The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill , be read the second time and referred to a committee.
:
Mr. Speaker, before, I talked about the consultations that informed us, and part of the consultations helped us determine that we would come up with the interim sustainable jobs plan, which was released in February. It reflects what we heard from Canadians and includes 10 key initiatives within areas of federal responsibility.
One of those initiatives, which is also in this legislation, is setting up a sustainable jobs secretariat. Creating a secretariat like this is a proven international best practice that was repeatedly recommended to the government. Canada's secretariat would promote policy and program coherence across all the five-year sustainable job action plans that are mentioned in this act and in work related to issues such as skills development, the labour market, workplace rights, developing our economy and reducing emissions. It would ensure that the opinions of workers, industry, provinces and territories, indigenous and historically under-represented groups and others are considered in all work on sustainable jobs across different policies, programs and departments.
The secretariat would also help in preparing and tracking the progress on the action plans, coordinating federal-provincial work related to the plans and providing policy and administrative support to the sustainable jobs partnership council, another initiative from the interim plan.
This legislation commits to establishing the sustainable jobs partnership council, which would provide advice to the government on the best measures to include in the action plans. The partnership council would be made up of sustainable jobs experts and would engage directly with Canadian workers, including those from rural and remote communities. This would ensure that they have a voice in the process. They would also engage with labour groups, indigenous groups, industries, trade associations, employers and different levels of government.
The council members would draw from their personal experience and expertise and give input to us, so we could engage in a process to formulate advice about the concrete measures government could take to support workers, their communities and the low-carbon economy. The partnership council would publish annual reports that include advice for the government, which would also help inform the five-year plans. The interim sustainable jobs plan that was released earlier this year is very important. It is a model for these five-year plans, and I can assure everyone that we are taking great action.
There is a lot to discuss, and I look forward to debate about supporting workers through investments and the union training and innovation program, UTIP, which focuses on sustainable jobs and supports up to 20,000 new apprentices and journeypersons.
We are investing in workers, people and communities across this great country. We are going to get the job done.
:
Mr. Speaker, my colleague's contribution with respect to Bill was really informative and interesting.
First of all, I would be remiss if I did not mention that I am speaking today on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.
Bill has been circulating within this country for the last 18 months or longer. It has been a topic of conversation for industry, experts, unions, workers, provinces, territories, committees, think tanks and task forces. This is not something that the government all of a sudden brought to the House of Commons. A tremendous amount of energy, support and careful thought have been invested into developing Bill C-50.
We know that Canadians and the rest of the world are investing toward a low-carbon economy. We are taking our lead from climate experts, from businesses and financial leaders, and from employment and labour specialists. These are people who work in the net-zero economy, who work in the energy sector today and are looking to where they would be working in the energy sector in the future. They want to grow with these opportunities and be a part of launching Canada into being a leader in a net-zero economy. They do not want to be on the sidelines and they do not want to be left behind. They want to be front and centre, and they want to be a part of this movement.
They all agree that the global transition to net zero has the potential to help drive Canada's continued prosperity toward well-paying, high-quality jobs for many generations to come. This is not just for this year, next year or the next five years, but future decades in Canada for which this would have an impact.
We are also taking our cue from the tens of thousands of Canadians who participated in these public consultations. They made sure their voices were heard. They gave us very critical and needed insight and perspectives into where those skills and trades are today, where they see them going in the future, and most important, how they would be included and play a role. That includes representatives from rural and remote communities, as well as from unions, indigenous groups, industry, provinces and territories. All of the stakeholders have participated in bringing forward the legislation before the House today, and that, in itself, speaks volumes as to where Canadians are today in a net-zero economy and the energy transition.
One of the most important conclusions drawn from these engagements was that, for an energy powerhouse such as Canada, there will be an overall increase in jobs for Canadians. As we continue to diversify our energy mix to include more clean and non-emitting energy resources, many of the experts and pundits are even predicting that we will have more new jobs than we will have workers to fill them.
That is a familiar story for Canadians today. The government's sustainable jobs plan is specifically intended to help address these challenges by working to grow the size of our labour force to include more youth, new Canadians, under-represented groups and others who want to participate in this economy in Canada.
We have already made historic investments. This is not new for us as a government. We have been making investments to build a stronger and more inclusive diverse labour force, including, for example, the work that we are doing for a sectoral workforce solutions program. This is nearly $1 billion in investments to help keep economic and low-carbon sectors current and ensure that their workforce is emerging, that it is a workforce that is needed and that we are meeting the demands.
We have put $55 million into the community workforce development program. This was to help communities connect with employers, with workers and with future jobseekers to determine where these skilled trades are going to be and how they prepare for them. For someone who is coming out of school today, where are those clean tech, net-zero economy jobs going to be in 24 months, four years or six years?
We are way ahead of the game on what needs to be done for workers in Canada to make this transition. Of course, we have many other programs, some that are supporting indigenous organizations, industry employers and a number of them supporting the Canadian labour market.
I come from an energy producing province, a province that has found its wealth in the oil and gas sector. Now we are seeing new opportunities on the horizon for hydrogen development, wind development, solar power development and tidal power development. We are seeing an opportunity before us today that a decade ago we did not even think was possible. We know it is the future for our economy. As a province, we know we need to move where the trends and new jobs are going to be, those new revenues. If we are to have a sustainable economy in Canada, we need to be prepared to make this transition.
We are not only an oil and gas producing province; Newfoundland and Labrador is a major generator of clean energy. Did we lose jobs because we went from diesel generation to the largest hydro development projects in the country? Absolutely not. We imported jobs by the thousands to do those developments, to build those projects. Now we are sustaining hundreds of more jobs in those sectors. This is not something new. Just like when we made transitions 30 years ago, we are making transitions today.
What I do not understand is why the Conservatives are not supporting the transition to a net-zero economy, knowing it is going to bring sustainable economic development and good jobs for Canadians who want to work in all regions of Canada and for those who want to be able to stay at home and have a well-paying job.
In fact, I was amazed when I looked at some of the reports and studies that were done. One was by Clean Energy Canada, a think-tank based out of Simon Fraser University. It talked about the number of new jobs that would be created in the clean energy sector alone, about 3.4% every year over the next decade. We are talking about increasing jobs by 46% in sectors like hydrogen and clean electricity. These are not small numbers. These are hundreds of thousands of new jobs for Canadians who will be graduates of high schools and college programs. Not only that, it is coming at a time when we are seeing a lot of skilled workers in the energy sector retiring and leaving the industry.
It is a great time to be proactive in Canada, and that is what our government is doing. Bill is the benchmark for those things to happen. I can guarantee, from a province which is now excited about hydrogen and offshore wind, as well as from other regions of Atlantic Canada that are moving forward with projects like this as well, that we are not only seeing the thousands of jobs that come with it, but seeing a sustainable, tremendous future for Atlantic Canada, for Newfoundland and Labrador in sectors like this. It gives us hope and optimism that we have not had for a long time.
We are getting a clean environment, a net-zero economy, great jobs and are giving Canadians an opportunity to stay and work at home. I do not see any reason anyone would vote against that in the House of Commons.
:
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill , which, as a part of this government's agenda of the unjust transition, threatens to do irreparable harm to the people in my communities and across this country.
I will be splitting my time with the member for .
The so-called sustainable jobs act, which is part of the unjust transition, represents a clear and present danger to the livelihoods and prosperity of hard-working people in my community and in communities across this country. No amount of flowery language crafted by high-priced, Ottawa-based consultants can change the fact and mitigate the very real message being sent to people in my region and across the country, which is that their jobs and their livelihoods are simply not a priority for the NDP-Liberal government.
The legislation before us is a new iteration of the same failed policies that seek to create a taxpayer-funded secretariat of government-appointed elites in Ottawa to decide for the people of my region and of regions across Canada what is best for them and what policies would be imposed on them to meet the Liberal government's arbitrary targets. This is fundamentally unjust. It would lead to significant losses in incomes, to losses in jobs and to losses in livelihoods in my region and across the country. It is clear that the NDP-Liberal government simply is not worth the cost.
I have clear evidence that this is the case, because this is exactly what happened in my region just a few short years ago. The NDP-Liberal government has not learned any lessons from the previous failures of the unjust transition. That failure led to taxpayer-financed corporate bailouts that cost my region thousands of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in annual tax revenue for my local municipalities. The counties of Parkland and Leduc are just two among many across this country that lost a considerable amount of revenue. This is revenue that has not been replaced, leading to higher taxes on people who have lost their jobs. Some people worked for 20 years in the coal-fired power plants, and then the government shut them down. Members of the government did not even listen to the recommendations of its own previous secretariat and its report on the coal transition. It did not listen to it, and the consequences for my region were very real, as I said.
The accelerated phase-out of coal mandated by the Liberal government and its NDP allies cost my community dearly. However, it did not even result in a drop in coal consumption around the world. In fact, coal consumption has gone up around the world. The only achievement of the phase-out is that workers in communities in my region and across the country lost out so that the rest of the world could keep burning coal and keep emitting more greenhouse emissions while my area was left out and suffered so much.
In the wake of the decision of the Liberals and the NDP to accelerate the phase-out of these plants, I met with union representatives and with workers' representatives. They told me that it did not live up to expectations, because the government promised it was going to have retraining and jobs for these people whose jobs it transitioned out of existence. These were people who were earning high five-figure and low six-figure jobs, many of them unionized jobs. Do members know what kind of jobs this government paid to retrain them for? They were jobs that paid $30,000 or maybe $40,000 a year. They were not unionized jobs. These were jobs that are not sustainable to support families, jobs that did not enable people to pay their mortgages or car payments. Since so many people in our region were affected by it, when they were trying to sell their home so they could move to an area where they could get a better-paying job, they could not even sell it, or had to sell at a loss. That is the consequence, and this is a government that has not learned from it.
Let us be clear on what the sustainable jobs plan is. In no uncertain terms, it is an attempt by the government to shut down Canada's oil and gas sector. As always in the case of a government with an ideological agenda, the ends justify the means. However, what are the means when it comes to this legislation and the government's agenda?
The unjust transition would help destroy around 170,000 direct jobs and displace 450,000 workers who are currently directly and indirectly employed in our traditional energy sector. In fact, across all sectors of the economy, the unjust transition would risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadians in every province, across many sectors, including energy, manufacturing, construction, transportation and agriculture. For a government that claims to be evidence-based, these are facts that it either completely ignores or, at worst, feel are justified in order to implement its warped anti-energy ideology. The term “sustainable jobs” could simply be replaced with what it really means, which is jobs that do not exist in our oil and gas sector.
This is extremely short-sighted, because our crude oil and natural gas, and the millions of products that are created from these resources, are entirely sustainable and will be for decades to come. They are not only sustainable, but they also create the highest-paying jobs in the country and provide the greatest economic return of any sector in Canada. In fact, our oil and gas sector is so important that it is the bedrock of our country's economy. Twenty-five per cent of our exports are related to the oil and gas sector. Without it, our trade deficits would be massive. Our dollar would collapse if we did not have it. This would increase the cost of importing goods like food, fuel and pretty much everything else.
Our inflation rate, which is already at record-high levels, would rise even further as our purchasing power collapses. Imagine the catastrophic increase in fuel, groceries and all imported goods if we did not have oil and gas exports propping up our dollar and supporting our economy. The consequences would be catastrophic. It would impoverish not only western Canadians but also Canadians who rely on the purchasing power of our energy-backed Canadian dollar. Inflation would skyrocket, and then the Bank of Canada, in order to get that inflation under control, would have to raise interest rates even further, interest rates that are currently not sustainable for most families in our country. This would lead to more Canadians losing their homes at a time when Canadians are already losing their homes. It would also lead to many families going bankrupt, small businesses collapsing and ultimately, an unacceptable drop in economic growth in our country.
Ironically, this accelerated phase-out of our oil and gas sector, and its resulting impacts, would undermine our efforts to actually make our country have a stronger, greener economy. The commodities we need in order to support wind power, solar power and other clean energy projects are made out of steel, copper and lithium, and these things are priced in American dollars. It would cost Canadian tech manufacturers far more money to produce the manufactured goods here in Canada, and we would not be able to benefit from that. If we have a stronger Canadian dollar with a strong, sustainable energy sector in this country, then we can support the investments needed to make our country greener.
Any serious attempt to grow the renewable energy sector in this country must be led by private industry. In fact, the oil and gas sector is already leading the charge in innovation, and environmental and social responsibility. It is the single biggest investor in clean energy technology in this country. It accounts for about 75% of total investment in this country.
According to Chief Dale Swampy of the National Coalition of Chiefs, “We are the leaders in environmental protection. If you meet with the Canadians who run the oil and gas sector, you'll see that they are just like you. They are concerned about the environment, about safety, about integrity. They'll do whatever they can to protect our country.” Chief Swampy is right. According to another analysis, conducted by the Bank of Montreal, Canada is already ranked as having the top environmental, social and governance profile among the world's top 10 oil and gas producers.
Not only would this bill and the government's agenda do irreparable damage to our own economy, but it would also have consequences that would be felt internationally. Russia's illegal invasion on Ukraine last year underscored the dangers of relying on dictatorships to fulfill our world's energy needs. When our allies have come asking for Canadian energy, the and the Liberal-NDP government have continually turned them away. Just today, I read that the United States is lifting sanctions on the despotic Venezuelan regime, which has repeatedly fixed elections and violently quelled dissent. America and the world are desperate for oil and gas. They are desperate for oil and gas from Canada, and we are the only country turning down the invitation to be part of the global energy solution.
Let us use Germany as an example. It is one of our closest G7 partners. The chancellor came to Ottawa, pleading for Canadian natural gas in order to cut his country off from dirty Russian energy. Germany is a country that, I read recently, has had to restart its coal-fired power plants just to make up for its shortfall in energy. We could be providing low-cost, clean Canadian natural gas. What did the say to the German chancellor? He told him that there was no business case for liquefied natural gas. Likewise, when the Japanese prime minister came to Canada earlier this year, the Prime Minister dismissed his request to help bring Canadian energy to Japan, and he offered just his signature platitudes.
Our allies do not want platitudes. They want Canadian energy. The conclusion is clear: On this side of the House, we believe that as long as the world needs traditional sources of energy, Canada should continue to develop and export its energy sources. Let us let the world's energy market be dominated by a democratic country for a change, one with the highest environmental standards and human rights standards. Let it be Canadian energy for a change.
:
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased and proud to take part in this debate since it is an essential debate for the future of Canada and, let us be honest, for the future of the planet. We are talking here about the vision, the perspective we have when it comes to Canada's natural resources given the challenges we are facing with climate change, which is real.
First, let us begin by defining what is at stake. Climate change is real. Humans are contributing to it. Humans therefore need to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and, ultimately, reducing pollution. Over the eight years that this government has been here, what is Canada's record?
Using a mathematical and scientific process, the United Nations, or UN, which is not just any old organization, analyzed 63 countries around the world to see which nations were most effective at countering the effects of climate change. After eight years of this Liberal government, Canada ranks 58 out of 63 countries. That is not our statistic. It did not come from overly conservative observers. It did not come from climate deniers. No, it came from people in the UN. They handed out their report card: After eight years of the Liberal government, Canada is ranked 58 out of 63 when it comes to effectively fighting climate change.
Will people be surprised by this disappointing result given that the government had pumped itself up and bragged about their ambitious targets?
[English]
“Canada is back.” That is exactly what the said eight years ago in Paris. People all around the world applauded that Canada was back. However, after eight years, Canada is way back, at number 58 out of 63. That is the result of policies based on ideology, not on pragmatism and practice.
[Translation]
That is why, sadly, Bill follows once again in the same Liberal tradition that this government is imposing on Canadians. In other words, the Liberals think that they are the only ones who know what to do, that they will tax everyone and that is going to reduce emissions.
After eight years, that is not what happened. This government has never met its targets. The rare times when there were reductions was, unfortunately, during the pandemic. If the Liberals' game plan is to bring Canada back there and shut down the economy for a few months, that is not exactly the best thing to do. We can all agree.
It is obvious that introducing carbon taxes is not working. That is the reality. Why is that not working? Because we would need all 195 countries in the world to have carbon pricing systems that were equivalent everywhere, with the same requirements everywhere and the same challenges everywhere The problem, however, is that the big polluters, the big emitters, starting with our biggest neighbour, do not subscribe to this system. This is a prime example of how important geography can be. The United States of America is our main neighbour, our main economic partner and our main competitor. Here in Canada, we are always quick and proud to lecture those around us. We tax people. We tax businesses. We tax wealth creators. We tax job creators. As a result, people go elsewhere instead of investing here. We are shooting ourselves in the foot. It is better to go elsewhere. That is the problem with this dogmatic approach.
Our approach is much more concrete, pragmatic and effective. It will deliver tangible results. On September 2, 2,500 Conservative supporters from across Canada gathered in Quebec City for our national convention. We had not had this type of event in five years. We were all under the same roof. The event took place on the evening of September 2 in Quebec City. I am from Quebec City. I am very proud to say that.
[English]
On September 2, there was a milestone speech by the future prime minister of Canada, the hon. member for . He is the leader of the official opposition today, but he will be the next prime minister. It was a milestone speech, the Quebec speech. It framed where we want to go with the next Conservative government, and when he talked about climate change, the leader was crystal clear that the real impact of climate change has to be addressed. That is what he said. This is why we recognize it, but we want to address it with pragmatism, not ideology.
[Translation]
The speech given in Quebec City is a big part of the history of Canadian politics and it will make its mark like many other important speeches in our history. That is why it will be remembered as the vision that the party had when Canadians gave us the honour of putting their trust in us to form the next government.
What was said in that speech?
The first pillar is that climate change is having a real impact and that it must be addressed. We need pragmatic measures to deal with climate change. Rather than imposing taxes, we are going to encourage people, through tax incentives, to invest in new technologies, research and development and measures that can be immediately implemented to reduce pollution. That is the objective. It is all well and good to brag about lofty principles and say that we are going to reduce emissions by 2.3% compared to what happened in 1991 because it was different in 1996, and so on. That is all theoretical. The reality is that there is pollution and we want to reduce pollution.
[English]
When we talk about reducing pollution, it is a never-ending story. We hear that we need to reduce, reduce and reduce. If we can reduce by 20% this year, then great and congratulations. What will be done on January 1 to continue to reduce pollution and emissions? Our plan is based on incentives in research and development to help reduce pollution. This is the first pillar.
[Translation]
The second pillar is to give the green light to green energy. People have projects ready to go right now. They want to invest in green energies and they want to do research and development, but there is too much red tape. We need to act efficiently. I would like to provide a very specific example. Quebec is currently engaged in a lively debate about the future of hydroelectricity. Should we relive the great 1950s, when we gave the green light to so many hydroelectric projects in Quebec, or should we do things differently? This is an ongoing debate. Does everyone know that, through Bill , the federal government has given itself the right to veto hydroelectric projects in Quebec? This is slowing thing down.
We want to do the opposite and speed up the process of giving people greater access to green energy. When I say “green energy”, I am talking about hydroelectricity, geothermal energy, solar energy, wind energy, as well as nuclear energy. These are all avenues that we need to explore further with new technology to make them more efficient and more accessible to Canadians. That is where it can happen.
The third pillar is that we must be proud to be Canadian, proud of our know-how, our energy and our natural resources. Yes, Canada is rich in intelligence. Yes, Canada is rich when it comes to researchers, natural resources and energy. Yes, as Canadians, we must prioritize these Canadian assets and export this know-how. We have extraordinary know-how in hydroelectricity; we are the best in the world. We should be exporting that know-how.
The same thing can be said of natural resources. There is a lot of talk about the electrification of transport. I, for one, am a supporter and I believe in the future of electric cars to combat the greenhouse effect. However, this requires lithium. We have lithium in Canada. Why is it taking years to get shovels in the ground? We need to speed things up.
That is why we should be proud of who we are. That is why we need to green-light green energy. That is why we need tax incentives to accelerate research and development. Concrete, realistic, responsible, pragmatic measures will enable us to fight the harmful impacts of climate change. For the past eight years, the Liberals have opted for their carbon tax and the second tax that, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, will cost over 20 cents a litre, or 16 cents plus tax. We know the Bloc Québécois had two opportunities to say no to the first carbon tax and the second one. Twice, the Bloc Québécois lent its full support and voted with the Liberal government to keep both taxes.
That is not the approach we recommend. We believe that Canadian know-how, smarts and natural resources are the best way to face the challenge of climate change.
:
Mr. Speaker, the issue raised was an attempt to intimidate and stop members from speaking. I will not be intimidated.
I will continue to speak even if it takes all night. I will speak out about climate change denial, even if I am interrupted relentlessly. These are the facts of this bill. I will continue to speak on behalf of the work that is being done, particularly the work we have done with energy workers.
I was speaking about the urgency. I spoke about the urgency of the climate crisis, and that certainly triggered the Conservatives. I spoke of the urgency of what the International Energy Agency is reporting, warning governments against continuing to invest in the fossil fuel industry because they are going to be stranded assets. The urgency is at the point that we are now reaching peak oil by 2025-30. We have this falsehood that if we continue to build infrastructure, we could ignore science, the economy and reality, which is something the Conservatives have done for so long.
I would like to speak to one other element of urgency in getting this legislation passed, which is the fact that the United States, under the IRA, in a single year, has created what is being called economic shock waves for their investments in clean tech. This is a game-changer of unprecedented proportions.
Again, I do not know any jurisdiction on the planet that chases away investment, but I know how upset the Conservatives are whenever we talk about what is happening in the United States. Offshore wind, under Joe Biden, in a single year, is moving to 40 gigawatts of power. The Vineyard Wind project would run 400,000 homes on cheap, clean energy. The Conservatives do not want Canadians to know that because they want to continue to promote coal and oil. There is 146 billion dollars worth of investment in the United States in offshore wind. This is something the Conservatives would shut down in a second.
We are seeing right now, within one year, 86,000 new permanent jobs, and 50,000 in EV. What we have seen is the Conservatives, again and again, ridiculing investments in battery technology and EV technology. We had the member who lives in Stornoway, which I do not believe is in his riding, show up in Timmins—James Bay to ridicule the critical mineral strategy, in a mining town. For God's sake, the guy has had a paper route. However, here is a man who comes into a mining region and makes fun of EV technology, when our communities and our workers are going to be ones building this new technology, and we are investing in it. We will push the government to continue to invest.
The legislation was very problematic for New Democrats. There was not a lot there. We pushed hard by working with labour and union workers who are on the front lines. One of the key places we went to was Alberta. We hear Conservatives talk about workers in Alberta, but they do not talk to them. They misrepresent them. We met with the electrical workers. We met with the construction workers. We met with the boiler workers.
We asked them what they wanted, and they said that they know the world is changing around them. Forty-five thousand jobs have been lost in oil and gas at a time of record profits, and the workers know those jobs are not coming back. Suncor fired 1,500 workers this year. Richie Rich Kruger, its CEO, bragged to his investors about the urgency, at a time of climate crisis, to make as much money as possible. He said he would target workers, that he would make every one of those workers in Suncor prove their worth if they were going to keep their jobs. It is taking record profits, over $200 billion, to big oil. It is putting it into stock buybacks and automation.
The workers knew there was no future. They told us they wanted a seat at the table. That is something New Democrats fought for in this legislation. Is it enough? No. We want to make sure that we have labour represented in the regional round tables that are moving forward. The idea of the Liberal government meeting with Danielle Smith without labour is a ridiculous proposition.
Here is the thing, there is no place on the planet that was more ready for the clean tech revolution than Alberta. In fact, just last Christmas, they were talking about the solar gold rush in Alberta. Just this past July, they were talking about how Alberta was set to become the clean energy capital of the world. Then Danielle Smith stepped up and shut it down. That was $33 billion. Here we go again—
:
Mr. Speaker, I hope that was not a point of order on this really important issue, but I will try to continue, because this is important.
We actually saw at our committee that the issue of sustainable jobs is a top-of-mind issue for Canadian workers, yet the Conservatives have done everything to slow it down and attack it. This is a big issue, because there are problems with this legislation, and our job is to fix it, not to obstruct something that is badly needed.
I want to get to the point of what we are up against in terms of Mr. Biden. In the first week of the Biden administration, he signed an executive order creating an inter-agency working group on energy transition. He set up a transition group to make sure that energy-dependent regions were not left behind. Biden came out of the gate in his first week. He also went to COP26 and said that America would create a new clean energy economy based on good-paying union jobs, because he knew that he had to send a signal that he was going to fight for the middle class, unlike what we see with the Conservatives, who are out to shut down job investments in Alberta and to attack investments in the battery plants.
This leaves us with, my God, the Liberals, who had never talked about these issues before. They were dragged kicking and screaming by the New Democrats. We said that we have to have some key investments. We need commitments and clarity, such as on prevailing wages. We need to say that if someone is going to get tax credits to do energy investment in Canada, there have to be good-paying union jobs. We also need to make sure that apprenticeships are part of the mix.
However, the promised $85 billion in clean energy tax credits, which sounds great, is not here yet. We are going up against a government that, within its first year, had set up its energy transition, a government in the United States that is now saying that there will be nine million direct jobs from the IRA. We have to compete with the U.S.
I have heard constant drivel of misinformation from the Conservatives about what the Chancellor of Germany asked for from Canada. I met the Chancellor of Germany, and he said that Germany was not interested in LNG but that it was interested in the long term and in hydrogen—
:
Mr. Speaker, I think I am getting so much interference because I am getting to the punchline. Then, I will move on, but I think it would be unfair to intimidate me and have my ability to speak circumscribed, because it is about what our priorities are. Our priority, as New Democrats, has been workers, and particularly people from the natural resources industry, like where I come from. I live in a mining town that is looking for the clean energy future, and nobody in my town would be given a $719 bottle of wine. What was in that wine?
I am coming to the conclusion. At the end of this night with these four Conservatives, paid for apparently by my cousin Dan McTeague over in the U.K., meeting somebody we do not know, they had a bottle of champagne for $1,791 Canadian. That is obviously not sparkling Baby Duck. I do not know who bought that for them.
I ask that, because what we are talking about is the insecurity of workers at a time of transition. Do we wish there was a transition? No, we do not. We are used to living the way we have lived. I have lived through transitions, and it is not pretty. Cobalt is where we lost every single silver mining job in one summer. When our iron ore mines shut down, there was no future there. We know the word “transition”, and we know it is not pretty. This was something we heard from workers in Alberta and other regions. They asked what is “just” about a transition and how we could make it so they have some place to go. This was the New Democratic plan from the beginning, which we negotiated with the Liberals.
The Liberals initially said that they were going to put a jobs centre as their solution. We said that a jobs centre sends a message that we are turning out the lights and leaving. Where are we going to put those jobs centres? Are we going to put them in Fort McMurray or Saint John's? We needed something broader and something bigger, so we pushed for the sustainable jobs legislation that would serve as the framework. This is the important thing: We need a framework around how these tax credits would be implemented. We know that if we do not have a plan, it will be just a gong show of friends, pals and lobbyists who are going to be sucking up this money, as unfortunately happens all too often in Canada.
We need to compete the way the United States has. They brought an all-of-government approach to make sure they were making a truly transformative revolution.
I will say another thing they talked to us about when we were in Germany. The Germans were very concerned about the IRA, because of the competitiveness. Over in Europe, 3,000 or 4,000 kilometres away, they were concerned about how they were going to compete against Joe Biden and the massive amount of investment that is moving out of Europe and moving to the United States. We are right on the American border, so when $33 billion gets sucked out of Alberta, it goes stateside.
In my region, talking to miners and mining companies, the first thing they said to me was, “Did you see the tax credits Joe Biden put in? They are really interesting to us.” We have to be able to say that we are here too, we will compete and we will make sure that the investment stays here.
Again, I am dealing with the Liberal government. We are trying to make this work. We are saying, for example, that there are a lot of things missing in this plan. What is the sustainable jobs secretariat? Is that just going to be some desk in some minister's office, or is it going to have a true mandate? What is the partnership council? Are we actually looking at something credible here?
What we are going to be insisting on, while the Conservatives try to filibuster that committee and that legislation, is checks and balances to make sure that regional representation is there. We want to make sure that labour is there with enough voices representing enough regions of the country, because they are the ones who are going to be dealing with the implementation of that, not us. We want to make sure that indigenous rights are fully respected and implemented, and part of that is in the tax credit incentives. They are going to be different in different areas, and they are certainly going to be different in the opportunities for indigenous people. We need to make sure they are front and centre.
The other thing we really want to know is that we have a youth voice on the stewardship council, because we want to make sure that those who are being most affected by the climate disaster that is unfolding have their future interests at stake. We need to make sure that the tax credits work, we need to make sure that they are being implemented and we need to have better data collection. What the Liberals are offering us on data collection is insufficient. There would not be a job left in Canada by the time they report back.
There need to be mechanisms that come back to Parliament to tell us if this is working. If it does not work, it is going to affect our environment, number one, but it is going to affect working-class families from one end of the country to the other.
What we were really surprised by, again, with the all-of-government approach taken by the Biden administration, is that we have seen, in one year, a staggering turnaround in terms of projects getting off the ground, in terms of jobs, in terms of commitments.
That is where we are at as New Democrats. We believe that we have a huge opportunity right now. Is this bill perfect? It is far from perfect. What we can do in a minority Parliament is come in with good plans and good amendments to make it happen, unlike our Conservative colleagues, who want to go back to the 19th century.
It is not going to happen. I am sorry. That world is gone. What we need to do is to say that we have an opportunity and if we do not compete, we are going to be at the side of the road because the United States is moving ahead.
I will just conclude on this. Let us consider Texas. Texas, politically, is about as out there and as right wing as the Conservative backbench and yet 890,000 clean-tech jobs are in Texas right now. There is no other jurisdiction in the world right now that has invested as much in clean tech as Texas. Texas came through the most brutal heat wave, killer heat wave, able to turn on all of their air conditioners.
Meanwhile, Danielle Smith was going around saying, oh my God, if we have clean power, we are going to have to turn the power off. She was paying for these trucks to drive up and down Ottawa saying, my God, if one invests in Canada, we are going to run out of energy. What kind of premier goes around advertising, in an energy-rich province, that the lights are going to be turned off?
The reality is that if we get these clean energy projects off the ground, it is going to dramatically decrease costs for families. It is going to give the working class and middle class steady jobs and it is going to save our planet. We will go to these hearings and we will push for strong amendments.
:
Mr. Speaker, I see that I received applause from a Conservative. Apart from you, Mr. Speaker, he is the only one who still claps for me. We will see how long that lasts.
The Bloc Québécois's position is clear. It is imperative that we change our energy trajectory so that Canada, which still includes Quebec, for now, contributes to the effort to prevent average temperatures from rising by 1.5°C. That is essential. We are talking about the future of humanity, the health of our people, the safety of our communities and the future of generations to come. We have to make the effort. That means we have to stop ratcheting up our fossil fuel production. That is point number one. The International Energy Agency says we must not start any new oil and gas production projects. By 2030, we need to gradually reduce oil production, which is part of the problem.
It is completely wrong to think that some kind of capture technology is going to let us increase oil production while reducing our absolute emissions. I am not talking about emissions per barrel, but absolute emissions. These are basic scientific facts. By reducing our oil production, we will gain access to large sums of public money, which is currently being disproportionately invested in fossil fuels. This money could be directed elsewhere so that Canada can transition to a 21st-century economy, focused on the long term, on the future of coming generations and on renewable energy.
We stand in solidarity with the workers who will have to participate in this process. When the Trans Mountain project began, we did not just say that the government should not invest money in that project and that there would be cost overruns. We know that the project is costing over $30 billion. What we said was that we should take that money that was in the Canadian public purse and use it for the transition, for good-paying jobs in the high-tech sector that produce technologies that can be exported, namely, energy storage technologies. By so doing, we would not impoverish communities in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, who are the primary victims of the lack of transition, who will be among those who will pay the most, and who will be even more disproportionately affected when finally do make the transition when it is too late and it is even more urgent.
The government has done enough greenwashing. We need to take action. Obviously, when we talk about greenwashing, I cannot help but think about this bill, which basically contains nothing of what I just talked about. There is nothing about any of that in this bill. The Liberals are saying that they want to train workers in the clean energy sector, but they are investing billions of dollars in dirty energy. Clean energy workers do not need this bill. They need an employment insurance system that works.
We learned from the member for that half of all workers are not covered by employment insurance. When I look at the federal government's investment strategies, and when I look at the Conservatives' plans, I am not sure I would want to apply to set up a wind turbine project. It has been so devalued.
What would it take? First, we need commitments and principles. This bill turns the process upside down and says that workers are going to be trained. It does not begin with what needs to come first. There is no commitment and there are no principles and no targets. It proposes solutions to a problem that has not been defined. Kafka himself could not have come up with this.
Next, we need a collaborative approach. They forget sometimes, but we are in a federation. There are provinces and municipalities. There are ecosystems in the labour market. There are communities, regions, workers, unions, employers, chambers of commerce and investors. There needs to be consultation. The democratic and civic process in the communities needs to be respected, but that is not covered in the bill. The bill provides that committees will submit reports, and it is not quite clear what will be done with those reports. We know that endless reports are issued here, and we know where they end up. They end up in a place where no one reads them. That is what will happen.
Once we have done all that, then we need measures to achieve the objectives. We need to think of the workers, the communities and the first nations communities. That is not happening at all. The provincial jurisdictions will need to be respected. There will need to be requirements for the planning and production of sectoral reports that cannot solely be the federal government's responsibility.
Labour law is under provincial jurisdiction. The workforce in Quebec has been under Quebec's jurisdiction since the 1990s. Everyone knows that. There are agreements, there is funding. It has not always been easy, but we have those things today. That is not reflected in the bill.
My take on this bill is that I do not doubt the intentions behind it, although given that the title completely eliminates the concept of the just transition, one can doubt the government's intentions. However, the whole thing feels improvised to me. The bill does not define a problem, yet it tries to find solutions. It is funny how the Liberals think a report is the solution to everything.
Since being elected, I have been bewildered to learn that committees work to submit reports to the government, and we vote on motions, but the government never reads them. Why, then, would it read the reports that are going to be produced under this bill? That is not plausible. That is where things stand.
The worst part is that the bill speaks to the government's utter ignorance, whether deliberate or not—if it is deliberate, then that is even worse—of Quebec's regional realities and Quebec's labour market. It is a bit like what happened with the early childhood centres. We are way ahead when it comes to skills training and collaboration on skills training. It seems like the federal government always waits 30, 40, 20 or 15 years. It dilly-dallies before eventually saying that Quebec is right and that it will try to push the other provinces to follow Quebec's example. That is precisely what is going on here. There will need to be asymmetry.
In the 1990s, Quebec voiced its demands on workplace skills training. In the 1990s, there were discussions about professional training, which led to federal transfers to Quebec for workplace skills training. This bill is on skills training, but Quebec does that, and it is good at it. If results matter, then the government should be consulting Quebec.
On June 22, 1995, the National Assembly passed the Act to Foster the Development of Manpower Training. Since then, Quebec has been in charge of workplace training. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, this reform is based on partnerships. In 1997, Quebec created the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail. This labour market partners commission repatriated active employment measures from the federal government to Quebec, and are working together to find innovative solutions, not just in green energy, but in all sectors, because every region of Quebec is different. Who are these people? The group brings together employers, employees, labourers, the education sector, universities, vocational training schools, community organizations and economic and social ministries that are familiar with Quebec's realities. It is working. Ottawa needs to stop ignoring that.
When we have immigration files in our ridings, we wait months for labour market surveys for each immigration file when those labour market studies have already been done in each region and in each sector. They are meant to determine what the needs are, what the needs will be in the future, how to plan and how to do things better. By deliberately ignoring Quebec with this bill, the government is saying that it does not want to do better. If Quebeckers want things to be better, they can vote for the Bloc Québécois, because we always defend Quebec's jurisdictions.
What should we do with this bill? We are thinking about it. It is not easy, but maybe something can be done with it. We are thinking it over. For starters, the government needs to listen to these concerns. It needs to consult Quebec. When we asked officials in committee if they consulted Quebec, they said it did not occur to them to do so. They turned red as ripe tomatoes, much like the tomatoes grown in my riding, which are redder than those grown elsewhere. When money is being allocated to implementing the strategies in the bill, Quebec will have to get its fair share. Negotiating labour agreements has never been easy.
Moreover, the government has to honour the Paris Agreement. It also has to honour the COP26 just transition declaration. The generally accepted term in the international community is “just transition”, which emphasizes the importance of making the energy transition and doing so in a way that serves everyone now, in all provinces and all communities, as well as future generations. As for the bill's title, my mouth dried out by the time I finished saying it. That is because someone is trying to hide something.
I think there is a lot of work to be done, and I invite all parties to take the blinders off and really consider Quebec's reality and its institutions. If objectives and achieving those objectives is so important, the government should take a step back and consult the Quebec government.
:
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to talk about this alleged just transition legislation brought forward by the Liberal government. Before we talk about this legislation, we should talk about the success of the Liberals with just transitions in the past, because they promised a just transition for coal workers. They said they were laser-focused on it and that anyone in the coal industry who was going to be displaced by their policies was going to get a just transition. They kept saying this, repeating it over and over again, making these false promises to coal workers.
Can we guess what? Those fake and false promises were actually discovered in the commissioner of the environment's independent auditor's report called “Just Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy”. The Auditor General looked at the just transition Liberals gave to coal workers, and let me summarize that it was garbage. They did absolutely nothing for coal workers.
Let us look at a couple of the excerpts in this report. One reads, “Overall, we found that Natural Resources Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada were not prepared to support a just transition to a low-carbon economy for workers and communities.”
This is what Liberals do. They try to beat up on energy-producing provinces with punishing policies, but then they say not to worry, that they are going to be there for them and that they are going to make sure it is a just transition. Those are false promises, much like Liberal promises on housing. They say that they are going to solve housing and that they have a housing accelerator, which is going to accelerate something. However, it accelerates nothing. Liberals come up with other programs where they just line Liberal insiders' pockets with gold, all at the expense of taxpayers, because they actually do not give a darn about the workers' jobs they are going to displace.
The Auditor General was really clear about this. Liberals had years to deliver a just transition for coal workers and did absolutely nothing. The Auditor General's report also states that the analysis is there was “No federal implementation plan”. Liberals said they had a plan. No, they misled Canadians. The Auditor General said there was no federal implementation plan.
The report also said that there was “No formal governance structure”. When one does not have a plan, there is actually not going to be any formal governance structure. They should have just said they have no plan, much the same as they have no plan on housing, the economy or combatting the opioid crisis. This should actually be called the “no plan transition”, because there is zero plan. The terrible thing is that there is also almost zero accountability from the government.
The final thing the Auditor General report stated was that there was “No measuring and monitoring system” put in place. Again, when one does not actually have a plan, when one just says to coal workers that it is too bad, that they are out of a job and that we do not give a damn, of course one does not put in a formal governance structure. One has no system to measure and monitor.
Then the Liberals have the audacity to come back to this place and say to Canadians that they have new legislation, because they care about workers and are going to give them a just transition. The only transition they gave to coal workers was to be out in the cold without a job. That is their plan as they once again beat up on Alberta and Saskatchewan and say that they are going to transition their workers out of jobs, but they are going to have some grand transition plan to take care of them. They did not take care of a single darn thing with coal workers.
Let us look briefly at something the Liberals say about this grand transition plan to take care of workers. They say that they are going to set up a council, to be known as the sustainable jobs partnership council. Its mandate is going to be providing the minister and specified ministers with independent advice through a process of social dialogue. That and $1.50 will buy a double-double at Tim Hortons, which is effectively what workers are going to get with this piece of legislation. The Liberals are going to set up a council. Wow, that is really ambitious.
I do not have a lot of faith in the government, because with anything it touches, it has the opposite of the Midas touch. Do members remember the Midas touch? It turns everything to gold. Everything those guys touch turns into garbage. They say they are going to set this up. I say, “Yeah, right.” They say they are going to do it in a couple of years. I say, “Yeah, right.” I can go back to how they treated coal workers. They treated them as I would not treat my worst enemy. They were indifferent. They set up no program, all the while saying that they were setting up a program and that they were going to take care of the workers.
That is called “gaslighting”, and the Liberals gaslight Canadians constantly. They actually do it on housing, too. We talk about housing, and the pops up, puffs up his chest and says that no one has done more for housing, that they have a housing accelerator and that they have this program and that program. However, housing prices have doubled. Rents have doubled, so when the Liberals say they are going to do something, we should actually believe that what they are going to do is cause harm. The policies they have brought in across this country are harmful, including the revolving door of the justice system. It does not really matter what crime someone commits, they are going to be out, because the Liberals reformed the bail system.
People who shot up the street one day are out a couple days later, because the Liberals changed bail. They said they were going to reform it to make things better. Now they want us to believe they are going to have a just transition that is going to make things better for oil and gas workers. No one should believe them, and that is not just because of their absolute failure on other things such as housing, criminal justice, the opioid crisis or the mental health crisis.
I remember when my colleague from had a bill to implement a three-digit suicide prevention number. The Liberals said they were going to help. It took two years to come up with a three-digit number. I know it is hard; it is three digits. They could not do it in two years, but now somehow they are going to plan a just transition with this unbelievable plan, the sustainable jobs partnership council. It is going to have some meetings, and it will be filled with Liberal list donors, just as they stack all the courts in this country with Liberal list donors. We can bet there is not going to be one person on this council who gives two craps about the oil and gas industry.
It is going to be packed full with their radical left-wing environmentalists. They will probably get the radical environment to put a bunch of his cronies on it, who will say they can heat their homes with hot air, like the hot air that comes from the government. They will not need oil and gas. We certainly will not have the electricity, because they do not have a plan to expand electricity generation or electricity distribution as they wipe out the oil and gas industry.
There will be no just transition for a single worker in this country under the current government. When the common-sense Conservative Party has a government, oil and gas workers will not have to be worried about being left out in the cold by a tyrannical, uncaring government. I can assure everyone of that.
Let us go back and look at some of the results from the Auditor General on the “Just Transition for Canadian Coal Power Workers and Communities”, because it is a page-turner of absolute incompetence. The government is incompetent in almost everything, but its members really took it to a new level. They worked hard to be extra incompetent for coal workers, and I should give them credit, because that level of incompetence is hard to get to.
Let us look at a couple of things. The Auditor General went through the federal commitments and programs the Liberals said they were going to do. There are 10 of them. Does anyone want to guess how many they actually came through on? It was four out of 10, and they are not even the ones that would actually do anything for workers; they are the easy ones such as having an interdepartmental meeting to talk about something.
As I just said, the Liberals then have the audacity to tell Canadians they are going to plan this transition for oil and gas workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where they basically have no seats. They do not care about the people there. They say they are going to plan the transition for them out of oil and gas, even though they left coal workers out in the cold, but they say not to worry because they are going to take care of it this time.
The finding under recommendation one was, “Natural Resources Canada had not led on the reporting on just-transition activities for coal workers and communities.” The Liberals did not report on the just transition activities for a single community. That is the first thing they did not do. Oil and gas workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan should get ready.
Ronald Reagan said the scariest words that anyone can hear are, “I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.” If Ronald Reagan were alive today, living in Canada, and heard the words of the Liberal government, he would be bloody terrified. When Liberals say they are coming to help, people should run in the other direction. Oil and gas workers know not only that the Liberals do not have their backs, but also that they are going to push them over the cliff.
The finding under task force recommendation two said, “Natural Resources Canada had not yet developed the just-transition legislation.” Liberals were supposed to do it in 2019. Now they have done this great thing in 2023, four years later, the sustainable jobs partnership council, which they get two years to set up. They are four years behind, and they are going to set up a council that is going to take two years because that is really hard. Setting up a council is hard work. We know how hard these guys work. It is going to take two years to get that set up. It is unbelievable.
We also know that no one on that council is going to care about oil and gas workers. No one on that council is going to care about the effects on the economy for Alberta or the effects on the economy for Saskatchewan. The council is going to be packed with Liberal donors.
With judicial appointments, there is really one qualification to be a judge in Canada right now with the Liberal government, and that is whether the person donated to the Liberal Party. The Liberals check the list and, if a person donated, that is great, he or she is in. On something like this, hard-core Liberals, anti-oil, anti-Alberta and anti-Saskatchewan people are what this sustainable jobs partnership council would be stacked with. The Liberals were supposed to get it done four years ago, but it is going to take another two years, so we would be at six years.
Recommendation three was, “Establish a targeted, long-term research fund for studying the impact of the coal phase-out and the transition to a low-carbon economy.” The Liberals did not do it. I know everyone was holding their breath thinking maybe they did something, but they did not do it. Will they actually do anything in this legislation? This is the question we have to ask ourselves.
Human nature is that we look at the past record to determine what the future performance will be. As the Liberals did absolutely nothing for coal workers, we can anticipate that they will do absolutely nothing for oil and gas workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Why would they? Why do they care? They have absolutely no representation there. Well, they have one MP who seems pretty anti-Alberta from some of the statements he makes, so he might want to try to get a seat in Toronto Centre—Rosedale or something like that in the next election.
Recommendation five of what they were supposed to do was to “Create a pension bridging program for workers who will retire earlier than planned due to the coal phase out.” Did the Liberals do it? No, they did not. Coal workers get phased out, their pension is now going to be less, much like many of the Liberals' pensions are going to be less when they lose in the next election, but has anyone in the Liberal Party on that side apologized to coal workers, saying they promised they would bridge coal workers' pensions when they phased them out and they did not? Did they ever apologize? No, they did not. Why? They do not care because they are energy workers.
Now when Liberals tell energy workers in Alberta and Saskatchewan that they are going to phase them out, but not to worry because they will be there for them, I say that is a load of hooey. There is no way Liberals are going to be there for anyone.
Imagine the devastation for a worker in the energy sector who is phased out and then their pension is not bridged. That is bad enough, but guess what, when we look at a detailed, publicly available inventory with labour market information pertaining to coal workers such as skill profiles, demographics, locations and current and potential employers, since the Liberals ripped them off on pensions, they say that they are going to put together this database so that they can transition workers into new employment. That is okay, because maybe they'll get to punch in somewhere else. However, did they actually do that? No they did not. They stand here in this chamber, Liberal member after Liberal member, parroting that this is great. They bring in time allocation on debate on this after they literally screwed coal workers, and I tell members that they are going to do it again.