Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-11-25 15:57 [p.2424]

Madam Speaker, with all due respect to the hon. minister, he cannot pick and choose what parts of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change science gets baked into the bill and what parts of the Paris Agreement he now refers to. I want to make it very clear that I was in Paris. I was there when we negotiated. It is very clear that the target for Canada for 2030 was to be ratcheted up and changed in calendar year 2020. We are expected, as a nation with a 2030 target, to have a new one in place by the end of the calendar year. That is the Paris decision document.

It is also very clear that, if we are going to be grounded in science, it is true that IPCC says that we must have net carbon neutrality by 2050, but to get there they also tell us that, globally, emissions must be cut by at least 45% no later than 2030. In other words, the heavy lifting in reducing emissions in this country must be done before the first target milestone year in this legislation.

I cannot vote for this bill as it now is, and I desperately want to vote for it. I appreciate—

Hon. Jonathan Wilkinson (North Vancouver)
2020-11-25 15:58 [p.2424]

Madam Speaker, I certainly thank the member for her commitment to this important issue.

As I have said in the remarks today and also in conversations that she and I have had, we certainly do intend to bring forward an enhanced climate plan. That is something that I have said very publicly. To her initial point, absolutely, yes we do intend to move forward with an enhanced plan, building on the great work that was done in the pan-Canadian framework, and certainly we intend to move forward in a manner that will enable Canada to be an important participant in the international conversations on climate change. We are committed to that and we will continue to move forward in that direction.

However, I would also say that this bill is an important step forward. I think that if the member looks at the reaction from many in not simply industry or labour organizations but environmental organizations, including Ecojustice, the David Suzuki Foundation, Équiterre and a whole range of others, she will see this is an important step forward.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2020-02-28 12:07 [p.1749]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to raise the urgent matter of the climate emergency. Under the terms of the Paris Agreement, 2020 is the year in which Canada must improve its climate target. We agreed to do so in 2015. We are now delinquent, in that the COP decision in Paris called for the new targets to be tabled by February 9 of this year. We need to table our new target. It needs to meet the IPCC imperative.

Can the minister update the House on progress to deliver a climate accountability act and a new target?

Mr. Peter Schiefke (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Lib.): Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for her work on this issue.

We took a leadership role in 2015 when we signed the Paris Agreement and encouraged other countries to do the same. Through the record investments, plans and programs we have put in place, we have been able to, projections show, bring us to 75% of the way there. We know there is more work to do, which is why we are committing to not only meeting that target but exceeding it and putting in place, in the coming months, the expert panel that will show this House and all Canadians how we plan on being carbon neutral by 2050. It is something we need to do for all of us and for our children and grandchildren.

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I think part of the problem is that even when experts understand the peril in which all human society is placed, those who are alarmed are afraid to sound “alarmist.” Translating the impact of two degrees, 3.5 degrees, and even higher levels of warming into language that is clear and unequivocal is not a project for the faint of heart. Let me try to explain two key factors in the IEA, World Bank, IPCC, and other projections.

The first is that these agencies do not yet say there is no chance of avoiding the two degree of warming threat which all countries, including Canada, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper personally in Copenhagen in 2009, have pledged to avoid. What is said is that if the collectivity of nations maintain current plans for climate action, the total impact is to allow greenhouse gases to continue to rise. On current policy trajectories, we fail miserably in our stated objectives. Only with the kind of urgent and comprehensive economic transitions undergone by nations at war can we avoid over-shooting two degrees. And even then, we are not guaranteed success.

Two degrees global average temperature warming is not a goal. It is to be avoided. It represents a level of human-caused climate impact which ensures dangerous levels of climatic destabilization. Many low-lying island states point out that at two degrees, they will be permanently inundated.

Yet, in a country like Canada that experiences minus 40 Celsius in winter and plus 40 Celsius in summer, it does not sound like a lot. Our failure to stress context allows the number to become meaningless. Only when it is explained that the difference between global average temperature today and in the last Ice Age was only five degrees Celsius does it become clear that two degrees global average temperature change is huge.

The second is to translate two degrees, three degrees and so on global average temperature into a language that actually says what it means. Given that two degrees is dangerous, what do words like “dire,” “devastating,” and “catastrophic” mean?

To understand a worst case-scenario for humanity due to the climate crisis, you need to understand the concept of positive feedback loops. Burning forests release carbon, warming the Earth faster to cause more forest fires. Melting Arctic ice reduces the albedo effect that bounced the sun’s heat back to the atmosphere. Without ice, the sun’s heat is absorbed in dark ocean water, warming the ocean faster, melting ice faster, further reducing the ice cover.

As the warming climate melts the permafrost, methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is released from what was once locked away. The methane further warms the earth, melting more permafrost and releasing more methane. These are examples of positive feedback loops, of which there are many more.

At some point in the human-caused surge in atmospheric greenhouse gases, we could unleash an unstoppable release of warming forces. This is called “runaway global warming.” The worst case scenario is that the planet becomes more like Venus—uninhabitable for all, but some microbes or bacteria able to cope in high temperatures. I don’t think it will come to complete extinction of humankind and most of our fellow travellers on Planet Earth.

However, it is hard to imagine how human societies, civilization itself, could survive the loss of the Western Antarctic ice sheet, leading to the flooding of all coastal cities; or permanent states of drought in food producing regions; or tens of millions of refugees fleeing famine and floods. These are not far-fetched events. They could occur in the lifetimes of our own children.

In Ronald Wright’s best-seller, A Short History of Progress, he reviewed a litany of once magnificent civilizations that snuffed themselves out. One line, a piece of graffiti Wright repeated, sums it up: “every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.”

Wright was interviewed recently for a brilliant piece by Chris Hedges (“The Myth of Human Progress,” truthdig.com, Jan. 13, 2013). Wright pondered our inability to address an impending disaster that could eliminate us from the face of the Earth. “We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit,” said Wright. “We are not good long-term thinkers.”

So next time you read that the International Energy Agency thinks we could face “dire” consequences and the World Bank warns impacts could be “devastating,” don’t yawn and turn the page. Find a way to join the movement demanding a planned, aggressive transition away from our dependency on fossil fuels.

We have a profound moral obligation to protect our children and their children from what many increasingly see as unavoidable. Not unavoidable because we lack the ingenuity, technology and creativity to avoid two degrees; we could do so and experience an increasingly healthy economy. Those who believe it is unavoidable simply cannot believe we will bother to try. Let’s make 2013 the year when it all turns around, when the community of nations decides to give humankind a future as well as a short history of progress.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May represents Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.
Originally printed  in the Hill Times.

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It can be a useful opportunity.  The NDP opted for Defence and Environment and the time for the meetings was duly scheduled by the Conservatives.  As customary, the Committee of the Whole (COW) begins when the daily business of the House is over.  The Conservatives chose the week the environment committee was out on the road, holding meetings across Canada, to have the Environment COW and then scheduled late votes both nights.  Earlier that day it was announced that last night would be the cut-off on Copyright legislation, Bill C-11.  I had many amendments to attempt removing the most onerous digital locks sections of the Copyright bill. Thanks to support from the Liberals as seconders and in forcing votes, we were able to force recorded votes.  Only once all substantive amendments had been defeated did I ask to compress the voting process to “Apply the vote,” cutting about an hour and a half off our voting time.  Still, COW did not start until about 9:30 pm and ran for four hours til 1:30 am. I attended both and wondered why anyone thought this could be useful.

True, departmental officials were available.  In each case a small table was placed at about the spot where the Prime Minister usually sits (although he was not there), and at the table top ranking officials sit in case their expertise and background is needed to answer questions.  I want to try to paint the picture of the table, one side pressed against the government bench.  In close formation, one on each of the three open sides of the table, sit the highest ranking officials.  Sitting like statues, facing each other.  True, General Walter Natynczyk had the best ram-rod like posture.  Staring straight ahead at the Defence Deputy Minister Rob Fonberg at a distance of a few feet.  The same formation for the Environment Deputy, Paul Booth, only he stared straight at Peter Kent, in the front row of government benches, flanked by the head of Parks Canada Paul Latourelle and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency head Elaine Feldman.  What must have been going through their minds? In four hours of Defence and four hours of Environment, they never spoke.  Why were they there?  Maybe that’s what they were thinking: why am I here? 

Certainly not to help Peter MacKay or Julian Fantino answer a simple question from Liberal John McKay who asked (three times? four times?) if anyone knew the cost per hour of the Department’s current jets, the F-18s.  And the only person rustling through papers to provide answers to Peter Kent was Michelle Rempel, his Parliamentary Secretary.  And, really, when nearly every answer was like a Chinese menu, why did anyone need to be there to help with answers?

Menu options for Peter Kent:

Option A: If asked anything by an NDP MP, answer with some variation of how bad bad bad the leader of the Official Opposition was to call the oil sands a disease;

Option B: If asked anything by a Liberal MP,  say “we will never ever ever bring in a carbon tax;”

Option C: If asked by a Conservative backbencher, for extra measure one MP actually bothered to read from the script and ask Peter Kent, “will you ever bring in a carbon tax?”  Answer: We will never ever ever bring in a carbon tax, unlike those bad bad bad Liberals. 

So was there anything new?

Well, last night Peter Kent said some unbelievable things.   For one, when Megan Leslie asked if the government planned to allow Opposition Members on the delegation to the Rio plus 20 conference this June, he said “no” (that was the believable part). And then he said, for the Durban climate conference, the government had offered assistance to the two Opposition MPs who attended. He claimed that while not actually providing credentials as part of the Canadian delegation, the government helped with getting the Opposition MPs into the UN FCCC Conference of the Parties in Durban.  Well, that description only applies to two people: me and NDP MP Laurin Liu.  I tried to help Laurin.  She had a whole day in Durban without being able to get into the conference centre at all. The NGO Climate Action Network finally succeeded in begging the UN Secretariat to grant her a badge with them. I asked her last night if she had had any offer of help from the “official” delegation that I didn’t know about. Nope. 

I know for a fact I was never offered any help.  And I know I never saw any help.  Since I was granted credentials as an advisor to the Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and they never had any request from Canada, the whole claim was as unnecessary as it was invented.   (Fun to imagine the conversation as a senior Canadian diplomat rings up his counter-part in PNG, “We have the Leader of the Green Party, you know. And it’s kind of awkward because we are not going to allow Canadian MPs on our delegation, unless they are Conservatives, so we aren’t paying her way or helping her find a hotel, and frankly, we feel pretty lousy about it, but it would be just aces if you could accept her on your delegation.” Not.)

There was also the claim, not once but twice, that the contaminated sites programme was a Harper Conservative initiative: “Our government invested $3.5 billion”. Twice, they said it.  Even though the $3.5 billion was put in place in 2005 by Paul Martin’s government to remediate contaminated sites on federal land.  At the time they thought there were a total of 8,500 sites.  Now, with half the money gone and 40% of the sites remediated, they realize the total is 22,000 sites.  So the Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan reported that a plan is needed.  More to the “unbelievably score card,” when Liberal Kirsty Duncan asked about the Commissioner’s report, Kent managed to insult both her and Scott Vaughan (and here I paraphrase) “The hon. member is as confused as the Environment Commissioner.”  She pressed to find out if he accepted the commissioner’s report. Nope. Not really. On toxics, Vaughan was confused. On climate, well, the poor man is obviously out of his depth.  Used out of date data sets. 

To both Liberal and NDP environment critics wanting to see plans for climate or toxic sites, Kent delivered a paternalistic, “the hon. members should be patient.”

Perhaps most unbelievable was Kent confusing the goal, to which Stephen Harper affixed his signature in Copenhagen (in the non-binding Copenhagen Accord) to avoid allowing global average temperature from reaching 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  Kirsty Duncan prefaced a question noting that the “window is closing” on our ability to avoid a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius. Kent looked at me as he said, (not yet recognized by the chair) “it’s closed.”   And then he rose and said the temperature in our Arctic has already risen above 2 degrees Celsius.

He said the same thing to me in Durban and I had explained that Arctic temperature increases are not the same thing as a global average temperature increase. The poles warm more rapidly than any other part of the planet.  The reason scientists are warning that we must avoid 2 degrees Celsius global average temperature increase is because that is a level of serious danger. It will be too late for low-lying island states at 2 degrees global average temperature.  That is why scientists and African nations rally around the slogan “1.5 to stay alive.”  Going beyond a 2 degree global average temperature increase is catastrophic.  The Minister of Environment doesn’t know the difference.  Kirsty Duncan explained the difference.  She is both a Liberal MP and a scientist. She worked on the IPCC. When she had clarified the science for the minister, she let out a sad sigh. It carried on her mic.  And Peter Van Loan and Peter Kent and Michelle Rempel all found that a hilarious moment.  And they all laughed uproariously. I wish I had found that more unbelievable.

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The International Council for Science (ICSU) is a non-governmental organization devoted to international co-operation in the advancement of science.  The ICSU plays an important role in international science, including hosting the World Climate Research Program.  Dr. McBean has been recognized as a leader in climate research, including as a co-author of the International Panel on Climate Report that won the Nobel Peace Prize.  He is also a co-author of the IPCC’s newest report, Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, and is chair of the ICSU Integrated Research on Disaster Risk program. A professor at the University of Western Ontario, Dr. McBean is also the Policy Director for Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.

“We have world class scientists here in Canada who are part of the global effort to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May.  “Dr. McBean’s renowned expertise is being recognized internationally but unfortunately our own government is slowly dismantling the scientific infrastructure in Canada, including cutting financial support to the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences and the Climate Change Scenarios Network.”

“The IPCC and scientists like Dr. McBean are starting to concentrate on how we are going to adapt to the extreme weather events that are the unavoidable consequence of climate change,” said May.  “Our failure to reduce greenhouse gases globally has now led to an increase in catastrophic events with corresponding economic losses and loss of life. The world’s scientists are sounding warning bells and the Green Party of Canada urges Prime Minister Harper to pay attention before it is too late.”

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, in its report Paying the Price: The Economic Impacts of Climate Change for Canada, estimates that the cost of Canada’s failure to act on climate change will range from $5 billion per year by 2020 to as high as $91 billion per year by 2050.  Impacts on forests and coastal areas will be particularly felt in terms of hits to the Canadian economy.  An increase in flooding, wildfires, heat waves, and poor air quality has already resulted in increased death and destruction of property. As a result Canada’s insurance sector is seeing costs from storms and wildfire escalating rapidly.

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Dr. Gordon McBean is a Canadian climate expert who recently became President-elect of the International Council for Science (ICSU), a non-governmental organization devoted to international co-operation in the advancement of science.

Additional information on Dr. McBean can be found here.

The summary report from the IPCC can be found here: http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX.

The full report will be found at the same URL in February.

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