Speech from the Throne
Motion for Address in Reply--Debate Continued
May 4, 2021
Honourable senators, I rise today in a delayed celebration of Earth Day here in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded territories of the Mi’kmaq people, to speak in response to the Speech from the Throne.
In her speech on September 23, 2020, the Governor General said:
Canadians also know climate change threatens our health, way of life, and planet. They want climate action now, and that is what the Government will continue to deliver.
The Government will immediately bring forward a plan to exceed Canada’s 2030 climate goal . . . . will also legislate Canada’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
Colleagues, the then Governor General Julie Payette was an astronaut. In the 2019 Throne Speech, she said:
And we share the same planet. We know that we are inextricably bound to the same space-time continuum and on board the same planetary spaceship.
Colleagues, while many of us have been captivated by the recent landing of the Mars rover, Perseverance, and the flight of the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, as we search for environments beyond our own which can support life, let’s today turn our attention to our own planet and the theme of this year’s Earth Day, which is “Restore Our Earth” — restoring our Earth so it can continue to support life will require both human ingenuity and collective perseverance.
Did you know that the first Earth Day was started in 1970 by an American senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat, and Pete McCloskey, the Republican congressman he recruited to be his co-chair?
The theme of the original Earth Day was “A Question of Survival” and its message, as highlighted by CBS’s Walter Cronkite, was “act or die.” Gosh, they sounded a lot like Greta Thunberg back then.
On Earth Day this year, U.S. President Joe Biden hosted a virtual global summit to discuss action on the climate emergency, and it looks like the “act or die” mantra of the original Earth Day has been revived. More on that later.
Honourable colleagues, on June 17, 2019, the House of Commons passed a motion to declare a national climate emergency in Canada. Since then, we had a federal election in which the environment and climate change were clear priorities for Canadians.
Last February, I launched a Senate inquiry into finding the right pathways for Canada to meet our net-zero carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions targets. Senators Mitchell, Galvez and Pate each spoke on the inquiry and many other Senate colleagues were lined up to follow. The idea was to spark our own Senate conversation on climate change solutions and then ignite interest and action across Canada. Like many of our best-laid plans for 2020, the inquiry was hijacked by the pandemic and then died with prorogation.
Colleagues, I would like to join the chorus line of other “pivoters” and pick up the climate conversation where we left off last March and I invite you to join me to advance it further.
Today, I will reference Speeches from the Throne, highlight what Canada has promised, touch on the U.S. and other international players, speak to pathways toward net zero and conclude with a modest proposal for you, my fellow senators. So please stay tuned until the end.
In October 1970, just months after the first Earth Day, Governor General Roland Michener introduced the Pierre Trudeau government’s plans in the Speech from the Throne:
All our efforts for a stable prosperity and for humane community will be of little value to us . . . if we do not quickly and determinedly grapple with the threat to our well-being and the well-being of future generations of Canadians which is represented by environmental pollution. Pollution is a many-headed hydra and requires action in many forms. You will be asked to consider bills intended to deal with pollution . . . in the ocean and in the atmosphere. . . . There will be proposed the establishment of a department to be concerned with the environment . . . .
On October 2, 1986, Governor General Jeanne Sauvé spoke on the Brian Mulroney government’s plans:
My government recognizes fully the essential relationship between a healthy environment and the quality of Canadian life. A new Environmental Protection Act will be introduced . . . .
On September 30, 2002, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson delivered the Jean Chrétien government’s message:
On a global scale, the problem of climate change is creating new health and environmental risks and threatens to become the defining challenge for generations to come.
On October 16, 2007, Governor General Michaëlle Jean articulated the Stephen Harper government’s commitment:
Climate change is a global issue and requires a global solution. Our Government believes strongly that an effective global approach to greenhouse gas emissions must have binding targets that apply to all major emitters, including Canada.
On December 5, 2019, Governor General Julie Payette highlighted the Justin Trudeau government’s priority:
Canada’s children and grandchildren will judge this generation by its action — or inaction — on the defining challenge of the time: climate change.
One year later, the Canadian government introduced its plan entitled “A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy.” The plan aims to create over 1 million jobs and includes $15 million in investments over and above the Canada Infrastructure Bank’s $6 billion for clean infrastructure.
Central to the effort is placing an escalating price on carbon pollution. The federal government’s constitutional right to do this was recently affirmed by the Supreme Court decision, which noted that global warming causes harm beyond provincial boundaries and that it is a matter of national concern under the “peace, order and good government” clause of the Constitution.
Chief Justice Richard Wagner described climate change as, “a threat of the highest order to the country, and indeed the world,” that will cause:
. . . significant environmental, economic and human harm nationally and internationally, with especially high impacts in the Canadian Arctic, in coastal regions and on Indigenous Peoples.
Budget 2021, introduced April 19 by Canada’s first female finance minister, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, provides $17.6 billion toward a green recovery to create jobs, build a clean economy and to fight and protect against climate change.
The government introduced Bill C-12, the climate accountability act, more than five months ago and recently introduced Bill C-28, which would enshrine the right to a healthy environment in Canadian law and strengthen the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
Canada has promised a variety of 2030 targets on the road to meeting our net-zero-by-2050 Paris Agreement commitment. The original target was to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below 2005 levels; the recent budget promised 36%; and at the U.S.-convened Earth Day summit, Canada promised to meet a target of between 40% to 45% reduction by 2030.
Having rejoined the Paris Agreement, U.S. President Biden committed to a target of 50% to 52% emissions reduction — very significant for the world’s second-largest emitter.
China’s surprise announcement last year at the UN General Assembly that it would cut emissions to net zero by 2060 is notable, given that China is the most polluting nation on earth, responsible for 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Also at the summit, the U.K. committed to 68% reduction by 2035, and the European Union to 55% below 1990 levels by 2030.
Honourable senators, with the U.S., China, the U.K. and a climate-determined Europe all expressing ambitious net-zero targets, Canada has clear opportunities for collaboration, and a significant competitive innovation and business imperative to add to our drive for a healthy, climate-stable world.
Honourable senators, with the World Meteorological Organization confirming that the global average temperature in 2020 was already 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and the past six years the warmest on record, with Arctic sea ice receding, sea levels rising, epic wildfires, flooding and tropical storms all on the increase, our planet and its inhabitants are at a tipping point.
It’s time to decide what we turn towards and time to decide, frankly, what we put behind us. It’s time for smart and humane choices. We’ll be asked to declare our choices in Glasgow this November, and the Canadian electorate may be asked to vote on those choices in the near future.
Jason Dion, lead author of the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices recent study, which outlines 60 scenarios for Canada to get to net zero, said that Canada has a strong hand with our landmass and resources, our infrastructure and know-how, but that we have “to play our hand wisely. Our advantage relies on action, so we can’t simply sit on our cards and wait.”
Let’s remember, Canada has never met any of its targets.
Honourable colleagues, to meet our ambitious new 2030 target and to get to net zero by 2050, we clearly need to accelerate carbon pricing while at the same time finding other ways to rapidly reduce and stop our emissions.
At the top of our list has to be a quest for a secure, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy supply, with innovation in the production, distribution and utilization of green energy as our first priority. This includes hydro, wind, solar, geothermal and tidal power.
We know we also need to examine low-carbon energy options such as green hydrogen and possibly small modular nuclear reactors. We need to decide how quickly we can and must phase out fossil fuels. We need to reduce and eliminate carbon from our transport sector, buildings, manufacturing and agriculture.
Powerfully effective nature-based solutions to carbon storage and sequestration are an obvious choice for Canada with our abundant forests, grasslands, wetlands, coastal marshes and agricultural land.
While being mindful of a number of concerns, carbon capture and storage technologies will no doubt play a role in getting us to net zero.
Emerging from the COVID pandemic, we are facing a need to reconcile two once-in-a-century imperatives: One, accelerating our response to the climate emergency with the associated imperative of a just transformation and, two, the need to rebuild our post-pandemic economy. Both require focused attention on the well-being and the potential of our citizens: women, youth, Indigenous people, oil and gas sector workers, and other groups severely affected, while being mindful of equity across Canada’s regions. No one and no region should be left behind.
Honourable senators, that is a tall order and one which will require bold leadership and all hands on deck. It will take an all-of-society approach. And that means a role for us, too: Canadian senators stepping up.
With our Senate independence and free of the constraints of short-term electoral cycles, imagine what we could do with our combined grey matter, diversity of experience, power and influence. We have high-quality studies, inquiries, Question Period opportunities and motions. Most importantly, we scrutinize and, where necessary, work to improve or initiate legislation. Today, I would like to propose a new way we as senators could lead in climate action. This is what I’m about to tell you about.
Colleagues, last month I had a call from Baroness Helene Hayman, former Lord Speaker, and Baroness Bryony Worthington, lead author of the U.K. Climate Change Act 2008. They had learned about our net zero inquiry and wanted to discuss potential collaboration between our chambers. They are co-founders of Peers for the Planet, the U.K. House of Lords group launched last year with 120 members. Both felt there was more parliamentarians could do to tackle climate change, and they recognized the unique potential to work across party lines to win ambitious but practical changes in policies and laws regardless of which party is in government. Their collaborative, big-tent approach has yielded concrete results in a number of areas.
Honourable senators, I am impressed with the momentum and results Peers for the Planet have been able to build, and I’m proposing to you today that we start our own similar Red Chamber group focused on Canada’s pressing climate change response.
Fifty-one years after the first Earth Day, initiated by American senator Gaylord Nelson, and a year after the U.K.- Baronesses Hayman and Worthington launched Peers for the Planet, I am keen to work with you to formulate our own uniquely constituted and mandated Senate of Canada coalition for urgent climate action. Just imagine what we could do if we marshal our collective ingenuity and combine it with our unfaltering perseverance.
Honourable colleagues, if not us, who? If not now, when? Let’s do it. Who’s in? Thank you.
Honourable senators, today I rise in response to the Speech from the Throne. I will follow the lead of Senator Coyle and focus on those parts of the Throne Speech that highlight the goal of a carbon-neutral future for Canada. In response to Senator Coyle’s invitation to collaborate on climate change: Mary, you can count me in.
My purpose is not to review territory that Senator Coyle has so cogently addressed but instead to bring forward a consideration that may be less appreciated in the noise of the lively debates on climate change, yet ones that may help us move away from ideologies that divide us to appreciate a future that can unite us. It is a future powered by better energy than what we have now.
Colleagues, we are living through a period of global energy transition. Over the course of human history, our species has lived through several similar periods. Historically we have always moved from one source of energy to better sources of energy, improving the lives of people along the way.
Much early agriculturally based economic growth in North America was powered by hydroelectricity — water mills. These were small, local enterprises with substantial limitations. Over time, with technological advances, hydroelectric power was used to create electricity that could then be used more widely for lighting, heating and cooking, but not — for engineering and political reasons — for transportation.
As population growth in North America increased and technological capacity improved, the ability to efficiently create, transport and store large amounts of electric power led to increasing development of hydroelectric projects such as large dams and Sir Adam Beck II Generating Station and Manic-5, for example.
However, this was outpaced by the use of coal for electric power generation. For example, in the United States, coal use increased about twofold between 1930 and 1990, and concurrently we became aware of acid rain. It was also then that scientists determined that coal burning emits not only large amounts of sulphuric, carbonic and nitric acid, but also carbon dioxide.
But it was the mass production of the gasoline engine powered Model T and the widespread use of the gasoline engine in World War II plus the post-war baby boom, followed by the invention of the suburbs and the technology of modern highway construction and gasoline station infrastructure development that drove our fossil fuel consumption. The love affair that many of us have had with our fossil-fuelled cars resulted from these historical phenomena.
But these changes did not occur overnight. Indeed, they took over 70 years of technological thinking, engineering tinkering and scientific analysis to evolve. The first gasoline-fuelled four-stroke cycle engine was built in Germany in the 1860s when Karl Benz began the first commercial production of motor vehicles with internal combustion engines. And by the way, just for historical context, it was in 1888 that Nikola Tesla patented the electromagnetic motor.
We went from small amounts of our energy consumption being based on fossil fuels to much of our energy consumption based on fossil fuels within a period of less than 100 years. Indeed, it is now estimated that about 85% or so of all the world’s primary energy consumption is from fossil fuels.
As fossil fuels came increasingly into use, they replaced existing sources of energy, promoted dislocation of people and changed markets for those existing sources of energy. Better energy won out.
For example, we no longer have a flourishing whaling industry in North America, as there is no demand for sperm whale oil. Those leviathans of the seas were hunted primarily for their oil, which provided domestic lighting and machine lubrication. It is estimated that this intense hunting resulted in the deaths of over one quarter of a million of these magnificent mammals in the 19th century, not to mention the horrific deaths of thousands of whalers who toiled in circumstances unimaginable to most people today. With the death of so many whales in easily accessible waters and increasingly high costs of whale oil to the consumer, the industry moved into marginal resource extraction mode, chasing smaller whales in colder and more extreme waters. By the end of the 19th century, the whale oil industry was a sunset industry, and all calls for continuing it full bore could not change that reality.
However, it was not only the waning of this non-renewable resource that stopped North American dependence on whale oil for lighting; it was the invention of the kerosene lamp, a better energy invention. Canadians can take pride in that, as it was Abraham Gesner, a Canadian geologist who figured out how to distill kerosene from petroleum. It was cheaper, easier to store and did not produce an offensive odour when burning. Ironically, it was technological advances in fossil fuels that contributed to saving the whales. However, development of that better energy source came with a cost to populations and markets that had relied on whale hunting as a traditional energy source.
Honourable senators, that is what is happening today. We are in a time of transition to better energy. It is comprised of both renewable and non-renewable resources. These include, but are not limited to, wind, solar, tidal, hydrogen and nuclear power. As our scientists and engineers improve our ability to capture, store and transmit this power, these technological advances will take the day.
For one example, photovoltaic research is rapidly surging ahead and will likely soon provide a more climate-neutral solution for some, but not all, future energy production. The discovery of the ability to generate energy from the sun is not new. Indeed, it was a young French physicist, Edmond Becquerel, who in 1839 discovered the photovoltaic effect, a process that produces electric current in the presence of light or radiant energy. From early photoelectric technology based on selenium coated with a thin layer of gold, to the discovery of using silicon for improved solar cell efficiency, we are progressing from today’s crystalline silicon cells and thin films to even newer innovations in quantum dot solar cells of much greater efficiency. As these technologies are further developed, it is not unreasonable to predict that they will decrease our dependence on fossil fuels for energy production.
Similarly, advances in our ability to safely use, reuse, recycle and store spent fuel has led to a reconsideration of the value and promise of nuclear power. There exist innovative advanced fission projects, such as small modular reactors and Generation IV systems; for example, the Integral Molten Salt Reactor being developed by the Canadian company Terrestrial Energy. Perhaps the utilization of thorium or combined uranium-thorium fuels will develop quickly enough for us to reap the benefits of this new approach in the foreseeable future.
Honourable senators, let us all remember the adage: “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.”
As one of our most eminent modern thinkers, Steven Pinker, has written: “. . . societies have always abandoned a resource for a better one long before the old one was exhausted.”
As we move ahead, our future growth and human development will need to embrace better energy which can help us continue climbing that ladder of global economic and social development while protecting the world we live in while we climb.
As history teaches us, each new energy replacement progress came with benefits and costs. Each required major changes to how people worked and lived. Each came with political turmoil and social disruption. But these transitional periods, difficult as they were, eventually led to better lives for more and more people. Coal mining was a dirty and dangerous job, but because coal was a primary energy source industry, its mining helped spawn the union movement, which created a better and more equitable path for worker health and democratic engagement that spread across all sectors of society.
Our challenge as senators is not to play Luddite, but to help nudge our country and our international partners towards a more rapid transition to better energy — better for us and for our climate.
As we move ahead, we must avoid the tragedy of the commons. This occurs when people become a free rider, expecting others to act but not demanding action of themselves. In Canada this is expressed in the argument that because we contribute less to global carbon emissions than others. we need not move quickly and robustly in our own jurisdictions. However, we cannot sit by and expect others to do it all.
We must also think in scale. It is not enough to signal virtue and only stop using plastic straws and single-use plastic bags. Our task is to take on the difficult work needed to effectively address climate change. That will require collective action much greater than changing to a metal straw from which to sip your latte.
As we do this, we must also do a better job of alleviating poverty, at home and abroad. Escaping from poverty requires abundant energy. It is not surprising that some of the world’s largest CO2 emitters are those nations currently experiencing historically unprecedented improvements in standards of living. This phenomenon occurred in what are now high-income countries during the period of the Industrial Revolution. Using the then-better fossil fuel energy, we in high-income countries have already polluted our way to wealth. Now is not the time to demand that other nations rein in their wealth creation, but to work with them to ensure that as they become wealthier they do so by utilizing better energy sources than fossil fuels. Indeed, a number of these nations are moving robustly in that direction. For example, India and China are leaders in the development of better energy technologies.
Our collective challenge is to rapidly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and move toward a near zero-carbon energy state, often referred to as deep decarbonization. This will require vigorous, honest, and courageous leadership from government, industry, the financial sector and organizations that collectively make up civil society. This will require shifts in traditional fossil fuel-driven industries and investment in better energy infrastructure, much as what happened with our national highway systems and national railway systems, which were created under the nudge from fossil fuel energy innovations. This will require us to stop setting up camps, be they those of climate warriors or climate deniers. This will require us to increase support for scientists and engineers who will once again, as they have done throughout history, lead us to better energy. This will require national and global collaboration at historically unprecedented levels.
Honourable senators, each of us is in a position to help us move towards a better energy future together.
With this realization, I fully support Senator Coyle’s invitation to combine our efforts and encourage each one of my Senate colleagues to do so as well.
Let’s invest in building a better energy future for our children, their children and all future generations as well.
Thank you. Meegwetch.
