Justin Trudeau

[Health, October 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, last July, two thirds of Canadians were planning to get vaccinated against H1N1, but now only half of them are planning to get vaccinated. And the figures are worse with respect to youth. A mere 36% of young adults are considering getting vaccinated, and that percentage is even lower in Quebec. That virus is targeting young Canadians, and this government is not getting the message across to them.

How do these Conservatives think they can justify once again not looking after our youth?

[Bill C-311--Climate Change Accountability Act, October 8th, 2009]

I will take advantage of this moment, Madam Speaker, to remind the hon. members opposite that the Liberal Party in the 2008 election, in which I was elected, had an ambitious plan regarding the environment. It was not universally accepted and we find ourselves in opposition because of it. However, the idea that we had a plan at least is not something that I am going to disagree with. Right now we are continuing to be in opposition. The Conservatives are in government. It is not so bad that an opposition party has not revealed every detail of its plan. What is bad is that the government has not revealed any details of any plan.

[Bill C-311--Climate Change Accountability Act, October 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member.

He raised a few points that I could completely take issue with, but I will focus instead on his question.

Quebec, which indeed has some great solutions for environmental problems—and I must congratulate the Charest government for bringing forward so many proposals in that regard—can share its solutions with the rest of Canada and the Canadian government. The values espoused by Quebeckers regarding the environment are not all that different from those espoused by all Canadians. As for being able to come together to say: here is our plan and here is how we differ from western reformists who do not represent our values and our reality; I completely agree that Canadian values must be conveyed by strong people from Quebec and the rest of Canada.

[Bill C-311--Climate Change Accountability Act, October 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

For the past four years, the Conservative government has been saying all kinds of nice things and making all kinds of promises about the environment, and for the past four years, the Liberal Party and the other opposition parties have been wondering what the Conservatives' plan is. Where is the plan?

Instead of a plan, we get inconsequential proposals, announcements that never materialize, fancy words and promises to cooperate internationally, but no action. That is why today's discussion could yield some very good results.

This motion we are debating is excellent. We are not talking about the environment in general. We are not even talking about Bill C-311 in general. The motion very simply separates out from the body of Bill C-311 the clause that addresses the requirement of the government to set targets and to say where we want to be in our reduction of greenhouse gases in 2015, 2020 and 2025 so that we know what the plan is going to deliver.

This is not overly rigorous, because under the mandate, the plan will be reviewed, updated and reassessed every five years. We will ask if we made it, if it is the right thing and if we are going in the right direction. Right now, we are looking at a concrete plan. The Government of Canada should be pleased with this motion and pleased with the opportunity to share with the House and the people of Canada its plan on where we are going.

The Conservative government makes a lot of hay out of its supposedly ambitious target of a 20% reduction by 2020 from 2006 levels. We can debate whether that is actually an ambitious target or not, but at least there is a target and it intends to get there. We need the government to tell us where we are going to be halfway, too. We need the government to tell us where we are going to be in 2015 and how we are going to get to the targets that exist for 2050.

The idea that we need to respond aggressively to the realities of climate change is no longer up for debate. The only question is, with what clarity will we do that and within what framework?

I am very pleased today that the NDP demonstrated that it has been listening to the Liberal Party in the environment committee, on which I have the honour of sitting. As we have said, we need to talk about where we are going. We need to get a plan. We need to hear what the plan is from the Conservative government. We need to hear about the issues around what we are going to be negotiating in Copenhagen and what the position of the government is going to be. Yes, we need to hear that.

The NDP, the Liberals and the other parties may disagree on what exactly that position should be or which binding targets should be imposed upon the negotiators at Copenhagen, but to remove the non-contentious part of Bill C-311 and simply say that the government is proud of its plan, the government must bring forward that plan.

I would really like the Conservatives to give us some straight answers about where we are headed. What steps do they plan to take between now and 2050? What will Canada do to ensure that we take responsibility and fulfill our commitments to the international community?

Our industries need clear direction. They need to know what will be expected of them in the years to come. As a member of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, I often talk to representatives of the oil and manufacturing industries. They want us—the Liberal Party—to tell them what our plan for them will be if we form the government one day. So I ask these industry representatives what the Conservative government has told them.

How has the Conservative government reached out to industry and said specifically, “This is where we need to go”? The answer time and time again is, the government has not.

What we are discussing today is an opportunity for the Conservatives to stand up and show us how strong their plan is, how great it is, where they want to go, and to give us targets that we can all aspire to and try to reach: industry, individuals, communities.

This is a good thing that we are talking about here. For the life of me, and perhaps I am still overly naive, I cannot understand why these Conservatives are opposing it. There is no question on the issue of climate change. We are all aware of the challenges. We just have not been able to get a sense from these Conservatives of how they are going to respond to those challenges.

Time and time again the opposition parties have tried to get those answers, first by bringing forward bills such as Bill C-311 that are demanding action. Now, by more modestly pulling out a piece of this bill, we are saying, “Okay, if the government does not want to give us action, at least give us an idea of the actions that it wants to take and where we are going to go. Give us something to reassure Canadians and to show Canadians that this Parliament is capable of addressing the grand issue of our time”.

How we get this right on the environment is going to direct the success or failure of us as a species in the 21st century. Still I hear lines like I heard about 10 minutes ago from the member opposite, where addressing the environment runs the risk of destroying our economy. I would like to think and to hope that in 2009 there is no longer any rhetoric around the fact that there has to be a choice between the environment and economy.

For so long now, the Conservatives and the Republicans have been saying that they cannot do anything about the environment because they have to deal with the economy, income and jobs. But we know that the critical thing is to combine these elements, to plan for both, to acknowledge that a healthy environment will support a strong economy and that a strong economy can and should contribute to a healthy environment. It is not magic. It is about investing intelligently in renewable energy and efficiency, about investing in the research, science, development and innovation that have always been Canada's strengths.

Unfortunately, we once again find ourselves in the position of having to beg the government to tell us its plan, to share its ideas with us, to tell us about its vision for the decades to come. That is not too much to ask.

We are asking for a little bit of clarity. We are asking the government to say, “This is what we want to reduce by 2015. This is where we want to be in 2020 and this is how we would like to get there by 2025”. We want to know if these targets can be adjusted if they are not ambitious enough or if they need to be more ambitious, if we need to deliver in a better sense.

That is the question we are talking about today. Will the government, that is so proud of its plan, so proud of the actions that it is supposedly bringing forward, share with us how those actions are going to result in targets for 2015 and so forth? Where is the plan? What is the plan? Can somebody please tell us?

[Bill C-311--Climate Change Accountability Act, October 8th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to hear the member opposite talk about the robust and rigorous plan that the Conservative government has put forward.

My question then is why the Conservatives are opposed to this motion to simply separate Bill C-311 to look at one section that they would obviously love to be part of, to simply release their plan, to reassure Canadians, to reassure industry, to let them know, to let everyone know what the targets are in this great plan they have. That is the motion we are discussing here today, and that is what I would like to hear the hon. member respond to.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would like to point out that when the hon. minister was asking for ideas, my suggestion to bring forward a conversation about youth and service in this House was shot down by the Conservative Party.

On the other issue, I would like to respond to every Conservative who stood and said that we were trying to push an election, that we wanted an election and that we are trying for an election. Have they seen the polls? Our interest right now is about telling the government that it is not doing good enough. If someone else will support them, I say let them do it, but we cannot look at our--

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I can understand where my hon. colleague from Gatineau is coming from, because he can see that the Liberal Party is popular in Quebec. People are interested in what we have to offer. They want us back in government. If he wants to talk about the past, he should try telling the truth—

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to see all those clippings about how strong the Canadian banking system is and would like to remind the hon. member that it was his leader who fought hardest and said that we should be more like Citibank in this country and that we needed to unite our banks and try to create it. It was Liberal policies that we had.

It is also nice to see that it was the Liberal opposition that pushed the government into responding to stimulus when it came forward with an economic update that was absolute fabrication when it promised a surplus in the last election.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Toronto Centre.

“That this House has lost confidence in the government”. This is not something that is said lightly. It is something the Liberal Party is saying after serious thought, after consulting with Canadians from coast to coast and after seeing to what extent this government is unable to provide Canadians with the help they need in these difficult times.

It is not a matter of wanting an election. It is simply that the Liberal Party cannot say it still has confidence in the government and does not believe that this government is up to the task that Canadians entrusted it with.

Being in this House used to mean something. It used to be a place of real debate, of real discussion on how to help Canadians participate more fully in our economic prosperity and how to help Canadians move forward with their hopes and dreams. It was a place where we had real conversations about how to articulate our values into policy and address the big challenges on the horizon, looking at where we are going as a people and as a country.

My grandfather, the member for Vancouver North, was here 70 years ago when this House was debating the rise of fascism in Europe and through the years that we were dealing with a post-World War II Canada, industrializing and strengthening our manufacturing base. There were real conversations. My father, 40 years ago, was here in this House to tackle bilingualism, to look at how Canada could be a force for good in the world, a balance in the rise of cold war conflicts. There were issues that defined their times.

Now, on the defining issues of our time, we seem to be nowhere to be found. Where is the government on the environment, how it affects Canadians here at home, how it affects the world that we are shaping, all of us together in this civilization? Where are we?

Where is the government on the fight against poverty, the extreme poverty that exists around the world but also in our own communities, particularly our native communities? The fight against poverty is one that the government has not brought forward; it has not responded to the prodding from this half of the House to address.

The government has been totally absent from the defining issues of our time.

The irony is that at a time when the Liberal Party is saying that this House has lost the confidence of the government, Canadians are suggesting that perhaps they have lost confidence in the capacity of this House collectively to deal with the important issues.

No one has all the answers. The 308 of us who gather from every corner of this country have been entrusted by our constituents to try to work out compromises, policies that will help us through, that we will come together and be worthy of the trust that Canadians have placed in us. Time and time again the government has pushed us to fail Canadians in those responsibilities.

When the government's perfect, culminating achievement has been to create an atmosphere in this House of Commons that is based on attacks, on division, on extreme partisanship, it has succeeded in the one thing we know the right-wing Conservative ideology is all about, which is making Canadians believe less in their government, expecting less from their government, and convincing Canadians that governments should not be in the business of anything other than short-term responses to immediate, pressing electoral problems.

That is not what Canadians need. Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that the politics of division can be very effective: to pick one's votes, to pander to them, to discard those who were not going to vote for that person anyway. The current government is proof that this is a good way of getting elected, but it is also proof that it cannot govern a country as richly diverse as Canada: east to west, north to south, urban, rural.

We cannot govern a Canada that is strong, not in spite of its differences but because of them, by playing on divisions. That is the great failing of the government.

I have just completed a tour of the CEGEPs and universities in eastern Quebec and, like everywhere else in Canada that I have talked with young people, the same question keeps coming up. Young people are wondering why they would bother being interested in what is happening in Parliament. Why should they get involved or even vote when they hear that a program like the Youth Skills Link Program to help young people get into the labour force gave 75% of its assistance to young people living in Conservative ridings; when they learn that out of a $260 billion economic action plan, only 0.04% was designated for youth programs despite the fact that young people make up 37% of our population; when they know that the student unemployment rate is almost 20%?

When over 200,000 young people have lost their jobs over the past year, the highest job loss of any age group, our youth have serious questions for the government that the government has been unwilling or incapable of answering so far. The tactics and tone of the Conservative government are all designed to make Canadians believe less in their government, less in their society and to expect less of themselves. Nowhere is this more devastating than in the pernicious impact on our youth.

Our young people have the talent, the intelligence and the motivation to truly change Canada and the world. But we are not inspiring them; we are not involving them enough, we are not providing them with the tools they need.

Young people are getting involved in record numbers with their communities, with international and domestic NGOs. They are caring deeply about how they shape the world, how they can make a better community and a better future for all of us. The fact that they could not care less about what happens in the House is, for me, the most glaring indictment of the visionless government.

The dominance of short-term pandering for votes, electoral strategies, has shortchanged all Canadians. The fact that we have been conditioned over the past four years to believe less of our government, to believe less in the capacity of all of us to propose large visions for this country, to say who we are, where we want to go, for me, is the greatest failing here.

There has been no articulation from these Conservatives of where we are going as a people and as a country. That, for me, is the final failure in a long list that ends today for the Liberal Party of Canada.

Let us be very clear that we do not want an election any more than any other Canadian, but the Liberal Party simply cannot pretend that the government is doing a good enough job at serving Canadians and building our future.

This is not about politics. This is beyond politics. This is about demanding a Parliament and a government that is worthy of the hopes and dreams of all Canadians.

[Youth, September 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, if the member opposite wants to talk about programs, let us talk about what little the Conservatives did when we did an analysis of all youth skills linked program announcements from January to August and found that 75% of the announcements landed in Conservative held ridings.

How can we trust a government that actively works to divide along partisan lines rather than allowing all young Canadians to contribute to building this great country?