Debates of May 16th, 2019

The Environment

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, action against climate change to ensure the safety and protection of this planet is not an event; it is a process. It is a journey we all must take together, and it must be done in steps, in increments.

With respect to the Trans Mountain pipeline, there have been major consultations. It is a belief of mine and of our government that we must work in collaboration with all communities. We must follow our procedures of law and ensure that our environment and our economy go hand in hand as we continue to progress and hopefully implement a long-term plan for sustainable green technology.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, when I was listening to the question from the NDP member, what came to my mind was the NDP government in British Columbia. That government has now moved forward on LNG, working with the national government. We believe that it is in the national interest to proceed with that.

On the other hand, the current leader of the New Democratic Party in the House has apparently flip-flopped on the issue. At one point, he favoured having LNG and thought it was a good thing. Now he believes that the NDP might have made a mistake at the national level and that it needs to reverse course.

My understanding today is that the NDP, not at the provincial level but at the national level, thinks that LNG is a bad idea. Does my colleague believe that having consistency is important when talking about environmental issues and that the NDP should be clearer and more transparent with Canadians on exactly what its position is on LNG, given that it is worth billions of dollars of Canadians' money?

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree. This kind of flip-flip is quite dangerous. In fact, the NDP leader's reversal goes against 10,000 good jobs for the residents of British Columbia.

We have to make sure that as we develop our whole-of-government approach and take climate action seriously and build that plan, we move forward together. It is really disappointing that the Conservatives have still not revealed their plan.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government, in fact the Prime Minister, made a unilateral decision to buy a pipeline after British Columbians were promised that there would be a new environmental assessment process for the Kinder Morgan expansion.

If the government were truly sincere about its action toward the climate emergency, why on earth did it buy a 65-year-old leaky pipeline?

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, now is the time for us to work in collaboration with all communities and to ensure that we are balancing the economy and the environment as we build capacity within our country to take on green technology and phase out our emissions to meet our emissions targets. I encourage the member opposite to work with us on this project.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, for those who are watching, today we are talking about how to ostensibly address the issue of climate change. At least that is what the Liberal government would have people watching believe. Unfortunately, the motion before the House of Commons that we are debating today does not talk about the economy and has absolutely no action in it whatsoever. More than anything, this gives the House an excellent opportunity to discuss the Liberal government's failures in the last three and a half years on both climate change and the economy. By quantitative metrics, the government has failed on both issues. That is what I want to lay out today. I also want to lay it out in the context of the amendment the Conservative Party has presented on this motion.

I want to start by reading an article from the National Post from August 9, 2016. The title is “Serious questions about GHG policy”, and the subheading is, “Those championing a carbon tax are positioning it as a silver bullet. But the fact remains that there are legitimate questions to be raised about Canada's approach to reducing greenhouse gases.” The article is from 2016, so the carbon tax was not fully implemented yet. It reads:

[The] Liberal government is developing a framework to implement a national price on carbon. Those championing this policy instrument are positioning it as a silver bullet. They offer a delicious premise: a carbon tax won’t cause any pain, while immediately reducing GHG emissions in Canada. But the fact remains that there are legitimate questions to be raised about Canada’s approach to reducing greenhouse gases.

First, Canadians have a right to know how much emissions the government wants to cut, on what timeline it plans to do it and why?

Why did it set those targets? What is it going to do on the issue of climate change?

The article continues:

What are the opportunity costs of us setting that target? It’s difficult to measure if a policy is working...if we don’t know what we hope for it to achieve. To date, the political exercise of setting emissions targets in Canada has mostly been about “my arbitrary target is bigger than yours,” rather than discussing what is achievable under different scenarios.

And what about other countries? Canada has a relatively low overall GHG-emissions profile. Even if we impose one of the most restrictive GHG-reduction frameworks in the world, what can we do to make major emitters like Brazil, India, China and the United States reduce their GHG profiles? What happens if we implement a framework that makes our industries less competitive than those located in developing countries? What evidence do we have that a given policy proposal will work? Have the billions of dollars that Canada has spent on global mitigation and adaption efforts made any impact? It will take more than just domestic policy to influence change.

In terms of putting a national price on carbon, we need to know whether that’s the best policy option to reduce GHG emissions.... At what price does demand for gasoline, heating fuel and other carbon products actually decrease in Canada, by how much and over what time period? What impact will it have on Canadian workers and lower-income Canadians? Will one region of the country be affected more than others?

Where would all of your carbon tax dollars go? Will revenue from this tax go into general government coffers to offset large operational spending deficits, will it be used to offset the economic impact of the tax or will it fund the development of new technologies? How would this process be managed and how much will it cost to manage?

Recent reports show that regulations on specific high-emission sectors, such as vehicles and the coal-fired electricity sector, have caused GHG emissions to grow at a slower rate. More importantly, this happened while the Canadian economy was growing.

Of course, that reference is to a policy that happened under the former Conservative government.

The article goes on:

The decoupling of economic growth in Canada’s natural resource intensive economy from GHG emissions growth is positive progress.

Any national GHG reduction policy framework should set achievable targets. It should be able to be transparently costed and measured. It should simultaneously reduce GHG emissions, protect the job security of Canadian workers and protect lower-income Canadians. If a proposed GHG policy fails to show that it can reduce GHG emissions, or if it will have a detrimental effect on the economy, we should reject it.

This likely means that presenting...[an idea that a carbon tax is]...a painless, standalone cure-all is a fallacy in the cold, natural resource-[driven]...economy that is Canada. Our GHG policy will likely need to consider phased-in, sector-[by-sector]...regulations (the current federal government isn’t talking about repealing regulations put in place by the previous government), developing and adopting new, more efficient technologies and other approaches.

The article talks about the carbon tax and asking Canadians to “make a financial sacrifice, and Canadians should have a say on whether or not they want to make it.” We are seeing that happen with the provinces right now.

The article continues:

The cost of GHG policy shouldn’t be hidden in bafflegab line items on their electricity bills, in order to avoid political scrutiny. Similarly, we should hold proponents of these policies to account for their GHG emission...targets, regardless of their political stripe....

this requires a non-dogmatic conversation about this issue. That, however, will take megatonnes of effort by all of us.

It is a pretty good article. Do members know who that was written by in 2016? It was written by me. This was in the National Post three years ago, and the government has done nothing on any of these questions.

Day after day, we sat in the House of Commons and asked the Liberals how much they were going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by. How much tax would the residents of High River have to pay to not flood again? What are the price elasticity assumptions of their carbon tax? None of these things have been answered. Every day they complain about what the Conservatives are doing. We have been asking these questions for three years, after the Conservatives presented a track record of reducing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions while seeing the economy grow. What we have seen under the current Liberal government is the opposite. If anything, greenhouse gas emissions are rising, because the Liberals have not put forward a plan that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They have just put forward a tax plan.

What have we seen? My riding is out of work. That is because the current government is not using a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It knows that it will not do anything. All it is doing is taking money out of the pockets of Canadians. That is wrong, because a carbon tax disproportionately affects low-income Canadians. It puts small businesses out of positions where they can hire more people. It is flawed public policy.

In the last three years, something very interesting has happened. Because there are people like me, and others, and yes, I have a degree in economics, economists have started backing off. The most militant pro-carbon-price economists have started backing off. When the Prime Minister first started talking about the carbon tax, he used reducing greenhouse gas emissions as the policy outcome.

Everyone around the world was saying that climate change is a problem. If climate change was not going to be a problem, what did we need to do? We needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I want to read this great quote. I love this quote. It was written on October 1, 2017, once the anger in this country starting mounting against the carbon tax. It is in Alberta Views magazine. It is an excellent article that is well researched. It is titled, “The Carbon Tax: Will it reduce pollution?” The author writes:

For many economists, the price increase is enough. “I don’t think we should actually care too much about what the specific effect on emissions will be,” says Trevor Tombe, assistant professor of economics at the University of Calgary.

I thought the whole point was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Do members notice the shift in dogmatic language? It went from, “We are going to reduce gas emissions” to “We have to somehow cover up and change the language, because we are stealing from people, and it is not going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Now, when the high priestess of the climate change cocktail circuit gets up here in the House and talks about a price on pollution, it is not a price on pollution. If the carbon tax is supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, why are major emitters exempt from it?

She stood up in the House of Commons and said that all of these major oil and gas companies were standing behind Premier Rachel Notley and championing the carbon tax and saying that at $40 a ton it was great, it was wonderful. Of course those companies were standing there; they had already priced that into their production models. They did not have to do anything to reduce their greenhouse gas emission profile.

All that did was price the junior oil and gas companies out of competitiveness. These were companies that had profit margins that would not allow them to operate when that price was coming on top of Bill C-69 and Bill C-42, which had punitive detrimental impacts on investment in those companies. All it did was price them out of the market. Bigger companies could come in and consolidate the assets, and that is the only way there has been any profit growth in the energy sector.

Then fast-forward to today, and where are all those big companies? They are saying, “Bye. See you later.” Why would they possibly invest in a country where the government fails, day after day, to provide any sort of stability in the regulatory sector? Bill C-69 does not have any positive impact on the environment, except in the opinion of far-left activists who do not think we should have an energy sector. Why? It is because the only environmental outcome they want is no development in the energy sector. Bill C-69 and Bill C-42 make the regulatory process so uncertain that we cannot attract investment in Canada.

It is even worse when we look at this problem from a climate change perspective. Let us say we lose that investment to other countries. What happens? Does global demand for carbon decrease? No, we have seen global demand for carbon increase, and somebody is going to be supplying that demand.

When the Minister of Environment and the Prime Minister price Canadian energy out of competitiveness and those contracts go to the United States, which has no carbon tax and less regulation, or to Saudi Arabia, the bastion of environmental standards and women's equality, and those jobs and those products go to those countries and that demand is met by those countries, we are actually perpetuating the problem of climate change, because that energy production is not happening in a country where we already have some of the strictest environmental standards in the world.

There is no plan in this proposal. If the government were serious about addressing climate change, it could have read through every single one of the questions that I outlined in 2006. We do care about climate change, but if we are going to be serious about it, we cannot put forward policy that has no measurable outcome, outside of loss of jobs.

Let us talk about displacing the climate change burden.

It is such a bourgeois, champagne-Liberal philosophy to say, “I can afford a carbon tax, because I have my Bentley and my Grey Poupon and my trips to the Aga Khan island. It is great for me. I will just charge my grocery bill at the Whole Foods Market to the taxpayer here.” That is great for that person, the Prime Minister of Canada, but it is not great for somebody who is being punished.

Let us say it is a steelworker in Canada, someone who cares about climate change and cares about having a job. The government allows the Chinese to come in and dump steel, while our manufacturers are subject to a carbon tax that the Chinese are not subject to. Our steel is not competitive, so we lose jobs in that sector while we are benefiting an economy that has no rules on carbon emissions.

That is really the nub of the climate change issue. I have been to some of these meetings around the world, and nobody there actually cares about having the tough conversation. If someone reaches into their purse and pulls out a phone that was tariff-free from a country that has coal-fired electricity, has very bad labour laws and is able to produce that phone cheaply because of a lack of a carbon tax, that is where we are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. However, nobody wants to have that conversation, because it is the tough conversation. This is why the Kyoto protocol did not work. It was because there were no binding requirements on emissions.

The Liberal government is going on the climate change cocktail circuit day after day, having pictures taken and sitting around tables covered in grass that cost $50,000 and saying, “I am contributing to the environment with my paper straw.” That is not changing outcomes.

The government has had three and a half years to do the same hard work that we started. Kyoto did not work and the United States and China have to step up to the table, but those conversations do not happen under the Liberals. We know that. We know it because we see it with the rest of their trade policies.

Now, of course we have to take action here at home. Of course we do. However, Canada is a place where it is cold eight months out of the year. A lot of our country does not have the luxury of being able to access public transit. Those people having trouble accessing it have to drive to work in a lot of places. Even people who are watching from the Greater Toronto Area and are looking at the gas prices in Vancouver may wonder what they are going to do at $1.80 a litre when they have to sit in traffic for an hour and a half. Because of its ineptitude, the government has not even been able to get the money out that the former Conservative government committed to years ago. What is that going to do for me?

The only behaviour that the $1.80-a-litre gas price will change, as we have seen in province after province after province, is voting intention. Nobody is going to support a carbon tax, because the emperor has no clothes. A carbon tax does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions; it kills jobs and it is bad public policy. It is bourgeois public policy. It is elitist public policy. It says that if someone is a low-income mom, it does not matter that she has to fill up her gas tank. It does not matter that someone who works in the energy sector is going to lose his or her job to Oklahoma or Texas or somewhere in the U.S. that has a more competitive regime.

To anybody in Canada who cares about climate change, the government is out to lunch with this motion. I do care about climate change, and that is why I am presenting a viewpoint that is opposite to the virtue-signalling nonsense that the government is putting forth. Pictures in a Climate Crusader costume do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Giving $12 million to a privately funded rich corporation like Loblaws does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate welfare handed out to whatever lobbyists can buy the environment minister the best steak dinner do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is going to take tough policy, like the policy we put in place with the coal-fired electricity sector and passenger vehicles, to reduce that curve over time.

With regard to the oil and gas sector, we cannot put in place a policy that reduces greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector by killing the oil and gas sector. I wish there were people with the political courage to stand up and say that this is the policy objective. Let us have that debate. I will win that debate; they will not.

There is a reason we did not put regulations in place on the oil and gas sector with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. Why? It was because of the Americans. I was there when people thought Barack Obama was the climate change champion. Does anyone really think that Barack Obama was going to put a carbon tax in place when he knew that the major industry in the U.S. was just coming on stream with a supply that was going to change them from a net energy importer to an energy-independent nation? Of course not. Then why would we regulate our industry out of competitiveness when we know that we can produce cleaner energy than they can with our own clean technology?

It is all about smart public policy that sets a sweet spot so that industry is incented to adopt clean technology—which a carbon tax is not going to do—while ensuring that people in my community do not lose their jobs and that we continue to attract foreign direct investment and capital so that there are incentives for adopting that clean technology. That is the type of public policy discussion that we need on climate change.

All that has been happening in the House of Commons this week was that the Liberals and the NDP were out-Liberalling and out-NDPing themselves on virtue-signalling, do-nothing motions in Captain Planet costumes. Anybody who cares about climate change in this country should vote against that and reject that. Anybody in this country who cares about jobs and the economy should ensure that the Leader of the Opposition becomes the prime minister of this country.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I offer my thanks for the entertainment from across the way.

There were three amendments that were proposed during the Conservatives' presentation. One of them related to climate change not being related to human activity.

Could the hon. member maybe clarify the amendments she put on the floor, rather than the rhetoric, and in particular clarify whether climate change is related to human activity?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, let us imagine if one of us had stood up and said, in a sarcastic tone, that his or her speech was entertainment. The Liberals might not agree with my public policy concerns. They might not agree with the fact that I have a background in energy economics and commercialized clean technology from the University of Manitoba, that I helped put together the business model for Carbon Management Canada and that I did that stuff and I know what I am talking about. My community is dependent on getting this policy right. If I had done something like that to the Liberals, it would have been, “climate change denier, everything is terrible”. I reject that premise, first and foremost.

Second, I reject the virtue signalling. The member can read the amendment. It says, “human activity has an impact on climate change”. I am saying that the current government has done nothing to mitigate the human impact on climate change in Canada or abroad. The only thing it has done is used its platform on the international stage, “Canada is back”, to take picture, have cocktails and eat canapés. The Liberals have not had the hard conversations with China. They blew it with the Americans. They are penalizing our industries through reverse tariffs through policies like this.

If the environment minister wants to stand and quote Bill Nye, Science Guy, and quote his passion, then she had better look in the mirror. She has done nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the country.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was just reading an article in iPolitics from a couple of years ago. It talked about Preston Manning distributing a Fraser Institute report among Conservative colleagues, urging them to adopt a carbon tax because it was a market-based mechanism. I am wondering how the Conservative opinion has shifted from Mr. Manning's.

That aside, I agree with the member for Calgary Nose Hill. A carbon tax is going to be ineffective if it is only selectively applied. If we are to put a price on pollution, it has to apply to everyone equally. I am worried that this debate is concentrating too much on the here and now, the costs of this and that and so on and so forth. I want to look 20 to 40 years into the future and what the costs of climate change will put on our economy.

For example, in my province of British Columbia, the forest fire budget is putting a big dent in our coffers. We know what the costs will be mitigating floods and so on.

With the economic costs of climate change in mind, I wonder if we can find some common ground. Could the member for Calgary Nose Hill give her opinion and her thoughts on some of the opportunities that exist in the renewable energy economy of the future, how organizations like Iron&Earth, which are oil sands workers, want to take their skill set and transition to the renewable energy economy of the future so we are providing that just transition?

This change is going to be forced upon us one way or the other. We are either going to react to it or we are going to be proactive toward it.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to put on the record that I vehemently and strongly disagree with Preston Manning's take on the carbon tax. He is wrong. It is not a policy instrument that works. I do not care if he is Conservative. There is no data to show that carbon is price elastic in Canada to the point where a $40 tonne will change behaviour and allow the economy to grow.

The reality is that the price has probably got to be at least $300. At that price, the only gains that we will see are sharp economic shocks. I do not want the single mom in my riding unable to drive to work. I do not want our country to go into the toilet economically. It is a false economy, and Preston is wrong.

Second, my colleague talked about the here and now versus the future. The future is determined by the here and now. If we are talking about policies and we are not measuring them based on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, then we are never going to see that reduction. That is just the reality. We cannot support a policy instrument that is bunk in the Canadian context. Maybe it works in Monaco, where it has a small principality that has public transit everywhere and it is loaded with billionaires. It is not going to work in the Canadian context. It just does not.

Anybody who has any background in economics knows that a carbon tax functions like a consumption tax. It does not change behaviour, outside of probably political behaviour and behaviour of things like going to work or creating jobs. It is a problem. There is no substitute good for carbon in Canada.

However, if we wanted to get to the point where we are talking about adoption of clean technologies and stuff, we need to have an industry and capital to receive that technology and adopt it. While we have been so busy chasing capital out of the country in the energy sector, we have been doing that at the detriment of our clean technology sector and all the workers about whom the member just talked. Those jobs are not going to happen here. They are going to happen in the U.S.

This is basic economics. The motions before us today are embarrassing. I am good to go on any one of these topics. I will debate price elasticity of carbon price. I will debate the best way to incent clean technology. We are not having that conversation. We are having a bunk, out left versus left virtue-signalling conversation for votes. That is the real problem with the climate change debate in Canada right now.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Women and Gender Equality]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member has proud Manitoba roots and is now a proud Albertan. She will know that Manitoba experienced two one-in-300-year floods, costing our economy $1 billion each. This, of course, is in addition to the $6-billion Calgary flood. It is very good to hear her acknowledge the reality of climate change and that we do indeed have to act.

I want to pick up on something the hon. member from the NDP just picked up on, and that is this. Just about every Conservative economist who I have ever read on this topic supports a price on pollution, people who advised Prime Minister Harper, people who advised Preston Manning.

Of course, our own Brian Pallister, the Premier of Manitoba, was about to put a price of $25 per tonne above our level. He seemed quite satisfied with that. He had a disagreement with the federal government on increasing that, but he did indicate to those far and wide that a price on pollution was one of a range of measures which would be effective in reducing greenhouse gases in Manitoba and contributing to our national reduction.

I wonder if the hon. member would comment on this. From the calculations I have seen by economists, by 2022, a price on pollution across Canada will cut emissions by 50 million to 60 million tonnes. We have seen the evidence from British Columbia, where there was a 7% reduction through its price on pollution.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

First, Mr. Speaker, I do not care what political stripe the economist is. A carbon tax does not work in Canada.

The member from my home province, the member for Winnipeg South, should understand that Winnipeg is not Vancouver. It is really cold in Winnipeg. I would love for him to walk down my mom's street, go to my mom's door and say that the government is going to make her pay another $100. My mom would then ask him how much she would have to pay so Winnipeg would not flood next year. I do not think he would have an answer. That is the reality.

There is no price elasticity data that shows that $40 a tonne is going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. All it does is make me get angry phone calls from my constituents and his constituents, asking why the government is doing this. Of course, the Premier of Manitoba looked at that data and said this was bad public policy, which is exactly what the Liberal governments should be doing.

Let us talk about floods in Manitoba as well. I sandbagged along the Red River in 1997. I care about ensuring that does not happen. However, where has the member been on the fact that Manitoba has drained 60% of its wetlands over the last 60 years? Where is the Liberals' policy on that? Where is their support for the nature conservancy? I am not saying that we have to have a holistic approach to environmental management in Canada. Yes, flood mitigation infrastructure and, yes, looking at all these projects, but that is the problem with the government. It has hung its hat on a consumption tax that is solely designed to offset the fact that it has spent billions of dollars on nothing and—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Order.

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Regina—Lewvan, Oral Questions; the hon. member for Calgary Rocky Ridge, Intergovernmental Affairs; the hon. member for Edmonton Riverbend, Carbon Pricing.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, maple syrup, does it get any more Canadian than that? We can all imagine the crunch of snow under our boots, the steam coming off of the evaporator, treating our kids and maybe ourselves, too, if we are being honest, to some maple taffy when we pour warm syrup into a bucket of clean, fresh snow.

There are not too many things more closely tied to our rural communities and identity than producing maple syrup, yet even this time honoured Canadian tradition is at risk due to the impacts of climate change.

More and more research shows that warming temperatures and the loss of snowpack are having a negative and costly impact on the production of maple syrup and therefore on family farms that produce them. These family businesses keep our rural communities sustainable. This is not news. Sadly, we have known this for some time.

As far back as 2008, a study was published about the Hasler farm in Flinton, a community in my riding. From 1956 to 2007, tree tapping for maple syrup shifted a full two weeks earlier. The temperature range that is needed to produce maple syrup is becoming briefer and the season shorter. In fact, in 2012, our production of maple syrup in Ontario fell by 54% because of the unusually warm spring. Since Canada produces 70% of the world's maple syrup, this has an impact on our rural communities and our rural economy, including our family farms.

Ask any farmer in my riding and he or she will confirm the weather is getting wackier all the time. I heard from my constituent, Matt from the Hastings Stewardship Council. He told me that we really needed to prepare for the changes that were already happening and more that were going to happen.

Farmers want to pass their farms to the next generation. Through low-till and no-till practices, good stewardship, environmental farm plans and more, farmers are making great efforts to fight climate change. Unfortunately, they are also the first ones to suffer from its effects through severe weather events like drought and floods.

I would like to confirm, Mr. Speaker, that I will be splitting my time with the member for Guelph.

When farmers cannot grow food, it is an emergency and we are all in trouble.

Let me talk about five or six 100-year events in my rural community. I say 100-year events, but they actually all happened in the last six years.

It 2013, in the beautiful town of Bancroft, and there was a state of emergency. Flood waters had risen and roads were washed out. Three schools had to shut their doors. The children's centre was shuttered. Arnold Creighton, an 83 year old, was quoted as saying he had lived there his whole life and had never seen anything like it.

In 2014, in Corbyville and Foxboro, villages in my riding that fall under the city of Belleville, there was another state of emergency. The mayor at the time, my good friend, the member for Bay of Quinte, was out there day after day sandbagging and helping to coordinate the relief.

Now it is 2016 and our farmers are hurting. Sixty days without solid rainfall was producing burnt and premature crops, costing our farm families. It was the worst drought in my area since record keeping began in the 1800s.

In 2017, we started the year with Quinte Conservation warning residents of the Napanee River watershed that they would have worse floods than even 2014. I get almost daily updates from Chief R. Donald Maracle of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, telling me of the devastating effects that flooding is having on homes in the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory. Properties on Amherst Island and Hay Bay are under water, not just by inches but by feet.

Those who have not experienced flooding themselves are not always aware of all the subsequent impacts. Rural properties are usually on septic and well systems, both of which can be compromised by floods.

However, 2017 was just getting started. It seemed that Mother Nature was playing a cruel joke after all the flooding, but by summer and fall, the Moira River was experiencing the lowest water levels and droughts since record keeping began. It was even worse than 2016, when the drought had already exacted a terrible toll on our farming community.

This year, 2019, I recently visited properties in Bancroft, Hastings Highlands and Corbyville. They were under water yet again. There were roads washed out in Tweed and 21 roads washed out in North Hastings that they had to deal with. We do not have to look far to see the devastating toll right here in the Ottawa region.

Amid all this historic flooding and the hard work our conservation authorities have to do to help our communities, it is mind-boggling that the Ford government has cut flood prevention funding for our local conservation authorities in half. These are the Conservatives' cuts, Conservatives who do not take climate change seriously.

Extreme weather events have a cost, a very human cost that we see on the faces of distraught homeowners who have lost everything. There is also a massive financial cost. Last year, extreme weather cost Canadians $1.9 billion. From 1990 to 2009, the average was $400 million a year. That number is only rising and is estimated to be as high as $43 billion by 2050 if we do not act.

My constituents are awake to the impact of climate change in our rural communities. I heard from Louise, at Harvest Hastings, who reminded me of the increase in diseases affecting trees due to the warming temperatures: emerald ash borer, Dutch elm disease, beech bark disease, ash wilt, and the list goes on and on. All of this leaves our forests more susceptible to the devastating impact of wildfires.

The Ford government's cuts to planting 50 million trees is not helping this problem. To add insult to injury, these seedlings in eastern Ontario are going to be destroyed because of the Ford Conservatives' cuts.

Climate change is also causing rural communities like mine to have a higher incidence of ticks, which is a cause of Lyme disease. This has devastating health impacts. I have three friends whose health has been impacted for the last five to six years because of Lyme disease. It is happening more and more often. These are three personal friends who live in my own community who are trying to recover from this disease. Their immune systems had been comprised. Two of them were recently diagnosed with cancer because the impact was so dreadful.

There are a number of Conservatives who represent rural ridings. When we look at the devastating impact climate change is already having in our rural communities and on our farm families, it becomes clear that the Conservatives are doing a disservice to their constituents by fighting climate action instead of fighting climate change. The fact is, the fight against climate change is one of the most important fights of our generation, and future generations depend on us.

As a lifelong environmentalist, from my days growing up learning good stewardship practices while hunting and fishing in Madoc in the 1960s and 1970s, to starting the first recycling program in my apartment building during my young professional days in Toronto in the 1980s, to fighting as a community activist in Tyendinaga to protect our community's drinking water from the mega-dump expansion in Napanee from the 1990s to this very day, one thing is clear: I will never stop fighting to protect our environment, our community and future generations.

Extreme weather events across Canada and the world are increasing: forest fires in the west, tornadoes in Ottawa and historic droughts and floods in my own rural community. The science is clear and the impact on human lives is clear. We cannot leave it to our children to pay the vastly higher, even existential, costs of climate change.

We know how to solve this, and it is our duty as parents, citizens and legislators to act. This is a climate emergency.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I came into the chamber because I heard the member opposite talking about rural areas, like where I am from, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix. I must say that the Liberals have not done anything in my riding, and they are certainly not trying to save the planet. We have seen nothing at all in four years.

The member said he recycles, among other things. This gives me the perfect opportunity to tell him that I am a Conservative and I make my own compost. I also recycle.

Can the member tell me why, with the election six months away, climate change is suddenly such an urgent issue for the Liberal government, when it had four years to take action and it did nothing?

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to my colleague, I could not disagree more. The first thing we did as a government after the election was to bring all the provinces together to create the pan-Canadian framework, which was the basis of what experts call the first real plan in Canadian history to actually deal with climate change.

It is a vast plan of over 50 different measures that bring into effect investments in innovation, infrastructure and transit, and set methane emission standards. It is about clean energy, clean technology and a price on pollution. There is no silver bullet that is going to solve climate change. It is going to take a real plan to do it.

It is very easy for people to be skeptical of a real plan and criticize it when they do not have any plan of their own. The Conservatives have done nothing for 10 years, and they do nothing today but criticize what others call the first real plan.

Our plan is working. As a country, we have created over a million jobs. We have reduced unemployment to the lowest levels. We are reducing our emissions and we are going to meet our emissions targets and our Paris Agreement commitments, because we know that the economy and the environment can, and must, go hand in hand.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in her speech this morning, the Minister of Environment talked about a young Inuit boy she met who has been seriously affected by climate change.

When I visited Nunavik with my colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, many Inuit people told us that the thawing permafrost is causing the ground to sink in several villages and that many people would have to move out of their homes. This is having serious repercussions in the far north that are affecting indigenous peoples, yet there is absolutely nothing in the Liberal motion about indigenous peoples, unlike the NDP motion yesterday, which the Liberals voted against.

Why is there absolutely no mention of indigenous peoples in this motion?

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is a very important one, because addressing the concerns of indigenous people is in that nation-to-nation relationship, and reconciliation is the most important relationship our government has been working toward.

In recognizing the very difficult conditions that indigenous people are in, our government has made vast investments into infrastructure. There were a number of investments announced today, $241 million in total, to help Inuit with infrastructure and the actions on permafrost.

We saw the road that was built to Tuktoyaktuk, and I give credit to the previous government for doing that. The great thing is that there are now sensors in that road measuring the impacts of climate change. As the member mentioned, those impacts are far greater in the far north than they are here in the south. It accentuates the importance of moving on this quickly and having a comprehensive plan to deal with climate change. That is exactly the plan that we have, and it is working.

Once again, the important thing is to ensure that the economy and the environment go hand in hand. If we blow up a section of the economy, then we will not have the revenues necessary to help indigenous communities build out.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for sharing his time with me. We visited the Mohawks on the Bay of Quinte last year. We are both water champions, looking to reduce boil water advisories.

Item (c) in our motion expressly says that the vulnerable communities we are trying to serve include the indigenous communities. We recognize the effects of climate change on the land they were once stewards of, and good stewards of, that we are no longer good stewards of, and recognize the emergency we have brought on ourselves.

I rise today to support the motion. Climate change is like no other problem we have had to face as a government or as a people. With respect to fossil fuels, renewables and the transition we have to make into the new economy, there is a challenge in front of us, and it is an emergency.

Environment and Climate Change Canada identifies greenhouse gas contributions by sector to help define the challenge ahead of us. Industry contributes 40% of greenhouse gas emissions; transportation, 25%; electricity and energy, 11%; residences, 11%; agriculture, forestry and food-related emissions, 13%. The first thing we need to do when faced with a problem like this is to measure it, because what gets measured gets acted on.

Since 2007, Guelph has had a community energy initiative, and I am proud to say that I was involved in it from the beginning. It looks at the factors contributing to energy use in Guelph and how we can reduce per capita consumption by 50% as we increase our population by 50%. That has a direct impact on climate change. Guelph is also very involved in active transportation and in reducing our impact on the climate. We are now looking at how we can hitch our wagons together, having Canadian programs working with Guelph programs.

In 2017, the government invested $175,000 for Guelph to update the community energy initiative, and last month the results were published in a phase 1 and phase 2 report, which was tabled at city council and will be discussed there later this month. It looks at all areas of climate change and how we can get our act together federally and with the municipality to address challenges together, aligning our efforts so we can combat climate change together.

My constituents are deeply concerned about the effects of climate change and how they will affect their future. I recently attended a student-run town hall, where students brought in the mayor, the member of provincial Parliament and me to sit on a panel for an accountability session. I would like to thank the young leaders of the community environmental leadership program and the Headwaters program for organizing the town hall.

The message is clear: Youth are demanding action from their leaders. They do not want leaders fighting each other; they want leaders fighting climate change. They do not want us to be distracted and in denial. They want us to meet climate change challenges head on, regardless of party and level of government.

Transitioning our economy from hydrocarbons to sustainable technology is the crucial task before us. While this at first appears to be disruptive to our economy, it is in fact a tremendous opportunity. There is a $26-trillion global market for clean solutions, and Canada has a chance to get ahead in this emerging market.

To prevent further changes to our climate, and to position Canada for the looming sustainable economy to come, our government has a plan. The pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change is investing $5.7 billion over 12 years, including $2 billion in the low-carbon economy fund. Other ministries, such as Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Transportation, Natural Resources, and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, have programs that contribute to our 50-point plan to address the climate emergency as we are facing it.

At the centre of this framework is a transition plan for our economy, including the sectors that emit the most, such as transportation and power generation, but also sectors that are already low on emissions, such as agriculture.

Emissions from transportation account for almost a quarter of all emissions in some provinces, such as Alberta, and in Quebec they account for half of all emissions.

To help change the level of emissions from transportation, our government has put forward an electric vehicle tax credit. Budget 2019 will invest $300 million over three years to fund a credit of up to $5,000 on any purchase of an electric battery or hydrogen fuel cell vehicle whose list price is less than $45,000. Again, this measure is focused on the middle class and on vehicles that are affordable for families. It helps them with the decision to get into those vehicles so that they can have a personal impact on climate change.

The clean fuel standards program aims at reducing emissions associated with the use of fuel and to promote cleaner technologies relating to fuel. The Canadian Trucking Alliance has actively worked to reduce emissions by adopting natural gas-powered engines and calling on governments to introduce complementary measures of investment in these technologies, as well as in hydrogen cell technology.

In Guelph, we are partnering with the federal government to find solutions. During a visit to Linamar, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development announced a $50-million investment, which was matched by $50 million from our previous provincial government. The funding will help create 1,500 new Canadian jobs and will support more than 8,000 jobs already within Linamar's corporate structure, including in advanced manufacturing processes using 3D printing and modelling, and resulting in cleaner automotive technologies.

Linamar will also open a new innovation centre in Guelph on Woodlawn Road. It will be dedicated entirely to research and development into the car of the future, including alternate fuels, electric vehicles, hydrogen cells and artificial intelligence technologies.

As a Guelphite and former president of the chamber of commerce, I know how important it is to have those jobs in Guelph. As co-chair of the automotive caucus of the Liberal Party, I know it is so important to see us getting into the car of the future in my home town.

The Government of Canada has financed the purchase of 26 new buses in Guelph, provided new bus stop funding and fare boxes, and funded a municipal study to look at how the municipality could use car sharing in the city's fleet to try to reduce the carbon footprint of the municipality itself.

With regard to energy and electricity, funds from the price on pollution can be used to invest in sustainable energy projects. My wife Barb and I have put solar panels on our house. We made use of a government program in order to do that. We are doing our part and getting income from our roof. What else can we do?

Geothermal is an example. In Saskatchewan, there is a $50-million geothermal project in Estevan. Helped by the Government of Canada, Guelph's Canadian Solar is investing $16 million in a solar project in Alberta, creating jobs in the new technologies of the future.

With regard to agriculture, we are looking at 13% of Canada's emissions. This week we were really excited to hear the announcement that Guelph and Wellington County were awarded $10 million to develop their plan for a circular food economy. They developed three principal goals to transform our local food ecosystem and reduce our environmental footprint caused by food waste by 2025.

The three goals we are looking at are: looking at increasing accessibility of affordable, nutritious local foods by 50%; creating 50 new circular businesses and collaborations relating to food; and increasing circular economic revenue by 50% by recognizing the value of food waste. In fact, McDonald's Canada is now working with the University of Guelph studies to create plastics for the automotive industry by using all the coffee grounds from across Canada, which I know will be interesting to the member for Winnipeg, who I hear enjoys a lot of McDonald's coffee on the weekend.

Climate change is a serious matter for seniors concerned about their grandchildren's future, for entrepreneurs and for students. Even today, groups of music students from GCVI in Guelph are visiting for the MusicFest Nationals, and they are deeply concerned about climate change. We spoke about this just moments ago.

As members of Parliament, we have a responsibility to future generations to both acknowledge this threat and to develop an actionable climate plan. We have a realistic and progressive plan to reduce our emissions, reduce poverty and lay the foundations for a sustainable economy of the future.

I will close with the words of one of my constituents, who wrote, “I implore you to do your part ahead of this historic vote and to do more work in the future in your role as representative to take on the uncomfortable choices that the climate crisis has given us.” I thank the people of Guelph, who inspired me to work on this challenge with them, and I look forward to working on this across Canada as well.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Guelph and his predecessor, the member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, for their comments, especially as they related to rural areas. The member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington indicated that the maple syrup season in 2012 was a failure, but he failed to mention that this year was a record crop, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of quality. I remember as a young person in the 1950s and 1960s that we would plant our spring grain in March, and this year it is barely being planted in May. Therefore, yes, climate does change.

If these issues are such an emergency, why has it taken so long, with barely five weeks left in the session, for the Liberal Party to bring this to our attention? We found out today that in 2016, the government was behind its targets by 44 megatonnes; in 2017, it was behind by 66 megatonnes, and by 2018, it was behind by 79 megatonnes of carbon emissions. We can see that it is going in the wrong direction, yet the Liberals have the temerity to stand and say they are meeting their targets, when clearly they are not.

Why did the government wait so long into its mandate, with 23 or 24 days left, to address this emergency situation?

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Kitchener—Conestoga had maybe three questions there, but he is clever at getting a few questions in at one time.

One of his questions was about farms. Yes, there was a bumper crop last year, but there is uncertainty about what will happen this year in terms of floods. The University of Guelph is developing crops that have deeper roots, because one never knows when the next drought is going to hit.

In terms of our goals, according to COP21, we needed a pan-Canadian plan to be put in place by the end of 2019. We have done this. We will likely have to change it because of Alberta, but we do have a plan in place. Then, from 2020 to 2030, we have to meet our objectives on COP21, and they are not linear. It is not that we start at the average and stay at the average. We have to ramp up. As we implement changes, we will see them take hold across the country, and we know that we will get there with the help of Canadians.

We are on the right track, and I am really excited to see the economic and environmental opportunities as a result of our programs.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government thinks we have a climate emergency before us. We do, and I am glad the government has finally realized that. However, the Liberals have taken actions that are contrary to the action that is required. For example, the Liberal government has adopted Harper's emissions targets, and we are not even going to meet those targets. I do not know how the Liberals will address the issue at hand. In fact, there are those, such as the NDP and others, who want the government to take on more ambitious targets, but it is refusing to do so. From that perspective, to boot, the government has also bought a 65-year-old, leaky pipeline.

How does the member square all of this, when Liberals say there is a climate emergency and that they are acting on it?

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can answer with just two words: Bill C-369. We have a way of evaluating environmentally sensitive projects such as a pipeline, but we are looking at having that pipeline provide a cleaner source of energy for old coal technologies used around the world. It will also give an economic benefit to enable us to pay for the transition into the new economy, which is something we have been very public about. The environment and the economy are connected. It is a matter of getting sustainable development of our environment using bills such as the one that is in the other place, Bill C-369, to have upstream and downstream emissions be part of the approval process. There are 156 conditions, and counting, that need to be met, including the indigenous conditions in that case.

We will work together with indigenous brothers and sisters and with the transition into the new economy.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my fantastic and enthusiastic colleague from Cowichan—Malahat—Langford in British Columbia.

The matter before us today is very important. I am honoured to rise in the House to talk about the challenge facing our generation. I am speaking on behalf of my constituents and on behalf of Montrealers, Quebeckers and Canadians.

Let me digress for a moment and talk about forced migration around the world.

In the past decade, growing numbers of people have had to flee their homes, never to return. Today, 66.5 million people, about 1% of the global population, have been forcibly displaced. Never in our history have so many people been displaced. Violence, armed conflict, persecution, massive development projects that destroy environments and ways of life, extreme poverty and environmental issues, including climate change, are forcing people to leave their homes and their communities.

Asylum seekers and internally displaced people leave their homes because they fear for their lives, their freedom or their safety. These people need peace and stability. That is why an organization like Development and Peace—Caritas Canada works with organizations around the world to meet the basic needs of those who have been affected by some of the worst migrant crises the world has ever seen.

In order to put an end to forced migration, it is imperative that we address the root causes. To do that, we must work together as citizens, organizations, civil society, humanitarian actors and multilateral organizations, but also as parliamentarians and as a government, to address this historically unprecedented challenge.

This situation will likely only get worse, because climate change and climate warming will also create what are known as climate refugees. These are people who have to leave home when natural disasters, such as rising sea levels, make their homes, cities or communities uninhabitable. Obviously, there is the tragedy affecting all of the nations and peoples who live on small islands in the Pacific. We know that those islands are at risk of becoming submerged by rising seas.

That is not all. Some shorelines and islands like the Magdalen Islands are eroding. Droughts, floods and forest fires are going to make some areas uninhabitable. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of people the world over will be displaced and will have no choice but to relocate because the temperature of the planet will have climbed 3°C, 4°C or 5°C. That would be catastrophic.

The debate we are having today is not just about the cost of investing in renewable energy, public transit or the electrification of our transportation, or the cost of constructing our buildings differently, using a circular economy approach and salvaged materials. The debate is also about the cost of doing nothing.

In Canada, the people who are most concerned about climate change are certainly young people, environmentalists and the NDP, but also insurance companies. They are scratching their heads because payouts for people whose homes are destroyed by fires or floods keep going up every year.

I do not have to go too far back to illustrate that. Last summer, in British Columbia, forests were razed to the ground and people were displaced by forest fires the likes of which we had never seen. There is not only a human cost, but also a tremendous economic cost.

According to figures from recent media reports, 66 people died in last summer's heat wave in Montreal. They got so hot they died.

Climate change is going to accelerate and intensify. If we do nothing, this sort of situation will happen more frequently. Obviously, I cannot overlook the flooding we just experienced in the Outaouais region and in other parts of Quebec and Ontario.

Climate change and extreme temperatures are getting worse, and this is going to radically change our way of life. There is a reason people in Montreal, across Quebec and everywhere in Canada are taking action. People of all ages, both young and not so young, are calling on our governments to take action and make the right decisions, even if those decisions might be painful or politically costly in the short term. That is our duty and our responsibility.

Aurélien Barrau, a French astrophysicist I really admire, said something in a recent interview that really struck a chord. We have 12 years left to act. Without a major course correction right now, future generations will see us as criminals because we did not make the right decisions and did not change our habits. We continue to exploit natural resources like we always have, use yesterday's dirty energy sources, give society's biggest polluters a free pass and subsidize oil and gas companies. That is what we are doing. We are not doing enough. That is why our constituents say we must take action. We need to change course now. Unfortunately, the Liberal government is not getting the job done.

Some will say that I am saying this because I am an opposition MP and the election is coming. I will repeat what I told a journalist not that long ago. I will rely on numbers and facts. I will even rely on reports from Environment and Climate Change Canada, from the current government. In 2017, Environment Canada told us we were going to miss the Conservatives' targets for 2030 by 66 megatonnes. Last year, that same department told us we were going to miss the targets by 79 megatonnes.

Then the Liberal government told us that we are heading in the right direction. How did it come to that conclusion? Where does that information come from? I understand that this is politics, and the Liberals are trying to convince people to re-elect them because they are such nice people. However, the reality is that they are going to miss targets that were already insufficient.

The Liberals promised to stop subsidizing oil and gas companies, but they are still doing that. They give them roughly $3 billion a year, and that does not include the $10 billion from Export Development Canada. That is huge.

Then they sprinkle a few dollars here and there for public transit, not to mention their totally inadequate plan for vehicle electrification. The Liberals say that they are offering a $5,000 subsidy to people who purchase a zero-emission vehicle, but they are not telling the whole story. It is a bit like buying a car. We must be sure to read to the very end of the contract to find out what is in the fine print. The Liberals fail to mention that this subsidy applies to a maximum of 20,000 vehicles a year, which represents 1% of all new cars sold in a year. The Liberals' target is to have zero-emission vehicles account for 100% of vehicles sold by 2040, but today, zero-emission vehicles only account for about 1% of vehicles sold, and the Liberals' plan is to increase that number by just 1% per year. I do not know how they expect to go from 1% to 100% with that plan. The numbers just do not add up.

The government talks a good game, but it is not taking action. On the contrary, it is making decisions that go against our responsibility to future generations. That is why I am disappointed that the Liberals voted against the NPD's motion on the climate emergency. It set out real measures and real decisions to help us make the necessary first steps. Unfortunately, all of the Liberal members of the House voted against our motion. Today, they moved their motion on the climate emergency after we moved ours, but their motion is weak and vague, and it does not make any real commitments. That is extremely disappointing.

Once again, the Liberals are making a big show of saying how important science is. Of course we agree that science is important, but the IPCC report says that we have 12 years to take action. If we spend the next 12 years doing the same thing we have been doing for the past four years, then we will not meet the target. We have a responsibility to act for our children and our grandchildren.

[Kim Rudd, Liberal, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to a comment my colleague from Kitchener—Conestoga made that apparently there had been no discussion about climate change in three and a half years and that it appeared we had to use the word emergency in order for anyone to pay attention. I am very pleased he now recognizes that climate change is indeed a problem. I thank him very much for saying that.

My hon. colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie talked about insurance. I come from a rural riding, as my former colleague did. All the municipalities within it have declared climate change an emergency in their work. One of the reasons they have done this is because of the insurance costs. We live in Lake Ontario and all the water up here is coming down.

The Governor of the Bank of Canada just put out his report today. He said that the insured damage to property and infrastructure averaged about $1.7 billion per year between 2008 and 2017, which is eight and a half times higher than the annual average of $200 million from 1983 to 1992.

Where does the hon. member think that $1.7 billion will come from? As the insurance companies are paying out that money, I assume they are going to want to recover those costs.