Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today and add my voice to this debate on the government's motion, which seeks to, among other things, finally declare that we are in a climate emergency.
It is very interesting that the government motion quickly followed our motion, which was debated yesterday and today was voted down by the Liberals, because they wanted to author their own, weaker-worded motion. Nonetheless, I am glad that we are paying attention to this very urgent issue.
There is no debate that climate change is happening. It is human-caused and we have to face up to that fact. Yes, our climate has changed many times over earth's history, but it has never changed as quickly and at the rate it is now because of the very fact that we are pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and they are reaching such concentrations that it is having dire consequences for how our planet's natural processes operate. If we continue down this path, we are on course to reach 4°C to 6°C of warming by the year 2100. It sounds like a small number, but it can have cataclysmic consequences.
I remember hosting a town hall on a national clean energy strategy and looking at scenarios of the planet warming 1°C, 2°C, 3°C or 4°C. When we get up to 3°C or 4°C, we are essentially looking at the disappearance of island nations. We can say goodbye to the country of Bangladesh. Many areas along the eastern seaboard of the United States will be inundated. The state of Florida will be gone, as will the state of Louisiana. If we think the current refugee crisis is bad, we should just wait until we have 800 million to one billion people who have to move.
In my province of British Columbia, we are seeing real economic costs as the forest fire budget every year is eating into provincial coffers. We have heard mention of what the insurance costs will be. Some of the most prized real estate in the country is in Vancouver. Vancouver International Airport is right beside the ocean, with the Fraser River flowing right by it. What are the costs going to be to save that piece of land when a flooding Fraser River is matched by rising sea levels? This has real economic costs.
In my own riding, in March, the Cowichan River, which is one of four designated heritage rivers in British Columbia, was at 30% of where it should have been. I counted on one hand the number of days of rain we got on Vancouver Island in the month of March, a month when, under normal circumstances, it would be raining pretty much every day. This puts our wild salmon at risk, because of course they depend on that river to spawn and continue the next line.
Therefore, we do have real costs, which is the frustrating thing. I feel that in today's debate there is a lot of discussion about the costs to people now, such as the cost of a carbon tax and the cost of upgrading things to make sure that we are on a path to a low-carbon future. However, the economic costs of doing nothing are going to absolutely dwarf anything we are talking about now. I have seen some estimates that climate change could cost anywhere up to 10% of the world's GDP. At that rate, we are not talking about billions of dollars; we are in fact talking about trillions of dollars.
Today's motion, which the Liberals have brought forward, roughly follows the same path of what we debated yesterday, with some key differences. Number one, there is no mention in today's motion of the Liberal government's continued subsidy of the oil and gas sector, to the tune of billions of dollars every year. Just imagine, Mr. Speaker, if we actually ended those subsidies and reinvested them in the renewable energy economy of the future. The Trans Mountain pipeline purchase was $4.5 billion of our money, and if the Liberals want to expand it, it could go up to $11 billion. Imagine if we had taken that money and put it in the renewable energy economy of the future, which, by the way, is now employing more and more Canadians, Canadians like those who work in the oil sands.
There is an amazing organization of oil sands workers, called Iron and Earth, who argue quite passionately that they have the skill sets as welders, pipefitters and electricians to transfer to the renewable energy economy, because they know that this is where our future lies.
This change is going to be forced on us one way or another. Therefore, our big choice here is whether we are reactive to that change, and change because it is being forced on us, or whether we seize the opportunity before us right now and make those important investments for the renewable energy economy of the future.
It is possible. We just need the political will. We have the technology. Every day in my riding, I see more electric cars. I see more solar panels on roofs. We have technology that allows for tidal power generation, coupled with wind turbines, solar power and geothermal. All of these, coupled with our existing hydroelectric facilities, can produce the electricity we need. Battery storage life is getting better by the year. The technology is there. We just need to have the political will to seize it and make sure that it is all working together, because ultimately, what we need to do is generate more electricity. It is possible to do it in a clean and renewable way.
It is going to take an absolutely herculean effort. I am talking about an effort on par with what this country did in World War II. We put women to work who had never really had positions in factories before. We basically retooled our entire economy to the war effort so that by the end of the Second World War, this country had the third-largest navy in the world. We had many people in uniform and tons of equipment, because we were united in a cause. This kind of fight is going to take the exact same type of effort through a combination of government working with the private sector, all working together toward a singular goal. We have to make that kind of investment.
People like to speak in this debate about how Canada's emissions are such a small part of the global average. I agree with that. However, our contribution in World War II was quite a small percentage. That did not stop us from joining in the fight with our allies, all working together. Canada did not stop sending soldiers because we thought our contribution was going to be insignificant. No. We were there from the get-go, and we saw it all the way to the end in 1945. That is the type of effort we are going to need, all working together and acknowledging that the problem is happening.
There are examples. In the state of Washington, just south of where I live, Governor Jay Inslee just announced an evergreen economy plan. He has set up a green bank that will have $90 billion in it. It is one of the most ambitious plans ever launched in the United States. There will be a wholesale effort, including renovating homes to make them more energy efficient, making sure that Washington state's electricity grid is all on renewables, and having a huge number of incentives to get people driving electric cars. We can call it the evergreen economy plan, a green new deal or whatever. I think we are all referring to the same thing. That is exactly what I, as a New Democrat member of Parliament, want to see us do, because we do not have a lot of time left. The clock is running out. We have to get to a point where Canada's emissions are measurably being reduced year after year, and we are currently not at that stage.
For me, it is personal, as it is with a lot of members of Parliament. I have three children. I have six-year-old twins and a 19-month-old. I have great concerns about the world they are going to inherit.
This is a moment where we have to put aside our differences and acknowledge that we have a way of doing this. This is not just virtue signalling, as I have heard some of my Conservative friends say. If we are going to actually take those first important steps of addressing this problem, the big thing we have to do is first acknowledge that there is a problem, that there is an emergency. However, so that this is not just about platitudes, we also have to back up that kind of emotion with strong, concrete actions. It can be done. We have the people. We have the skill sets. We have the technology. We just need to see the leadership in this place, this House of Commons, and show people that we are actually treating this issue with the seriousness it deserves.
There is a whole generation of kids out there in high school who are looking to us. They are striking every Friday. Let us rise to the challenge, meet their expectations, come together to do this and give it the justice it deserves.