Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member of Parliament for Edmonton Strathcona.
Teck Frontier was never the solution the Prime Minister and the Liberals said it was, and it is not the solution the Conservatives are now claiming it is. Teck is another example of the Prime Minister's failure of leadership on fighting climate change and creating jobs for the future.
I am surprised that we are here for this so-called emergency debate. How does this debate constitute an emergency?
Teck pulled out of a project that was a bad decision economically, given that its business case relied on extremely high oil prices, for decades to come, of over $95 a barrel, much higher than what Teck told its own investors and almost double what our oil prices are currently. It was an even worse environmental decision, given the astronomical CO2 emissions from the project and the impact on land, air and water. The Teck Frontier project would have emitted four to six megatons of CO2 every year in its operation. To put that into context for my Conservative colleagues, four megatons of CO2 is equivalent to the emissions that all the light-duty vehicles in British Columbia produce every year. That is every single car, every single small truck and every single personal vehicle. The Teck Frontier mine would have emitted that amount every single year.
The greenhouse gas emissions from the Frontier mine are fundamentally inconsistent with Canada's climate targets and the Paris Agreement commitments. When we are already so far away from achieving our climate commitments, anyone serious about meeting our climate obligations, our obligations to our international commitments and to future generations, could see that this project could not be approved. Nevertheless, the Liberals looked as if they were seriously considering moving forward with the project. The Liberals committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, but this project would have emitted four to six megatons of CO2 every year until 2067. It just shows that the Liberals' words were just more empty words.
The Liberals keep saying they want to balance the economy and the environment, but they are failing at both. They decided to buy a pipeline for $4.4 billion and now want to borrow an additional $12.6 billion to construct the Trans Mountain pipeline, which will increase tanker traffic on the coast, where my constituents and I live, sevenfold and increase our greenhouse gas emissions in the middle of a climate crisis.
The Teck Frontier mine, the proposal that the Liberal government was seriously considering, would have put endangered species in northern Alberta at high risk, would have devastated irreplaceable wilderness, would have had detrimental impacts on treaty rights and would have knocked us even further off track from our climate goals.
Instead of empty promises, pipelines and bad projects, let us invest in long-term sustainable jobs in Alberta and across Canada. Investing in transit, retrofit, green infrastructure and clean energy will not only help us meet our climate targets but can also provide good family-sustaining jobs in a low-carbon economy.
New Democrats proposed a plan that would have created at least 300,000 good jobs in the clean energy future for the next four years, but we have not seen that kind of leadership from the Liberal government. We need to build zero-emission vehicles here at home and we need to make it easier to buy and charge zero-emission vehicles no matter where we go. We need to be not only producing electric vehicles in Canada but also providing incentives targeted to made-in-Canada vehicles only, giving manufacturers a powerful incentive to build. This safeguards good jobs and strengthens our auto sector.
We need to electrify our fleets, making public transit cleaner, more convenient and more affordable. We need to provide training for workers to transition into the low-carbon economy. We need to provide support for workers, for families and for communities so that the changing economy actually works for them. We need to boost clean-tech research and manufacturing with “buy Canadian” procurement. We need to create good family-sustaining jobs by building infrastructure in every region of our country.
We could save families $900 or more a year in home energy costs with energy-efficient upgrades. Making bold investments in energy efficiency not only pays off in terms of reducing emissions but also brings savings on energy bills. It also means good jobs in communities from coast to coast to coast.
We need a government that is committed to supporting workers today, not with imaginary jobs and projects with no business case, but supporting workers while equipping them with the skills and opportunities of the future. It means making sure that Canadian workers have access to meaningful training funds to use when they need them.
I also want to take a moment to mention an incredible organization, Iron & Earth, which is a worker-led initiative. These are oil and gas workers who want to work building renewable energy projects, who organized to support each other and who advocate on their own behalf. They are not only supporting their fellow workers, demonstrating how their skills are transferable and connecting these workers with training, resources and a network they require to position themselves in the new renewable energy industry, but they are also calling on the government to implement a national upskilling initiative, investing in training that would empower oil and gas, coal and indigenous workers to get into the renewable energy economy. These oil and gas workers see the opportunities that could be possible if the government truly took its commitment to workers and the climate seriously, but successive Liberal and Conservative governments have left workers to navigate these shifts on their own.
Workers in Alberta are feeling the impact of job losses, and 19,000 workers lost their jobs just in the last month. The answer to this problem is not projects that are economic and environmental nightmares. The answer is not empty promises of jobs from projects that have no business case. The answer is investing in good family-sustaining jobs all across the country.
We need to fulfill Canada's G20 commitment to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and we need to redirect these funds to low-carbon initiatives. We also need to reform Export Development Canada's mandate to focus on providing support for Canadian sustainable energy projects rather than the petroleum industry.
We need to truly support workers, industry, research and innovation. These are the kinds of investments that would drive real results, creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs and helping to boost the economy across the country. It would also put Canada on the path to meeting ambitious science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets that we need if we are going to prevent catastrophic climate change from dangerous global warming beyond 1.5° Celsius.
The answer is a plan that creates good jobs to support hard-working families and upholds indigenous rights. The answer is a made-in-Canada green new deal.