Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak, as my colleagues mentioned, to the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink motion today. I intend to give very brief remarks to the last matter, which has to do with the farmers in western Canada, but I will speak mainly to the second matter about Canada's energy sector.
On the matter of interswitching, this is a problem that the previous Conservative government did nothing to resolve in the long term. It just kept having temporary continuances. However, it did extend the interswitching distance, I think it was to 120 kilometres.
I have talked with the grain farmers of Canada, and with some of the growers in Alberta I know well, including Humphrey Banack. They said they would be pleased, if eventually this law is in place, to extend it to 1,200 kilometres, but are deeply disappointed that yet again the government is letting the August 1 deadline pass without any change. That means that the interswitching reverts to 30 kilometres. This is going to put our shippers at an extreme disadvantage, particularly those who are in the process of negotiating the shipping of their crop this fall.
Indeed, we support the fact that this should be expedited. We need the Liberal government to take measures to ensure this interim arrangement extends until this law is passed and in force.
The second matter is on the allegations by the Conservatives that the government is attempting to phase out Canada's energy sector by implementing what they call a job-killing carbon tax, adding additional taxes to oil and gas companies, removing incentives for small firms to make new energy discoveries, and neglecting the current jobs crisis in Alberta. What they are neglecting is the reality of the energy sector, not only in Alberta, not only in Canada, but across the world in fact. That is that most of the investment is shifting to the renewable energy efficiency sector. The Conservative Party absolutely refuses to understand that the energy sector includes more than oil and gas.
Contrary to what they assert, it is not the recent move by the Liberals to address climate change that is the problem; it is the complete failure of the previous government to address this global challenge in any credible way, or to take any measures to support the diversification of the economy. That includes in my province of Alberta, and including toward supporting the development, expansion, and deployment of renewable energy and job creation in the energy efficiency sector.
The Conservatives committed to reducing greenhouse gases, and then set targets. They then repeatedly promised to establish a regime to address the single largest and growing source of carbon emissions, the oil and gas sector. They proposed a cap-and-trade regime. They even issued a discussion paper on offsets. However, none of it ever materialized. They did, to give them credit, propose a shutdown of coal-fired power by 2050 unless the greenhouse gases were reduced, investing millions of taxpayer dollars in carbon capture and sequestration.
The Alberta companies completely backed away because of the high costs and questionable efficacy of the technology. However, that target did not address the growing health impacts of the coal-fired power sector, which are well documented by the Canadian Medical Association. To its credit, the NDP Government of Alberta has moved forward the date of decommissioning of coal-fired power. That was in response to these concerns over the health impacts associated with the toxic emissions from coal-fired power. The federal government eventually followed suit and has also moved forward the date.
Alberta has also announced regulations to reduce methane emissions, which this government again mirrored but has delayed. Conservatives did nothing about methane, despite the fact that methane emissions are far more powerful in causing climate change than carbon.
The Conservatives' tirades about the carbon tax are growing tiresome. Many of the provinces have already initiated programs to reduce greenhouse gases in their jurisdictions, including a carbon levy imposed years ago by the then Progressive Conservative Government of Alberta, and a carbon tax imposed by the Government of British Columbia. Contrary to the allegations by the Conservatives that addressing carbon kills a fossil fuel sector, we need only look to the booming sector in B.C. and Alberta. Instead, the Conservatives should be supporting calls by many for additional measures to the carbon tax by the federal government to actually address climate change.
Environment Canada is projecting that based on the policies it has in place, the country is on pace to miss its reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, pumping out at least 30% more than promised. That is based on the meagre Harper targets that it has continued to stick by.
In fact, there is a problem with the carbon tax. As many credible sources have pointed out, it is not sufficient on its own to deliver on the national reduction targets, let alone the commitments made in Paris.
While a number of nations have managed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, Canada's continue to increase. The government should start by expediting action on its promise to the G20 to phase out and rationalize inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. That has been recommended by Canada's Auditor General, who, in his 2017 spring report, criticized both the Department of Environment and Climate Change and Finance for failing to even complete a review of the perverse subsidies in place, let alone prescribing a plan and timeline to phase them out. This could go a long way to ensuring a more level playing field for investments in the renewable energy sector, and energy efficiencies.
Second, while the budget lists a myriad of measures to support deployment of renewables and increased energy efficiency, for the majority of those measures, any spending is defrayed over the next several elections. There has been almost zero allocated for it this year. The release of federal money supporting provincial and territorial initiatives under the bilateral agreements on green infrastructure and the low carbon economy fund are similarly postponed.
Why not restore the ecoENERGY retrofit program, as my colleague mentioned, to match provincial and municipal programs that would help reduce energy costs for small to medium-sized businesses, and help reduce the concern with the coming carbon tax?
It is also time to follow the United Kingdom model and infuse accountability into the climate program. As our party has been recommending since I was elected eight years ago, it is important to enact binding reduction targets and establish an independent commission to advise, monitor, and report.
The problem is that there is a list of initiatives that various ministers wander out to the public and industry to talk about, but there is no certainty of what they are moving forward on. The first glimpse that they might go forward with programs is that we saw this listing in the budget documents. However, when one turns to look at the budget document, one sees that in fact zero dollars are allocated this year. That includes programs to help isolated and northern communities get off diesel. That would be beneficial both to the health of the community and to reducing greenhouse gases. That is one small measure that is regrettably again delayed.
It is very important that we get off this rant about the carbon tax and instead come together to put pressure on the Liberal government for an extensive, encompassing program to meet not only its meagre targets, but targets it should be meeting for a fair contribution to the world reduction in greenhouse gases and its Paris targets.
It is not enough to send the Minister of Environment and Climate Change around the world. She spends a lot of time meeting with members from the European Union and so forth. It is time for her to come home and start implementing some of these measures that will benefit Canadians, reduce their costs for energy, and move us toward a cleaner energy economy.
