Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to address the House today on an issue that is important to all Canadians.
I want to read into the record the amendment we are debating at the moment, which was proposed by the member for Abbotsford at the end of his excellent presentation earlier today. It reads:
...the House recognize that:
(a) climate change is a real and urgent global problem requiring real global solutions and that Canada can and must take a leadership role in developing those global solutions;
(b) human activity has an impact on climate change and its effects impact communities across the country and the world;
(c) Canada and the world must take urgent action to mitigate global climate change and combat its impacts on the environment;
(d) the government's own “Clean Canada” report shows the government is falling short of the Paris targets by 79 million tonnes,
and, therefore, as an alternative to its current proposal to tackle climate change involving a non-binding declaration, the House call upon the government to produce a real climate change plan that will enable Canada to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions according to the targets of the Paris agreement.
That is the difference between our amendment and the government motion. The government motion fails on a couple of significant levels. It does not talk about the global nature of the problem and, specifically, it does not address the fact that the government is falling further and further behind the targets it agreed to in Paris a couple of years ago.
We heard the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley reminded the House earlier that those were the targets set under former prime minister Stephen Harper. Those are the targets we are talking about today. The targets set by the former Conservative government were such good targets that the Liberal government embraced them, but it is failing to meet them.
The comments from the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, declaring that the Prime Minister was a high carbon hypocrite, goes right to the member putting forward this motion in the House today. There are 22 sitting days left in this Parliament before we go back to our ridings for the summer and then the House dissolves due to the upcoming election. However, sanctimonious Liberals on the other side are asking how we cannot say that this is an emergency. They have had an opportunity for three and a half years to bring forward this motion. For three and a half years, they have had an opportunity to bring about a climate plan to reduce emissions to meet the targets they agreed to in Paris, and they have utterly failed.
What the Liberals have come up with instead is a carbon tax, a tax that punishes average working Canadians, while it lets the big emitters off the hook. It lets them continue to target the people we represent in our ridings for doing things Canadians have to do, things like heating their homes, driving to work, driving to school and taking their aged parents to a doctor's appointed. The government has decided to embrace a climate plan to punish those people for living in Canada.
I hear laughter on the other side. We hear laughter from the Liberals when they think about that. They do not care about those people. They care about people like the owners of Loblaws, the owners of a multi-billion company, who get $12-million gift of free fridges that they would have bought on their own. That is called a climate plan to these Liberals. They are looking out for those people. Some emergency from the perspective of the Liberals.
The climate is such an emergency to Liberals that the Prime Minister got on his taxpayer-funded private jet and flew to Tofino for a couple of days of surfing. By the way, it was on Earth Day. He got on his private plane, burned the fuel and got to have his holiday in British Columbia.
A survey released this week by Toyota Canada shows that over half of British Columbians are rethinking their holiday plans because of the price of fuel. They cannot afford to fill the tank in their vehicles to go see their family or take the vacation they have been looking forward to all year. Rich British Columbians will have no problem reaching into their pockets, getting out a couple more $20 bills or $50 bills and paying for that extra price of fuel.
Similarly, the Prime Minister has no problem reaching into taxpayers' pockets and taking a private jet to Tofino. There is no way to get to Tofino on public transit. People have to drive there. It is a long, beautiful drive, one that I have made before, and it requires a vehicle with a full tank of gas. The Prime Minister has made it many times, but on a taxpayer-funded jet. He is a high-carbon hypocrite.
He did the same thing during the height of the SNC-Lavalin scandal when he used the taxpayer-funded private jet to take another vacation in Florida. He does not pay for the fuel and he does not care about the carbon tax. He went to Florida with the family when he needed some downtime, which is fine, but then he flew back to Ottawa for a private meeting and a photo op, and then back to Florida again, and then back to Ottawa one more time.
It is a climate change emergency, according to the Liberals, but it is an emergency for somebody else to pay for, because they should not have to change their ways and the Prime Minister should not have to change his ways; he just wants Canadians to change theirs. He wants them to drive less to get their kids to school, drive less to get their kids to their soccer practice, drive less to get their mom or grandmother to the hospital or to the doctor. That is what the government is doing. We have seen it time and again.
We have also seen that they actually do not believe in it. John Horgan, the premier of British Columbia, is a classic example. He also, like the Prime Minister, has virtue-signalling motions like this one, but he actually increased the carbon tax higher than what is mandated under the national carbon tax plan. He jacked it up on April 1. He jacked up the price of fuel even more than he was required to under the Prime Minister's law. Then, two weeks later, when the price hit $1.80 a litre, he said it was a crisis and that we needed to do something because people were paying too much for fuel, but we all know that this is exactly what he wants and exactly what the Prime Minister wants. He said as much when he was in British Columbia a year ago. They want Canadians to pay a price for living in this country, and in a large portion of this country, people are living in remote areas where they have to drive to do the things that are necessary.
What happens when we do not treat this as a global issue? We have seen what happens when the Liberals do not treat this as a global issue. They think that Canada is an island unto itself and that if they impose additional costs on businesses and individuals, it has no impact.
What have we seen since the current government took office? We have seen the greatest flight of capital this country has ever seen. We have seen billions of dollars, nearly $100 billion, fleeing the country, primarily out of the energy sector, and setting up shop in other places that are not putting a carbon tax on their businesses. In the case of Royal Dutch Shell, it was an $18.4 billion flight of capital. For ConocoPhillips, it was $17.7 billion; Devon Energy, $7 billion; Kinder Morgan, $4.5 billion; Marathon Oil, $3.3 billion; Chevron Energy, $1.5 billion; Murphy Oil, $937 million; Apache Corporation, $927 million; Statoil ASA, $832 million; Total S.A., $560 million, and the government celebrates it. The Liberals celebrate that flight of capital, because it is from the dirty industries that they do not like to talk about.
Those companies have not gone out of oil and gas; they are developing oil and gas in the United States. They are developing oil and gas in the offshore of Brazil. They are developing oil and gas in Kazakhstan and places that do not have the same high world-leading clean energy policies that this country has. We develop the cleanest, greenest energy in the world, and we should celebrate it, because that is something that all Canadians can be proud of.
The motion that the government has brought forward is an attempt to distract from its fourth-place finish in a recent by-election in British Columbia with 22 days left in the sitting of this Parliament. The Liberals are not taking emissions seriously, which is proven by their 79-million-tonne shortfall on their own targets. That is why we will support our amendment and not their motion.