Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join the debate briefly and ask my friend from Richmond a question. This entire debate around the environmental impacts is as though Bill C-5 never passed. Bill C-5 says the government can break any law it wants to, including the Species at Risk Act or the Impact Assessment Act, if a project is of national interest. I know my Conservative colleagues may not agree with me that this is a bad thing, but I wonder if the Conservative caucus has noticed that Bill C-5 would be on top of Bill C-39.

Mr. Speaker, watching the recent investment summit, I had a sense of déjà vu. At COP26, then UN special envoy on climate finance, our current Prime Minister, announced the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. The world's largest banks and investment firms committed over $100 trillion for the transition to net zero. Five years later, the only net zero is the investments promised by these firms. How will the investments promised at the recent Toronto summit differ from the Glasgow promises?

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise virtually in the House to present a petition of deep concern to constituents. It relates to the very pressing issue of the critically endangered population of southern resident killer whales. The petitioners note that with the expansion at Roberts Bank, which is a very devastating ecological project, as well as the increased oil tanker traffic, there is a need to protect whales. Their habitat shrinks when they are in an acoustic environment, when there is noise and there are vessels too close. I know I have summarized. However, unusually, the key action component of the petition I am presenting has been acted upon, so I now add a note of thanks. The petitioners ask for the same distance requirements that Washington state put into place: that recreational and whale-watching vessels stay 1,000 metres back from this threatened population. In fact, the Government of Canada has now adopted the same regulations as Washington state. It is a rare occasion to present a petition and also thank the Government of Canada for acting on it.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today in the House to present an e-petition that was originated by someone concerned that Canada is the only G7 country that provides a fully funded home for the leader of the official opposition. I am presenting this, obviously, without any thought to any particular person. Given the rules around petitions, I do not take a position on the petition. I would just say that this e-petition has attracted over 20,000 signatures of Canadians who would like the House to examine whether we should continue to provide a fully funded home for the leader of the official opposition.

Mr. Speaker, keeping it short, I am sure my hon. friend from Vancouver Granville will agree with me that the lawyers at West Coast Environmental Law based in Vancouver are hard-working and very skilled. They have named this the “bulldoze nature bill”. I agree with them. Is the member prepared to listen to the advice of expert environmental lawyers who give this bill an F?

Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed with Bill C-39. Unlike the Liberal MPs, I would say that there are no environmental lawyers who believe this bill protects the environment. I would like to ask whether the government and its MPs are open to significant and serious amendments, because this bill is unacceptable.

Mr. Speaker, “getting products to market” is a repeated phrase, and one thing that shakes my confidence in the government was in the Canada Gazette. On August 1, when it posted about the west coast oil pipeline, it did not accurately describe, in a very short description, the product that will go in the pipeline. Similarly, as the Liberals talk about the product going to China in the pipeline, I will note that the diluted bitumen, which is actually the product used mostly in China, is the tar in the bitumen to pave roads. I wonder if the member would comment on the level of familiarity of the government benches with the products that are being shipped.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Seniors for Climate Action members who came across Canada on the Seniors Climate Witness caravan and raised the issue of the climate crisis, just as scientists are raising it. The Prime Minister, on the floor of the House, committed on October 17, 2025, to meet the Paris targets. Ever since then, he has been galloping in a different direction. My question is simple: Before committing to spending tens of billions of dollars to build a climate-killing pipeline, will the government at least present to the House a cost-benefit analysis, a pretense, even, of a business case that this has any place in our strategy?

Mr. Speaker, this bill is an abomination. I want to go back to Bill C-5 along with Bill C-39. All of the language in these statutes rests on the assumption that cabinet can pick a project of national interest or a region of national interest without any criteria and without any cost-benefit analysis or proof of a business case. Will the minister commit that before naming any such project or any such region, we actually have some facts presented to this House?

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask a question about, not just how much bureaucracy, but whether it troubles him as it troubles me that the government creates new agencies that are not transparent. Rather than creating Crown corporations or entities within departments, we are looking at special operating agencies, like the Major Projects Office, that are not as accountable as other types of bureaucracy. I wonder if the leader of the official opposition has any comment.

Mr. Speaker, I fully agree with my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. She gave an excellent speech. She clearly outlined the democratic setbacks regarding the environment and workers' rights. What does she now think of this government and the Prime Minister, who, in the past, presented himself as someone concerned about climate issues and the threat of climate change? Why is he moving so far away from those values?

Mr. Speaker, I also welcome the member for North Vancouver—Capilano to the House. I suppose I could also welcome him to North Vancouver. I also was up and down the hills of North Vancouver quite a lot through the by-election, and I may have heard different things from the voters there. I do want to help the hon. member. This question was asked to my friend the member for Joliette—Manawan by the hon. member for Hull—Aylmer: Where in the bill do we find retrenchments and abandonment of endangered species? It is riddled throughout the bill. It is changes in the Canadian Navigable Waters Act, it is changes in the Fisheries Act and it is changes in the Species at Risk Act all around the idea that before conditions can be set, they would have to be examined for their practical feasibility and economic impact. This bill is nothing but a disgraceful abandonment of environmental regulation across Canada and decades of work. Since the hon. member references the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, how can he ignore, and does he ignore, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation court case against the dredging of Burrard Inlet, which would destroy habitat that the federal government committed to protect?

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour today to present a petition with collected signatories from beyond my riding, but including my riding. The petitioners are very concerned about what we know about bottom trawling, in other words, pulling enormously heavy draggers along the ocean floor, removing everything in their path. It is a non-selective fishing method and the term “nets” hardly describes it. They are heavy implements that actually do enormous destruction. The United Nations and various international agencies have called for an end to bottom trawling. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has provided data on specific ground fish species, but has not yet acted to protect the entire ecosystem. Therefore, the petitioners are asking the House of Commons to implement the 2011 United Nations convention that calls for a moratorium on bottom trawling, otherwise known as clear-cutting the ocean floor.

Madam Speaker, the Minister of Finance will already know, because of the earlier negotiations between parties for unanimous consent on various aspects of the bill, that I will support it. I do have some misgivings, and I am glad for the opportunity to debate it later today. However, since the minister mentioned the investment summit, I will say that there is a piece of legislation I desperately want from the finance minister, which is to amend the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act. He will know that the investment board was set up in 1997 with only one rule: Invest Canadians' pension money where it gets the greatest rate of return on investment, which means we are invested more outside Canada than in it, more in the United States than in Canada. I would like my pension dollars to go to the school down the road, to the hospital in my community, and to help for small business, not for Petco in the United States, not for Grok to build deepfake—

Madam Speaker, not to be too pointed about it, but does it ever occur to the Conservatives that they should sue the Liberals for plagiarism? The Conservative platform is now being implemented point by point by the current government. I would add another one, and I do not agree with these changes. I know the Conservative caucus would have reason to cheer, but why would the Conservatives promise to cut overseas development assistance? The Liberals promised they would not, and then they did by $2.7 billion. There have been many promises. Certainly the Liberals promised to meet our Paris agreement targets. They are clearly not meeting them. I ask my hon. colleague from Barry South—Innisfil if the Conservatives have considered getting a lawyer.

Mr. Speaker, I find when I talk to constituents, and I do hold a lot of community meetings, that, yes, there is a huge amount of concern with affordability. As the hon. member will know, I will vote for the bill as well. However, I also hear a lot of concern from my constituents in British Columbia about how this summer we had a province-wide state of emergency over wildfires. I know that certainly there is deep concern within Skeena—Bulkley Valley about the changes in the lower water levels and impacts on salmon. I wonder if he has any comments on this other aspect of a crisis we are seeing. We cannot really deal with one at a time. We have to deal, with urgency, with both.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place for the first time to give a speech since our summer recess. I spent much of the time since I last saw members in this place, as we all have been doing, travelling through my riding. It may look like a small dot on a postage stamp to people who are looking at it quickly, but actually, given that it is five separate small islands, Saturna, Salt Spring, Mayne, Pender and Galiano, ferry transit between them makes it difficult to get to all parts of the community. Certainly, it takes a lot of time to travel with B.C. ferries. I am certainly supporting the motion from my colleague just down the way here, from Courtenay—Alberni, to find ways in the next budget to provide some funding to assist and have some equity between the way Atlantic Canada ferries are subsidized and B.C. ferries. I am detracting from my main point, which is that on the Saanich Peninsula, as the name of my riding, Saanich—Gulf Islands, suggests, I represent quite disparate areas geographically. Getting to nine different communities, as I do twice a year, to make sure I hold community meetings as conveniently as possible for all my constituents, means that I have just been on a very inspiring and constantly humbling experience of listening to my constituents in each of the five small southern Gulf Islands and throughout the Saanich Peninsula, from the very tip of it at the very northern part of the peninsula, near Swartz Bay and the airport, all the way down into areas that are covered by the MP for Victoria. We share some territories there. The concerns from constituents in Saanich—Gulf Islands are not unlike concerns from constituents I imagine my colleagues have heard across the country. There is a lot of concern about the cost of living, particularly around housing. There is a lot of concern about access to medical care, access to a family doctor and provision of health care services. In my communities, everywhere I went, there was the concern of the climate crisis. This summer, British Columbia had a state of emergency declared for the whole province as fires burned out of control. It was terrifying to see the sights out of Peachland and the areas around the Okanagan. We also had extreme weather events throughout British Columbia this summer. As a former Cape Bretoner, my heart broke to see the roads washed out and the floods and the loss of life in Cape Breton from the floods there. In other words, whenever I am travelling through my community of Saanich—Gulf Islands, I know that what I am hearing resonates with Canadians across the country. There is no question that Canadians are concerned about the cost of living, and I will be supporting Bill C-38, which we debate now, but I do so with some misgivings, because it, once again, piles on the notion that we are heavily taxed, which some Canadians are and some Canadians are not, and that a temporary relief measure like this will make a real difference. I also have a long memory, and I remember that back in 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the fuel excise tax permanent in the 2008 budget, which was one of the better things he did in terms of public policy. Again, in the 2013 budget, he confirmed and committed that the municipal order of government would be able to access those funds as a predictable, reliable source for public transit. This has changed over time in terms of where that funding comes from. For municipal orders of government across Canada, one of the concerns I have is, as we temporarily suspend the excise fuel tax, not only does it have impacts on our overall debt and deficit, because that is just money not coming in to the general federal revenue at a time when we have unprecedented levels of deficit already, but it also creates confusion for municipal orders of government. I have spoken to mayors who say that yes, they are told by the federal government that there are other infrastructure funds and they can apply through those, but they are not as transparent, not as predictable and not seen to be as reliable for helping people who are looking for public transit. I do have a number of points to make about this, but while we look at fuel taxes in today's bill, let us just for a moment focus on public transit. This country, for a wealthy industrialized country, a member of the G7, has an embarrassingly poor public transit system, particularly in rural and remote areas of Canada, particularly if we are looking for an affordable form of transportation like a bus or a train. If a person owns their own vehicle, yes they can mostly get from A to B, but if they do not, they can be in some peril, recalling that the findings of the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls included a strong recommendation that Canada commit to a ground transportation system that was affordable and reliable in rural and remote areas, because it is the vulnerability of the poor that places indigenous women and girls hitchhiking on the Highway of Tears. For people trying to get from Prince George to Vancouver, are within rural interior B.C., or for that matter, are in Saskatchewan or Alberta, we used to have a bus service that was quite reliable in most provinces, but it retreated everywhere and all at once. We used to have many more routes on Via Rail, and they used to be more affordable. I have heard Alto mentioned a few times in this place. However, the Green Party thinks that Alto needs major overhauls to become what it could be, but in the meantime, it does absolutely nothing for Canadians who do not live in the Windsor-Quebec corridor. It does nothing for people in rural parts of New Brunswick where medical care can be a five-, six- or eight-hour drive from a hospital. If it is winter and the roads are icy, or for a senior, there are no alternatives to get there except to get in a car and drive. Again, while we are talking about this fuel excise tax, because of its historical connection to transit, I wanted to use this occasion to make a few points on that. I am hoping that the federal government brings it forward in its next budget. I had begged the Prime Minister before the 2026-27 budget. When I met with the Prime Minister in early October 2025, I made this very point that we need affordable ground transportation in this country. We do not have it particularly for rural and remote Canadians, but we are also looking at a lot less predictability around the funds for urban public transit. Going to this piece of legislation and the focus on a temporary suspension of fuel excise taxes, there will be some ways in which that assists some Canadians: those who are buying gas. Again, if a person cannot afford to own their own car, they are not buying gas for a car. According to Statistics Canada, one out of 10 Canadians right now is living below the poverty line. That should command our attention. There is a growing gap in this country between the wealthiest and the poorest. I remember when I used to feel sort of complacent or self-satisfied as a Canadian thinking, “Well, that gap between the rich and the poorest is in the United States. It is not so much here.” We actually are going through a very significant shift. The middle class is feeling the crunch. When we talk about the affordability crisis, we are largely talking about the fact that, as some of my colleagues from other parties have already mentioned, we have families with two incomes who still cannot make ends meet. There is that crunch in the middle class, and affordability has become increasingly difficult. What has happened to the income distribution in this country? We may be in a class war where the upper class or the billionaire class has already won, and we did not even know there was a war. Again, one in 10 Canadians lives below the poverty line, but what is happening to the wealthiest? According to Forbes, in 2000, it could track 15 billionaires in Canada. I am not against billionaires. Well, actually, I kind of am. I think that billionaires should be taxed so that we can reduce them to mere millionaires so that they have to count their pennies like the rest of us mere millionaires. I am kidding, obviously. I am not in that group, but it does strike me as something that should command our attention that, right now, there are 76 to 82 billionaires in Canada. Again, 26 years ago, there were 15. Now, there are somewhere between 76 and 82 billionaires. Some Canadians are doing quite well. Some Canadians do not worry about the fuel excise tax. In fact, they do not worry about their income tax either. We are not taxing their wealth, which we really need to look at. We need to look at taxing assets. For what it is worth, in the last election campaign, thanks to the Parliamentary Budget Office and the act that oversees it, political parties had the right to ask for the Parliamentary Budget Office to give all political parties access to an analyst to look at budgetary planks that the party was looking at to see what the PBO thought of budget proposals. It happens that the Green Party platform, of all the party platforms in the 2025 election campaign, was the one that brought us closest to balanced budgets. I do not think anyone saw that in the news because, despite our efforts, we did not get any news coverage of the fact that we had the platform that brought us closest to balanced budgets. We did that through a combination of measures. One that was very successful was a tax on financial transactions. It used to be called the Tobin tax. In the late 1990s, the House of Commons passed a motion in support of Canada pursuing the Tobin tax. We applied it domestically and looked at what would happen if we put a 20¢ tax on every $100 of transactions in the stock market or currency transactions. Now that is not going to affect those people who are struggling in the middle class, nor does it have any impact at all on the one in 10 Canadians who are below the poverty line. However, applied to stock market transactions and currency transactions, it could bring in $55 billion to Canada's general revenues. That could really make an impact for Canadians who are struggling. That could provide the transit that people need to get from A to B when they are in the group of people who either cannot afford to own a car or find it much more convenient not to have to operate one, particularly in urban areas. Again, rural and remote Canada also needs ground transit. When we look at the current situation and the price of gas being one of the main drivers of inflation right now due to the decision in February of this year by the United States and Israel to launch attacks on Iran. These violate the United Nations charter. I suppose I could be charitable and say the Prime Minister misspoke when he initially said that Canada was supportive of what the U.S. was doing in bombing Iran. Regime change has never actually occurred through foreign countries violating international laws to bomb them. In any case, ever since that occurred, the price of gas has been spiking, especially since the Strait of Hormuz started being blocked, which was entirely predictable, although somehow Trump and his advisers did not predict it. The effect of higher gas prices has been devastating on inflation and the cost of food. It has had a real impact, certainly for North Americans, and globally it has created a lot of instability in markets. It has created a lot of concern. One thing it has also created is a windfall level of profits for the oil and gas industry. Here we are debating a minor change that will affect the Treasury of Canada by increasing debt and deficit, but why are we not talking about the need for an excess profit tax on the industry that right now is essentially war profiteering? The oil and gas sector has, in the last year or so, had an extraordinary increase in profits, and some of it has certainly been to the benefit of Canada's economy. Our government books and the Alberta provincial government books are better off for high fuel prices, but it certainly has not helped the average Canadian or for that matter the average American or people around the world who are struggling. They are also struggling, as I mentioned earlier, because of the climate crisis and the impact of having to become climate refugees, sometimes several times in the same year. I think of people in northern Ontario, near Wabakimi Provincial Park, in first nations communities that burned to the ground and had inadequate preparations for such events because the November 2025 budget gave scandalously scant attention to the need to protect communities and to build up a national firefighting force to buy water bombers. What we had was a commitment to lease water bombers and that was it. We were going to lease three water bombers over four years. There was nothing for what we need to do for flood protection and for building up. By the way, firefighters in this country are not even classed under occupational health and safety rules as first responders. They are at the back of the bus in terms of the protection for their own lives, their own salaries and their own pensions. I will go back to the issue of windfall profit taxes. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, if we applied windfall profit taxes on the oil and gas industry, that could bring into the coffers of the Government of Canada between $18 billion and $48 billion. Again, that could assist us quite a lot in paying down the debt. With respect to the $34 billion, for some reason, I like to convert billions back to millions so we can think about what it really means to be a billionaire and what it really means for the Canadian government to spend the money it takes in through taxes. One billion dollars being 1,000 million dollars, we spent $34,000 million, without a single vote in this place, to build the Trans Mountain pipeline through a Crown corporation that we are now proposing would build a second pipeline. This is an outrageous waste of money, where the public purse is paying for something that the private sector does not think is worth investing in because there is no business case. However, if we brought in a windfall profit tax on the oil and gas sector and brought in $18 billion to $48 billion there and if we brought in, as we are advocating, a financial transaction tax to bring in $55 billion there, yes, we could start paying down debt and deficit. I meant to mention one thing about the pipelines that I forgot. The hon. Minister of Energy and Natural Resources was in British Columbia earlier this summer, and he actually said that the Trans Mountain pipeline was making “oodles” of money. To correct the record while I have a chance, in fact while the Trans Mountain pipeline in its year-to-year operations is more than breaking even and making some money, the revenues returned to the Government of Canada by the Trans Mountain pipeline have yet to be sufficient to pay the interest on the debt Canadians incurred to build it. If someone is making money in a normal business context, if they have spent $34 billion to build their business, personally I do not think they are making any money until they pay that off. They have a $34-billion debt and not one penny has been paid down but are under the assumption that pipelines are like something the tooth fairy leaves under one's pillow and there is no actual cost to them. However, it is $34 billion and now the government is proposing to spend $40 billion for a project that has no private sector proponent. Regarding this bill, if we are going to provide real relief to Canadians and real measures for affordability, we do need to look at excess profit taxes on the very monopolistic small group of grocery store chains that we have in this country. We need to help farmers. Desperately, we need to help farmers so they can get food from their farms to the tables of Canadians, healthy local Canadian food. I applaud the measures the government has brought in for making greenhouses more accessible, but we need to make land accessible to young farmers and we need to do everything we can to ensure that the grocery store chains buy local and promote local so that our farmers can continue to provide healthy food to Canadians. We would not do much in Bill C-38 to actually deal with the affordability crisis. Yes, the Liberals have taken a page out of a position advocated by the Conservatives last year. Yes, I will vote for it, but I am concerned. Where is the government in really helping Canadians with affordability? Where is the help for remote and rural Canadians to get transit that is affordable? Where is the help to ensure that the poorest of the poor are not bearing a larger tax burden than the richest of the rich? It is time to actually consider tax fairness in this country, taxing wealth and excess profits of transnational corporations.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the member for Les Pays-d'en-Haut. I know him well; he was once my neighbour in the House. Before the Liberal majority, I sat sit with them on the other side of the House. I know that his riding depends a lot on the ski industry. We had better do something about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Otherwise there will be no ski industry in the country because we will not have enough snow to sustain it. Meanwhile, I am voting for this. I take his point that we want to be sure that we are reducing stresses for people today who are spending too much on gas, no question, but if we really want to invest in a future for Canada, it is time to act on the climate crisis and reduce excess profits to the big oil and gas industries that are making out like bandits at both ends.

Mr. Speaker, I think we have to really be bold. We need a guaranteed livable income to eradicate poverty in the country. Poverty costs our whole society. It is not a matter of charity. A wealthy, industrialized country like Canada should not have one in 10 Canadians living below the poverty line. We should not have people setting up tent cities. We should be able to ensure that every Canadian has what it takes to live, and that allows people to not fear clawbacks if they start making money somewhere else. If we are really serious about it, end the class warfare and declare that Canada wins by bringing in a guaranteed livable income.