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Results: 31 - 45 of 604
View Paul Manly Profile
GP (BC)
View Paul Manly Profile
2021-06-22 17:34 [p.9002]
Madam Speaker, two years ago this House declared we were in a climate emergency and it took until November for the government to table this bill, which, when read, looked like no more than a public relations document pretending to be doing something. There is no accountability in this bill; it is hollow. I could not support it at second reading, because there is no principle behind it.
When it came to actually getting it into committee after a very short debate, most of the briefs arrived after the amendment period was over. It made a mockery of listening to concerned citizens. There was no youth or indigenous representation and no climate science testimony. Not a single indigenous witness was heard.
How often can the Liberals say they did not have time to consult indigenous people, while also saying that Bill C-12 respects UNDRIP?
View Jonathan Wilkinson Profile
Lib. (BC)
Madam Speaker, to argue a lack of accountability mechanisms in the bill, I would just suggest to my hon. colleague that he read the bill again.
It is a legally binding process for the federal government to set climate targets and to bring forward plans every five years, three different progress reports between now and 2030, a 2030 assessment report that has to be tabled within 30 days of the 2030 national inventory report, an annual report detailing how the federal government is managing financial risks of climate change, each year the minister has to respond to the report of the net-zero advisory body and the Minister of Environment has asked, and the bill requires, the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development provide a report by the end of 2024. There is an enormous number of accountability mechanisms, and I just would ask my colleague to review the legislation again.
View Taylor Bachrach Profile
NDP (BC)
Madam Speaker, I have a very simple question, and I would appreciate a clear, concise answer from the minister.
If this motion is carried, and Bill C-12 eventually becomes law, who will ultimately be held accountable for Canada meeting its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets?
View Jonathan Wilkinson Profile
Lib. (BC)
Madam Speaker, ultimately we live in a democratic society, and it is the government that is going to have to be held accountable for its ability to live up to the commitments it makes under this law.
What this law requires is an enormous amount of transparency and accountability through all of the measures I just mentioned, and it provides the information on which the voters of this country, who are the ones who will make the decision about how urgent and how important this issue is, as they rightly should in a democratic society, will make the decision.
As I said before, we will never again in this country have a government like that of Stephen Harper, which essentially set a target, pretended it was an issue, pretended it was important, but never had a plan and never made progress.
View Anthony Rota Profile
Lib. (ON)
I declare the motion carried.
It being 6:20 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.
View Dan Albas Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the good people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. There seems to be a bit of a sense of electoral urgency in the air, so let me just say that I have always appreciated the honour to be their representative, and I will always keep fighting for their interests. I am thankful also to my family, who allow me to continue that work.
If we hearken back just to the Government Business No. 9 debate when it originally opened up, we had the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment and me. I was interrupted part way through for the proceedings of this place. It happens all the time, so I do ask those watching at home to know I am continuing my speech. In essence, I was giving a litany of concerns raised by the committee process, which was hastened by the Liberals literally steamrolling through along with the NDP. It was a process where people who wrote in to the committee were not heard. There were no indigenous witnesses. In fact, even the Assembly of First Nations' brief along with over 70 other briefs were not translated and sent to the committee until after the period of amendment. This is something that has been raised by a number of people as being a concern, telling people they did not matter.
Returning back to my comments, I was speaking specifically about the need for different aspects to be included in the bill. I will just start where I left off.
What we wanted to do was to include in the assessment report a summary of the measures undertaken by the provincial governments to achieve the national emissions targets. Once again, that seems obvious. However, once again without any debate, the Liberals and the NDP rejected it. There were no reasons given. They just voted against it. Their changes would be to include only the key measures that the federal government was implementing together with the provinces. However, since the provinces will be doing many great things on their own, should there not at least be a record of them?
The Liberals truly believe that the provinces are subordinate to the federal government and that, unless something is done by Ottawa, it is not important. That is not what we believe. A Conservative government would work with the provinces to reach our climate objectives. We believe that the provinces are partners, not punching bags.
There is another problem that I am hearing a lot about, and that is how the big push towards transportation electrification is affecting our electric grid.
Now, I support electric vehicles. Our party included an electric vehicle mandate in our secure the environment plan. We are not against electric vehicles, but Canadians are questioning whether the grid can handle this change. That is why we proposed that the assessment report in the bill include an assessment of the grid's ability to deal with increased demand.
We cannot move forward if we do not have the full picture. This was another reasonable proposal that was rejected by the Liberals and the NDP. We persevered nevertheless.
A lot of concern about the bill, including from me earlier on, has been about the formation of the advisory group. A significant number of briefs, witness testimony and amendments from other parties were about this very topic. We came up with what we believed was a reasonable approach: Instead of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change appointing all 15 members, he would simply appoint six, then the Minister of Finance would appoint three, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry would appoint three and the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations would appoint three.
This would allow a more whole-of-government approach and for different ministers to put forward the priorities from their ministries into the advisory body. Conservatives believed this was the best way to ensure a wide variety of voices, not a body that includes people devoted to destroying a way of life for many Canadians, yet, sadly, the Liberals and NDP rejected it. Why did I list all these changes and talk about why the Liberals and the NDP rejected them without even debating them? It is because I wanted to show how much of a farce this process was.
Everything I mentioned was thoughtful and reasonable. We did not come in with a “Liberals admit they are terrible and should resign” amendment designed to be defeated, no. We came in with good ideas that the Liberals and NDP refused to even debate or consider, all of this after the minister said he was willing to work with all parties. Yes, sure. It was not just the Conservatives affected by this bad-faith deal between the Liberals and the NDP. I have already mentioned how an identical Green Party amendment was defeated. By the end of the process, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands had started to withdraw her own amendments because it was clear the Liberal and NDP members were not even interested in listening.
The Bloc Québécois put forward many great amendments, not ones that Conservatives generally supported, but thoughtful and productive. The Liberals and the NDP opposed them all without debate, except for one at the very end and the NDP decided to support adding a five-year parliamentary review. No one could have watched that process in committee and not be sickened by what they saw. The Liberals and the NDP not only rejected any suggestion that was not their own, but a great deal of witness testimony to boot.
Indeed, the few amendments the Liberals proposed and supported did not do anything. Many were just spelling out that the minister must do things that the minister could already do. The biggest joke of them all was an amendment that the target of net zero by 2050 did not mean net zero could not be achieved earlier, which zero people thought was the case, yet before we were called just as bitter as the Liberals, we voted for a couple of government amendments we thought were good. We came in willing to work in good faith. Unfortunately, the government and the NDP did not.
What did the NDP get for seemingly selling out to the government and agreeing to be its coalition partner in all of this? It was not much, as it happens. Basically, every environmental witness and brief stated there needed to be a 2025 target in the bill, a milestone target. In fact New Democrats themselves said that over and over in debate on the bill, but did they get that by making a deal with the government? No. Instead, they got a 2026 interim objective, which is not actually a thing in the bill and only exists in the NDP amendments as a topic that must be reported on.
In the bill, targets have teeth. They must have plans and reports. The interim objective does nothing. That is what New Democrats got for their undying allegiance in this. They also say that they got the advisory group to be more independent. What that really means is they simply added the word “independent” to the name. Seriously, that is all they did, just added a word. The minister still appoints all of them and decides what they will do unilaterally, but the word is in the title, so it must be true. It would be funny seeing what little the NDP members gave up in exchange for their loyalty if it was not so sad.
I am sure the NDP member will rise after me and proclaim New Democrats made the bill better, that they got the Liberals to make these nothing changes and that means they are doing really good work. The reality is that the Liberal government pulled one over on the New Democrats, gave them almost nothing and got their dignity in return. They will have to answer to their friends in the environmental movement for this sellout. I expect some of those meetings will not be pleasant.
That is how we got to where we are. The Liberals and NDP rushed the process, refused to listen to witnesses or briefs, refused to debate anything and refused to consider any ideas not their own, and that is just disgraceful. While we, the Bloc and the Greens were trying to debate, trying to do the thing we have all been elected to do, the minister accused us of filibustering the bill.
There were over 150 amendments and they were moving through at less than 10 minutes each. We were not filibustering, we were asking questions and debating, the kind of thing one would expect to do at committee scrutiny. To the Liberals, I guess daring to ask questions is tantamount to heresy.
We saw what they did to Bill C-10, stopping debate and passing laws in secret. That is how they want this place to run: a rubber-stamp for their Liberal ideas. I reject that. My constituents sent me here to represent them and to try to make the country better, and yes, to debate.
Therefore, I did ask questions during debate, and it is not my fault the Liberals and NDP refused to. In the Liberal world, even asking questions is apparently now a filibuster, because how dare we question the member for Papineau, whose ideas are perfect as they are and should never be challenged no matter who someone is. Well, I will because that is what I was sent here to do. I will ask those questions.
Since I wrote my speech, we had a closure motion pass today. As I said, the process the government chose was to put forward a bill and let it drag along and drag along. I would have constituents ask about Bill C-12 and I would tell them the government just really has not decided to move it forward.
Suddenly Liberals get to the end of the session and they start remembering there is a bill they have to do. They rush it through committee, a process I have explained, as well as how difficult it was on the witnesses, and even for members. I am sure there are lots of things Liberals would have wanted to ask more questions on so they could do their job as backbenchers holding the government to account, but they could not. They agreed to a strategy and they stuck with the NDP faithfully.
Since then, this very night, the minister tried to say Liberals supported the Bloc Québécois in their parliamentary review. That was fundamentally out of synch with any sort of reality. It contradicts exactly the testimony we heard earlier. The closure motion did not just cut off debate for myself but for all members, including those backbench Liberal MPs who maybe thought their constituents deserved to see their members of Parliament in action, asking questions, showing up to debate and putting forward their own ideas.
Let us be mindful, the House leader actually called the Conservatives out for filibustering a bill. We were asking questions, and he had the gall to say that we were holding things up. In fact, the Minister of the Environment a week ago Wednesday, wrote to different parties and asked us to finish the bill, which we were almost finished anyway.
We finished it Wednesday night, waited to see what happened Thursday and nothing. Eventually, our chair for the environment tabled it Friday and then Liberals said that they wanted to debate it as early as Monday, so we expected it. Then we found out that Government Business No. 9 suddenly springs out of nowhere. It sounded like they did not even want to debate Bill C-12, they just wanted to have something on the Order Paper, maybe because they knew it would not be ready in time.
What I am saying is the Liberals are in control of the agenda. One of the few things the government largely still has control of is the agenda on this place. Despite all their talk about us filibustering, they did not bring the bill forward. In fact, we did not even debate debating the bill, as in this motion, Government Business No. 9, until yesterday, a full week and a half after the bill was tabled.
I hope I have impressed upon members tonight that the government has slowly tabled a bill that many witnesses did not support, and then decided to let it languish on the Order Paper. When the Liberals finally realized they had to get the engines hopping, they jammed it through with only six hours of debate. Then they jammed it through again at committee. Now they are jamming it through today, so that even Liberal members do not get the ability to hold their own government to account, let alone all other members in this place.
I am deeply dissatisfied with the government. Canadians should see that the Liberals, by their own actions, have used a process whereby Canadians do not feel heard and their representatives do not feel needed. This is a minority Parliament. No political party was given an absolute majority in deciding the views of all Canadians.
This is where we are supposed to debate ideas and to force compromise. Instead, the Liberals and the NDP have linked up and said that they do not need to hear from anyone else. During a minority, that is a shame. Shame on the government House leader and the Minister of Environment for doing so.
On this side of the House, we will call out what we see. On this side of the House, we will fight for ideas that help our environment and help us meet our targets on climate change, not simply talk about them and talk a good game. After an election, a Conservative government will do what is right on the environment and do right by Canadians.
View Kristina Michaud Profile
BQ (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I must say that I really enjoyed working with him on the committee. As he mentioned in his speech, some committee members truly wanted to improve this bill.
However, it is completely wrong to claim, as the minister did, that the Liberals voted in favour of a Bloc Québécois amendment, that they at least gave the Bloc something and accommodated the opposition. The only reason a single one of the 30-some amendments we proposed was adopted is that the Conservatives voted with us on the amendment, and I thank them for that.
I would like to know what my colleague thought about what the members of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development did to improve this bill.
View Dan Albas Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. I think it is important to say that the Liberals and the NDP rejected a lot of ideas. The Bloc Québécois, the Green Party and the Conservative Party proposed many improvements to Bill C‑12.
This bill was not perfect, no matter what the government believed. The opposition members from the Bloc, the Conservative Party and the Green Party are the ones who had a lot of positive ideas to protect the environment and to meaningfully address climate change.
View Taylor Bachrach Profile
NDP (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments by the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, and I find his protestations somewhat disingenuous. I was at those committee meetings. I watched the member vote against the principle of climate accountability at second reading and then, at committee, vote against clauses 3, 4, 5, 6, 6.1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19. It is like the member is saying that he agrees we need to get across the river, but then he votes against wading, votes against swimming, votes against bridges and votes against watercraft.
Is the member in support of climate accountability, and will he be voting in support of Bill C-12?
View Dan Albas Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank my fellow British Columbian. I know why he is so uptight and upset. My speech has revealed the true face of the NDP in this Parliament. It has enabled the Liberal government and its rhetoric instead of taking real action.
I was in favour of this bill very early on, to the surprise of the member and I am sure of many in his caucus. However, the minister worked in bad faith with us, and the member worked with the minister to basically push through a process that pushed Canadians and expertise out.
As he is pointing a finger at me, he should be mindful that when he points his finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back. That is why the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley is upset. It is because he was part of a bad process and he enabled it.
View Paul Manly Profile
GP (BC)
View Paul Manly Profile
2021-06-22 19:42 [p.9014]
Mr. Speaker, it sounds like the committee process was a real sideshow.
I talked to the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, who has attended 13 COP conferences and has been involved in the climate change movement for decades now. She knows lots of scientists and is well-connected, and is probably more knowledgeable than any other member of this place. She made some really important suggestions, like getting in touch with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, where they have established legal precedents and worked with other countries on climate change, or with James Shaw, who is the Minister for Climate Change in New Zealand. He has implemented a series of detailed plans to combat climate change. She knows a long list of scientists. All of this was rebuffed.
What does the hon. member think about the accountability in this bill?
View Dan Albas Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I know the member is disappointed, and I know that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands was extremely disappointed, not just with the product but with the process. When in government, no party will win everyone over, but for goodness' sake, we should at least have a clean process. More than anything, that is where members, like the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith and the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, can find some common cause to hold the Liberal government to account.
It is really sad when we see a minister so hell-bent on getting his way that he is willing to push aside even his own caucus members. That is not accountability. That is not how the system is supposed to work. I have heard the expression that with good people, a bad system can work, but unfortunately when we do not have the right people, even a good system will not work.
View Chris Lewis Profile
CPC (ON)
View Chris Lewis Profile
2021-06-22 19:44 [p.9014]
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. His constituency name is not as easy as Essex, but it is a heck of a great name.
The hon. member spoke of putting teeth into bills and teeth into reports, and of Conservatives fighting for great fresh ideas. Could the member give us an example of what he and Conservatives would have liked to see in the report and ultimately in the bill?
View Dan Albas Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, I am really pleased that the member for Essex listened to my speech. Had he listened to the whole thing, he probably never would have wanted to talk to me again. However, I will speak specifically to the one part of it.
The Conservatives believe in a whole-of-government approach. We need an all-hands-on-deck approach to climate change. That is the only way we are going to be able to do this. We need to work with the provinces. As I said, the provinces should be partners not punching bags, something the government continues to forget.
What did we want to see? Instead of the minister being the sole person to decide who is on the advisory board and the plans that go to cabinet being made on the recommendation of the minister, we wanted a whole-of-government approach. Instead of one person being responsible, multiple ministers should be. Then cabinet itself would be able to argue, break down the silos and come out with a united plan.
Climate change is very real. It is a challenge. If we cannot get the right governance structures in place and do not get rid of the silos of government and work with the provinces, we will get no further. We need all hands on deck for this, and the Liberal bill puts it all on one minister.
How can one minister change everything, unless it is the Prime Minister in that government? I do not know. These guys seem to think there is a way to do it. We will see how it works in reality.
View Brad Redekopp Profile
CPC (SK)
View Brad Redekopp Profile
2021-06-22 19:46 [p.9014]
Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of sitting on the environment committee with my colleague, and I did notice all of the collusion that happened between the NDP and the Liberals on this issue.
My question to him is simple. How will all of the collusion in the way the NDP has worked to support the Liberals be portrayed in the next election? Can Canadians trust NDP members to have their own thoughts, or are they just here to prop up the Liberal government?
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