Madam Speaker, I am pleased to see you here and to be here with my colleagues in the House this evening.
It is good to be back. It was a great summer. I had a nice time having conversations with my constituents as well, but it certainly is excellent to be back in the House representing our constituents. I am here with a new role, and it is a huge honour and privilege to be the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change in addition to my role as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Sport.
Indeed, the fight against climate change is the most important battle of our generation, in my view, and in most people's views, and it is an honour and privilege to be serving in this capacity today because climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. In recent years, climate change has had unprecedented effects on Canadians and people globally. Impacts from climate change have affected our homes, the cost of living, infrastructure, health and safety, and economic activity in communities across Canada and in the world. Inaction on climate change is just not an option in 2023.
This summer, news was rampant across this country about the devastating wildfires and the impacts they are having on our communities. The air quality was an issue. People were fleeing their homes. People were evacuating as far north as Yellowknife. It is not an option to ignore the impacts of climate change. Putting a price on carbon pollution is an effective and essential part of any serious response to the global challenge of climate change, and our approach is designed with a focus on affordability. It is not just possible but incumbent on everybody in the House to care about more than one thing at a time.
I heard from my constituents over the course of the summer that affordability is a top concern. I also heard from people that fighting climate change is a top concern. Any serious government needs to have a plan to fight for both, and indeed we do.
Sadly, what we are fighting against in the House is this thinly diluted version of a Republican party, where evidence and facts just do not seem to matter anymore. All that seems to matter to these Conservatives is politics because that is their only path to power, so they repeat these cheesy slogans over and over again to try to shift the narrative away from important issues, such as climate change. This is despite the fact that good economists are producing evidence that suggests pricing pollution only has a 1% impact on prices going up on certain items and that it only adds a tenth of 1% to inflation.
It is dishonest and it is disheartening to see so-called progressive Conservatives, such as my friend and colleague opposite, who campaigned on a promise to price pollution, turn on their heels and run in the opposite direction when their new leader changes his mind. It is something they all campaigned on, and it is very disheartening to see. It is actually stark to recognize that there are members of the Conservative Party who campaigned on a promise to price carbon, and now they are going against their promise to those constituents. Many of those progressive Conservatives in those ridings indeed voted for those ideas.
In closing, I would like to read a quote. I call it the “good idea”. It reads:
The “good idea”...seeks to advance — and that I wholeheartedly support — is that for any economic activity, especially the production of energy, we should identify its negative environmental impacts, devise measures to avoid, mitigate or adapt to those impacts, and include the costs of those measures in the price of the product. It's the idea behind using carbon pricing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, water pricing to conserve water, garbage pricing to deal with waste, and road pricing to reduce traffic congestion.
That quote is from Preston Manning, the idol, the Conservative mentor of the leader of the Conservative Party.