Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hamilton Centre for his powerful words. I also want to begin by thanking our colleague from Winnipeg Centre for bringing forward this bill, which makes such an important contribution to a conversation about an issue that many of us feel is the most critical issue facing not just our country, but our planet.
I want to acknowledge that I am speaking today from the unceded lands of the Wet'suwet'en people here in my home community of Smithers, British Columbia. It is such an honour to speak to this bill at this juncture in time when we are searching for answers so desperately. After decades and decades of knowing about the severity of the climate crisis and after so many false starts, the sad fact is that, as a country, we are failing. All of our actions over all of that time have had so little impact.
I started becoming concerned about the climate crisis as a teenager. Now I am old enough to have teenagers of my own, yet so little has been done. Time and time again, we have made commitments, and set targets, timelines, and dates. Time and time again, we have failed to act in a concerted and consistent enough manner to realize the goals we have made for ourselves.
What Canada has shown is a commitment to building and expanding the fossil fuel infrastructure of this country. This has erased so much of the progress we have made through things like energy efficiency and clean energy production. With so little time left on the clock, we are still searching for ways to mobilize our government and fight the climate crisis, this climate emergency, with the seriousness and dedication it demands from us.
Canadians, especially young Canadians, and my colleague spoke so eloquently to this, want some mechanisms to break this pattern of complacency and apathy. They want to hold today's decision-makers to account for their promises, not at some distant date well outside the time horizons of our political process, elections and political calculuses, or the investment horizons of the private sector. After decades of failure, we know that does not work. What Canadians want is regular, binding, short-term and enforceable accountability measures that hold today's leaders to account.
This bill before us, Bill C-232, has a number of strengths. To me, its greatest strength and most important contribution is that it centres our work on the climate crisis and it centres in that work the rights of indigenous people. This is such an important thing to bear in mind and keep at the centre as we go forward together.
It was good to see in the government's own accountability legislation, for all of its flaws, a passing reference to the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. By comparison though, Bill C-232 calls not only for the full involvement of indigenous people in the creation of a climate emergency action framework, but it also calls for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to ensure that the framework upholds all of the provisions of the U.N. declaration and that it specifically takes into account indigenous knowledge and science.
Reading this bill and reading, in particular, the clauses around the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People made me think of all the indigenous nations in northwest B.C., this incredible part of our country that I am so deeply honoured to represent in this House. Indigenous people in northwest B.C. are on the front-line of climate impacts, and the changing climate is affecting so many aspects of their daily lives.
Thinking about our environment and thinking about the resources and goods produced by this bountiful place, there are few species that are more iconic than wild salmon. All five species of wild salmon swim up our rivers from the ocean every single year. In the fall, if someone goes on social media, they will see so many photos of smiling people processing salmon, drying salmon, smoking salmon, sharing recipes, and sharing techniques and traditions that have been handed down generation after generation.
It is at the very centre of the way of life in northwest B.C. However, with warming ocean waters and ocean acidification, the introduction of invasive species and droughts affecting spawning channels, things are looking very precarious for this iconic species.
I spoke today to Walter Joseph, the fisheries manager at the office of the Wet'suwet'en, and he spoke about the challenges in the tributaries where the salmon spawn, but what really has Walter worried, is what is happening in the ocean. He described the ocean as a black box. When the salmon go out to the ocean we do not know what happens. What we do know is that, for so many wild salmon stocks, the numbers are declining every single year, and we know that climate is having a huge impact on that.
On Haida Gwaii, we have seen tremendous die-offs in the yellow cedar, a tree species that is so critical to the Haida people. We know from work done by the University of British Columbia that this is a direct result of low winter precipitation and warmer temperatures. A team from the University of Victoria also found that sea level rise on Haida Gwaii is greater than anywhere else along our coast.
In the eastern part of our region we have seen the mountain pine beetle ravage our forests. We have seen years with extreme wildfires and 2018 was one of the worst years on record for wildfires. It left thousands upon thousands of hectares scorched. It left communities evacuated. It burned buildings from Fort St. James and Burns Lake all the way to Telegraph Creek in the northern part of this beautiful region.
Speaking of Telegraph Creek, I wanted to call to mind a young fellow who is really remarkable. His name is Montay Beaubien-Day. He is a 13-year-old member of the Tahltan and the Wet'suwet'en nations. When Monty saw his family's ranch in Telegraph Creek burn in the massive wildfires of 2018, it inspired him to join with other young people, such as Haana Edenshaw from the Haida nation and 13 others from across the country in a lawsuit against the Government of Canada for failing to attack the climate emergency.
At the heart of that suit brought forward by these young people is a deep-seated frustration with Canada's inaction on the climate emergency. The plaintiffs went to court because they wanted this country to be accountable for its promises and to take responsibility for the future it is handing their generation. How did we get to the point where our children, the young generation, has to take the country to court to ensure that they inherit a basic semblance of a livable future?
Indigenous communities are not just on the front lines of climate change when it comes to impacts, but when it comes to solutions as well. I have been so inspired by the work done by the Heiltsuk's climate action team on the central coast led by climate action coordinator. They are engaging residents and creating a community energy plan grounded in the Heiltsuk community's needs. Their plan is to reduce dependency on fossil fuels, bring the community back in line with Heiltsuk values and laws, improve the health and safety and create a green economy for the Heiltsuk people. Their aim is to have 129 heat pumps installed by the end of March. They are for almost one-third of the homes in their community and they will reduce emissions by as much as five tonnes per household.
I think of the Nuxalk Nation, which is also on the central coast. Their clean energy initiative is focused on building a run of the river hydro project which will be able to reduce the Bella Coola Valley's diesel consumption by up to 80%. On Haida Gwaii, the Swiilawiid Sustainability Society is engaging island residents, especially youth, in a conversation about a clean energy future.
I spoke with chief councillor of Skidegate, Billy Yovanovich, a couple of summers ago. His community has installed 350 heat pumps. The Haida are leading in so many other ways. Many of these communities are working hard to take action on climate change and these are not big communities. They are not metropolitan centres.
These are small villages, many of them with only a few hundred residents, yet they understand inherently that they have a responsibility to be a part of the solution. They are taking responsibility for their part of the challenge, and Canada needs to have their backs. The impacts we are seeing will not slow without our country also taking responsibility and doing its share. The sad truth—