Madam Speaker, the more time I spend here, the more time I hear the word “file”. There is the mental health file, the housing file, the disabilities file, the climate file. I cannot stand it, because the word “file” reduces deep systemic injustices into political speak. The fact is that climate is not a file. It is about whether we choose to continue living on a habitable planet.
Bill McKibben, who has been writing and organizing around the climate crisis since the eighties, would say, “Winning slowly is the same as losing.” This morning we had a reminder of that when climate scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued their latest warning. The co-chair's report says, “It's now or never”. If we want to limit global warming to 1.5° C, we must decrease and plateau emissions at the latest by 2025.
The scientists who wrote this 2,900-page report went on to say that they have a high confidence that unless countries around the world step up their efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the planet will be on average 2.4° to 3.5° C warmer by the end of the century, sailing past the target of increase by a maximum 1.5° C.
The UN Secretary-General went on to say:
We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree limit agreed in Paris. Some government and business leaders are saying one thing—but doing another.
Simply put, they're lying. And the results will be catastrophic.
Back at home, what do we have? We have a so-called emissions reduction plan that tells Canadians a fairy tale that somehow we will keep increasing oil and gas production and give oil and gas $50 billion in a new subsidy for carbon capture and storage, a completely unproven technology, and the carbon intensity of the oil will magically disappear.
What is actually true? One recent study from the Netherlands found that the majority of carbon capture technology they looked at, 32 out of 40, actually emitted more carbon than they captured. More recently, over 400 academics and climate scientists and experts around the country shared that “carbon capture is a false climate solution.”
Even if we take the government at face value that there is $9.1 billion in new investments in its plan—and to be clear, there are some constructive investments in that plan—the unfortunate truth is that those investments are overshadowed, not only by that $50 billion I just mentioned but also by the $21.4 billion on the Trans Mountain pipeline, the cost of which has ballooned, which intends on increasing oil from 300,000 barrels to 890,000 barrels a day. As well, the government is ambiguous on its decision with respect to Bay du Nord, an oil drilling project off the coast of Newfoundland that would not even begin until 2028 but would allow drilling for another billion barrels of oil. All of this means that the government is gambling with our children's future.
I am not interested in hearing what others have to say about the plan; the only bar that matters is that of climate science. I wonder, knowing the hard work that parliamentary secretary is putting in and her good intentions, whether she can tell us if she—
