Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vaudreuil—Soulanges.
I thank the right hon. member for Papineau for his motion.
I suspect that when most of us look back on our time in the House, we may well point to this motion as one of the most consequential votes of our careers. This is one of those rare moments when what is before us transcends parties and has implications for decades to come. The motion is about how this country will respond to the great challenge of our time, and how we will honour the principles of Paris.
Since coming to office, our government has been guided by some important principles: that environmental responsibility goes hand-in-hand with economic prosperity, that engagement is better than estrangement, that Canada works best when Canadians work together, and that no relationship is more important than the one with indigenous peoples.
These values have guided our actions and informed our policies. The motion before us today reflects those same values. The Paris agreement highlights the urgency of our environmental responsibility while pointing us toward new economic opportunities, and it speaks to the necessity of co-operation toward a common goal.
The agreement also reflects a compelling reality that while the transition to a lower carbon future might be long, the trajectory is clear, that we simply cannot continue along the present course but are at a pivotal moment, a time when the world truly begins the historic adjustment toward more renewable sources of energy.
Our government understands the imperatives of this moment. We are committed to making Canada a leader in the new clean energy economy of the future, and our actions have reflected that commitment.
We began by signing the Paris agreement. We became one of the founding members of the mission innovation agreement, the ambitious global agreement to double government investment in clean technology. We have signed a far-reaching agreement with our North American partners on climate, clean energy and the environment, and may I say with some local pride that much of that work was done in my home city of Winnipeg.
Our first budget invested $1 billion in clean energy and technology; $2 billion in a low carbon fund to work with the provinces; more than $100 million in energy efficiency; and billions more in public transit and evergreen infrastructure, including charging stations for electric vehicles and fuelling stations for alternatively fuelled vehicles.
Now we have set a benchmark for pricing carbon pollution starting at $10 per tonne in 2018 and rising by $10 each year to $50 per tonne by 2022. This will help Canada meet its climate change targets while providing greater certainty to Canadian businesses.
Our government has been moved and inspired by the perspective of indigenous people, a perspective that reminds us of our responsibility to those who have come before and those who will follow, of our enduring relationship to the land and the water and the air. It is also a perspective that places a great deal of emphasis on relationships. As Grand Chief Perry Bellegarde has said so well, “Before you build anything, build positive, respectful relationships”.
This, too, has been reflected in how we have developed and implemented public policy. We have reached out to tap the commonsense of Canadians on how best to move us along the continuum toward a lower carbon economy; and it is a continuum, because while it is exciting to think about the clean energy, low carbon economy of the future, we are not there yet, and we will not be there for years to come.
Even in light of the Paris agreement, as the world continues to transition to renewable sources of energy, the demand for fossil fuels will continue to rise. By 2040, a growing middle class in developing regions, such as Asia, will be consuming more barrels of oil every day, and to meet that demand, the world will have to make trillions of dollars in investments.
At the same time, the percentage of natural gas in the global energy mix is likely to increase as a natural transition fuel, cleaner than coal or oil, and more accessible than many renewables. For a country like ours, which is rich in both of these resources, this has profound implications.
We could simply say that we are going to shut down the oil sands and natural gas production and let others meet this global demand, let others have the jobs and reap the benefits. This is certainly one option, or we could say, let us use this period of increasing demand to our advantage. Let us build the infrastructure to get our energy to global markets sustainably and use the revenues to fund Canada's transition to cleaner forms of energy.
In other words, let us leverage the fossil fuel resources we have today to deliver clean energy solutions for tomorrow, which is why the Prime Minister has said that the choice between pipelines and wind turbines is a false one. We need both.
Provinces such as Alberta are demonstrating that a forward-thinking energy-producing jurisdiction can also be a leader in combatting climate change. That is the way forward for Canada. That is our vision for the future, to use the coming decades to meet rising global demand for oil and gas while funding the next generation of renewable energy.
That is only possible if we receive full value for our resources, and that is why our government has been clear that one of our key responsibilities is to help get our resources to market in an environmentally responsible way.
The problem is that Canadians lost faith in how major resource projects were assessed. Our challenge is to restore that trust, and that is what we are working hard to achieve. We have expanded consultations to build an environmental review process that carries the confidence of Canadians. We are meaningfully engaging with indigenous communities. We will initiate a modernization of the National Energy Board. We established an interim strategy with principles to give proponents certainty and the process transparency.
Will all of these efforts lead to unanimity on any particular project? Not only do I doubt it, I know it will not.
We understand that there are strongly held views on all sides, which is why it is so important that Canadians have the opportunity to be heard. At the end of the day, Canadians will be able to say, whether they agree with the decision or not, that the process was fair, the evidence was weighed, and their voices were heard.
Today's motion is consistent with our government's long-term plan to help combat climate change, build up our clean technologies, restore Canadians' trust in how we go about evaluating major resource projects, and get our energy to global markets. It advances good-paying, clean economy jobs for Canadians, and positions us at the forefront of what is both the great challenge and opportunity of our time, the transition to a lower carbon future.
There is a Chinese proverb that says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” The best time to have been serious about climate change may have been years ago, but the second best time is now.
