Discussion · Government Orders
Elizabeth May Green
“I will vote against this budget. It breaks our promises on climate change and attacks the idea of setting emission targets. Instead of cutting emissions, the government is building pipelines that will make climate change worse. I want members of Parliament to stand up and demand real climate action.”
“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this place just before we go to our constituencies. As to the last exchange between the hon. parliamentary secretary and my friend from Calgary Centre, we are all mindful of the losses in our military, particularly from the disaster that just happened at CFB Wainwright. There are things that we share in this place, and I hope one of them is eternal gratitude for our veterans and those who serve in the armed forces. Once we leave this place today, we will be back in our own constituencies for one week, so this opportunity to speak to the budget I really appreciate. Last year, I struggled with the 2025 budget. I discussed it with members of the Prime Minister’s staff, with the Prime Minister and with the former minister of the environment, and in the end, I was the only opposition member to vote for it. I do not think this is a spoiler alert, but that will not be happening again. I will not be voting for this budget. I am appalled, on numerous levels, by the budget. There is much that has been said in this place that I do not need to repeat. The member for Vancouver East was speaking to her concerns. Yes, it is good to see the commitment to end homelessness, but where are the funds going to be found to ensure that first nations, Inuit and Métis people have adequate housing? I completely agree with my friend from Calgary Centre and my friend from Wellington—Halton Hills North that this budget is miraculously weird. The Government of Canada can insist that other entities live up to generally acceptable accounting practices, but apparently it does not have to live up to them itself. Given that I have a limited amount of time, I want to speak to the fundamental reason that I am grievously shocked by how bad this budget. There is one key topic, one thing, that I want to focus on in the time I have available: This is the first budget in more than a decade that not only fails to live up to the challenge of the climate crisis, but actually repudiates the very idea of targets. On page 7 of the budget, it attacks the idea of targets. For Canadians who are watching, it says, “For too long, climate action was about targets without a practical plan”. Then it refers to investments as “punitive regulations”. Then it says, “Our new approach is a bold, pragmatic plan with four pillars”. None of them take us anywhere near the targets. I want to make it very clear to anyone watching that the targets repudiated in this budget are legally binding. Canada signed on to them under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which we are a party, and through which we committed that when we tabled a target, we were committed to achieving it. That target, the current one to which Canada is legally committed, is for significant reductions by 2030. A previous government under Stephen Harper left in place its targets for 2030. In this place, at least the Liberals, New Democrats, the Bloc and the Greens had said that what Stephen Harper’s former minister of environment, Leona Aglukkaq, had tabled was woefully insufficient. We are not going to even meet those targets now, much less the improved targets that Justin Trudeau put in place. Why does this matter? It is all fine to hear the verbiage over and again that the world has changed and that everything has changed, but guess what has not changed. Canada is still located on planet earth. We are still subject to what happens in the planetary atmosphere, to physics and to the chemistry of the atmosphere, which we have already changed through our conduct. We know from the world’s best scientists and the world’s most extensive peer review process, called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that if we do not reduce emissions very drastically, and before 2030, we are in for an accelerated heating of the planet that would cost, as it has already cost Canadians, billions of dollars in insurable losses and uninsurable losses, like the loss of life and loss of species. The heat dome in British Columbia in 2021 that killed 619 people in four days also killed three billion sea creatures in that same time, four days. We cannot ignore the climate crisis, yet that is what this budget does. The Liberals still mouth the words “net zero by 2050” as if they are meaningful. They are not consistent with the science. They are not part of the Paris Agreement. Net zero by 2050 was an invention for public relations purposes to kick down the road to 2050 any real action for our children and grandchildren. As a grandmother of a two-year-old, I am not just worried but terrified for what kind of future our kids are going to have. I voted for the budget last year because the Prime Minister stood and said the government was committed to achieving the Paris Agreement targets. I was a fool to believe the Liberals. I have repented for being a fool. I see clear-eyed now. They are building pipelines that are going to drive up emissions, and who is going to pay for them? It is the people of Canada. Is there a cost-benefit analysis? No. Will there be one? No. Why? It is because they want to drive up emissions. I do not understand why the government wants to drive up emissions and pour fuel on the fire of a climate crisis that takes Canadians’ lives, destroys our crops and hurts our businesses from coast to coast. Worse, it steals the future from our children and does so in broad daylight. This is not a budget I can vote for, and I beg the government and members who care about climate, who I know are there and care, to stand up and insist that we have climate action that does not mean building pipelines and expanding oil and gas production but reducing emissions and restoring forest cover as quickly as possible. Please do not tell us about giving $2.5 billion to De Havilland to help its bottom line. That does not buy a single water bomber for Canada. We must treat the climate crisis as the emergency that it is. We can no longer afford to hit the snooze button when the alarms—”
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this place just before we go to our constituencies. As to the last exchange between the hon. parliamentary secretary and my friend from Calgary Centre, we are all mindful of the losses in our military, particularly from the disaster that just happened at CFB Wainwright. There are things that we share in this place, and I hope one of them is eternal gratitude for our veterans and those who serve in the armed forces. Once we leave this place today, we will be back in our own constituencies for one week, so this opportunity to speak to the budget I really appreciate. Last year, I struggled with the 2025 budget. I discussed it with members of the Prime Minister’s staff, with the Prime Minister and with the former minister of the environment, and in the end, I was the only opposition member to vote for it. I do not think this is a spoiler alert, but that will not be happening again. I will not be voting for this budget. I am appalled, on numerous levels, by the budget. There is much that has been said in this place that I do not need to repeat. The member for Vancouver East was speaking to her concerns. Yes, it is good to see the commitment to end homelessness, but where are the funds going to be found to ensure that first nations, Inuit and Métis people have adequate housing? I completely agree with my friend from Calgary Centre and my friend from Wellington—Halton Hills North that this budget is miraculously weird. The Government of Canada can insist that other entities live up to generally acceptable accounting practices, but apparently it does not have to live up to them itself. Given that I have a limited amount of time, I want to speak to the fundamental reason that I am grievously shocked by how bad this budget. There is one key topic, one thing, that I want to focus on in the time I have available: This is the first budget in more than a decade that not only fails to live up to the challenge of the climate crisis, but actually repudiates the very idea of targets. On page 7 of the budget, it attacks the idea of targets. For Canadians who are watching, it says, “For too long, climate action was about targets without a practical plan”. Then it refers to investments as “punitive regulations”. Then it says, “Our new approach is a bold, pragmatic plan with four pillars”. None of them take us anywhere near the targets. I want to make it very clear to anyone watching that the targets repudiated in this budget are legally binding. Canada signed on to them under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which we are a party, and through which we committed that when we tabled a target, we were committed to achieving it. That target, the current one to which Canada is legally committed, is for significant reductions by 2030. A previous government under Stephen Harper left in place its targets for 2030. In this place, at least the Liberals, New Democrats, the Bloc and the Greens had said that what Stephen Harper’s former minister of environment, Leona Aglukkaq, had tabled was woefully insufficient. We are not going to even meet those targets now, much less the improved targets that Justin Trudeau put in place. Why does this matter? It is all fine to hear the verbiage over and again that the world has changed and that everything has changed, but guess what has not changed. Canada is still located on planet earth. We are still subject to what happens in the planetary atmosphere, to physics and to the chemistry of the atmosphere, which we have already changed through our conduct. We know from the world’s best scientists and the world’s most extensive peer review process, called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that if we do not reduce emissions very drastically, and before 2030, we are in for an accelerated heating of the planet that would cost, as it has already cost Canadians, billions of dollars in insurable losses and uninsurable losses, like the loss of life and loss of species. The heat dome in British Columbia in 2021 that killed 619 people in four days also killed three billion sea creatures in that same time, four days. We cannot ignore the climate crisis, yet that is what this budget does. The Liberals still mouth the words “net zero by 2050” as if they are meaningful. They are not consistent with the science. They are not part of the Paris Agreement. Net zero by 2050 was an invention for public relations purposes to kick down the road to 2050 any real action for our children and grandchildren. As a grandmother of a two-year-old, I am not just worried but terrified for what kind of future our kids are going to have. I voted for the budget last year because the Prime Minister stood and said the government was committed to achieving the Paris Agreement targets. I was a fool to believe the Liberals. I have repented for being a fool. I see clear-eyed now. They are building pipelines that are going to drive up emissions, and who is going to pay for them? It is the people of Canada. Is there a cost-benefit analysis? No. Will there be one? No. Why? It is because they want to drive up emissions. I do not understand why the government wants to drive up emissions and pour fuel on the fire of a climate crisis that takes Canadians’ lives, destroys our crops and hurts our businesses from coast to coast. Worse, it steals the future from our children and does so in broad daylight. This is not a budget I can vote for, and I beg the government and members who care about climate, who I know are there and care, to stand up and insist that we have climate action that does not mean building pipelines and expanding oil and gas production but reducing emissions and restoring forest cover as quickly as possible. Please do not tell us about giving $2.5 billion to De Havilland to help its bottom line. That does not buy a single water bomber for Canada. We must treat the climate crisis as the emergency that it is. We can no longer afford to hit the snooze button when the alarms—