Madam Speaker, as members know, the climate crisis is on our doorstep. This year, our country has been burning from unprecedented, climate-fuelled wildfires, with 131,000 square kilometres of land burned this summer alone, which is more than double the next-worst wildfire year on record. In a vicious feedback loop, this in turn has released more than one and a half times our annual emissions from carbon stored in trees and soil.
It is clear that we need urgent and bold action, and it should go without saying that this means we need to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure. In fact, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.” He goes on to say, “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” However, this is exactly what the Province of Ontario is doing. It is planning to build new gas plants that will increase emissions from the province's electricity sector and then lock them in with long-term contracts and financing arrangements.
While the governing party has committed Canada to achieving a net-zero carbon electricity grid by 2035, its recently released regulations meant to achieve this have been weakened so badly that loopholes now allow for expanded and prolonged use of natural gas on the electricity grid. Specifically, these loopholes allow for two natural gas plants to operate at full capacity, 24-7, until the end of 2040 and 2037. They allow for all of Ontario's gas plants, except one, to operate for 450 hours per year. Worst of all, they allow for the Government of Ontario to proceed with its plans to build up to 1,500 megawatts of new gas-fired generating capacity.
What does this mean? It means that these loopholes in the draft regulations allow for greenhouse gas pollution from Ontario's power plants in 2035 to exceed their 2017 levels by up to 178%.
What is the point of so-called clean electricity regulations if they allow emissions to almost triple? There are 35 municipalities, including the City of Kitchener, I am proud to say, together representing almost 60% of the province's population, that have now passed resolutions calling for the opposite: to phase out gas power in Ontario by 2030 or sooner.
The good news is that it is not too late. The federal government published these draft regulations on August 10. The formal consultation on the regulations ends November 2. We could still have regulations that truly do achieve net-zero emissions from Canada's electricity sector by 2035, as the government has said its intention is, but to get there, we have to absolutely stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure, and this includes expanding natural gas-fired electricity.
We could do it sooner if we really wanted to. A new report from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance shows that Great Lakes wind power could supply more than 100% of Ontario’s current electricity needs. We could build it in less than a year at 40% the cost of nuclear. The Ontario government though is not going to do it on its own.
Will the parliamentary secretary today commit to strengthening the clean electricity regulations and closing these loopholes?
