Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 21/09/2022 15:13:34
Context: Question

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Mr. Speaker, last week, a new study reviewed those points of no return called tipping points, stalled ocean currents, permafrost collapse and forest dieback. The conclusion: Even at 1.5° global heating, irreversible and globally damaging thresholds are exceeded. The nine most dangerous within them, the loss of the Labrador current, looms large. This is dangerous for Canadians. We can avoid this, but only with urgent action.

When will the government wake up and cancel TMX and Bay du Nord?

Mr. Terry Duguid (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House, we share the member’s concern about our climate future, and we hear about it every day, every week from our constituents. Just to remind the hon. member, we have an ambitious sector-by-sector path for Canada to reach its 2030 targets and to move onto net zero by 2050. It is a very practical road map. A couple of examples are incentives in infrastructure for electric vehicles, energy retrofits for greener homes and buildings, reducing oil and gas emissions, and supporting our farmers.

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Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 16/06/2022 15:10:19
Context: Question

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Mr. Speaker, regarding government financing of the TMX pipeline, in written answers to Questions on the Order Paper, the government is claiming that BMO and TD review make this project financially viable, but these analyses remain due to commercial confidentially, they will not release them. Previous TD reports on TMX were public. Why hide them now? It is entirely likely the government plans to write off financial risks and debt and leave us financially exposed. If it is so commercially viable, why can we not see the reports?

Hon. Randy Boissonnault (Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, Canadians know how important it is to get our product to market and to tidewater. The government does not intend to be the long-term owner of the Trans Mountain pipeline. This is a project that has led to 12,700 jobs and once completed Canadians will enjoy full price for our oil on the world market. A divestment process will be undertaken once this project is essentially de-risked and once consultations with indigenous peoples conclude.

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Elizabeth May: We are standing on the edge of too late
Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 19/05/2022 18:35:24
Context: Question

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise tonight on this adjournment debate. I want to acknowledge I am standing here on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

The question I am pursuing tonight I originally asked on April 27, so it had not been long since we had received the final chapter of the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with its most dire warnings ever.

I asked the Prime Minister how it could be, given we had been told by the IPCC that emissions must peak globally by 2025 and drop dramatically from there to at least half by 2030, that two days later the government approved the Bay du Nord project and how it could be that three days later the budget included continuing to build the Trans Mountain pipeline while somehow transferring this monstrosity to indigenous ownership.

The Prime Minister’s answer, as ever, was that the government was doing so much and had committed $100 billion to be spent between 2016 and 2030. One hundred billion dollars is a lot of money, but it does not save us. The government’s plan does not come close to holding to 2°C or 1.5°C.

We are facing some very serious realities and talking points will not do. I have to admit I made an error in my question of April 27. On how bad things were, I quoted from the IPCC lead author, who said that it was now or never. I read the report of the IPCC as saying, as I just did, that we have until 2025 globally to ensure that emissions have peaked and dropped from there. I was wrong.

I went back and reread page 22 of the “Summary for Policymakers” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report. We do not have until 2025; we have less time. The quote is that global emissions must peak between 2020 and, at the latest, before 2025.

This is not a political debate. I know the hon. parliamentary secretary is as good and decent a person as we are ever going to find in this place, and the minister is a good person and the Prime Minister is a good person, but it does not matter. The difference between policies developed by good people who fall short on climate change and policies by people who do not believe climate change exists, and this is in the words of Bill McKibben, one of our leading champions for climate action globally, is losing more slowly.

The Liberal plan before us does not deal with the science. It does not. Setting net-zero by 2050 as if it means anything is spin. It is not science. Net-zero by 2050 is only relevant if global emissions peak before 2025 and drop rapidly from there.

I know what the hon. minister has said in this place about Bay du Nord and the emissions not being Canada’s problem. Really? When did he lose his moral compass? The emissions do not matter if they happen somewhere else? Canada is to continue to increase producing oil and gas? It is not our problem if the emissions in other countries condemn our children to an unlivable world? That is what we are talking about; nothing less than that.

When we have a choice between now or never, please do not choose never.

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“Yesterday, Parliament passed a Liberal motion declaring a climate emergency. Today, Prime Minister Trudeau worsened the climate crisis with infrastructure destined to expand and prolong oil sands emissions,” said Ms.May. “This announcement represents cynicism and hypocrisy at a level that is quite breathtaking.

“We cannot achieve our Paris commitment to keep global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C, the level required to ensure that we continue to have a livable world, and build a pipeline.”

Ms. May described Prime Minister Trudeau’s promise to invest pipeline profits in clean energy projects as a cynical bait and switch that would fool no one. “If you’re serious about fighting climate change, you invest public funds in renewable energy. You don’t invest them in a bitumen pipeline,” she said. “And there’s no guarantee that this pipeline will ever turn a profit anyway – in fact it almost certainly won’t.”

Ms. May predicted that the project would face new court challenges from Indigenous groups who still have not been adequately consulted and from environmental groups. “This decision pushes our endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales closer to extinction.”

“We’re in a climate emergency that requires us to start rapidly reducing the use of fossil fuels,” said Ms. May. “The pipeline expansion requires the increases in fossil fuel production in Canada. No amount of spin can square that circle.”

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The twists and turns in the saga of the Kinder Morgan pipeline just took a turn for the seriously weird today, but the path has never been clear.

The Alberta oil sands lie under thousands of square kilometers of boreal forest, wetland and muskeg. Bitumen is a viscous substance found in small concentrations amid the rock and soil. It is either mined out from huge open pits, or pumped out through in situ production, injecting hot water deep into the ground to loosen it. Either way, the resulting product highly polluting, very expensive to produce and of low value. Bitumen is a solid. To be refined, bitumen must undergo costly upgrading. Bitumen, being both low value and expensive to produce, would never have been developed without government subsidies, with the lowest royalty rates in the world at 1% and massive federal subsidies of several billion/year.

Before the 2008 global financial crisis, there were upgraders and refineries being planned. But when the recession hit, those investments, along with any new oil sands mines, retreated. When the economy recovered, oil sands expansion came back. But not the upgraders and refineries. Instead, for the first time, industry began to promote pipelines. Keystone was the first pipeline proposed to run north-south to take Canadian bitumen to other countries for processing.

Since bitumen is a solid, there is nothing logical about proposing to move it through a pipeline. Stirring in fossil fuel condensate (essentially naptha) creates a mixture sufficiently liquid to flow through a pipeline, without the expense of upgrading it to synthetic crude. The resulting mix of condensate (called diluent) and bitumen is called dilbit. And it is very challenging to clean up. The 2010 dilbit spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan was the first time regulators realized dilbit behaved very differently than conventional crude. The diluent is highly toxic and volatile. Diluent separated from bitumen and bitumen sank to the river bottom.

By the 2011 election, pipelines had become a political issue. Former prime minister, Conservative Stephen Harper, an Albertan who stood four-square for fossil fuel development, opposed any pipelines heading to the British Columbia coastline. Harper’s position was that Canada should not export bitumen to countries with lower environmental standards for refineries than Canada.

Within months of that election, difficulties in gaining US permits for Keystone led to an entirely new position. With Harper’s support, Enbridge proposed a pipeline to Kitimat on the BC coast. In 2013, Texas-based Kinder Morgan asked to build a second pipeline more or less along the lines of the Transmountain pipeline purchased from a Canadian company from Alberta to Burnaby, not far from Vancouver BC. Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion would be 100% dilbit for export. It would increase tanker traffic, loaded with dilbit, seven-fold.

To grease the gears for pipeline approval, Harper gutted environmental laws. The resulting environmental review of the Kinder Morgan expansion was the worst in Canadian history. No longer reviewed by our environmental assessment agency, the pipeline was before the National Energy Board. Intervenor rights, such as cross examination of industry witnesses, were eliminated. Many intervenors withdrew alleging the process was “rigged.”

In the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau pledged that no project could be approved based on such an inadequate process. Trudeau promised evidence-based decisions, respect for indigenous rights, the end to fossil fuel subsidies and an aggressive climate plan.

In 2016, the Liberals turned down the Enbridge pipeline due to the court ruling the previous government violated indigenous rights. Simultaneously, Trudeau announced support for the Kinder Morgan pipeline. In doing so, he violated election promises to respect indigenous rights, to base decisions on evidence, and to pursue real climate action. Having approved Kinder Morgan, he and his ministers became increasingly pro-pipeline.

Meanwhile fifteen different court cases were working through the Federal Court of Appeal. The new BC government raised its concerns about the threat of a dilbit spill and to survival of the endangered southern Resident Killer Whales. In March, I was one of the several hundred people arrested protesting the Kinder Morgan pipeline. As opposition built in British Columbia, Trudeau insisted the pipeline was in the national interest and must be built. On April 8th, Kinder Morgan upped the ante and demanded the federal government remove the uncertainty created by all the court challenges to the project by May 31st.

Astonishingly, the government announced on May 29th that the Government of Canada will buy the existing Transmountain pipeline. Canada will pay $4.5 billion for those existing assets, valued by Kinder Morgan in 2007 at $550 million. As well, the Trudeau administration says it will get the controversial expansion pipeline built. Kinder Morgan had pegged those costs at $7.4 billion, and that is just the beginning of federal liabilities. With this, Trudeau’s election promise to end fossil fuel subsidies is violated in spectacular fashion.

We await the court decisions. This battle is a long way from over.

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