moved:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should ensure that: (a) before making decisions on infrastructure funding proposals, where federal funding exceeds $500 000, an analysis of their impact on greenhouse gas emissions is considered; and (b) where appropriate, funding priority be given to proposals which help to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Mr. Speaker, it is a distinct honour to rise in the chamber today to introduce my private member's Motion No. 45. I would like to begin by thanking my seconder, the hon. member for Pontiac, and all my other hon. colleagues in all corners of the House who have agreed to sign on and second this motion.
As one of Canada's primary coastal cities, my riding of Halifax stands on the front line in the battle against climate change. The impact of greenhouse gas emissions if not curbed will have serious repercussions for Halifax, for Nova Scotia, and all of the communities that we so love.
A decade ago, the three orders of government and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities jointly funded a study called “Climate Smart”, a climate risk management strategy for Halifax that painted a very sobering picture of my city if climate change was not addressed.
Here is some of what that picture looks like.
Halifax's status and viability as a great Canadian port city, a key economic driver in my riding, my province, and in Eastern Canada, will be put at risk as changes in ice patterns jeopardize year-round shipping to Halifax through the Northwest Passage. Our port infrastructure will be damaged, at times irreversibly. Our local economy, and therefore the national economy, will suffer. Sea level rise will threaten the quality and quantity of our drinking water. The existing strain on our health care system will intensify as injuries from extreme weather events increase in number, and high humidity leads to higher frequency of respiratory ailments like asthma and allergies.
Climate change will harm marine habitat as well, and by extension the commercial viability of some of our most critical fish stocks, like salmon and cod. This is in a province where the fishery accounts for 10% of our GDP.
Transportation infrastructure found mostly along the coast will quickly deteriorate, and increased costs for road and rail maintenance will become a larger and larger strain on public resources.
This is the potential story of climate change in Halifax. However, the implications of uncurbed greenhouse gas emissions are equally dire right across Canada, where we are surrounded by more than 200,000 kilometres of coastline and where many upon many communities and cities lie.
The impacts do not stop at our borders. In January of this year, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, a federal department roughly the equivalent of our own Department of Infrastructure and Communities, announced grants totalling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities in dire need address climate change. One of those grants is for something new, but also something we are going to be hearing of more and more in the months and years ahead. It is a grant to pay for the resettlement of the United States' first climate refugees from the inundated shores of Louisiana. We are not talking about some far off land. We are talking about government funded relocation of climate refugees right here on this land mass that we share with the United States.
Of this, The New York Times wrote earlier this week:
Around the globe, governments are confronting the reality that as human-caused climate change warms the planet, rising sea levels, stronger storms, increased flooding, harsher droughts and dwindling freshwater supplies could drive the world’s most vulnerable people from their homes.
Just last week, Sally Jewell, the U.S. secretary of the Interior and former Mobil Oil executive said, while visiting Ottawa, “ ...the changes are underway and they are very rapid. We will have climate refugees”.
To bring it back home, we are told that a 2° Celsius increase in global mean temperature could mean that Nova Scotia becomes an island. That is the same 2° the Paris climate accord sets out to limit us to. Just imagine the costs to government of having to extend a lifeline to the island of Nova Scotia.
We can avoid those terrible human and financial costs, but we need to act now to protect our environment, to protect our communities, and to build a resilient Canada that is is prepared to adapt to the climate change that is already well under way.
I come to this House from a 20-year career as city planner. It is a career that has been dedicated to building livable, sustainable and resilient communities, in various urban, suburban and rural locales across Canada and in the northeastern U.S., but primarily, and for the past 11 years, in my home town of Halifax.
I am proud to have been a co-founder, and founding vice president, of a national organization called the Council for Canadian Urbanism. The Council for Canadian Urbanism, or CanU, was created 10 years ago by city planners, urban designers, and architects from public, private and academic practice across Canada. In 2013, in a historic moment, these community builders from across the country met in Halifax to ratify and sign the Charter for Canadian Urbanism, a copy of which hangs proudly in my office both here and at home in Halifax.
The charter is instructive in many ways for the members of the House, and today I would like to read this relevant excerpt:
Canada’s cities and communities urgently require more progressive and creative approaches in order to become more successful, sustainable, creative, livable, healthy and resilient. Implementing a better Canadian Urbanism is key to addressing our most critical challenges, including climate change, ecological integrity, economic health and global competitiveness, energy resiliency, affordability and homelessness, public health, and social inclusiveness.
It is clear that the way we build our communities, the kind of infrastructure we deploy, and how we make infrastructure funding decisions will, in large measure, determine how we face climate change and whether we win or lose the battle against it.
That brings me to my private member's motion, Motion No. 45.
Quite simply, Motion No. 45 proposes that greenhouse gas emission analyses be undertaken for infrastructure projects seeking federal funding, and where appropriate, prioritize this funding for those that mitigate the impacts of climate change.
If passed, I believe the positive impacts of Motion No. 45 will be profound and numerous, and I would like to use my time today to talk about just four of them.
First is the way in which it would increase government's capacity to make evidence-based decisions. Canadians expect us to ensure decisions are based on science, facts, and evidence, as written in the Prime Minister's mandate letter to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. To this end, we must increase data-collection capacity, a directive in the Prime Minister's mandate letter to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities. Motion No. 45 would further both of those goals.
The scientific evidence makes it clear: we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By having important data on GHG profiles of infrastructure proposals, as Motion No. 45 would require, our government would have the science, the facts, and the evidence to make better-informed decisions when making infrastructure-funding choices. That is a win for evidence-based decision-making, and that is a win for the environment.
Second is the way in which Motion No. 45 would help grow a strong economy while protecting the environment. Since the start of this 42nd Parliament and the Speech from the Throne, our government has recognized that a clean environment and a strong economy go hand in hand. We cannot have one without the other. Protecting the environment and growing the economy are not incompatible goals. In fact, our future success demands that we do both.
Because infrastructure spending represents a critical piece of our government's plan to grow the economy, we must ensure that the environmental impact of projects is a key consideration in the rollout of this historic investment program. The onus is on us here in this chamber to heed the call for environmentally responsible infrastructure spending, not only because it is the best hope of adapting to and combatting climate change, but also because projects with lower greenhouse gas emissions are more cost-efficient. They make use of renewable resources, and with current technologies moving away from carbon-based energy, they will last longer into the future.
In contrast, infrastructure projects with high greenhouse gas emissions and a lack of climate change resiliency further increase the many costs we know to be associated with the impacts of climate change.
Our investment in infrastructure is an investment in the future. By investing in a way that also contributes to mitigating and adapting to climate change, we have the ability to significantly amplify the outcomes of that tremendous investment. Simply put, when we invest taxpayer dollars intentionally and intelligently, we enhance our longevity and resilience, and this is not just environmental resilience, but it is economic resilience too. It helps to build an economy that works for the future, and that is what Canadians want.
The third impact of Motion No. 45 is the way in which the motion would foster environmental consciousness in government. If passed, my private member's motion would contribute to a government that keeps environmental costs and consequences in mind for all decisions. That is a government that recognizes infrastructure spending decisions can no longer be made based solely on a short-term bottom line.
Projects must not only be shovel-ready, but they must be shovel-appropriate. For that reason, we must consider whether the infrastructure investments we are making today might have future risks that outweigh their immediate benefits.
It was only this past January that the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and the Minister of Natural Resources announced a set of five interim principles for major projects designed to restore trust in the environmental assessment process. Among these principles was a commitment to assess the direct and upstream greenhouse gas emissions of major projects.
These interim principles represent a return of a government that takes climate change seriously, and Motion No. 45 is a natural complement to and accelerator of this effort.
The fourth positive impact of Motion No. 45, and the last that I will address today, is the way in which the motion would assist us in fulfilling our international commitments.
It was only recently that the Prime Minister signed the Paris climate agreement thereby agreeing to take domestic measures as soon as possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to keep the global temperature from rising more than 2°C.
To contribute to this effort and regain Canada's environmental credibility in the world, we must consider the environmental impacts of our government's historic infrastructure spending program. This is both an opportunity and a responsibility when it comes to our international standing and the global response to climate change.
In the same way that greenhouse gas emissions transcend the boundaries of the places where they originate, so too would the benefits of greener infrastructure. If we prioritize greenhouse gas reductions in our infrastructure spending, the positive benefits of that extend across the country, from our bustling urban centres to our beautiful rural communities to our beloved national parks, and yes, even beyond our country's borders. Motion No. 45 would position Canada to be an active and respected global partner in the worldwide fight against climate change.
At the outset of my remarks today, I painted a bleak picture of my riding of Halifax, a picture of what could happen to my beloved city if meaningful action is not taken to reduce GHGs. But there is another possibility. It is a future for Halifax where air and water are clean, where we consciously mitigate against climate change with every decision we make, where the infrastructure we build is resilient against climate change and sea level rise, where we live in healthy, walkable, and vibrant communities, and where looking after the environment is the surest way to ensure sustainable economic prosperity. That is the future I am working for as the member of Parliament for Halifax, for my community, and for all Canadian communities.
I must applaud the environmental organizations in my city for their work calling on government to address climate change, organizations like the Ecology Action Centre, the Dalhousie University Sustainability Office, the Citizens' Climate Lobby, NSPIRG working groups, the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, and Sierra Club Atlantic, to name just a few, as well as numerous clean tech and green tech entrepreneurs in Halifax like CarbonCure, Green Power Labs, LightSail Energy, SabrTech, and Scotian WindFields Inc. There are so many more. I am very proud to heed the call today of those climate leaders.
I am so proud of this government and this cabinet for putting a stake in the ground to say that Canada is back as a global climate change champion. The work of the Prime Minister and many others in Paris and around the world has made us proud, but moreover, they have provided hope for the future for our children and for our children's children, and that has made us grateful.
Some might worry that the environmental assessment process like the one I propose is too ambitious, but I ask them to remember that there was once a time when Canada's environmental assessment process was rigorous and respected. In the decade since then we have lost time but it is not too late to make up for lost ground. It is more important now than ever before to take decisive and meaningful action to combat climate change. My motion represents that opportunity.
If agreed to, Motion No. 45 would send a clear message to Canadians that the government is committed to building a Canada they can be proud of and one that they will feel confident leaving to their children.
