Debates of Oct. 19th, 2023

Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I urge people to have a look at the Speaker's ruling from yesterday. Again, page 8 reads, “This includes coming up with fake titles for members in order to mock them or making comments that question their courage, honesty or commitment to their country.”

There is a lot of that in debates lately, so let us try to bring that debate further up. I know the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay is really wanting to talk to the bill at hand.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think I am getting so much interference because I am getting to the punchline. Then, I will move on, but I think it would be unfair to intimidate me and have my ability to speak circumscribed, because it is about what our priorities are. Our priority, as New Democrats, has been workers, and particularly people from the natural resources industry, like where I come from. I live in a mining town that is looking for the clean energy future, and nobody in my town would be given a $719 bottle of wine. What was in that wine?

I am coming to the conclusion. At the end of this night with these four Conservatives, paid for apparently by my cousin Dan McTeague over in the U.K., meeting somebody we do not know, they had a bottle of champagne for $1,791 Canadian. That is obviously not sparkling Baby Duck. I do not know who bought that for them.

I ask that, because what we are talking about is the insecurity of workers at a time of transition. Do we wish there was a transition? No, we do not. We are used to living the way we have lived. I have lived through transitions, and it is not pretty. Cobalt is where we lost every single silver mining job in one summer. When our iron ore mines shut down, there was no future there. We know the word “transition”, and we know it is not pretty. This was something we heard from workers in Alberta and other regions. They asked what is “just” about a transition and how we could make it so they have some place to go. This was the New Democratic plan from the beginning, which we negotiated with the Liberals.

The Liberals initially said that they were going to put a jobs centre as their solution. We said that a jobs centre sends a message that we are turning out the lights and leaving. Where are we going to put those jobs centres? Are we going to put them in Fort McMurray or Saint John's? We needed something broader and something bigger, so we pushed for the sustainable jobs legislation that would serve as the framework. This is the important thing: We need a framework around how these tax credits would be implemented. We know that if we do not have a plan, it will be just a gong show of friends, pals and lobbyists who are going to be sucking up this money, as unfortunately happens all too often in Canada.

We need to compete the way the United States has. They brought an all-of-government approach to make sure they were making a truly transformative revolution.

I will say another thing they talked to us about when we were in Germany. The Germans were very concerned about the IRA, because of the competitiveness. Over in Europe, 3,000 or 4,000 kilometres away, they were concerned about how they were going to compete against Joe Biden and the massive amount of investment that is moving out of Europe and moving to the United States. We are right on the American border, so when $33 billion gets sucked out of Alberta, it goes stateside.

In my region, talking to miners and mining companies, the first thing they said to me was, “Did you see the tax credits Joe Biden put in? They are really interesting to us.” We have to be able to say that we are here too, we will compete and we will make sure that the investment stays here.

Again, I am dealing with the Liberal government. We are trying to make this work. We are saying, for example, that there are a lot of things missing in this plan. What is the sustainable jobs secretariat? Is that just going to be some desk in some minister's office, or is it going to have a true mandate? What is the partnership council? Are we actually looking at something credible here?

What we are going to be insisting on, while the Conservatives try to filibuster that committee and that legislation, is checks and balances to make sure that regional representation is there. We want to make sure that labour is there with enough voices representing enough regions of the country, because they are the ones who are going to be dealing with the implementation of that, not us. We want to make sure that indigenous rights are fully respected and implemented, and part of that is in the tax credit incentives. They are going to be different in different areas, and they are certainly going to be different in the opportunities for indigenous people. We need to make sure they are front and centre.

The other thing we really want to know is that we have a youth voice on the stewardship council, because we want to make sure that those who are being most affected by the climate disaster that is unfolding have their future interests at stake. We need to make sure that the tax credits work, we need to make sure that they are being implemented and we need to have better data collection. What the Liberals are offering us on data collection is insufficient. There would not be a job left in Canada by the time they report back.

There need to be mechanisms that come back to Parliament to tell us if this is working. If it does not work, it is is going to affect our environment, number one, but it is going to affect working-class families from one end of the country to the other.

What we were really surprised by, again, with the all-of-government approach taken by the Biden administration, is that we have seen, in one year, a staggering turnaround in terms of projects getting off the ground, in terms of jobs, in terms of commitments.

That is where we are at as New Democrats. We believe that we have a huge opportunity right now. Is this bill perfect? It is far from perfect. What we can do in a minority Parliament is come in with good plans and good amendments to make it happen, unlike our Conservative colleagues, who want to go back to the 19th century.

It is not going to happen. I am sorry. That world is gone. What we need to do is to say that we have an opportunity and if we do not compete, we are going to be at the side of the road because the United States is moving ahead.

I will just conclude on this. Let us consider Texas. Texas, politically, is about as out there and as right wing as the Conservative backbench and yet 890,000 clean-tech jobs are in Texas right now. There is no other jurisdiction in the world right now that has invested as much in clean tech as Texas. Texas came through the most brutal heat wave, killer heat wave, able to turn on all of their air conditioners.

Meanwhile, Danielle Smith was going around saying, oh my God, if we have clean power, we are going to have to turn the power off. She was paying for these trucks to drive up and down Ottawa saying, my God, if one invests in Canada, we are going to run out of energy. What kind of premier goes around advertising, in an energy-rich province, that the lights are going to be turned off?

The reality is that if we get these clean energy projects off the ground, it is going to dramatically decrease costs for families. It is going to give the working class and middle class steady jobs and it is going to save our planet. We will go to these hearings and we will push for strong amendments.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member from Timmins—James Bay today. There was that one exchange between him and the member for Sarnia—Lambton. She started to claim that she was not a climate denier, which I found very fascinating, because, only moments before that, when she was giving a speech in this House, she made some pretty wild claims, stuff that one sees from Russian bot memes on Facebook.

She said that only 7% of the population wants to have an electric car, yet in 2022, one out of every 10 vehicles was a plug-in vehicle in Canada.

She also said that no one wants to be trapped in a snowstorm at -30° because the batteries do not work. This is completely untrue. I have been driving electric vehicles here since I was elected in 2015. They work in the winter.

She also said, and this is the best one, because this is the meme that one always sees, “They catch fire”, as though we should be afraid of an electric car because the battery is going to catch fire.

The outrage and the misinformation that is being distributed by Conservatives is what gives them the reputation that they are climate deniers.

Would the member for Timmins—James Bay agree with that?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my deep tradition in Parliament to not cast aspersions on any but to only speak to facts, so I will only speak to facts.

The member for Sarnia—Lambton lives on Highway 401 and Highway 401 is the heart of Canada's auto belt. Canada's auto belt has gone all in on EV technology. Here is the simple thing. Those jobs could go to Ohio or they could stay in Canada.

We see the Conservatives do misinformation after misinformation about EV, about critical minerals, about battery technology, as if our workers cannot make proper cars.

I am sorry. Canadians can make the best cars on the planet. The Conservatives and the Conservative leader attack EV technology and the battery technology, but my region is dependent on those jobs. We are going to get the critical minerals out of the ground. We are going to work with the companies on Highway 401. We are going to make the cars in Canada and make them sustainably.

The Conservatives do not have to drive them. They want to go back to the days of the horse and buggy, so let them.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed that the hon. member spent a lot of time on sponsored travel, so I would like to ask him a question. In 2022, he took a trip to Berlin, Germany that cost $10,500. The trip was paid for by the FES, partnered with politicized NGOs, to attack Israel, SHAML, a radical anti-Israel NGO, and Mossawa, which is one of the main Israeli Arab NGOs involved in the political demonization of Israel.

He held a joint press conference with Hezbollah in 2004 and HDIP, which promotes international political attacks on Israel.

How could he justify that?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as we saw earlier today, the Conservatives attempted to use the horrific kidnappings by Hamas to promote the oil and gas agenda. I do not say these things are lies. I do not need to. I do not even need to respond to that kind of gutter talk.

The fact that the Conservatives would say that going to meet the German Chancellor and German parliamentarians about energy was somehow tied to the terror attacks in Israel shows how marginal they are and how deplorable the actions are of a party that will say anything, do anything and misrepresent anything at a time of such horror, tragedy and killings. I would tell the member shame on him.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I would like unanimous consent to table the member's sponsored travel.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I am already hearing a number of noes.

We have a point of order from the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am more than willing to put out our sponsored travel. Are they willing? The member for Cumberland—Colchester had the $1,800 bottle of wine. Would they put the documents on the table and tell us who bought that wine?

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

We are getting into debate.

Questions and comments, the hon. members for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question. Why are we talking about sustainable jobs and not a just transition?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot hear myself.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Order.

The hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. People can have conversations in our lovely lobbies. In fact, there are even cubicles just outside where people can have conversations without bothering everyone. They are very comfortable, so I invite members who are not interested in this debate to go there.

My question is very simple. I would like to know why the Liberals and the NDP are afraid of the words, “just transition”. Why are they talking about sustainable jobs instead?

That seems like a very “Canadian” choice of words to me, a well-rehearsed talking point. Why not talk about a just transition?

Why is that not the bill's title?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, words do matter, and when we met with workers about what they wanted, they wanted to know there was a future. That was why the words “sustainable jobs” meant something. We heard that from workers.

In terms of international obligations, we need to ensure in the legislation that this is not just an island by itself. It must meet the international commitments we have made on issues like the just transition.

It is very important, when I am in Edmonton meeting with electrical workers who want to know what their future looks like, to say this is about jobs. This is about tomorrow. Once we have established trust with the working class, we will move further ahead because there is no energy transition without workers at the table. That is why the language matters.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have been a member of Parliament for eight years. I have listened to a lot of speeches in this place. Rarely have I seen as many points of order during one speech as what I just witnessed. I think that demonstrates just how thin-skinned the Conservatives are on this issue.

What I was really interested in—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Mr. Speaker, they are heckling right now. They continue to show how thin-skinned they are.

My honourable friend was talking about oil and gas profits. He made a point about all the wealth companies are generating and asked what they are doing with it. They are not investing in workers. They are firing workers. They are doing stock buybacks. They are doing dividend payouts.

Can my hon. colleague talk about that? It seems to me that rather than standing on the side of workers, we are hearing Conservatives parrot what the CEOs of the oil and gas industry say. I am wondering if he could expand on that.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very important question because we saw big oil racking up $200 billion in profits in the most catastrophic climate year on record.

Rich Kruger, Suncor's CEO, said there was a “sense of urgency” to make as much money as possible. I think of the 200,000 people who were displaced. I think of the buildings that were lost. I think of the terrifying situations we had and the obligation the CEOs have to deal with this.

The Conservatives live in a bubble of pretending that the world does not exist. Meanwhile, there are over 100 major lawsuits right now against Exxon and Suncor in jurisdictions like California and Colorado because they knew back in the 1960s and 1980s that they were burning the future of the planet. Shell, in 1988, warned that by the time issues became clear in the 2000s, it might be too late, but it took the time to raise its oil platforms six feet on the offshore rigs so that when the ice caps melted, it could still make money.

That is their responsibility and we will call that out.

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

Mr. Speaker, I think of Bill C-49 and Bill C-50. Bill C-49 had phenomenal support, not only from the House of Commons but also from the premiers in Atlantic Canada. It was all about renewable energy and future clean, green jobs. There are literally hundreds of thousands of potential jobs from there to Bill C-50, and we recognize the future. There is a need to develop, promote and encourage those green jobs. However, the Conservatives, as they voted against Bill C-49, are now going to be voting against Bill C-50.

The member often makes reference to climate change deniers. Why does he feel the Conservatives are challenging these good, futuristic middle-class jobs that are going to be there today and tomorrow?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. My grandfather was a coal miner and had to leave the coal mines because there was no future there. That is when he went to work in the gold mines and broke his back underground. My mother is a miner's daughter. This is what we grew up with.

When the jobs went out, I never heard the Conservatives say they cared. We lost jobs and the pensions of the workers at Kerr-Addison, Pamour miners were ripped off and Elliot Lake went down. We are in a situation of transition, and I think of the people in Atlantic Canada who have had to travel too often to find jobs.

Right now, we are competing with the United States offshore in the Atlantic, and it is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore wind. We can either get in the game and provide sustainable jobs for the communities out there or sit on the sidelines and let the Americans take them. I am not willing to let the Americans take our opportunities.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I see that I received applause from a Conservative. Apart from you, Mr. Speaker, he is the only one who still claps for me. We will see how long that lasts.

The Bloc Québécois's position is clear. It is imperative that we change our energy trajectory so that Canada, which still includes Quebec, for now, contributes to the effort to prevent average temperatures from rising by 1.5°C. That is essential. We are talking about the future of humanity, the health of our people, the safety of our communities and the future of generations to come. We have to make the effort. That means we have to stop ratcheting up our fossil fuel production. That is point number one. The International Energy Agency says we must not start any new oil and gas production projects. By 2030, we need to gradually reduce oil production, which is part of the problem.

It is completely wrong to think that some kind of capture technology is going to let us increase oil production while reducing our absolute emissions. I am not talking about emissions per barrel, but absolute emissions. These are basic scientific facts. By reducing our oil production, we will gain access to large sums of public money, which is currently being disproportionately invested in fossil fuels. This money could be directed elsewhere so that Canada can transition to a 21st-century economy, focused on the long term, on the future of coming generations and on renewable energy.

We stand in solidarity with the workers who will have to participate in this process. When the Trans Mountain project began, we did not just say that the government should not invest money in that project and that there would be cost overruns. We know that the project is costing over $30 billion. What we said was that we should take that money that was in the Canadian public purse and use it for the transition, for good-paying jobs in the high-tech sector that produce technologies that can be exported, namely, energy storage technologies. By so doing, we would not impoverish communities in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, who are the primary victims of the lack of transition, who will be among those who will pay the most, and who will be even more disproportionately affected when finally do make the transition when it is too late and it is even more urgent.

The government has done enough greenwashing. We need to take action. Obviously, when we talk about greenwashing, I cannot help but think about this bill, which basically contains nothing of what I just talked about. There is nothing about any of that in this bill. The Liberals are saying that they want to train workers in the clean energy sector, but they are investing billions of dollars in dirty energy. Clean energy workers do not need this bill. They need an employment insurance system that works.

We learned from the member for Thérèse-De Blainville that half of all workers are not covered by employment insurance. When I look at the federal government's investment strategies, and when I look at the Conservatives' plans, I am not sure I would want to apply to set up a wind turbine project. It has been so devalued.

What would it take? First, we need commitments and principles. This bill turns the process upside down and says that workers are going to be trained. It does not begin with what needs to come first. There is no commitment and there are no principles and no targets. It proposes solutions to a problem that has not been defined. Kafka himself could not have come up with this.

Next, we need a collaborative approach. They forget sometimes, but we are in a federation. There are provinces and municipalities. There are ecosystems in the labour market. There are communities, regions, workers, unions, employers, chambers of commerce and investors. There needs to be consultation. The democratic and civic process in the communities needs to be respected, but that is not covered in the bill. The bill provides that committees will submit reports, and it is not quite clear what will be done with those reports. We know that endless reports are issued here, and we know where they end up. They end up in a place where no one reads them. That is what will happen.

Once we have done all that, then we need measures to achieve the objectives. We need to think of the workers, the communities and the first nations communities. That is not happening at all. The provincial jurisdictions will need to be respected. There will need to be requirements for the planning and production of sectoral reports that cannot solely be the federal government's responsibility.

Labour law is under provincial jurisdiction. The workforce in Quebec has been under Quebec's jurisdiction since the 1990s. Everyone knows that. There are agreements, there is funding. It has not always been easy, but we have those things today. That is not reflected in the bill.

My take on this bill is that I do not doubt the intentions behind it, although given that the title completely eliminates the concept of the just transition, one can doubt the government's intentions. However, the whole thing feels improvised to me. The bill does not define a problem, yet it tries to find solutions. It is funny how the Liberals think a report is the solution to everything.

Since being elected, I have been bewildered to learn that committees work to submit reports to the government, and we vote on motions, but the government never reads them. Why, then, would it read the reports that are going to be produced under this bill? That is not plausible. That is where things stand.

The worst part is that the bill speaks to the government's utter ignorance, whether deliberate or not—if it is deliberate, then that is even worse—of Quebec's regional realities and Quebec's labour market. It is a bit like what happened with the early childhood centres. We are way ahead when it comes to skills training and collaboration on skills training. It seems like the federal government always waits 30, 40, 20 or 15 years. It dilly-dallies before eventually saying that Quebec is right and that it will try to push the other provinces to follow Quebec's example. That is precisely what is going on here. There will need to be asymmetry.

In the 1990s, Quebec voiced its demands on workplace skills training. In the 1990s, there were discussions about professional training, which led to federal transfers to Quebec for workplace skills training. This bill is on skills training, but Quebec does that, and it is good at it. If results matter, then the government should be consulting Quebec.

On June 22, 1995, the National Assembly passed the Act to Foster the Development of Manpower Training. Since then, Quebec has been in charge of workplace training. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, this reform is based on partnerships. In 1997, Quebec created the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail. This labour market partners commission repatriated active employment measures from the federal government to Quebec, and are working together to find innovative solutions, not just in green energy, but in all sectors, because every region of Quebec is different. Who are these people? The group brings together employers, employees, labourers, the education sector, universities, vocational training schools, community organizations and economic and social ministries that are familiar with Quebec's realities. It is working. Ottawa needs to stop ignoring that.

When we have immigration files in our ridings, we wait months for labour market surveys for each immigration file when those labour market studies have already been done in each region and in each sector. They are meant to determine what the needs are, what the needs will be in the future, how to plan and how to do things better. By deliberately ignoring Quebec with this bill, the government is saying that it does not want to do better. If Quebeckers want things to be better, they can vote for the Bloc Québécois, because we always defend Quebec's jurisdictions.

What should we do with this bill? We are thinking about it. It is not easy, but maybe something can be done with it. We are thinking it over. For starters, the government needs to listen to these concerns. It needs to consult Quebec. When we asked officials in committee if they consulted Quebec, they said it did not occur to them to do so. They turned red as ripe tomatoes, much like the tomatoes grown in my riding, which are redder than those grown elsewhere. When money is being allocated to implementing the strategies in the bill, Quebec will have to get its fair share. Negotiating labour agreements has never been easy.

Moreover, the government has to honour the Paris Agreement. It also has to honour the COP26 just transition declaration. The generally accepted term in the international community is “just transition”, which emphasizes the importance of making the energy transition and doing so in a way that serves everyone now, in all provinces and all communities, as well as future generations. As for the bill's title, my mouth dried out by the time I finished saying it. That is because someone is trying to hide something.

I think there is a lot of work to be done, and I invite all parties to take the blinders off and really consider Quebec's reality and its institutions. If objectives and achieving those objectives is so important, the government should take a step back and consult the Quebec government.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member has read the legislation, which has within it the creation of a council. That council, I believe, would be around 15 members. Within that council there would be appointments of different forms of stakeholders, everything from leading industrial personnel to labour representatives and other types of stakeholders who could really contribute to the development of that strategy. This would ultimately lead to a report on a five-year basis, the first one appearing in 2025.

Does that not fit many of the things the member was talking about in terms of having a strategy and looking to get the expertise coming forward? That, in essence, is what the legislation would do. It would ensure that Canada continues to generate good-quality middle-class jobs well into the future, dealing with green energy jobs.