Madam Speaker, in Adjournment Proceedings this evening, I am pursuing a question for which I did not receive an adequate answer on November 20.
I asked about the new legislation before us, Bill C-12, which proclaims itself as a net-zero climate accountability act. It fails on almost every point. The Green caucus is struggling with how to handle it. We want so very much to support climate accountability, but we struggle with whether we can even vote for this legislation at second reading to send it to committee.
Here is what the legislation must do as the bottom line requirement to be called accountability on net zero for climate action: We have to get the science right, we have to get the process right and we have to get the accountability right. Right now, it has three strikes and this legislation is out.
Getting the science right means that in the preamble, one does not cite one aspect of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change science, that to hold to 1.5°C we must have net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, all the while ignoring the closer-term reality of the emergency and the urgency. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also says that to have any hope of holding to 1.5°C, we need massive reductions in greenhouse gases in the next decade.
It is not an even pace of having three decades so we take our time and do it in even bits every 10 years. No, we cannot do that. Most of the heavy lifting has to be done before 2030. That is not clear in the legislation. As a matter of fact, it is denied by the way the legislation is structured with a first milestone year in 2030.
Next is getting the process right. I am honestly baffled that the Liberal government appears to have ignored the experience garnered in other countries with climate accountability legislation. The U.K. has had its legislation since 2008. There are lessons to be learned there. Similarly, New Zealand, which brought in its legislation, learned from the U.K.'s experience, as did Denmark. All of the climate accountability legislation in countries where it is working have relied on expert advice. To the extent they have an advisory group, they are experts.
This legislation wants to have an advisory body that seems to be another version of a multistakeholder group without expertise. That is a very significant error. I like multistakeholder groups. I used to be vice-chair of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which was destroyed and repealed. It was originally put in place by the Mulroney government, by the way, and it was repealed under Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012. We should bring a national round table or something like that back, but not through the backdoor of Bill C-12, where we need expertise, not multistakeholder advice.
The third area of accountability that fails is having the mechanisms to hold the government to account and getting them right. This bill does not use mandatory language around the minister meeting a target. It is interesting. I have been conferring with colleagues in New Zealand and they are looking at saying, if the target is missed, that means the government will have to make up what it missed by buying credits and paying for them. Their finance department is getting ready to book the costs of missing the target. Therefore, there is a financial penalty and the government will then be keeping its eye on the ball to avoid that penalty.
The bottom line here is that the Paris Agreement now has the support of the United States, President-elect Joe Biden has appointed a high-level special envoy in John Kerry. Canada should be jumping up right now to be bold and ambitious.
This bill is not what we need. I hope we can see changes before it comes back at third stage and report stage.