Thomas Mulcair

[Stuart McLean, February 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is with incredible sadness that we learned of the passing of Stuart McLean. He was my friend and nothing less than a Canadian treasure, a beautiful soul whose stories became a part of our lives.

We listen to the story of Dave cooking the turkey, while driving on through the snow on Christmas Day, laughing hysterically and then welling up, touched by the humanity and love that he always captured, but that was Stuart. He also knew how to make us cherish the moments of joy and laughter in our daily lives.

Our sincere condolences to Amy and to all his family and loved ones.

I would like to end by reading something that Amy posted last night, “We will have a tribute for him this summer. Via canoe, as the sun goes down, when the loons call. When he was happiest of all. I'll just leave this here. He loved to call for them, and every once in a while, they called back”.

I thank Stuart.

[Ethics, February 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the questions that Canadians are asking are about their Prime Minister who has broken the law again.

The Prime Minister promised to usher in a new era of transparency and ethics, but the Prime Minister himself is now under investigation for not one but two separate incidents.

Let us try a different tack to see if we can get the Liberals to stop spouting their talking points.

What would the Liberals have said if Stephen Harper had broken the law not once but twice?

[Ethics, February 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the document from the U.S. border services said that Yassine Aber did not have a valid Canadian passport. I saw that document. I also saw his passport that is valid until 2026.

The Ethics Commissioner has opened another investigation into the Prime Minister's exclusive vacation. lt is the second time, and unprecedented that our Prime Minister is under investigation.

Will he now admit to breaking two different laws, and will he finally take responsibility for his actions, or is he going to blame it all on some guy named Joe?

[Canada-U.S. Relations, February 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, promises, promises. It is not what they say they will do, it is what they did not do on Monday.

On Monday, I visited Yassine Aber, who was turned back at the U.S. border. He is a brilliant young man and also an athlete. He was turned back, but not because he committed a crime or did anything wrong. No, he was turned back because his parents are from Morocco. It is a disgrace to have a Liberal government that refuses to condemn this blatant discrimination.

Why are the Liberals doing nothing to address—

[Canada-U.S. Relations, February 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, on the heels of the Prime Minister's visit with Donald Trump, the Liberal government is continuing to deny that American immigration policies have direct impacts on Canada. The Prime Minister refuses to stand up against Trump's Muslim ban.

The immigration minister refuses to repeal the safe third country agreement, and the public safety minister refuses to raise cases of Canadians being turned away at the border with his American counterparts.

Why is the Liberal government turning a blind eye to these obviously discriminatory and hateful U.S. immigration policies?

[Montreal and its Universities, February 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today to applaud the fact that Montreal has just been named the best city in the world for university students.

Montreal is the first city to take over the top spot from Paris since the annual international ranking has been prepared and published. Montreal is unique in terms of quality of life, cultural diversity, and its world-class universities with instruction in both official languages.

In fact, Canada's big university cities performed very well overall in this international ranking. Vancouver and Toronto took the 10th and 11th spots respectively.

Our cities are global in every sense and welcoming because, fundamentally, we are a country of diversity, peace, and inclusion. Let us stay that way.

Congratulations, Montreal.

[Job Losses in the Energy Sector, February 8th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. It gives me the opportunity to remind the House of the wonderful opportunity afforded to Canada by the Paris agreement, which seeks to address the problem of global warming by reducing greenhouse gases.

We signed that agreement and, if we respect it, we will have the opportunity to create tens of thousands of good jobs in renewable energy. We have the universities, the expertise, the technical schools, the wind resources, and the knowledge of hydroelectricity to create clean energy and the economy of tomorrow. All that is available to us.

All it takes is a federal government that believes in it and that will begin to play an active, credible, long-term role.

[Job Losses in the Energy Sector, February 8th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague from Yellowhead for reminding everyone that the tragedy of the loss of jobs in Grande Cache has to do with the closing of a coal mine, first and foremost. However, it is another example that in the energy sector, because that is what it is, we have to have a long-term plan. We have to ensure we think of those families and communities, first and foremost.

One of the very few economic theories that is actually specific to Canada is the staples theory. It is a history that we have in our country of developing raw natural resources, exploiting them rapidly, and not thinking long term about developing them and adding the value here. I think the same thing is going to happen in the next few weeks when we look at the failure of the Liberals to deliver a plan for softwood lumber, and that is going to affect communities right across the country.

It is a question of how we develop our natural resources, which we should remind ourselves are a blessing that a lot of countries in the world would give anything to have. We just have to remember that it is not enough to leave it up to the market in terms of sending things off raw and hoping things will work out for the best.

There was a challenge from one of my Conservative colleagues before, asking if we would stand and be in favour of refining, upgrading, and processing here. I am a former environment minister and have a good track record as an environmentalist. I stood and fought all I could to keep the Shell refinery in Montreal because I knew how much that meant in terms of value-added jobs.

Therefore, I am on the same page as the member when it comes to a long-term plan to ensure we have good jobs in the energy sector in Canada.

[Job Losses in the Energy Sector, February 8th, 2017]

The interesting thing about the Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Chair, is that he is an expert at setting up straw men, all the better to knock them down himself. What a spectacular false argument coming from someone in a party that always claims to understand that energy and the economy have to be taken care of at the same time. All we had to do is listen to what he just said. What a ridiculous false argument.

He talked before about the loss of trust in the previous government. It was the Liberals, and the Prime Minister, no one else, who promised British Columbia that none of these projects would go forward without a credible, thorough environmental assessment. They broke their promise to British Columbians and that is why Canadians do not trust them on anything to do with energy right now.

[Job Losses in the Energy Sector, February 8th, 2017]

Mr. Chair, first of all I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Edmonton Strathcona.

Mr. Chair, the subject tonight, and you gave it at the beginning, is to take note of job losses in the energy sector. In some of these debates, it has been easy to lose sight of that very simple fact. Anyone who has spent any time in Alberta over the past couple of years cannot have avoided taking note of the devastation that has been wrought on the economy in that province and on tens of thousands of families. That is why we are here tonight. We are here to take note of that, and one would hope come up with other than the pious platitudes of the Liberal government and start talking about solutions.

We talk about the immediate effect on those families. I have met some of those families, and there are members of my family who live in Calgary and who have been hard hit by this. There is a 25-year veteran of the oil patch, a senior geologist with two kids in university, so I know what it is like to see up close and personal someone losing his or her job after working so hard for so many years in that sector. That is why it is our obligation to start looking at this long-term, and see what those solutions can look like.

The first thing to point out is that the Liberals promised a great deal on employment insurance, but as we speak today, 6 out of 10 unemployed Canadians cannot access employment insurance. That is the current state in Canada. That has to change.

We also believe that we have to start working toward a sustainable economy. The Liberals talk a good game on that. We talk about losing trust in the Conservatives, but when they pushed through Kinder Morgan under the failed process of Stephen Harper without doing what they swore they would do, and when they said to the Dogwood Initiative that they would redo the process, they did not keep their word.

They pushed that through, and it is not going to get built because they have not respected their word and the people of British Columbia are going to stand up to Kinder Morgan. There is no way it is going to go through in its current form.

Let us be clear, the only way forward, the only way we can protect workers and families is to aggressively pursue the innovative diversified clean economy of the future, and leave the outmoded and unstable energy economy of the past behind.

I remember being in Alberta several years ago and reading a bumper sticker that made me smile, but I was trying to figure out the reference. The bumper sticker said, “God, if you give me another boom, I promise not to blow it this time”. I can understand when I go to Alberta and talk to people who are losing their homes, what it is to live in a boom and bust cycle, and I do not think of the people outside of Alberta, because it is primarily in Alberta that those job losses have occurred in the energy sector

Saskatchewan has had a hit as well, but I do not believe enough people in Canada understand the effect of that boom and bust cycle on families, and how many tens of thousands of families have been hard hit.

The current situation and the hardships faced by workers due to the collapse in oil prices around the world are the direct result of the failure of successive Liberal and Conservative governments to develop a diversified energy economy in Canada. It is the federal government's responsibility to take meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change.

Do not get me wrong, we understand that our natural resources are a blessing. Of course they are, and a lot of countries in the world are very jealous of the fact that we have access to so many resources, but the Paris accord was signed with one very clear purpose in mind, to make sure that Canada could contribute its share to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its share of coming to grips with the reality of global warming.

Unfortunately, again, the Liberals have talked a good game, but they have not met the very specific criteria of section 4 of the Paris accord. There are two requirements in there. The most important being, that every time we talk about climate change in Canada, we have to have a plan to reduce and we do not have one.

We also have to have an economy-wide plan that puts us all on the same page in terms of reducing GHGs. We have not done any of that.

It is worth noting that Canada's market share of the global clean energy market dropped five points, and that is the most of any other of the 24 largest exporting countries. In fact, when it comes to clean energy exports, the Czech Republic now beats Canada. The lost opportunities cost Canada $8.7 billion in 2013 alone, and we cannot repeat the mistakes that led us to this place.

Canada cannot be left behind in the energy economy of the past.

That is why we are calling upon the government to set its bland rhetoric aside and come up with a real plan for the future and for the sustainable development of Canada's energy sector.