Elizabeth May
Saanich—Gulf Islands, British Columbia · Green Party · Canada
“It is easy to roll out solar panels, except that our provincial utilities get in the way. In any case, the cheapest source of electricity, reducing the cost for everyone, would come from focusing on renewable electricity. I do think there is some promise, although it needs a lot of work.”
“We are the only party in the House that does not receive a penny of support from the parliamentary budget, being both unrecognized and unfavoured. I am glad my colleagues from the NDP received funding to make up for what they lost when they ceased to be a recognized party. I have less money, but I am here, and I am not alone.”
“When it became clear that children were dying of Reye syndrome in New Brunswick because of forest aerial spraying by the forest industry. He stated, “I don't like to see people dying. This is one of the things I really wouldn't like to see.”
“That is not the only thing I want to concentrate on, although I will take most of the time, and I am grateful for the chance to speak to this bill now, finally, in this place. Regarding the removal of the excise tax, I have asked before about this in question period.”
“There is not even a link in the language used within the spring economic statement, the budget itself or Bill C-30, but it clearly, by inference, rests on this assumption: More pesticides are going to reduce food prices and help the economy. That is a leap. Let us say that is wrong, based on the evidence, in two ways.”
“Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary is a friend, so when I say a friend, it is not just rhetoric, but I am disappointed. When Bill C-30 was first tabled, I asked the hon.”
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“[ English ] We could be doing more with our raw resources to make sure that we do not rip and ship, shipping out raw logs and shipping out unprocessed bitumen, failing to gain the opportunities of extracting value before we send our raw resources to other countries, where they get the jobs and we get the waste and pollution that is left behind as they take the resources for their benefit. This is an opportunity where we could actually rethink our economy and rethink the way we act together. As the Prime Minister has said repeatedly, we can stop thinking about ourselves as 13 separate economies and think of it as one economy. What kind of economy is that? I am certainly hoping that we start thinking about a circular economy.”
“[ English ] I agree that we need, as the Speech from the Throne says, the largest transformation of our economy since the Second World War. We need it quickly. Over hundreds of years, Canadians have been known to be, and our economy has been somewhat limited to the idea of, a raw-resource colony, not just for other countries but increasingly for transnational corporations around the world that own a lot of our resources. From hewers of wood and drawers of water, we have become scrapers of bitumen and wasters of water. (1735) [ Translation ] We need to take action to put an end to this system of exporting raw resources instead of value-added products.”
“[ English ] We have a sense that there is less solidarity, I think, among the 10 Canadian provinces, three territories and the federal government than we find within the 24 separate sovereign nation-states of the European Union, at least within the oral history of my childhood with parents who were very much affected by the Second World War. The members of the European Union that now work so well together were, not that long ago, at war with each other. How is it that we, as one country, not only do not act like a country a lot of the time but also do not think like a country. [ Translation ] We need to start thinking like a country, acting like a country, because we are facing challenges. The threats are real. There are fundamental threats to our country and to our civilization.”
“Now we have a different effort, and I hope we can still work together, because it is terribly important that we stand united and are not bullied by what we could say right now is one of the world's champion bullies. He is not the only one. Vladimir Putin is competing for world champion bully. There are others. [ Translation ] As far as the Speech from the Throne is concerned, there are some things I completely agree with. There are also, as I said, some details. It is clear that our economy must change. It is not just about our economy, but perhaps also our culture as a country that is not really a country. There are 13 countries in our united nation.”
“It was December 3, 2024, when then prime minister Justin Trudeau asked Pierre Poilievre, me, Jagmeet Singh and the leader of the Bloc Québécois to meet him to talk about what we could do as individual leaders of opposition parties working with the then prime minister to create a team Canada approach to deal with the threat. I signed up, and so did everybody else. We said we could all stand together. It made me proud to be Canadian that the leader of the official opposition, the leader of the New Democratic Party, the leader of the Bloc and the leader of the Green Party could all say, with the Liberals, "how do we work together?". We continue that effort. That was the one time we met in person. We continued, by the way, in early January and early February, meeting on Microsoft Teams to continue the effort of working together.”
“Madam Speaker, I thank my dear colleague, the member for Davenport, for giving me the opportunity to respond to the Speech from the Throne. We had an amazing experience at the opening of this Parliament: the visit by our King, King Charles III. I agree with the main theme of the Speech from the Throne, which is the need to build Canada strong. However, there are some details that were not mentioned in the Speech from the Throne. [ English ] I look at it and think, yes, of course, let us build a stronger Canada. It was the moment of the November 2024 election that made everyone realize the U.S. had once again put someone in the White House who showed no shame whatsoever about ripping up any agreement he had already signed, and who was prepared to break all sorts of laws and make all sorts of threats against us.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of many British Columbians, and certainly all petitioners, who continue to draw attention to the perilous state of wild salmon populations and are looking at the entire food chain and the threat to herring populations, which are also being overfished. The petitioners ask that we at least go back to the recommendations of Mr. Justice Cohen and the report that he tabled, which, after years of study, called for the removal of fish farms. My constituents do not want me to call them that; they have asked me to call them toxic fish factories, and they should be taken out of open waters and placed on land.”
“Mr. Speaker, I was going to ask the Prime Minister a question about nation-building projects, but then today Tina called our office. She got my chief of staff on the phone and started explaining that she is a mom with disabilities and cannot figure out how she is going to feed her children, and she started crying on the phone. I have a nation-building project question. Cheques start going to Canadians with disabilities in July, but they have a lousy max-out at $200 a month. How about a nation-building project to lift all Canadians with disabilities out of poverty?”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Courtenay—Alberni, because he has reminded me that one of the solutions I wanted to mention is the First Nations' Emergency Services Society, which is based in B.C. and is a great model that should be rolled out across the country. I have mentioned the heat dome a few times, because it was traumatic to have 619 British Columbians die within four days, but on the ecosystem, what a lot of people do not know is that the heat dome also affected life in the oceans. Three billion sea creatures died, so some of my constituents in the heat—”
“Mr. Speaker, we need to work together. We have to deal with this crisis. It is urgent. In the Speech from the Throne, not a single word was said about the Paris Agreement. I think the government may act soon. I hope so, but there was not a word about it in the throne speech. Now, we have to face this crisis, be honest with the people of this country and work together to reduce greenhouse gases, protect our economy and at the same time prepare to adapt to severe climate events.”
“There are things we need to do for emergency preparedness, and we are not prepared in this place right now to talk about what we need to do as a country, to work together to save lives, when it is right in front of us that people are running for their lives. Yes, it is traumatic. People do not get over it overnight. Their kids do not get over it. They get nightmares for a long time, and maybe people do not get to go back to work for a very long time after having heat stroke in a heat dome.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am sorry my friend from Fort McMurray feels that way. I have not had any speeches tonight until now, and in asking questions, what I have said tonight is that our thoughts are with the people running for their lives. The hon. member may have missed it, but I have been through this with my family in B.C. We have been through floods where friends disappeared down the river in their home, and their bodies were never found. We have been through forest fires and on fire alert for evacuation, when we did not know where we were going to go when the word came through that we would have to go.”
“We may be on the very edge of too late, but it is not too late to put in place the mitigation and adaptation measures that will help us preserve the Canada we love on the planet we love.”
“One of them is to acknowledge what John Vaillant succinctly testified to the Standing Committee on Natural Resources: “the oil industry is...a fire industry”. This is tough. It is that kind of inconvenient truth we do not want to hear. We want to be able to protect our resources. Bitumen is a very valuable product, probably too valuable to burn if we start thinking about it and start planning ahead. We need to ensure that we give to our children a planet on which they can survive and not allow the climate crisis into an unstoppable, irreversible, self-accelerating spiral with positive feedbacks that leave us with the floods and the heat domes, but beyond that, with the collapse of human civilization. We do not have to accept that.”
“The De Havilland Canadair 515 was mentioned earlier by one of my colleagues. It is built partly in Calgary and partly in Sidney, British Columbia. Right now, these water bombers are back-ordered, and all the orders are for the European Union because they ordered a lot of them. The European Union coordinates which countries need them the most and where to send these water bombers. The thing about these forest fires, these 21st-century fires, is that they are different. Have members heard about the zombie fires? They stay below the surface of the soil through the winter. They can have snow cover on top, but the zombie fires are still there, ready to break out in the spring. That is one of the reasons we had fires spread so fast this spring. In the time I have left, I want to focus on the things we can do.”
“These are fires whose very behaviour has been changed by the climate crisis itself. They burn hotter, they move faster and they create their own weather conditions, high winds, unpredictable, the beast. They are different. John Vaillant concludes, “We're changing the climate...in a way that favours fire way more than it favours us.” We have driven the climate to an overheated state that continues to cause more forest fires, and the fires behave differently. We do need solutions. Yes, we need to fire-smart areas and do a lot of proactive things way in advance, such as building firebreaks around remote rural communities and making sure they are planted with deciduous trees, which are moister and cooler and help service fire breaks. Yes, we need more preparedness, and we need to buy water bombers.”
“They were once carbon sinks; they held more carbon, and they sequestered carbon, but they ceased to be sinks. They are sources of forest disease and carbon from forest fires, which we do not count in our ledgers of where we are in fighting greenhouse gases and reducing emissions. In terms of the science, the best book on this and one I recommend highly, is Fire Weather by John Vaillant, one of Canada's best writers, just in the way he can craft words with the language. He became fascinated with forest fires, and he was studying the Fort McMurray fire, the beast of 2016, and he got deeper and deeper into it. His conclusions are important. People say the boreal forest is a fire-driven ecosystem. Yes, there have always been fires in our boreal, but not these fires. These are what John Vaillant calls the “21st-century fire”.”
“Again, that is based on Antarctic ice core data. It is actual science. It is a number. It is empirical. Now it is 427 parts per million, and when it goes up, it does not go down. Our emissions have grown. We pledged to stop increasing our emissions back in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, and still they have grown globally. Burning fossil fuels are the main reason that what was once a beneficial natural phenomenon called “the greenhouse effect” has been overheated and overcharged. The greenhouse effect made this planet alone, in this solar system, warm enough to sustain any life at all. However, we have saturated the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and we have overwhelmed the natural carbon sinks that pulled them out of the atmosphere. That is what has happened to our forests.”
“Cutting to the chase here, we lost an area of interior British Columbia forest two times the size of Sweden because of global warming. It was the first major multi-billion-dollar impact from the climate crisis. That is why Gordon Campbell was the first premier in the province to bring in a carbon price. Those dead forests stood there, and with hotter and drier weather, the fuel load got hotter, drier and tinder-dry every year, it seems. Sometimes it is described as a very persistent drought. It is the beginning of what could be described as the pointy edge of desertification, because it is not likely to go away. We have fundamentally changed the climate. Atmospheric chemistry has changed. (2340) We never had more than 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere over the last million years.”
“When we are focusing on forest fires and we are talking about what is happening right now, I want to split my time between saying what it is that we know about climate science and what we should be doing right now, because there has not been a whole lot of science talked about tonight, although some people have made a very good-faith effort. Some members say with good intention that the forests had all the dead trees from the pine beetle outbreak. Right, that is called a positive feedback loop, because the pine beetle outbreak was caused by global warming. Ask our former right-wing British Columbia premier, Gordon Campbell, who figured out that usually the pine beetle is killed in a winter cold snap if the temperature gets to -35°C. That does it; that stops the pest that is endemic to our lodgepole pine forests.”
“Earlier tonight, someone mentioned that this state of long seasons of wildfires that do not seem to end, that are more intense every year, is a new normal. It is not. We have entered a state of what John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather , calls “the Petrocene”. We have entered a time where everything is unknown; we do not know. What we can say is that this may be the hottest weather we have ever seen, and 2024 was the hottest year on record for the whole planet since records were kept. We might say this is the hottest summer we have seen in the last, my gosh, couple of hundred years. We can also equally say that this is the coolest summer we are going to get for the next couple of hundred years.”
“My husband's daughter nearly died in the heat dome because it hit 50°C in Ashcroft, British Columbia. My step-daughter, Julia, who is in her mid-thirties and healthy, nearly died. With climate events that have hit us over and over again, one might think we would learn things from those emergencies. Despite the fact that I know that people have the goodwill to say we are learning, I think because of the nature of our being so segmented, so siloed between provinces, between territories, between municipalities and between first nations, governments tend to be way ahead of everyone else in realizing what needs to be done, but how do we marshal the resources? What do we actually do to confront the threat?”
“member for Winnipeg Centre , is about the people and the communities right now that are running for their life. The focus was on Manitoba because it was the Premier of Manitoba who first called for a state of emergency in his province on May 28. The next day, May 29, the Premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, called a state of emergency there. There was no intentionality to leave out the fact that Alberta has major wildfires right now across the province or that British Columbia has wildfires. I am a British Columbia MP. My husband's family has a farm, but the farmhouse is now not used for people who want to do farming. Ever since the summer of 2021, that house has been providing refuge for people who have had to leave their home because of forest fires and because of floods.”
“Mr. Speaker, I particularly want to thank my new colleague from Calgary Confederation for a quite excellent speech. This debate has been going on now since 6:30 this evening. It is now, as we can see by the clock, 11:40 p.m. I am disappointed that we have not been able to make more progress on finding common ground. There is no question but that every single member of the House is thinking of and concerned for the communities most at risk, where people are scrambling for their life, leaving their home behind and maybe leaving pets behind. Everyone is wondering, with their heart in their throat, whether they will see their home again. The focus of this night's emergency debate, inspired by the motion and the letter to the Speaker from the hon.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to put on the record, of course, that forest management is exclusively a provincial jurisdiction, but there are many important climate factors, and some that are not exclusively climate. Somebody will point out that, yes, a fire gets started by lightning, but what if there is a fuel load that is absolutely tinder dry from years of hot, dry climate events that make it so likely that fires have changed their behaviour because of the climate crisis? I wonder whether my hon. colleague has any comments on the provincial role.”
“Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have addressed the new member as secretary of state, and I think this moment requires that we all extend our deepest concerns, sympathy and prayers not only to him but to the people of his community, his riding and all throughout Saskatchewan who are threatened by wildfires. That is the point of what we are doing right now. I am from British Columbia, where we have had wildfires at the doors. We saw Lytton burn down in 15 minutes on June 30, 2021. To this day, in that community, where over 250 people were living, only nine people have been able to return to rebuild homes. It is a long, hard road. We have to learn from where we are, but compassion comes first.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre for bringing this critical issue to the floor of the House of Commons tonight for an emergency debate. There are many ways in which this is an emergency. In June 2018, this House voted that the climate crisis was an emergency. The next day, the government approved a pipeline. Tonight we are debating an emergency where we are seeing people running for their lives from remote communities in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I ask the hon. member what she hopes can come out of this debate tonight to change from rhetoric to action on the climate crisis.”
“Madam Speaker, I would also like to congratulate my neighbour in the House, a fellow British Columbian, the new member for South Surrey—White Rock. I want to ask him about an issue that was almost solved with a bill that died on the Order Paper on January 6. It was Bill C-33 , and it dealt with an issue. There is another member of the House who happens to be here, the hon. member for Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères , and we worked hard to amend Bill C-33 to have it accomplish the end of shipments of thermal coal and exports out of the port of Vancouver. These come from the U.S. They come on coal trains through his riding. I wonder if the member has any comments on whether we should bring that bill back.”
“Madam Speaker, it is awfully good to see this particular Speaker back in her chair and with continued health. I want to welcome the new member for Eglinton—Lawrence to this place and ask him if he has reflected on the failure of the Speech from the Throne to pick up any of the recommendations on the report of the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which was tabled four years ago today. I am wondering if the hon. member has any reflections on the failure to discuss the need for a guaranteed livable income, which was one of those key recommendations. The government did say it would implement the calls for justice.”
“Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Miramichi—Grand Lake on his election. I share the concerns the member has about the fate of Atlantic salmon, as well as that of Pacific salmon. As he will know, and in Miramichi everyone knows, by the way, that I am actually bicoastal. I am from Cape Breton Island and Vancouver Island. I grew up on Cape Breton Island. The Miramichi is famous, as is the Margaree River, which is my home. Saving both of these salmon populations is going to be a struggle. I look forward to working with the hon. member. If he is prepared to fight for wild Atlantic salmon, I am prepared to fight for wild Pacific salmon.”
“Mr. Speaker. I am presenting a petition that I suppose could have been from petitioners in almost any electoral district across Canada. Petitioners from Saanich—Gulf Islands have asked me to present this petition, which points to the crisis across Canada regarding access to primary health care and having a regular family doctor. In my community, in the Sidney and Victoria area of British Columbia, the average wait time for a walk-in clinic is two to four hours, depending on the community. The number of physicians in Canada is growing, but the number of Canadians without a regular doctor remains stable. The petitioners call on the Government of Canada to work with all the provinces and territories to come to a holistic and fair solution that addresses the critical shortage of family doctors across Canada.”
“The petitioners urgently ask the Minister of Transport to impose mandatory vessel distance regulations, just as is the case south of the border in Washington state.”
“Mr. Speaker, the petitioners call upon this House to consider the urgent crisis in the collapsing numbers of the population of southern resident killer whales. They have been identified as an endangered population under Canada's Species at Risk Act. There have been numerous programs and promises put in place, but the southern resident killer whale population continues to lack adequate protection and would be far better protected when they swim across the border and are in the waters of Washington state, where the rules are more rigid, the regulations are enforced immediately and boaters and large marine craft are aware that they can be fined and ticketed as opposed to ignored when they violate whale protections on our side of the border.”
“Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member for Kitchener South—Hespeler. There are a lot of new members in this place, and I wish to welcome everyone and wish them good luck in their work here on behalf of their constituents. I do want to ask the hon. member if his position is that our health care system should be abolished and that the Canada Health Act should be repealed, representing socialism. I actually think that Canadians and our social democracy have done a wonderful job of combining free enterprise and a system that works for all Canadians with the best elements of being concerned with the greatest good for the greatest number and not allowing market forces to drive up the cost of health care. The U.S. health care system, for example, delivers higher costs and worse results in health care.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present a petition from constituents as well as Canadians from coast to coast. It is certainly an issue that came up on the doorsteps when I was campaigning. The petitioners ask that the government takes seriously its commitments under the Paris Agreement to avoid the dangerous and even catastrophic levels of climate change and global warming that will occur if we exceed the 1.5°C global average temperature increase. The petitioners call on the Government of Canada to take many steps. I will summarize them by saying that they want the government to cut emissions dramatically to ensure that we avoid the levels of climate crisis that will put human civilization itself in jeopardy.”
“Mr. Speaker, as Saskatchewan and Manitoba burn, there is precious little content in the Speech from the Throne on how the government plans to approach the climate crisis. There is not a single reference to the Paris Agreement and our legally binding targets to cut emissions by at least 40% by 2030. On November 2024, we were at only 7% below 2005 levels. When will the government present a plan? So far all it has done is cut the one measure that was working.”
“Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to give a Caesar-like speech. We are not burying the member. I am tempted, of course, as ever, to praise him because we are friends. I do not think the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot will be gone long from this place, and I do not know if the official residence of Stornoway is now found within the borders of Battle River—Crowfoot, but I am sure that all things will be revealed. I hope the member for Battle River—Crowfoot will be back here. I want to ask him a question, very briefly, because it is my first time taking the floor today. The hon. member for Calgary Centre pointed out how many Conservative ideas are in this Speech from the Throne. I think it could have been a Speech from the Throne from a Conservative government.”
“They point out that an Angus Reid poll conducted recently, this last September, found that 85% of respondents want to see a citizens' assembly choose a form of electoral reform to replace the perverse first-past-the-post system. To summarize, they are petitioning for the government of the day to put in place a mechanism to find a consensus among Canadian citizens who want to see fair voting that reflects the will of the voting public to make sure that the Parliament voters get is the Parliament voters voted for. They are calling for a citizens' assembly on electoral reform to be completed within 12 months and for recommended changes to be put in place before the next election.”
“Mr. Speaker, as it is my first time taking the floor in the House in this session of Parliament, I want to begin by thanking the voters of Saanich—Gulf Islands for the trust they have placed in me to continue to serve them. It is the honour of my life to do so. I am extremely grateful to the 350 volunteers who helped so diligently, some of them working seven days a week and around the clock. I will never be able to thank them enough. On behalf of many constituents, I am rising to present a petition, and not for the first time, from petitioners who point out that there is a strong desire across the country for electoral reform.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. As you may be aware, although the hon. member for Vancouver East is some distance from the Chair, there unfortunately has been more heckling than one would want on the day when we receive the Speech from the Throne. Some hon. members: Oh, oh! Elizabeth May: I am being heckled as I make this point, Mr. Speaker. In your election, there were many commitments made in this place from many quarters that we want to see better decorum in Parliament. On the part of my ability to understand and hear the member who is right next to me, the heckling was too loud.”
“I pledge again never to heckle, and to do everything possible to aid your work, Mr. Speaker, in protecting our rights and ensuring the effective, efficient and honourable conduct of this place, such that there will be no need for warnings on CPAC or any other network. Again, I urge everyone here to try our very best. I pause briefly to congratulate the Prime Minister on his maiden speech and, again, on brevity. We look forward to more speeches from our Prime Minister, from the leader of the official opposition and from members of all parties, whether recognized or unrecognized. We are all here for the same reason. We work for Canada. We work for our constituents. With your wise counsel, Mr. Speaker, we will work hard to make this a Parliament in which Canadians can be justifiably proud of Canadian democracy.”
“Mr. Speaker, congratulations to one and all, especially to the new members. [ English ] It is an honour to rise to congratulate our new Speaker and to congratulate all the members elected in this place, whether for the first time or, as for the dean of the House, the 13th time. I congratulate, again, every member. I reflect on what it was like when I witnessed my first Speaker election, when I was first elected. We elected the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle . I will never forget that the leader of the official opposition at the time, the late Jack Layton, stood on that occasion and said, and I commend this to the official opposition, that his caucus would never heckle. That was a wonderful moment. As I stood then on behalf of the entire Green caucus, I do also today.”