Catherine McKenna

[Carbon Pricing, October 16th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians expect us to have a plan to protect the environment, to tackle climate change and to grow the economy. We have that plan. We have been able to create more than 600,000 jobs with Canadians. We have the fastest-growing economy in the G7. We have historic low rates of unemployment. Guess what? Our emissions are going down and we are doing this with Canadians.

[Carbon Pricing, October 16th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, will the party opposite release a plan with a price on pollution? We have a plan. Our plan is working. It is growing the economy. We have created more than 600,000 jobs with Canadian—

[Carbon Pricing, October 16th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell you how much it warms my heart to hear the member opposite talk about how there should be a price on pollution. I am surprised, though, because the member opposite did not vote in support of a price on pollution. Yes, we have said that big polluters have to pay and we will give more money in the hands of Canadians. We know we need to take action on climate change. We have a climate plan, but the big question is this: What is the Conservatives' plan to protect the environment and grow the economy?

[Carbon Pricing, October 16th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians from across the country are seeing the impacts of climate change, whether it is forest fires or floods or extreme heat or in the Arctic, which is quite literally melting. We have a plan to tackle climate change, to do our part and also to grow the economy. We are taking measures, which include phasing out coal, net-zero building standards, investments in renewables, investments in clean technology companies and, yes, putting a price on pollution. There is a cost to pollution, but we have always said that we will give money back, more money in the pockets of the people who live in a province—

[The Environment, October 15th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for her tireless action and advocacy on climate change over decades when no one was paying attention. I only wish that previous governments, in particular the Conservative government, had actually heeded her call and taken climate action.

We have a plan. We have a plan to meet a target and we are implementing that plan. We need to implement that plan. The Paris Agreement has a mechanism where every five years we need to be more ambitious. We negotiated this plan with the provinces, territories and Canadians. We are now in a place where we need to do what previous governments have never been able to do, which is to be serious and implement the plan.

With respect to putting a price on pollution, there are Conservatives who think it would be great if polluting was free. We need to make sure that we have a price on pollution across the country. We need to make the needed investments to get the provinces off coal. We need to support those workers as well and ensure we have a just transition. We need to invest in public transportation. We need to do all these things. We need to be more ambitious.

However, the first thing we need to do is implement what we have said we would do. It is easy to have a target. It is harder to have a plan to achieve it. That is what we have made a commitment to do. This year at COP24 what is critically important is that we get the rule book for COP24. I have worked hard all year and I will continue to work hard, including at COP24, to ensure that we get the rules. We need rules around transparency. We need rules around accountability.

We also need the world to get off coal. That is why we have the Powering Past Coal Alliance. We are working with countries across the world to show them they can get off coal and support workers and communities.

My focus right now is on working with Canadians who want us to implement their plan. They want the investments. They want the opportunities to be more energy efficient and save money. They want us to do what we said we were going to do.

[The Environment, October 15th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, we certainly must take climate change action. That is why we have a plan. We spent a year developing it by working with indigenous peoples, the provinces and territories, businesses, environmentalists and young people. We worked with everybody.

Now is the time to take action. I urge hon. members of the party across the way, who know that climate change is real, to acknowledge that we must work very hard on this issue. They may not understand the economic opportunities that this represents and we will talk more about that, but we must work together in order for this plan to be effective.

As far as the price on carbon is concerned, we need their help finding companies to invest in, ones that can find solutions for everyone. The cities we are working with are in their ridings.

We have a plan. Now it is time to get serious and band together. We must deal with climate change, reduce our emissions, create good jobs, and grow our economy, but we must do it together.

[The Environment, October 15th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would invite the member opposite to come cycling with me to the office at any time.

We have a plan to tackle climate change. The party opposite does not have a plan. Why do those members not talk about their plan?

We have a plan and we are implementing it. We have a plan to tackle climate change to reduce our emissions, create good jobs and grow our economy. The sad thing is, the party opposite does not get it. It does not understand that there is a huge cost to climate change. People are facing extreme heat. People died this summer because of extreme heat in Quebec and Ontario. We had forest fires. I have had to call ranchers who lost their whole ranch because it burned down. I have helped sandbag because floods have impacted people's homes. There is a huge cost, and the cost is only going to grow if we do not take action.

The party opposite also does not understand the economic opportunity, which is in the trillions of dollars. If we are smart about this, we can be the country that provides the clean solutions. We would be helping businesses save money because when they are energy efficient, they save money. What could they do with that money? They could reinvest it in their business.

We want to work with Canadians. As I said, we can be smarter. We did not get out of the Stone Age because we ran out of stones. We got smarter. We have the solutions we need. We know what we need to do and now we need to implement it.

[The Environment, October 15th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, our government has a climate plan. We have worked very hard on this climate plan, and now we are implementing it. Unfortunately, we have the party opposite working with Conservative parties across the country, politicians who actually do not understand there is a cost of climate change right now, that we are paying the price and that the bigger price will be paid by our kids. They also do not understand the economic opportunity. They have no plan for the environment. They have no plan for the economy.

We need to come together as a country. We need to make climate change a non-partisan issue. If we make it a partisan issue, we will never do what we need to do, which is to actually be serious about climate action. At the end of the day, we have one planet, so we need to figure out how we are going to save that planet. We need to figure out how we are going to ensure that our kids are not going to face the things that were mentioned in that report, things like acute food shortages, devastating storms, climate refugees, a melting Arctic which has consequences for the entire world. It would mean no more coral reefs and species at risk we all love across our country would disappear. Is that what we want? No.

We all care greatly about our country. We all care greatly about the animals in our country. We care greatly about snow, and it does not matter whether we are snowmobilers, skiers or kids who want to go tobogganing. We need to be serious about climate action, and we have an opportunity to do it, to do it right, and also to create good jobs and grow our economy.

I ask all parties to join us, to be serious about climate change, and help us take the action we have worked so hard to set out in our climate plan and are implementing with Canadians. We are implementing it with cities, businesses, hospitals, schools and kids. We are going to continue working really hard with Canadians. I just wish the Conservative Party would work with us.

Brian Mulroney was the first person to talk about putting a price on pollution. He tackled one of the biggest problems we had when I was growing up: acid rain. I was worried and petrified as a kid about acid rain. How did he do it? He did it through political leadership, through innovation, by working with business and putting a price on pollution. I ask that we work together, that we take these smart measures, that we come together as a country and that we show we can be a natural resource based country and we can still take climate action. We are a natural resource based country. We want to get our resources to market, but we need to do it in a sustainable way.

We have the opportunity to provide the solutions that the world desperately needs. These are solutions that are creating good jobs, that are going to take advantage of the economic opportunity and that we can export to other countries that are also trying to figure out how to take climate action. China is looking for Canadian solutions. When I go to China, I go with companies from Canada. I go with carbon capture and storage from Saskatchewan. I do not discriminate against any good solutions. We do not have the luxury of saying that we are not going to work with people. It is why our government continues every day in every city and town across this country to work with farmers, businesses and environmentalists. We continue working with them because we do not have a choice, and we have this opportunity.

Once again, it is up to us. It is up to people in this House to be serious about climate action, and to figure out how we are going to come together and take serious action. After a decade of inaction and not taking seriously what we knew from scientists about needing to act on climate change, we need to come together now. We can do this. I am an optimist, a realistic optimist.

I have seen Canadians across the country want to be with us. Hospitals that are saving money through investments we have made in retrofits are investing that money in their patients. Schools that are investing in energy efficiency are reinvesting that money in their students. Businesses that are investing in being more energy efficient can reinvest that money in their businesses and employees. We can do this. We can, but we have to be serious and we have to come together.

We need to acknowledge that climate change is real and serious, that we are seeing the impacts, that there is a cost to it right now and that we can act. We can do right by our planet to reduce our emissions and create good jobs, and we can create made-in-Canada solutions that we can export to the world.

I know we can do this, but I also know we need to come together. We owe it to Canadians. We owe it to our kids. We owe it to the world. We have one shot right now to take serious action on climate change, and we should just get to work, come together and show Canadians how it is done.

[The Environment, October 15th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the UN report was clear that we are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change, and we are the last generation to be able to act. This is not just about future generations. This is about my kids and the kids of everyone here and the kids of everyone in this country. For children who are 10 years old today, we are talking about catastrophic impacts in 30 years, when they are 40 years old, if we do not take action.

Action on climate change should not be a partisan issue. It will affect all of us, whether we are rich or poor, whether we live in the north of the country or the south, whether we vote on the left of the spectrum or on the right of the spectrum, whether we are urban or rural. We are all in this together, and we need to come together.

Meanwhile, we have one party, the Conservative Party, that has no plan for climate change, and worse, thinks that polluting should be free. There are huge costs to pollution, and these are costs that we are paying as Canadians. Everyone across the country has seen this summer extreme heat. We have seen forest fires that are burning longer and brighter than ever. We have seen floods. We have seen droughts. Our Arctic is literally melting.

We need to act on climate change, and our focus should be on how we do it. How do we implement the climate plan that our government negotiated with provinces and territories, with indigenous peoples, with cities and towns, with businesses, with environmentalists, with hospitals, with schools, with all Canadians? We have a plan, and now we need to implement it.

The other problem with the Conservatives is that they do not understand the huge economic opportunity of action on climate change. It is in the trillions of dollars. There is a huge opportunity to do things better. We did not get out of the stone age because we ran out of stones; we got smarter.

We are seeing Canadian companies that are innovating. These are companies like CarbonCure, which is making cement that is lowering greenhouse gas emissions. They take the greenhouse gases from industry, they inject them, and they create stronger and cheaper cement. This solution is being used in California, where I saw it in a cement factory, and it is being used around the world. Would we not want good jobs? Would we not want economic opportunity? We need to take action on climate change. We need to create good jobs. We need to grow our economy, and that is exactly what we are doing.

I am extremely proud that under our government, we have created more than 600,000 jobs for Canadians. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in decades. Our economy is the fastest-growing economy in the G7, and also we are reducing emissions.

We need to recognize that there is a huge cost to climate change. This is a cost that has gone from $400 million a year just over a decade ago to over a billion dollars. The UN report talks about the cost of climate change: $50 trillion. These are costs that are going to be borne by people. We need to act. As I said, we are the last generation to be able to act on climate change.

When we look at some examples of disasters, we can look at the Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016. It cost almost $9 billion. We know that we are going to continue to see wildfires like that, and they are going to get worse. However, if we take action, we can limit the impact.

In Paris, I was involved in negotiating the Paris Agreement with a delegation that included Conservatives, NDP representatives, the member from the Green Party, indigenous leaders, and premiers of all political persuasions. We all came together with the rest of the world, and we said that we all need a plan. For the first time ever, every country's representatives said that they were going to act on climate change. I pushed very hard, as a representative for Canada, to strive for 1.5 degrees. We, Canada, as a country, knew that we needed to be ambitious, not just for Canadians but also for people around the world.

One of the saddest moments I have ever witnessed was at COP 22, where we had a representative from a small island state speaking to an Inuit leader, and the Inuit leader said, “My homeland is melting, and it is causing yours to go under water.” This is what we are talking about. We are talking about the impacts of climate change that we see around the world. We really do need to come together.

We can think about what we have done as a government. We helped negotiate the Paris Agreement. We pushed for 1.5 degrees. We pushed to recognize the role of indigenous peoples in the Paris Agreement. We pushed for market measures, and then we came home and did the hard work.

We spent one year negotiating with the provinces and territories and indigenous leaders. We listened to Canadians from coast to coast to coast. It is clear that Canadians want climate action. They want smart action that is going to tackle climate change, reduce our emissions, create good jobs and grow our economy.

Let us talk about our plan.

Our plan includes phasing out coal. We know that coal is not just bad for the environment but is extremely bad for human health. The previous Liberal government of Ontario phased out coal, and Ontario went from over 50 smog days to zero. That had an impact, and not just on people's health. It meant fewer kids with asthma and fewer premature deaths, but it also meant less cost in terms of hospital visits. It was a good thing for the environment, for health and for the economy.

We are also making historic investments in public transit. When I talk about the investment in public transit and LRT in Ottawa, that is going to be the largest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the city's history. It is also good for people who live in Ottawa. They can get to places faster, cheaper and in a cleaner way. We are also investing in electric vehicles and a transportation strategy, because we know that we need to reduce emissions across the board.

We also know that we need to reduce emissions in how we build things. We have a net-zero building strategy. We have also made historic investments in social housing. We know that the people who are the most vulnerable should pay the least when it comes to their heating costs.

I was here in Ottawa visiting new social housing built to the passive standard. The cost for a resident in that building will be $12, not a month but a year, in heating costs. That is a huge opportunity.

We are making historic investments in renewables and also in interconnecting grids. We know that provinces that are getting off coal can be linked with provinces that have clean power.

We are also making investments in energy efficiency. We are supporting Canadian businesses, hospitals, schools and individuals who want to do right by the environment and want to save money. The thing is, that also creates great jobs. It creates jobs for contractors. It creates jobs for builders, and it creates jobs for the people who are building the material. That is good for the economy.

There are so many opportunities for us to come together and take action on climate change. However, we also need to recognize that there is a cost to pollution. It is not free to pollute. It is literally a cost that is now being borne by Canadians.

When we looked at how we could do this, we gave two years to all the provinces to come up with their own plans for putting a price on pollution. Some provinces stepped up and showed leadership. The provinces that have, or had, a price on pollution, which were B.C., Alberta, Quebec and Ontario, until, unfortunately, recently under the new government, were the fastest-growing economies in the country while they were serious about tackling climate change. That is what we want. We want the environment and the economy to go together.

We also told the provinces to design their own plans and decide what they wanted to do with the revenues. The revenues will always stay in the provinces in which they are collected. A province like Saskatchewan could potentially cut its whole provincial sales tax, or it could do like other provinces, such as Quebec, and invest in clean technologies and electric vehicles, or British Columbia, and give money back in the form of tax cuts. However, what we cannot do is let big polluters get a free ride. We are all paying the cost of pollution.

We have a huge economic opportunity. When we say that there is a cost to pollution, businesses innovate. They figure out how to reduce the price of polluting by coming up with cleaner solutions. Those are clean solutions that they can then use and export. They will and are creating good jobs in Canada. That is what we want.

We are always focused on how we grow the economy, how we create good jobs and how we do right by the planet. When we look at what is happening across the country, there are so many great stories of companies that are tackling climate change and also growing their bottom line.

Take VeriForm, a steel manufacturer in Ontario, which is focused on energy efficiency retrofits. It cut almost 80% of greenhouse gas emissions and it saved $2 million. When I met with the owner, he said that even if he did not care greatly about climate change, which he does, he would have invested in these energy efficiency measures, because they added to the bottom line.

In Quebec, GHGSat is a company that uses satellite technology to measure emissions. Now people around the world are looking for this technology. When I talk to farmers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, they are using climate resilient crops for zero-till agriculture. They are part of the solution. Why? Because they also recognize that they are being impacted by climate change. Everyone is impacted by climate change. It does not matter if it is a farmer in Saskatchewan or an Inuit in the high Arctic, we are all feeling the impacts from climate change. We all know we need to act.

When it comes to a price on pollution, we just found out last week that the winners of the Nobel Prize in economics are economists that showed that putting a price on pollution works. What did they use as the best example of that? It was British Columbia. What did British Columbia do? It put a price on pollution. It gave money back in the form of tax cuts, and it has been able to have one of the fastest-growing economies in the world while at the same time reducing emissions. It has one of the top clean tech sectors in the world.

I am proud that under our government, we have supported the clean technology sector and are focused on how to help companies have clean solutions. Those could be mom and pop shops or the big game-changing solutions. We are now punching way above our weight. Thirteen out of the 100 top clean tech companies are Canadian. That is something we should be totally proud of, but I want to see half those companies be Canadian. That is what our goal is. Our goal is to figure out how we do right by the planet, how we reduce emissions and how we create solutions the world so desperately needs.

Let us talk about what is going on around the world. COP24 is coming up. We need to get the rules for the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is like the car; now we have to get the engine. We are working very closely with China and the European Union. Unfortunately, the U.S. stepped back on climate action.

What have we done as a country? We have stepped up. We are committed to the Paris Agreement, which includes being more ambitious. Every five years, everyone needs to ratchet up ambition.

We are also focused on phasing out coal and helping countries around the world do this. Canada and the U.K. have a powering past coal coalition. There are countries and businesses from around the world that are joining. Why? It is because they know that we need to get out of coal. If we are going to meet our Paris Agreement targets, we have to do that, but there is a huge opportunity, because the price of renewables has dropped.

My hon. colleague from the NDP talked about the need to support a just transition. I was just meeting with our just transition task force and talking exactly about how we can do that. This is a task force that went to communities where we are phasing out coal. They talked to workers. They talked to communities. We have labour unions and businesses involved. How do we figure this out and transition to a cleaner economy? It is better for the environment, but it is also a $30-trillion opportunity. That is not coming from me. That is coming from the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. That is coming from the head of BlackRock. That is coming from businesses across the world that recognize that we need clean solutions. They recognize the risks of inaction.

The challenge is that we have one party, the Conservative Party, that does not want any action. The Conservatives took no action for the last decade. The emergency we are talking about right now was an emergency 10 years ago. This was an emergency, and they never took it seriously, and now what do they want to do? They want to kill all climate action—

[The Environment, October 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would be very happy to speak with the member opposite about this matter.