Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this evening's adjournment proceedings. I am pleased to be able to rise to pursue a question I originally asked on June 7 of this year.
It was in question period and I had the honour to address my question directly to the Right Hon. Prime Minister. We could actually feel the smoke in Parliament that day. I do not know how many of my colleagues remember that, but on June 7, the forest fires across Canada had reached the inside of Parliament. As I said in my question, the Ottawa bubble had been pierced by the reality of the climate crisis. We felt it in the chamber. There was smoke in our eyes. Our eyes were burning and it brought home forcibly that we are in a climate emergency.
My questions to the Prime Minister were directly about what a government would do if it understood that it was an emergency. I know the Liberals continually claim that they have done more for climate than any previous government. That is possibly true. Certainly, the climate plan put forward under the government was never as complete or as effective as it could have been if Paul Martin's government had not been brought down on November 28, 2005. Money was in place in the 2005 budget and the plans were stronger and more comprehensive.
However, here we are and it is 2023. Time is literally running out. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has told us clearly that in order to hold to 1.5ºC global average temperature increase, which is not a political goal but a goal required by physics and chemistry to ensure a livable climate for our kids, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak and begin to drop rapidly by 2025.
That is why António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has said that continued investments in fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure is “economic and moral madness”.
We started talking about the forest fires this year. All around the world, scientists have tracked Canada with alarm. We had a fire season that started earlier and lasted later. In total, it burned approximately 19 million hectares. We also had floods that took lives in Nova Scotia. We also had fires that extended as far as evacuating all of Yellowknife. Both in total area affected and in the number of people affected and lives disrupted, nothing should have said so clearly to the Liberals as this forest fire season that it is not enough to put in place policies on one hand to reduce greenhouse gases, if we keep subsidizing fossil fuels with the other hand.
Now is the time to bring in an excess profits tax on the fossil fuel industry, which is bringing in $4.2 billion as Motion No. 92 would have it. Now is the time to cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion before wasting a single additional dollar of public money. Now is the time to say that if we are serious about reconciliation, we do not drive that pipeline through Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc Territory. Now is the time to understand this is an emergency and we act like it.
From now on, we take it so seriously that building fossil fuel infrastructure and expanding fossil fuel production will stop, and stop now.