Charlie Angus

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am still trying to get an answer about the four Conservatives, the members for Northumberland—Peterborough South, Lakeland, Cumberland—Colchester and Battlefords—Lloydminster, who flew over to England for a single meeting. They were fed chateaubriand, porterhouse steaks, oysters and smoked salmon at a cost of $4,690. Who paid for that? They say that Dan McTeague, the well-known climate crisis denier, paid for that, but that is simply not credible.

Then they started into the booze: $818 Canadian for one bottle of wine. That was not good enough. That just wet their lips. It was $265 Canadian for the second bottle of wine. The third bottle of wine, when they were really tipsy and talking climate denial, was $719. Then they finished it off with an $1,800 bottle of wine. That was $3,593 just on the booze alone.

Will the member be honest and tell us who paid for that trip and why they were over in the U.K.? This is an enormous amount of money. Who was trying to influence the Conservatives on climate denial?

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, we are in a really dangerous moment. The Conservatives are using disinformation, rage farming and toxic means to attack, and people are starting to get more and more threatening toward MPs who disagree with them. We need to elevate this to a level where we are dealing with a climate crisis of unprecedented proportions. Instead, we get toxic gibberish from the Conservatives.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I feel at a disadvantage; I have never had a paper route. However, I have been a carpenter and I have worked to raise my kids. I have done many jobs, and the thing that I have learned from people is that they expect us to be honest.

The leader of the Conservative Party, at a time of international crisis, refused to get a security clearance. He does not want to know facts; he wants to be able to throw whatever toxic gibberish out there while we are dealing with an international crisis. That man is not fit to live in a 19-room mansion. He is not fit to have his private chef paid for by the taxpayer. He is not fit to be—

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives come to rage farm in Timmins and they refuse to meet with the Cree, the Ojibway and the Algonquin people. They never will meet with the indigenous people in the riding. They do not seem to think they count.

Let us talk affordability. What is the price for a Chassagne- Montrachet bottle of wine? It is $818. A bottle of Le Passage Cotes is $265. A bottle of Vaio Armaron Amarone is $719. That was the drink of four Conservatives who were flown over to England by the climate-crisis crank, Dan McTeague, for one night. Talk about affordability. Here is the kicker: Those four Conservatives then finished the night off with a $1,791 bottle of Champagne.

For them to talk about affordability, when their leader lives in a 19-room mansion; when they are being flown around the world by cranks, claiming that it is being paid for; and they are spending $1,800 on Champagne. To hell with the—

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I would like to bring forward a bit of history to start today, because I know the Conservatives hate deeply facts and history.

I am going to read from the people of the State of California, attorney general versus ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, American Petroleum Institute and BP.

In 1988, Shell, along with all the other big oil companies, did major scientific studies of the dangers of fossil fuel burning. In that report to Shell executives, they warned that the drive of CO2 buildup was going to have “significant changes in sea level, ocean currents, precipitation patterns, regional temperature and weather.” However, they said something even more concerning. They said, “by the time the global warming becomes detectable”, which they said in 2000, “ it could be too late to take effective countermeasures.” They knew they were burning the planet.

What did Shell do? The next year, Shell raised the drilling platforms in the ocean by six feet. It was saying to hell with the people who were living on islands in the Pacific and the hundreds of millions of people on shorelines. It knew it was burning the planet. It knew the ice caps were melting. It was damned sure it would get every last dime before the planet was done. To make that possible, it had to use an elaborate system of disinformation.

As such, today, once again, we have the Conservatives bringing forward this constant disinformation, but it is not even smart disinformation. It is distilled down to this dumb meme they are going to send out as their attack ads.

Yesterday, we were told that the leader of the Conservative Party apparently had a paper route. He has no other job history, but he had a paper route at one time. In June, I remember him saying that he was going to keep speaking until the government dropped the budget and got rid of dental and child benefits. He spoke for three hours to his rapturous backbench, and then even it got bored and the budget passed. Therefore, he needed a new stunt, because with the Conservatives it is always about stunts, spin, smear and smoke and mirrors, and smoke from fires.

The Conservative leader announced, in the hottest summer in the history of the planet, that he was going to go from coast to coast to coast to pitch the idea that burning fossil fuels should be free, saying to hell with the 14 million hectares of forest lands that burned this year, the 200,000 Canadians displaced and the communities that lived in fear. When he came to my region, people were trying to escape the fire by canoe, because we could not get Hercules planes up there. He was promising that not only was he going to expand pipelines everywhere, but that fossil fuel burning was going to be free.

However, it did not work out so well for him, because even he had to flee the fires. However, it did not stop the Conservatives with their sock puppets of disinformation.

The member for Kelowna—Lake Country, as her community was burning, was going on about making fossil fuel burning free, showing disconnect and disinterest in keeping people safe, and not recognizing that there was a direct link between fossil fuel burning and the destruction of our environment. The member for Kelowna—Lake Country would rather promote the sock puppet messages from the Conservative war room than protect her own people.

I mention the member for Kelowna—Lake Country, because just recently the West Kelowna fire chief, Jason Brolund, spoke at the United Nations. This is what leadership is. He said that climate change became very real for West Kelowna, that the scope and scale for them to fight was nearly impossible to be successful again, that because of the changing climate leading to conditions, it was making it easier for fires to burn and grow. He asked a simple question. He wanted to know why we were spending money on fighting fires when we should be spending money on dealing with climate change.

However, we would not hear that from the member for Kelowna—Lake Country, because she is a loyal sock puppet of disinformation for the Conservative Party office.

The new member for Calgary Heritage, in his very first speech in the House, was going on about the rise in the price of potatoes, and he blamed it on the carbon tax. Calgary gets its potatoes from Idaho. There is no carbon tax there. That does not matter to Conservatives, because they are deeply opposed to facts. Facts make them angry; they need spin.

What caused the rise of price of potatoes in Calgary Heritage? It was the droughts and the wildfires in the western United States. However, the Conservatives do not want us to hear that.

Here we are with a motion that is not a credible one. It is more like political toxic gibberish, which is what we have come to expect. The Conservatives are failing to deliver for Canadians, as well as leaving our children and our grandchildren to deal with a planet that is now on fire. They are missing and deliberately undermining the opportunities.

I want to say one more thing so people can understand how serious this is. The EU just released its graph on Canada's forest fire average. In just over three days, Canada pumped more than 50 megatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere from wild, out-of-control forest fires. That is more than what we would normally put out in a year, and this is at the end of September. Those members know that the planet is on fire, but it is to hell with the planet and the truth.

At the same time this past week, the International Energy Agency said that the explosive growth in renewables would give us a fighting chance against the 1.5 barrier. It does give us a chance. We are seeing a huge investment in renewables around the world, and yet the Conservative Party, at every level, tries to stop, delay and deny the ability of Canada to participate.

My friends should look at Texas. Texas is so right wing it would fit in comfortably with the Conservatives. Texas got through the death-causing heat wave because of the massive amount of solar that is online right now in the state of Texas, with over 890,000 jobs in Texas in clean energy. More and more are coming on stream all the time, yet the Conservatives do not want people to hear that. That is why Danielle Smith tried to shut down the huge opportunities for Alberta workers, because they would rather tie themselves to an industry.

We heard Rich Kruger say that they are more than willing to burn the planet to get the last dollar and leave Alberta workers, and Canadian workers, on the sidelines. They were going to go after work. That was Kruger's statement. They just fired 1,500 workers. We have lost 50,000 jobs in the oil patch as profits have gone up $200 billion. They have made $200 billion while our planet burns and they are not putting any of it back in. They expect the taxpayer to pay for their carbon capture and they are firing the workers. Therefore, Alberta energy workers came forward and said they wanted a vision to get into the huge opportunities in clean energy. All we have heard from the Conservatives is absolute ridicule.

People will look back on this era and wonder whether there were any leaders willing to stand up to protect the future of the planet, because the planet is in crisis now. If people ever want to hear laughter, just listen to the Conservatives talk about the planetary crisis. It is to hell with the planet, to hell with our burning forests, to hell with the people who are living in the coastal regions, like in Nova Scotia. Two years in a row there have been catastrophic hurricanes.

The Conservatives would rather leave people to that fate than actually be part of the solution with which the rest of the world is embracing and moving ahead. It is about ideology. It is about disinformation. It is about rage farming. They believe that if they run disinformation, get people angry and spin disinformation, the member, who lives in Stornoway, will become prime minister. To hell with the planet, to hell with our children; to hell with our burning forests.

We need to come together and show a better vision.

The United States, with Biden's massive investments in clean tech, is leaving us at the side of the road. We hear the Conservatives ridiculing the investments in the battery plants. We either compete or we are left at the side of the road. However, it is to hell with the workers, to hell with the future economy, to hell with our planet. It is about rage farming. It is about obstructing anything that we are doing as a nation to live up to our global obligations and to preserve this planet for our children.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, people in Ontario did not pay a carbon tax. We were part of the cap and trade system, but then Doug Ford and his gang of grifters came in from Etobicoke. They ran on a buck a beer. They said they were going to get people a buck a beer, but decided to rip up all the EV charging stations and then kill the cap and trade program. Now Ontarians are having to pay into carbon pricing because of Doug Ford and his gang. Doug Ford is scrambling, saying we are going to be the automobile centre of the planet after ripping up the EV charging stations. The only thing we have actually seen Doug Ford deliver was an $8-billion boondoggle to his corrupt insider friends.

Could my hon. colleague talk about the Conservatives' propensity for backroom deals and the danger of a grifter government during a climate crisis?

[Department of Public Works and Government Services Act, September 26th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am always honoured to rise on behalf of the people of Timmins—James Bay, who are very interested in this bill. Their region is rich in natural resources.

I am also proud to rise in support of my colleague from South Okanagan—West Kootenay, who is not only a great parliamentarian but also a respected author and biologist. In his bio, they put those things first, which shows how important he is in other aspects, as well as bringing forward a motion on sustainability.

This bill is really important. I am going to say that, in all my years in Parliament, there has been lots of talk about Canada being a world leader, our forests and blah blah blah. However, the fact is that we have been failing on a number of fronts, and we have to address that. We are in a time that the Greeks would have called “kairos”, which is both a crisis and an opportunity. The crisis happened when we lost 14 million hectares of forest land this year from the climate catastrophe that is unfolding, which the Conservatives would exacerbate with their addiction to burning more fossil fuels. We are seeing our forests under threat from climate change and the changing pressures on the softwood and hardwood resources that we rely on in our communities.

In my region in northern Ontario, there is an issue of glyphosate spraying in the cutovers. This ignores indigenous rights and the hunters and trappers who are out on the lands.

We have to deal with this, yet in the face of the climate catastrophe, we have huge opportunities as a nation. One of these is to start looking at sustainable building. This is the reason I think the option of including and changing building codes is going to be fundamental to making us more sustainable, as is bringing in more wood products.

When I was in Berlin meeting with government officials last year, I was so amazed at how far ahead they are and so embarrassed at how far behind Canada is in terms of housing, building and having a net-zero approach to all building strategies. We do not have that at all. One only has to look at Doug Ford, Mr. X and their buddies, who were going to sell off the Greenbelt land to make a bunch of bucks for insiders. That is not a vision.

What do we need to do in order to respond to the need to build more sustainable housing? We have the skills; we have the tools. Our region in northern Ontario has the wood. They call it the “fibre mask”, but I prefer to call it the trees; it is the natural environment.

We have taken a real beating over the years from the softwood lumber disputes. We saw how Stephen Harper sold Canada out when we wanted every World Trade Organization dispute on softwood lumber. We were left with a crippled market. We could use those mills to bring forward the products that could be used in more sustainable building.

When wood is compared to cement, cement is responsible for 8% of the world's global emissions. Cement is higher in its impact on the global environment and GHGs than aviation is. We focus a lot on aviation, but cement is a serious issue. We are going to have to rethink how we build. Forestry can do that. However, we are going to need to actually go beyond talk and move forward.

I would like to point to my colleagues and suggest they look at the United States. They brought in an all-of-government approach through the IRA. There has been explosive, unprecedented growth in clean tech. We can look at the state of Texas. Texas is so right-wing, it would stand out even on the Conservative backbench, although maybe they would move it to the front bench these days. However, Texas has embraced clean energy. It is now bringing more clean energy online than any other jurisdiction in the world other than China. There are now 890,000 jobs in Texas in clean tech, and they came through the brutal, deadly heat waves. They were able to keep their air conditioners on because they had so much solar capacity.

What is happening in the United States is that all-of-government approach on infrastructure, on building, on the tax incentives and on procurement. Procurement is what we need to talk about, so we can say to our forestry communities, such as Elk Lake, Timmins and Kapuskasing in my region, that we can use these products. We can then say to the mill towns that we have lost, such as Smooth Rock Falls, Iroquois Falls, Espanola and Kirkland Lake, that there is potential for restarting mills to build new products, new fabrication and sustainable housing. The market is there.

We could be selling this internationally as well. We need to do it sustainably and with full indigenous involvement, consultation and participation. We need to do it with the lens that we are dealing with a time of kairos.

A climate catastrophe is unfolding. We need to get serious as a nation, to move beyond talk and actually become the global leader that we should be and can be and will be if we follow motions like what we see with this excellent motion tonight.

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, September 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member who represents the Green Party does support making polluters pay; the Conservatives do not. I think it is unfair that she is singling you out when it is really the member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, September 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome my hon. colleague to the House. I had the honour to sit beside his father. In the final weeks, I asked him every day, “Jim, how are you doing?” He said, “Every day is grace.”

I welcome my hon. colleague, and I thank him for his words on indigenous education and the climate crisis. We know there are many in this House who do not believe that our planet is on fire and would rather have it burn if it made a few extra bucks for big oil. We all need to work together, so I thank my colleague.

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, September 26th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I have known many young people, and I actually spent the summer helping move people out of Toronto because this is no longer a city they can live in. It now takes 20 years for a family to save for a down payment. It has been reported that 40% of the condos in Toronto sit empty or are being rented out on Airbnb.

This is a manufactured crisis. Therefore, when I hear my hon. colleague talk about the response, what I am not hearing is a credible plan for co-operative housing, which was a linchpin of making urban living possible and also of making rural and northern living possible. Due to the fact that the market forces have failed us, that there is market manipulation and that the housing market has been used by speculators, we really need a strong all-hands-on-deck approach to address the housing crisis that exists in every one of our communities across this country.