will vote yes on this motion. Their dream is that we will have a government that will take action, remove the fossil fuel subsidies, invest in renewable energy and show the transparency that is so important for us to battle back and beat climate change.
Our dream is very simple. It is a springtime when we are not hearing about communities devastated by record levels of flooding due to climate change. It is summers on the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where people will be able to walk outside and breathe the air, like when I was a kid. We have not seen that over the last few years, but when I was a kid, August was a wonderful time. We could breathe in the sea air and see the sun and the mountains. That no longer happens, because we have not taken action.
I think all of us would like our children and their children to live in the kind of environment we had when we were children. That takes action, and I hope all members of Parliament will support this motion so we can take the steps, declare climate change an emergency and fight back against climate change.