House of Commons photoLost her last election, in 2025, with 25% of the vote.
Criminal Code February 27th, 2020
Mr. Speaker, can the member comment on whether the Conservatives support Audrey's amendment and helping families to avoid the kind of cruel suffering and difficult choices people often face when they are looking at imminent end-of-life situations and potentially not being able to give consent farther down the road?
The Environment February 26th, 2020
Mr. Speaker, with no real plan to fight the climate crisis or create jobs, the Liberals are failing at both. A climate plan that leaves workers behind is no plan at all. We cannot attract businesses and jobs if the government is not serious about climate change. We need investments in new infrastructure, renewable energy, public transit and in helping people to retrofit their homes.
There are lots of things we can do to help fight the climate crisis, so why are the Liberals not doing any of them?
Emergency Debate February 25th, 2020
Mr. Speaker, it is staggering that the Liberals' joint review panel was not considering the impacts on our climate commitments. As we are moving forward, beyond Teck, what is needed for a framework for decision-making when it comes to looking at projects and whether they are going to help us meet our climate obligations?
Emergency Debate February 25th, 2020
Madam Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary spoke about indigenous consultation, so I will quote the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation chief, Chief Allan, who said:
We had no choice but to go on with this thing. We were the last nation that didn’t have an agreement with Teck Resources. It’s not like we wanted to pursue this, but we were put in a position of do or die situation and we had to do it.
Chief Gerry Cheezie, who is downstream from the Teck project, said, “Our rights are being trampled.”
The missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirit people report describes the relationship between work camps, which experience an influx of transient workers who arrive to work in mines or energy industries, and higher rates of sexual assault and harassment. I am curious to know the hon. parliamentary secretary's comments in regard to these kinds of resource extraction industry camps. How do they impact indigenous women and girls? Why is the consultation process one to be praised?
Emergency Debate February 25th, 2020
Madam Speaker, this is one of the things that Conservatives will often fall back on: Why are we using fossil fuels while advocating for climate action? It is one of the problematic aspects when we have a system that is so embedded in fossil fuels infrastructure. We need our government to take leadership. We need our government to invest in innovation, in new technology. We need our government to show the kind of leadership that will address the climate crisis now.
Emergency Debate February 25th, 2020
Madam Speaker, I will always applaud the small steps that we are taking toward climate action, but when we have a government that spends $4.4 billion on buying a pipeline and then is going to borrow over $12 billion to construct it, it is challenging to see the current government as anything but a climate failure.
Emergency Debate February 25th, 2020
Madam Speaker, immediate jobs are what they want, yet Teck Frontier mine promised 7,000 construction jobs that may or may not have really appeared because the company said to the joint review panel that its business case was built on $95 a barrel. The CEO then admitted to the company's own investors that anyone with any credibility looking at the price of oil knows that it will never get to $95 a barrel. We are at $51, and projections say it will not go much higher than $60 to maybe, tops, $70.
This project was not going to be built. If you want good jobs now, invest in the low-carbon economy.
Emergency Debate February 25th, 2020
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member of Parliament for Edmonton Strathcona.
Teck Frontier was never the solution the Prime Minister and the Liberals said it was, and it is not the solution the Conservatives are now claiming it is. Teck is another example of the Prime Minister's failure of leadership on fighting climate change and creating jobs for the future.
I am surprised that we are here for this so-called emergency debate. How does this debate constitute an emergency?
Teck pulled out of a project that was a bad decision economically, given that its business case relied on extremely high oil prices, for decades to come, of over $95 a barrel, much higher than what Teck told its own investors and almost double what our oil prices are currently. It was an even worse environmental decision, given the astronomical CO2 emissions from the project and the impact on land, air and water. The Teck Frontier project would have emitted four to six megatonnes of CO2 every year in its operation. To put that into context for my Conservative colleagues, four megatonnes of CO2 is equivalent to the emissions that all the light-duty vehicles in British Columbia produce every year. That is every single car, every single small truck and every single personal vehicle. The Teck Frontier mine would have emitted that amount every single year.
The greenhouse gas emissions from the Frontier mine are fundamentally inconsistent with Canada's climate targets and the Paris Agreement commitments. When we are already so far away from achieving our climate commitments, anyone serious about meeting our climate obligations, our obligations to our international commitments and to future generations, could see that this project could not be approved. Nevertheless, the Liberals looked as if they were seriously considering moving forward with the project. The Liberals committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, but this project would have emitted four to six megatonnes of CO2 every year until 2067. It just shows that the Liberals' words were just more empty words.
The Liberals keep saying they want to balance the economy and the environment, but they are failing at both. They decided to buy a pipeline for $4.4 billion and now want to borrow an additional $12.6 billion to construct the Trans Mountain pipeline, which will increase tanker traffic on the coast, where my constituents and I live, sevenfold and increase our greenhouse gas emissions in the middle of a climate crisis.
The Teck Frontier mine, the proposal that the Liberal government was seriously considering, would have put endangered species in northern Alberta at high risk, would have devastated irreplaceable wilderness, would have had detrimental impacts on treaty rights and would have knocked us even further off track from our climate goals.
Instead of empty promises, pipelines and bad projects, let us invest in long-term sustainable jobs in Alberta and across Canada. Investing in transit, retrofit, green infrastructure and clean energy will not only help us meet our climate targets but can also provide good family-sustaining jobs in a low-carbon economy.
New Democrats proposed a plan that would have created at least 300,000 good jobs in the clean-energy future for the next four years, but we have not seen that kind of leadership from the Liberal government. We need to build zero-emission vehicles here at home and we need to make it easier to buy and charge zero-emission vehicles no matter where we go. We need to be not only producing electric vehicles in Canada but also providing incentives targeted to made-in-Canada vehicles only, giving manufacturers a powerful incentive to build. This safeguards good jobs and strengthens our auto sector.
We need to electrify our fleets, making public transit cleaner, more convenient and more affordable. We need to provide training for workers to transition into the low-carbon economy. We need to provide support for workers, for families and for communities so that the changing economy actually works for them. We need to boost clean-tech research and manufacturing with “buy Canadian” procurement. We need to create good family-sustaining jobs by building infrastructure in every region of our country.
We could save families $900 or more a year in home energy costs with energy-efficient upgrades. Making bold investments in energy efficiency not only pays off in terms of reducing emissions but also brings savings on energy bills. It also means good jobs in communities from coast to coast to coast.
We need a government that is committed to supporting workers today, not with imaginary jobs and projects with no business case, but supporting workers while equipping them with the skills and opportunities of the future. It means making sure that Canadian workers have access to meaningful training funds to use when they need them.
I also want to take a moment to mention an incredible organization, Iron & Earth, which is a worker-led initiative. These are oil and gas workers who want to work building renewable energy projects, who organized to support each other and who advocate on their own behalf. They are not only supporting their fellow workers, demonstrating how their skills are transferable and connecting these workers with training, resources and a network they require to position themselves in the new renewable energy industry, but they are also calling on the government to implement a national upskilling initiative, investing in training that would empower oil and gas, coal and indigenous workers to get into the renewable energy economy. These oil and gas workers see the opportunities that could be possible if the government truly took its commitment to workers and the climate seriously, but successive Liberal and Conservative governments have left workers to navigate these shifts on their own.
Workers in Alberta are feeling the impact of job losses, and 19,000 workers lost their jobs just in the last month. The answer to this problem is not projects that are economic and environmental nightmares. The answer is not empty promises of jobs from projects that have no business case. The answer is investing in good family-sustaining jobs all across the country.
We need to fulfill Canada's G20 commitment to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and we need to redirect these funds to low-carbon initiatives. We also need to reform Export Development Canada's mandate to focus on providing support for Canadian sustainable energy projects rather than the petroleum industry.
We need to truly support workers, industry, research and innovation. These are the kinds of investments that would drive real results, creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs and helping to boost the economy across the country. It would also put Canada on the path to meeting ambitious science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets that we need if we are going to prevent catastrophic climate change from dangerous global warming beyond 1.5° Celsius.
The answer is a plan that creates good jobs to support hard-working families and upholds indigenous rights. The answer is a made-in-Canada green new deal.
Business of Supply February 20th, 2020
Madam Speaker, in his comments, the member said that it was unacceptable or he could not stand it when people from outside of the Wet'suwet'en territory used this issue in a political or partisan way. Is that not precisely what this motion is doing?
Judges Act February 19th, 2020
Madam Speaker, I am sorry I cannot respond in French. I promise I am learning, so hopefully some day soon I will be able to in the House.
When we talk about groups that have been marginalized by our systems, specifically groups that face higher instances of sexualized violence, these people need to be consulted in the creation of any education program. To develop training and seminars without their input means we would have glaring gaps in service. When we look at the higher rates of sexualized violence for indigenous women, women with disabilities, and immigrant and refugee women, and we look at the barriers that people face in coming forward to the police, we need to make sure that our training is going to serve the people who need it most, so I do—