QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Environment and Climate Change
Climate Plan
April 2, 2019
Minister, thank you for coming back to the Senate. If I could follow up on your reference to the report yesterday that Canada is warming at twice the global rate.
Perhaps you could comment on what that report means for the government’s climate change action plan. It’s clear that we’re not doing enough.
How has it changed your thinking on the current targets and the means and tools you put in place to try and curb our emissions to keep global warming at a manageable level?
Thank you, senator, for your advocacy on this issue.
This report is sobering. I don’t think it’s a surprise. Last year we had a UN report that talked about what we’re seeing internationally, but now we see the facts here.
The impacts of climate change are extraordinarily significant right now, but we have a choice about whether or not we’re going to take really ambitious action on climate change and try to mitigate the greatest impacts of climate change. The impacts will be paid for by our children, grandchildren and future generations.
We have a climate plan. It gets us three quarters of the way to our target. We are talking about a target in 2030. We do need to be doing more, but we need to be landing the key elements of our plan.
I will say it is great that it is no longer free to pollute across the country, but it is extraordinarily disappointing to see Conservative politicians of this generation who don’t support one of the most effective actions that we have: putting a price on pollution so that is no longer free to pollute.
I’ve had many conversations with former Prime Minister Mulroney. He used a price on pollution to tackle the biggest challenge I faced growing up: acid rain.
I was extraordinarily worried as a child. I remember doing a project on acid rain. I was worried about our lakes and rivers literally dying because of pollution. But guess what? It was solved by putting a price on pollution. It was cheaper and faster, and Canadian companies found the solutions. It is a great example.
The other day I was speaking with Arnold Schwarzenegger, not just the “The Terminator” but the former Republican Governor of California who brought in a price on pollution. Guess what? It works in California.
They have reduced their emissions. The have one of the fastest growing economies in the United States and they have a vibrant clean tech sector. He was proud that not only did we put a price on pollution, but we did it in the most conservative, small c conservative way possible by returning the revenues directly into the province — 90 per cent to people, 10 per cent to businesses, schools, hospitals and universities.
We need to take action on climate change and we need to be more ambitious. I wish that we could do it in a bipartisan way because it doesn’t matter in if you’re a Liberal or Conservative r from any other party. It does not matter if you live in the north or the south, in the city or a village. We’re all being impacted by climate change.
