Madam Speaker, as in every debate, when I am faced with a motion, I try to figure out the intent and what the motion hopes to achieve.
As I read my colleague's motion, looking for the intent, I was reminded of a comedian that I like, Yvon Deschamps. Deschamps is a master of irony, and his method is simply to take a social issue to its logical extreme to show how absurd it is. That is truly what it reminded me of.
In reading the motion, I thought about my first days in the House of Commons and the rallying cry of my Conservative colleagues, “Build a pipeline!”, which I found to be a bit ludicrous. It reminded me of what we saw in the United States a few years ago with Sarah Palin and her famous line, “Drill, baby, drill”. It seemed like those people had no understanding of the climate crisis we are facing and the harmful effects that fossil fuels can have.
Let us leave that aside for now. I might come back to the motion's intent later, unless it comes up along the way. I suggest we do the most useful thing we can do when faced with any proposal, namely analyze the text.
Motion No. 61 calls on the government to recognize that it is impossible to replace fossil fuels. Another way to say that is that fossil fuels are “irreplaceable”. This implies that they are without equivalent, that nothing is equivalent to fossil fuels.
Personally, when I talk about something that is irreplaceable and without equivalent, what immediately comes to mind is water, which is indeed irreplaceable and has no equivalent. It could also be the air we breathe. My relationship with my girlfriend is certainly irreplaceable, and so is my son. However, I do not think oil is irreplaceable. In fact, let us go a step further and say that red wine and cheese may be irreplaceable, but I do not think oil is.
I seem to be missing something about what my colleague is trying to say by claiming that oil is irreplaceable. This strikes me more as something Yvon Deschamps would say in his act than as something a politician might say, but whatever.
The first paragraph of the motion reads as follows:
(i) replacing oil and gas with more environmentally sustainable options is not technologically or economically feasible,
I do not know where my colleague lives, but there are already many technologically and economically feasible proposals for replacing oil. These proposals and these new technologies would have benefits for our economy. The first thing I think of is the battery supply chain, which we are currently studying at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.
We should remember that it is now possible to store energy and that battery efficiency is increasing exponentially, which is quite promising. We can do this in Canada because we have everything we need here, including critical metals and, in Quebec, the rare earth elements needed to produce permanent magnets for electric vehicle batteries. There are potential options with a very low carbon footprint. I do not know if my colleague knows about them.
There is also green hydrogen, as opposed to grey hydrogen, that can be produced from biomass and can be used for heavy-duty transportation. I am thinking about the forestry industry, which is an excellent candidate to replace the fossil fuel industry. Thanks to the bioeconomy, we now have replacements for many petrochemical products.
This may interest my colleague, who said earlier that the oil industry accounts for many jobs, such as chemists and engineers. The Standing Committee on Natural Resources heard from experts in the forestry industry who said that all of these chemists and engineers could play a part in the transition to forest biomass-based bioindustries, which would significantly reduce our carbon footprint.
Therefore, I think that to claim that it is impossible to replace oil and gas products is an irony worthy of Yvon Deschamps, the absurdist comedian I mentioned earlier.
The second paragraph of the motion states:
(ii) Canada's energy needs require the use of oil and gas to heat Canadian homes, schools and hospitals, to propel vehicles, to bring food to Canadian tables, and to produce electricity,
I live in Quebec, where most homes, including my own and those of my parents and friends, are heated using hydroelectricity. The same is true for many schools. Today, some schools are even heated using forestry waste, or biomass.
The same is true for hospitals. Electricity is also used to propel vehicles. Countries around the world are making the transition to electric vehicles. I do not know whether my colleague has ever heard of them, but we have been talking about them for 20 years. We have kicked into high gear when it comes to the electrification of transportation. It is one of the best ways to reduce our carbon footprint, bring food to Canadian tables and produce electricity. Of course, there are places that produce electricity using oil, but Quebec is certainly not one of them. This motion is clearly not directed at Quebec.
The third paragraph of the motion says, “Canadian oil and natural gas are produced with the highest environmental standards in the world, and domestic producers are global environmental leaders and responsible corporate citizens”.
Right away, that reminded me of big tobacco. It was like listening to big tobacco in the 1990s. Members may remember that, back in the 1990s, cigarette makers were pushing smooth, velvety flavours, smooth cigarettes. At one point, there was even an ad about the athlete's cigarette. Talking about oil and natural gas that comply with environmental standards is like talking about a healthy cigarette. It is a devious way to avoid addressing the real situation we are facing, which is climate change. Once again, any attempt to divine my colleague's intent brings me right back to irony.
The fourth paragraph of the motion states that “using Canadian resources creates Canadian jobs”. Sure, that may be true. At one time, Canadian natural resources, be they oil or gas, did create jobs for Canadians, but we know that is increasingly less true. Albertans need to know the truth. I encourage my colleague to tell Albertans the truth.
Let us look at the oil sands projects that have been abandoned. We know that big investment funds no longer want to get involved in the oil sands. As for Keystone XL, the last one in the running, our American neighbours have decided to make the shift towards a low-carbon economy. They dropped Keystone XL. When we came to the House, no investors wanted to commit to the Teck Frontier project. They dropped that too.
I can name one promising natural resource sector that creates jobs, and that is forestry. Our party commissioned a vast study on the entire forestry potential of Quebec, a study that is very conservative, not in the Conservative Party sense, but small “c” conservative, meaning there was no exaggeration. We know that in the long term, over 10 years, if we make the shift towards the bioeconomy, we can create 16,000 jobs in Quebec alone. This natural resource sector could create jobs, and the bioeconomy could easily be incorporated as part of a transition plan for the Alberta economy, since the skills are already there in terms of chemists and engineers working on these kinds of processes.
The fifth paragraph deals with first nations. I will go over it quickly. I need not remind my colleague of the whole kerfuffle with the Wet'suwet'en. Let us just say that there are many indigenous communities that do not look favourably on oil and gas projects.
The sixth paragraph is on the tax revenue from the fossil fuel industry. I would just like to say that, at the end of the 1970s until the early 1990s, we know that the government had to invest $70 billion to make oil sands technologies profitable. We know that. Quebec's share in that investment is 22%. Fourteen billion dollars to support the oil and gas industry. We know that, from 2017 to 2020, an extra $24 billion was invested in oil and gas. I am still waiting for the economic spinoffs from the oil industry.
My time is up, but I had so many other things to say.