Elizabeth May
Mr. Speaker, we have alarming news from the front lines of the climate emergency. The dispatches are deeply worrying.
The defences are falling against what protected our Arctic and kept it cold. The polar vortex is eroding and like an advancing army, the warm air from the south has occupied our Arctic, driving temperatures up 25° Celsius above normal in a sunless winter. No sun has warmed that ground for months and yet the Arctic is in a heatwave. The time for complacency, pat answers, and fossil fuel appeasement is over.
When will the government increase our targets and our ambitions to meet this accelerating threat?
Catherine McKenna – Minister of Environment and Climate Change
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for her tireless advocacy on climate change.
I was in the high Arctic this past summer with Inuit youth and they talked to me about the very real impacts of climate change. It is extraordinarily worrying what we are seeing right now.
I am working extremely hard to bring Canadians together on climate action. We are putting a price on pollution and we are phasing out coal. We are making historic investments in public transit, on energy efficient social housing, on investments in clean technologies.
We need to be working with the world. We are all in on climate action. I would encourage all parties opposite to do the same.