Debates of April 11th, 2024

Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act

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

The debate is between AI and AC.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as members who are elected to represent our constituents, we know this needs to be at the core of all of our decisions and discussions, to ensure that we have sound climate action that matches the emergency we are facing with a real jobs plan.

My colleague prior mentioned the Youth Climate Corps and the importance of this being implemented. It is a motion that has been put forward by my NDP colleague, the member for Victoria, to ensure that young people are part of the solutions, that they are trained, employed and part of the work in lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Could the member share whether he is in support of this motion as well as share his thoughts on how this important work aligns with what we are talking about today?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, obviously, I will always be in favour of proposals that seek to improve conditions for young people, particularly proposals that take into account education, the possibility of getting better jobs that will bring them into harmony with the planet. Above all, I support the idea that young people should be able to enrol in regional educational institutions close to where they live and where we are witnessing the development of our energy sources and the extraction of minerals such as strategic critical minerals.

Yes, I do think we have to support this. There are some excellent initiatives under way, particularly at the Abitibi-Témiscamingue CEGEP and the Université du Québec, to reflect on issues such as social licence, the need to better harmonize these projects with our communities, greener mining, innovation and improved mineral processing.

I would like to quickly say that I saw a small box at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières that shows the consequences of soil degradation on a site over 50 years. This is made possible by research and employment. It is done through knowledge. We need to encourage this, and the federal government has a responsibility in this respect.

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

Mr. Speaker, today is an important day and a proud day. It is a day that we fulfill the promise to workers who came to us and said that they needed to have their voices heard in dealing with the biggest economic and environmental crisis of the last 300 years.

I think back seven years ago, in Edmonton, when I met with the incredible workers at Local 424 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. They had asked me to go to their plant and meet with them. They wanted to show me the incredible training they were doing for a clean-tech future. They said that the world was changing and they were not going to be left behind, that they had the skills to take on whatever. They also said, which I knew then and believe, that there was no place in the world that could move to a clean-energy economy quicker than Alberta, and these workers were at the front of the line in the training.

They asked me where the government was on this. They saw the future coming. That question has stayed with me ever since. In the seven years since, the climate crisis has become much more pronounced. We no longer talk about the summer, we talk about the fire season. Our national fire chiefs have talked about a ferocious fire season after last year, when 200,000 Canadians were forced from their homes because of the ongoing climate disaster due to increased burning of fossil fuels.

However, we also see how fast the transition is happening around the world. It is not a myth. It is not a lie. It is not, as the Conservatives claim, some kind of globalist woke conspiracy. It is a fact. When the market changes and we do not have a plan, it is heartbreaking.

I live in mining country. I remember when the market changed in iron ore prices. Kirkland Lake and my community of Cobalt were never the same again. I remember being on one of the last shifts underground at Stanleigh Mine in Elliot Lake when the uranium market fell. It did not matter how much one believed in disinformation or claimed there was a conspiracy, once it was gone, those jobs were gone forever.

We have lost 45,000 jobs in the oil sector, and those jobs are not coming back. We lost 1,500 jobs just this year. Richie Rich Kruger from Suncor told investors in his company, which was part of the group that made $78 billion in profits, that he was going to target work as a way to be more efficient. The billions of dollars they are making they are putting into automation. They are not putting it into communities or jobs. We are seeing a reality where there will be a drop in oil and gas jobs, we figure from 171,000 down to 100,000 by 2030. Therefore, we have to be prepared.

When we lost our mining economies in the north, there was no plan. There was no place where people could go, and it was devastating. We talk about a just transition. I always say it is a transition where I come from when we see U-Hauls on the lawns of our neighbours, who are leaving with no future.

The IBEW, the operating engineers, Unifor, the Canadian Labour Congress came to us and said that there had to be a plan in place, otherwise we would miss the boat. The transition is happening. China put $890 billion into clean tech last year, more than the rest of the world combined. The result was that it pumped $1.6 trillion into its economy and brought it up 30% in a single year. It is moving ahead.

South of the border, Joe Biden's IRA has created 170,000 jobs and over half a trillion dollars in new investments. What we hear from the Conservatives now is that this is some kind of George Soros woke conspiracy that is being planned, a planned Soviet economy to destroy jobs. It was the workers themselves who came to us and said that we needed plan in place, that they did not want all those jobs going stateside.

Where are we in Canada? Danielle Smith blew $30 billion in clean-tech investments out of Alberta and said that they were not welcome. Why? It was just out of ideology. This is a province that was Canada's energy superpower and she cannot even keep the lights on in April. It is becoming Canada's banana republic for energy at a time when the climate crisis in Alberta is burning the fields. We are in fire season already and it does not have the water. We have never heard a single Alberta Conservative ever talk about the drought that is hitting due to the climate crisis. We need to take action.

It is a reasonable step that we are talking about. We need to ensure this transition happens, and, for my Liberal colleagues, that plan is not moving fast enough. We have to keep up and we have to be competitive, but we need to have workers at the table. They have a right to be at the table, because decisions will be made. It could be pork barrel, misspending or it could be a plan that ensures we build on the strengths of the workers we have and our incredible resources.

It is amazing. The other day the leader of the Conservative Party was asked about his opinion on the industrial carbon tax, and of course after having belittled the member for Victoria, which is very much in keeping with his style, he claimed there was no industrial carbon tax. It is a falsehood.

We have this funny tradition in Parliament. One can come into the House and lie all day long, but one can never be accused of being a liar because one is supposed to be an honourable member. The fact that the leader of the Conservative Party is making disinformation about the industrial price of carbon is a concern. Maybe he just does not know his file, but I do not think that is the case.

The Conservatives this morning, with some of the numbers they were talking about, were trying to claim that Bill C-50 is some kind of plot. They were saying that there were 1.4 million jobs, 170,000 jobs and 200-some thousand jobs that would immediately disappear if this happened. One can only make ridiculous claims like that if one deliberately shuts down the voices of the people who came to testify.

What happens when legislation is brought forward, and it can be good or bad and can be amended, is that we hear from the witnesses. Who were the witnesses who were not allowed to speak? The Conservatives did not allow the IBEW to speak. They did not let the carpenters union speak. They shut them down. It was the New Democrats who brought the people who have gone through the coal transition, and the Conservatives did not give a darn about those workers in the coal transition. They did not want to hear them. They did not want to hear anyone from Unifor. Those are the people who are working in the EV technologies. They shut them down and would not let them speak. They did not want the Alberta Federation of Labour to speak.

They did not want that, because if they let people speak who actually speak the truth, then disinformation falls by the side of the road. They cannot then walk around with claims of conspiracy and idiocy if there are people who say something is simply not true.

When one says to Conservatives something is simply not true, they really lose their minds. Look at the Conservative leader and his support from Alex Jones. Alex Jones is an absolute hate-monger. This is a man who taunted the families of 20 children who were murdered by an evil conspiracy hater. Alex Jones was on the John Birch Society podcast, which is another hate site, bragging about the member who lives in Stornoway. Does anyone think he was going to challenge that? Not a chance.

However, I challenged Alex Jones, and within an hour, photos of my daughters were online with their addresses. We know how the hate machine works. It is the politics of intimidation. When I take on the member for Carleton for not even bothering to show up for the election he is threatening to call, boy oh boy, within an hour their hate memes are going through my riding to call me and threaten me.

What Conservatives wanted to do was shut down Bill C-50. When they brought forward the amendments, most of which had to be generated by AI because I do not think the Conservatives were smart enough to actually bring them forward, we had to sit through hours with them screaming. They screamed for eight hours of intimidation. It was like gong-show Brownshirts. In all my career, I have never seen such deplorable and disgraceful behaviour.

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

We have a point of order from the hon. member for Lakeland.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that member just likened duly elected members of Parliament on the Standing Committee on Natural Resources to Brownshirts.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on that point of order, everybody knows what the term “Brownshirts” refers to. It refers to Nazi Germany. This member is effectively calling Conservative members on that committee Nazis. He needs to immediately apologize. It is a disgraceful remark.

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

The hon. member should retract that.

The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am more than willing, because I think if you looked into the—

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, for that exact member to be characterizing the actions of my duly elected colleagues, who are Conservative members on the natural resources committee, in the way that he has actually lines up perfectly given that he told me to “eff off” in the committee meeting—

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

That is descending into debate.

Let us go back to the issue of being judicious with the words we are using.

The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay has the floor.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was talking about the politics of intimidation. I was talking about how my daughter's photos were being posted online. I was talking about—

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

We have another point of order.

The hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I have neither heard a retraction nor an apology. You asked for it. It needs to be explicit. We need to hear it in this chamber, not just a running over of it like it did not happen.

The member should retract and apologize.

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

The usage of that term is not correct. Could the hon. member retract it and then move on?

The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was pretty sure that I used it as a simile, that these were the tactics they were using—

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

Retract.

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

Mr. Speaker, I retract it, but I do know that they have met with neo-Nazis from Germany. That is a separate issue.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member has been here a long time and will hopefully not be here much longer, but he has been here long enough to know that one cannot say indirectly what one cannot say directly.

He knows that. He should know better. He needs to apologize or leave the chamber.

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

Would the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay please retract and apologize for the usage of that term?

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

Mr. Speaker, yes, certainly, I retract it, but I will now go back to the point—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

I cannot hear anything, so I would not know.

The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is very telling because we did have to listen to eight hours of screaming, shouting and intimidation—

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

The hon. member for Saskatoon—University.