Francis Scarpaleggia

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, this is another thing we have been hearing ad nauseam, which is the idea that there are Liberal senators in the Senate. I have been here for quite a while, and I remember, and the hon. member from Winnipeg remembers as well, when we decoupled from the Senate. Now the senators are appointed there by the Prime Minister because they are independent spirits. They are independent thinkers who are highly qualified and, quite frankly, have minds of their own.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I find it unfortunate that some people appear to want to use tactics to draw partisan attention. These tactics can have consequences. That is what happened when two women senators were targeted. Unfortunately, some people react badly when they see things like that on social media. Fortunately, in this case, there were no serious consequences, but it could have encouraged angry people to do things that could hurt someone. We need to be careful. These types of tactics do not work in the long run.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, the Bank of Canada has said that the price on carbon is not contributing in any significant way to food inflation. Now, I do not know, maybe the hon. member does not accept studies and analyses by the Bank of Canada as legitimate academic studies. I know his leader does not think much of the Bank of Canada and puts the blame of everything on the shoulders of the Bank of Canada.

There is a price on carbon. It is being added to the cost of things. The point is that it is not responsible for the biggest chunk of the rise in food prices.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, here we are having another debate on carbon pricing. It feels like the only thing we talk about here in the House is carbon pricing. Some claim that it is a “carbon tax”.

I know all about taxes. Taxes generate revenues that the government pockets. In the case of the price on carbon, all revenues, all the funds generated are returned to individuals or, in some cases, to businesses to allow them to invest in the transition to a clean economy.

I have been sitting here, day after day, listening to what I consider to be a false narrative on the price on carbon. First of all, it has been given an incorrect name. It is not a carbon tax. A tax is something that generates revenues that go to the government coffers. When one talks about a price on carbon, and this is the beauty of it, as it is extremely effective, all of the monies received from the price of carbon are returned to Canadians or Canadian businesses. As a matter of fact, if the price on carbon were removed, the climate action incentive payment would disappear and a vast majority of Canadians would be worse off. We do not hear that truth from the Conservative Party.

What we hear is what my former colleague and Canadian hero and hockey great Ken Dryden used to call “truthiness”. Truthiness is something that sounds true, but it is just not true. Day after day, we are treated to a simplistic but false chain of causation that the Conservatives trot out. It sounds true and anyone listening would say, “Yes, that sounds very logical”, but the chain breaks all along the length of it if one spends any time thinking about what is being said.

Every day in question period, it sounds like the ankle bone is connected to the shin bone, which is connected to the knee bone, which is connected to the thigh bone, except they say, “If one has a price on carbon, it costs a trucker a little more to ship. That means the distributor has to pay a little bit more, and that means that the retailer pays a little bit more, and then Canadians pay a little bit more.”

That is not how it works at all. As a matter of fact, studies, and we know that the Conservative opposition is not keen on academic studies or rigorous studies of any kind, have shown that the price on carbon contributes very little, an minuscule or infinitesimal amount, to the food price inflation. Although we would not want to let academic studies get in the way of a good “truthy” argument coming from the other side.

I think the Conservative Party is using the price on carbon as a red herring. I get very frustrated when constituents write to me and say, “Please take the price on carbon off”, and I write back to say, “Sir, madam, the price on carbon does not apply in Quebec.” Quebec has been pricing carbon since 2007, and B.C. has been pricing carbon since 2008. It does not apply in Quebec.

I have had other people come to me, and I guess they listen to Conservative propaganda because they say, “Where is my climate action incentive payment?” I have to say to them, “Sir, madam, I am sorry. You do not get the climate action incentive payment because you do not pay the price on carbon.” They write back and thank me for explaining it to them. They did not realize. That is a bit of the job of a member of Parliament, which is to explain the facts about government policy and why government policy is the desired policy.

I have talked about this before in the House, but I will mention it again. The Leader of the Opposition fancies himself to be a great monetarist economist in the tradition of the Chicago school of economics, the school that was made famous by Milton Friedman. However, Milton Friedman thought that the price on carbon was a wonderfully simple and effective policy instrument for pricing pollution. It is what we call an externality, which is something that is not priced and is therefore not reflected in the market, so it leads to a greater use of something that is not necessarily a societal good, which is what the price on carbon is really all about.

We can keep talking about this, I am sure, until the cows come home, and I am prepared to stand up in the House over and over again to set the record straight about the price on carbon. However, let us face it, we are going through an affordability crisis in Canada and around the world, as a matter of fact. Fortunately, in Canada we have one of the developed world's lowest inflation rates. As I said, the challenges remain, but I think we have to look at the international context and see where we fit within it.

Now, the government recognizes that we have an affordability crisis, and it is acting to help Canadians weather this crisis. Fortunately, we have seen the inflation rate come down recently, and this was predicted a couple of years ago. I wanted to wait and see because we want to see the reality, but many economists were telling us a year and a half to two years ago that, by this time, inflation would start to come down. In fact, it seems to be happening, but we will wait and see over the long term. In the meantime, the government is acting, and I will give members an example of one of the inflation relief measures that our government instituted to help Canadians weather the inflationary storm.

Budget 2023 introduced a new, one-time, targeted grocery rebate to provide inflation relief for 11 million Canadians and families who needed it most, which is over a quarter of the Canadian population. That is not peanuts. The grocery rebate provided $2.5 billion in targeted support, with eligible couples with two children receiving up to an extra $467 and single Canadians without children receiving up to an extra $234, which included single seniors. Now, the Conservatives may say that is not enough and does not really count, but they can tell that to somebody who is dealing with the high cost of food as a result of international developments, such as the war in Ukraine. I do not think it is something to sneeze at.

The government, of course, is doing other things. For example, it is addressing junk fees. Junk fees are taking a real bite out of Canadians' incomes, and they are having a disproportionate impact on lower-income Canadians. Through budget 2023, we announced our government's intention to work with regulatory agencies, provinces and territories to reduce junk fees for Canadians and continue to ensure that businesses are transparent with prices to help make life more affordable for Canadians.

At this point, I want to digress a little bit because we have noticed that the price of automobiles has been rising. It is not because of the price on carbon that the new car a person is leasing or buying has gone up a tremendous amount of money. I will explain why this has happened, and it is related to the pandemic. That is not a novel idea. On the other side of the House they seem to have forgotten the pandemic and the impacts of it, but there is a lot going on in the economy still today that is related to the pandemic. What happened in the pandemic with the sales of automobiles is that supply chains were interrupted for car dealers.

I was just getting going, but I am out of time, so I will stop there. Maybe some other day I will talk about why the price of cars has gone up, but it has nothing to do with the price on carbon.

[National Strategy on Flood and Drought Forecasting Act, November 24th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the point of the bill is to really require a strategy because, as the member knows, private members' bills cannot require the spending of money.

The idea of a strategy is to create a plan or model for how we can move forward with flood forecasting. I believe the model should be based on the National Hydrological Service as opposed to the Meteorological Service of Canada because the Meteorological Service is a top-down, centralized service that does wonderful work, but the National Hydrological Service is a cost-shared program with the provinces. There is a lot of back and forth and co-operation between the federal government and the provinces and territories, and that is the kind of model that we need, not something that is top-down but that is interactive with the folks who are closest to where the action is taking place.

[National Strategy on Flood and Drought Forecasting Act, November 24th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is absolutely right. There are various pieces of legislation.

The Canadian Meteorological Centre is located off Highway 40 at Sources Boulevard on the West Island. Yes, there are programs in place, but they need to be better coordinated for greater benefit to the country. The purpose of the bill is to ensure that the existing elements are better aligned to increase their effectiveness.

[National Strategy on Flood and Drought Forecasting Act, November 24th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure Bob would be very pleased to hear the hon. member mention his long-standing friendship with him.

The federal government has been investing in climate adaptation infrastructure, though one can always invest more, and it has recently released its climate adaptation strategy, which is a framework. I would be in favour of as much funding as possible to strengthen the resiliency of communities.

With regard to why the government has not been doing this already, in defence of Environment and Climate Change Canada, it is working on the issue. I feel personally that it is not going far enough and I introduced the bill to push the issue forward a little more.

[National Strategy on Flood and Drought Forecasting Act, November 24th, 2023]

moved that Bill C-317, An Act to establish a national strategy respecting flood and drought forecasting, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that a key role of a legislator, especially when society is faced with a growing multiplicity of challenges, many of which require recourse to science to solve, is to act as a conduit, in essence a conduit for bringing the science that resides in our universities and other research entities, including government departments, into the realm of actionable public policy. This is what Bill C-317 seeks to do.

Before I delve into the bill, I would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. John Pomeroy, director of the global water futures programme at the University of Saskatchewan, and Dr. Alain Pietroniro, Schulich chair in sustainable water systems in a changing climate at the University of Calgary, both of whom have patiently provided me with a basic understanding of flood and drought forecasting to allow me to argue today, hopefully convincingly, for the creation of a national flood and drought forecasting strategy.

Fresh water is one of those complex policy issues that call for urgent political and policy attention. First, let me be clear, Bill C-317 is not about encroaching on provincial jurisdiction. It is not a Trojan horse, no more than the Canada Water Agency, which will be a platform for co-operation in better managing our water resources, would be a Trojan horse.

It would be a political conceit, not to mention just plain foolish, to think the federal government could govern fresh water, a provincial resource, in a top-down centralized fashion. That said, we need all hands on deck if we are to properly manage and protect this vital resource, which Canada has been blessed to possess in such great abundance in its rivers and lakes, in its ice coverage and beneath our feet in groundwater.

I implore members not to oppose this bill for reasons of politics or ideology. Water, especially when we speak of flooding, is a far too important of a non-partisan policy issue. Bill C-317, if adopted, would help better protect communities across Canada, including in Quebec, from the devastating impacts and costs of flooding. My own riding of Lac-Saint-Louis in Quebec, as well as ridings adjacent to it and further upstream, have been impacted by costly flood events as recently as 2017 and 2019. I have seen first-hand the damage and heartbreak that flooding can cause.

My bill calls for the creation of a national flood and drought forecasting strategy. I want to emphasize the word “national” here, as opposed to “federal”, which is a crucial distinction.

Water is far too vast and complex an issue for the federal government to be able to take on alone and take sole responsibility for. This would be true even if, by some miracle, the Constitution gave the federal government complete jurisdiction over water, which is obviously not the case. Centralization is simply not the way to go here.

The federal government readily acknowledges this fact in its words and actions. The federal government's equivalency agreement with Quebec on the regulation of waste water effluent is a good example of this desire to collaborate, even when it comes to a powers under the Fisheries Act, which falls squarely under federal jurisdiction.

That being said, when we talk about water or other environmental issues, gaining knowledge, advancing research and sharing best practices to reach better solutions are international undertakings that require a kind of collaboration that transcends borders. Nothing in this bill challenges respect for jurisdictions, including provincial jurisdiction over water. If the European Union countries can collaborate on a common water policy, the European water policy, the regions of Canada should be able to do the same.

The condition of our water resources is increasingly linked to climate change. In fact, water is the canary in the coal mine, an early warning system. I would like to quote one of the most respected experts on water policy, Jim Bruce.

He said, “Like a fish that does not notice the shark until it feels its sharp bite, humans will first feel the effects of climate change through water.” Put another way, to quote water policy guru Bob Sandford from his book Flood Forecast: Climate Risk and Resiliency in Canada, water is a child of climate. He writes, “If we follow what is happening to our water, it will tell us what is happening to our climate.” In other words, we experience climate change through water.

At this time, I would like to say that, while Bill C-317 deals with both drought and flood forecasting, I will be concentrating on flooding in this debate.

According to the United Nations, flooding is the most common natural hazard globally. Due to damage associated with floods, it has been known as the deadliest natural disaster after earthquake and tsunami.

To quote Zahmatkesh et al. from an article entitled “An overview of river flood forecasting procedures in Canadian watersheds”, published in the Canadian Water Resources Journal, “In Canada, floods are known as the most common, widely distributed, and the most costly natural disasters which threaten lives, properties, the economy, infrastructure, and environment.”

Needless to say, flood disasters hurt the economy. According to the Library of Parliament, an Insurance Bureau of Canada paper states that large natural disasters have a negative impact on economic conditions. A typical disaster lowers economic growth by about one percentage point and GDP by about 2%.

The damage from flooding is not only physical, it is emotional and psychological as well. To quote the report of the 1998 symposium on the Saguenay flood:

Some authors have observed an increase in depressive and somatic symptoms [and] emotional distress and anxiety [pursuant to flood disasters]. Some flood victims...[have even] exhibited psychological disorders 14 years after the event, including phobias, panic disorders and agoraphobia.

I have seen the damage. I have toured flooded areas of my riding with Jim Beis, the mayor of the Montreal city borough Pierrefonds-Roxboro, who has been tackling local flood risk head-on for years, through robust annual springtime flood preparations. He has worked tirelessly to buttress the community's resilience to floods, often not waiting on the city administration downtown to act to protect his constituents, many of whom are also my constituents.

Allow me to give a brief overview of major flooding events in recent Canadian history. In 1996, according to the report from the 1998 symposium on the Saguenay flood:

More than 16,000 were evacuated and 7,000 families witnessed...damage to their homes or neighbourhoods [in the flood].

Twenty percent of the disaster victims suffered post-traumatic stress and the flood “generated psychological after-effects that were measurable three months later.”

Apparently, these floods drove home the reality of climate change for Quebec's Premier at the time, Lucien Bouchard, and its destructive potential.

In 2017, the Ottawa-Montreal region experienced extreme flooding and then again in 2019. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the 2019 spring flood in Quebec cost $127 million in insured damages.

This brings me to 2013 in Alberta where, to again quote Robert Sandford in his book Flood Forecast: Climate Risk and Resiliency in Canada:

Three storm cells combined and then lingered for three days in the same region and unleashed 250 to 270 millimetres of rain in the upper regions, producing some nine million cubic metres of rainfall, suddenly turning mountain creeks into raging torrents. The spring snow melt was late that year and the snowpack was above normal for late June, something that was not recognized in the province's flood prediction system or model. The province's flood prediction system utterly failed and flood warnings were not issued in many places until after evacuation orders were issued. However, the inadequacy and failure of Alberta Environment's flood forecasting system should not be attributed to the skill or knowledge of individual forecasters but to systemic problems related to staffing cuts, reliance on outdated forecasting tools and inadequate field monitoring.

The flood caused $5 billion in damages.

In British Columbia, in 2021, parts of the southern region of the province recorded between an estimated 1-in-50 and 1-in-100-year rainfall events, triggered by an atmospheric river, delivering about one month's precipitation in a matter of hours. The total flood damages totalled $9 billion.

Needless to say, damages from flooding are expected to grow exponentially with climate change. According to a report by GHD consultants entitled “Aquanomics: the economics of water risk and future resiliency”, “droughts, floods and storms could wipe $5.6 trillion USD from the GDP of key economies, with some more affected than others.”

In Canada, “droughts, floods and storms could result in a total loss of $108 billion to Canadian GDP between 2022 and 2050, an average of 0.2% of GDP per annum.” Output losses in Canada in manufacturing and distribution alone between 2022 and 2050 could reach a total of $50 billion. One can only imagine the impact on inflation of increasing, widening flooding events.

Flood forecasting is a complex endeavour with two key components: meteorological forecasts and hydrological modelling to translate weather forecasts into stream flow and water level predictions. Accurate flood forecasts also require knowledge of watershed characteristics, which influence water flows. It is easy to see that accurate flood forecasting relies on large quantities of data from multiple sources and the ability to create models that are both broad and granular, into which to feed the data. As flood forecasts cover wider and wider areas and take account of more and more factors in an uncertain climate context, greater and greater processing power is required to crunch the data and produce a range of probabilistic scenarios, which means an increasing reliance on supercomputers.

According to scientists, “Canada is the only G7 country, and perhaps the only developed country, without a national flood forecasting system”. Flood forecasting in Canada is largely considered a provincial responsibility, carried out by many of the 13 provincial and territorial governments, various municipalities across the country and some 99 of the Ontario conservation authorities. However, there are disadvantages with this approach. The main one is the lack of integration with weather forecasts as well as inconsistent forecasting capacity across provinces. This fragmented approach can lead to the slow adoption of new technology and advanced methods, and to an absence of technical coordination with agencies like the Meteorological Service of Canada.

Most jurisdictions in Canada have no modern flood forecast modelling capability. Even the most sophisticated systems use dated software and are limited to major river forecasting. Fragmentation can also be problematic in dealing with transboundary basins when individual systems in each province and territory, and between provinces and territories and the U.S., are not necessarily compatible. Several provinces and territories are still struggling with their forecasting needs because of limited human resources or skills. However, there are advantages in the Canadian decentralized system. It allows provinces to be laboratories to test unique and innovative approaches that, once demonstrated to be successful, can be adopted by other provinces. The benefit of this fragmented approach in flood forecasting is that it allows for developing bespoke flood forecasting systems that are specifically tailored to work at regional scales and to tackle unique local hydrological challenges.

I have much more to say on the technical level about what the bill would accomplish, and I expect to be able to touch on those aspects in future speeches in the House and also in committee, if the bill gets there.

I would like to end by saying that the benefit of a national forecasting system is that its models are of higher quality, producing more accurate large-scale forecasts with longer timelines than is possible with local forecast models only. The ability to connect national models with local forecasting efforts is crucial for accurate flood forecasting and also for long-term capacity building. National modellers gain experience on a regular basis from floods in different parts of the country. A national modeller could very well predict a flood almost every year. Local modellers, on the other hand, might not predict a flood in their whole career. Working with national modellers facilitates knowledge transfer that strengthens the overall system.

The bill is trying to accomplish a formal structure of collaboration among the stakeholders in this area, with the scientists and the forecasters, which is something I believe they all want. At the moment, they do meet informally to share best practices, but there is a need for a more permanent structure that could bring them together to better predict floods for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Housing, November 24th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, across Canada, Canadians are struggling with the cost of housing. Unlike the Conservative leader's plan, we are making the investments necessary to get Canada building again, and it is working.

Statistics Canada has reported that investment in multi-unit home construction is up over 8%, with all provinces reporting increases. However, we are not stopping there. The fall economic statement is bringing more solutions to make sure that we are building homes and building them faster.

Can the parliamentary secretary for housing, infrastructure and communities tell Canadians what new housing measures we are putting forward through the fall economic statement?

[Persons with Disabilities, November 9th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, we all sympathize with the additional challenges that people with disabilities face when they travel, particularly by plane.

Recently, we have seen media reports of several cases involving the unacceptable treatment of people with disabilities who were travelling by plane, specifically with Air Canada.

The Minister of Transport called a meeting with Air Canada to hear about its detailed accessibility plan. Can he share the highlights with us?