Madam Speaker, I too want to take a few seconds as well to salute my colleague from Repentigny who, unfortunately, will not be with us for the next election. In our caucus, we affectionately call her our eco-warrior, or Momo, which is shorter and simpler. I salute her because she is an inspiration to many colleagues.
Today, we are talking about support for clean technologies. An article published in this morning's newspapers states that partisan politics is basically the biggest obstacle to our decarbonization efforts. As it happens, that answer came from someone I admire a lot, Normand Mousseau, the scientific director of the Institut de l'énergie Trottier. He gave that answer to my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, who asked him why Canada's decarbonization performance has been so disappointing. I will read Mr. Mousseau's statement, because it is worth noting.
There's a consistency problem at the federal level, because it's very hard to move projects forward with parties that are so far apart on the very objective of [decarbonization]....
That is part of why there is such a big problem. Why is Canada, in particular, having so much trouble holding its own when it comes to clean technologies? It is because different parties are taking completely different positions. Business people are reluctant to invest in major projects if there is no predictability.
The signal that the Leader of the Opposition regularly sends is that he does not believe in global warming. Most of the Conservatives' opposition days have been devoted to eliminating the carbon tax, which is probably one of the key tools for transitioning to clean energy, so the only possible conclusion we can draw is that he does not believe in global warming.
Just last week, when we had the emergency debate on U.S. tariffs, the Leader of the Opposition repeated that he believes Canada needs more oil and gas pipelines and needs to export more energy. If I were a clean energy investor, knowing full well that the next government will probably be Conservative, I do not think I would be willing to invest much of my money in clean energy projects. That is what Professor Mousseau was saying this morning. I do not think that Professor Mousseau is particularly partisan. He is the scientific director of the Institut de l'énergie Trottier, a top expert on energy matters. This is the typical dynamic when the federal government is dealing with the energy file. Why are opinions so polarized? It is because Canada is under the thumb of the oil and gas industry.
As proof, consider the Trans Mountain fiasco. Let me make an evocative comparison. The Parliamentary Budget Officer told the Standing Committee on Natural Resources that we put $4.6 billion into Trans Mountain that we will never get back. The government will never get that money back. It threw $4.6 billion out the window, and the project itself cost $34 billion.
Let me remind members that the federal government announced in 2023 that its ambitious plan to electrify and decarbonize the Canadian economy would cost $40 billion, yet a single fossil fuel project cost $34 billion. The most ambitious plan in the history of government, according to our Liberal colleagues, was going to cost $40 billion. That is just awful. This comparison shows how awful it is.
Why should anyone consider investing in clean technologies when the federal government is basically saying that, if we want the pipeline to be profitable, we will have to be slaves to oil for the next 40 years? Not only that, but if we want the pipeline to be profitable, we need to pick up the pace and produce even more barrels of oil. According to the figures provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, that is totally inconsistent. According to the IPCC, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to reduce our oil consumption by 62%. Moreover, if we do not have a carbon capture and sequestration strategy, which is a mere pipe dream, as I will demonstrate later, we will have to reduce our fossil fuel consumption by 70%. That is if we want to stick to a 1.5-degree-Celsius increase in global temperatures.
What we are doing, however, is investing $34 billion in infrastructure so as to maximize oil consumption. If that is not inconsistent, then I honestly do not know what is.
I will get back to this insanity now. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, if we want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we have to reduce our oil consumption by 62%, and that is with with carbon capture and sequestration strategies. Speaking of this carbon capture and sequestration nonsense, not too long ago Suncor CEO Rich Kruger came out and said, “We have a bit of a disproportionate emphasis on the longer-term energy transition”.
Suncor's Rich Kruger wondered why so much energy had to be dedicated to these new technologies. He said that the focus should instead be on the commercial interest, the oil sands. We do not have to agree with him, but at least he was being frank. This is indicative of what we see in the oil and gas sector.
Oil companies know full well that carbon capture and sequestration strategies cost a fortune and that the pipe dream of producing net-zero oil makes about as much sense as making diet poutine. It will never happen.