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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“Mr. Speaker, I am presenting an e-petition that has the signatures of just under 5,000 Canadians, raising an issue that seems pretty much a no-brainer. The death benefit from the Canadian pension plan has been frozen at the same level since 1998, at $2,500. Obviously, the cost of living and the cost of a funeral, the cost of dying, in this country have more than doubled since 1998. Since many Canadians outlive their savings, the petitioners are asking the House of Commons to consider that the CPP top-up death benefit really applies only to people who have never received CPP. The number of people who are suffering and who are living below the poverty line calls us to consider this: that the House of Commons and the government increase the CPP death benefit.”
“Mr. Speaker, later this afternoon we will hear the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie address the House one last time. [ Translation ] I thank him. I salute him. He is a man of integrity and courage. [ English ] My question is for the Minister of the Environment. Will she find the courage to fight for climate? Will she find the courage to fight for our future?”
“Mr. Chair, we are here borrowing $25 billion to start a sovereign wealth fund, but we have $793 billion in assets in the Canada pension plan, managed by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Most of those investments go to the United States. The vast majority of them go to countries other than Canada. We have had some—”
“Mr. Chair, I ask the hon. minister if he would not agree with me that we have seen a steady stream of efforts to get Canadians corporations to invest in themselves and reinvest in R and D, and it is a string of failures, as David Dodge pointed out. The tools that we have tried just have not worked, and then people tend to turn on the corporate sector, which it does not appreciate. They say that the sector is not investing in itself and it is its fault. I am just hoping that we can learn lessons from the past and decide that it is time to ensure that we actually use Canadian workers in Canada to further process our raw materials and not ship them out raw. Might the government be thinking of putting in some measures that would encourage that?”
“However, a multifactorial issue for productivity occurs when we export a relatively large proportion as raw material without value added. I wonder if the minister has any thoughts on how Canada can improve productivity or can point to any measures in the existing financial documents of the last year that actually would make a difference in improving our productivity.”
“Mr. Chair, I thank the minister for his very kind comments. I want to turn to a perennial challenge for Canada's economy and ask where the minister sees his government's efforts to deal with the productivity crisis going. We are not making any headway since back when David Dodge first declared that we had a crisis in productivity. This is my analysis, and I could be dead wrong on this. Certainly in countries and sectors that are dominated by oligopolies, we have a problem where there is a relatively small number of firms dominating an entire sector. It is pretty well known that Canada's telecommunications sector, banking sector and the large grocery store chains lack the kind of competitiveness that would lead to better productivity.”
“I wonder if the various investments that are described as subsidies and investment tax credits in budget 2025 and in the spring economic update have been subjected to a risk assessment of what the Prime Minister once referred to as what happens when we have unburnable carbon and there is no market for it. Have we seen in the finance department a real assessment of the risks of assuming that investing in fossil fuels is a good bet for this country?”
“Mr. Chair, I wish the hon. minister a good evening. I will watch my time closely and try to give him adequate time to respond because I hope to have a conversation more than a grilling. I note that the hon. minister referred frequently to the International Energy Agency as authoritative. I wonder if he noted that last month the executive director, Fatih Birol, said that based on the global experience of the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran and the geopolitical instability around fossil fuels, the days of fossil fuels are numbered, that the world is shifting more quickly to renewables and electrifying, and that there would be a steep decline in any demand for oil in the future.”
“Part of the Green Party policy, just to make it clear for my friends across the way, is to pick a date on which we will transition off fossil fuels and only use Canadian fossil fuels till that date.”
“Mr. Speaker, I do think it is important to remember that, while it is rare that on any climate issue one would invoke Stephen Harper's legacy, the current government's climate policies are so bad that they do bring to mind things that Stephen Harper did better, such as deciding that the gas tax should be permanent and should be used to fund urban transit. I think there is a bit of bait and switch when they say they are going to relieve this tax. I think what the Liberals are doing is fuelling, no pun intended, the wrong message, as if the narrative is correct that somehow it is the extra taxes from government that are making gas more expensive. It is a factor, but a much larger factor is that we have structured our economy and our use of fossil fuels around shipping out low-value exports and not creating the jobs here.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the Liberals' policies lack common sense. There is this belief that it is a good idea to cut and eliminate almost every policy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the government is saying yes to electric vehicles. However, at the last minute, the government changes its plans and ends up saying that it does not want them at all. In the end, the government says they may want some. The government also eliminated energy efficiency programs for homes in Canada. It makes no sense.”
“Mr. Speaker, to the second part of the question, there is no hesitation on my part, because we have, for years, been calling for improving our refinery capacity in Canada. There was a Canadian entrepreneur in British Columbia who wanted to do that to reduce the risk of bitumen on our coastlines. However, let me just point out that eastern Canada has something called Hibernia. The mobile oil platforms there produce a much higher-value crude than bitumen, and it is all shipped to the States.”
“To that, I will only add that I am concerned about getting rid of the excise tax on our fuel, which we are doing with the spring economic statement, Bill C-30 . Stephen Harper's made the wise decision that the excise gas tax would be forever dedicated to public transit in urban areas. The Liberals have now ditched that plan and are giving a short-term, and I think insufficient, tax break to Canadians because it ends on Labour Day. For all of that, the one sure thing is that nothing is going to hurt our economy like the climate crisis, which is barrelling towards us. Nothing is going to damage our economy as much as the government is currently doing by slashing carbon and climate control programs in order to boost what it thinks will turn into economic growth.”
“It is still, on the order, about 90% of our exports that go to the United States. One little curious point people might find amusing as a factoid, but that is rather despairing, is the idea that there was some great benefit coming to Canada by getting our bitumen to tidewater. In fact, a great deal of what gets shipped out of the port of Burnaby towards China, because it is still a solid thing, is a lot like tar. A lot of what we ship to China gets used to pave roads because it is a lot like tar. If we wanted to have a domestic industry that would improve our productivity measurements as an economy, we would not be shipping out raw product. Every time we increase the relative proportion of value-added product before shipping it out of the country, we improve our overall economic indicators.”
“Despite the fact that we have been told some fairy tales over the years, like if we had a pipeline from British Columbia to eastern Canada or from Alberta to New Brunswick, the Irving refinery in New Brunswick could process that and it would be good and we could we use it domestically, the reality is that the Irving refinery is still the only refinery in Canada that imports Saudi oil. The Irving refinery does not have an upgrader to take solid bitumen, turn it into synthetic crude and then refine it. These are some of the basic structural impediments to Canada getting maximum workforce benefit and maximum domestic economic benefit. We could get more benefit and more jobs in Canada while reducing our overall production of fossil fuels, which we primarily export to the United States.”
“Well, I think it is still the mindset of hewers of wood and drawers of water, and because we are failing to listen to smart folks in the refinery business and in the workforces who have been looking at why we do not want to have value added to our refining capacity and be able to say that what we are using in our tanks, as long as we are still using the internal combustion engine, comes from Canada, because this is a Canadian product. It does make it more expensive, as we can imagine, to ship it out of the port in Burnaby, ship it overseas, and, in some cases, down to refineries in Washington state, only for British Columbians to buy it back from refineries in Washington state.”
“We ship out raw bitumen, and people could have had jobs in refineries if we had kept up the capacity in our refineries and if we had built upgraders to go with the refineries so that Canadian bitumen could be used in Canadian gas tanks without being shipped out of the country first. This is a big problem. This affects the price of gas in Canada. We are the fifth largest producer of fossil fuels in the world. We export most of it by far, and we import product from other countries. That is quite astonishing. Why do we do that?”
“(1635) Our capacity to take a domestic product, refine it and use it here has been substantially structurally reduced. Unifor told the National Energy Board that it did not want an export pipeline built because it felt it would inevitably lead to the closure of refineries in the Lower Mainland of B.C. This is because the product that those refineries might want to refine was moving offshore before there was any value added, as is the case whenever we ship out raw materials. We do this a lot in Canada with shippers, hewers of wood and drawers of water. Because we ship out raw logs, the sawmills in Canada cannot operate at full capacity.”
“However, the pipeline project was then and is now, as it operates, transporting something that is a solid, low-value form of fossil fuel called bitumen, which is diluted with enough fossil fuel condensates that it can flow through a pipeline. Unprocessed raw gets shipped out of Canada to go to refineries in other countries to be upgraded to synthetic crude, and from there it goes to refineries elsewhere. Focusing on our refinery capacity, in the 1970s, Canada had about 40 refineries. One of the things that the Unifor brief pointed out to the National Energy Board is that we have lost a huge amount of our refinery capacity. It is now down to, in 2026, about 14 to 16 refineries, depending on how one counts. That is down from 40 refineries.”
“There is a logic to this, but let us look at the current situation. One of the reasons that fossil fuel prices are higher for Canadians who want to put gas in the tank is that, of the fossil fuels we produce in this country, about 75% of them are exported, and the bulk of that by far, 75% of what we export, or about 60% of total, is exported unprocessed raw. I became more aware of this back in 2016. I was an intervenor in the National Energy Board review of what was then the Kinder Morgan pipeline project, and the largest union representing workers in the oil sands, Unifor, was also intervening against the pipeline project. Why would the largest union in the oil sands be against the pipeline project? They pointed out the obvious. The pipeline was then idiotically bought and built by Canada at a cost of $36 billion of public funds.”
“These are larger discussions to have, but the question that I want to focus on now is the one before us from the Conservative Party: Why is there a price differential, even with the international volatility caused by war and mistakes? To say they were mistakes is to be charitable toward the U.S. White House. To say they were monstrously reckless decisions is more accurate. Why is there this price differential? To get into this, I have to drill down a bit, no pun intended. When the Green Party issued our climate policy in 2019, called “Mission: Possible”, we made the commitment, which I think very few Canadians ever heard of, that we should, as we ramp down on our dependence on fossil fuels in Canada, only use Canadian fossil fuels in this country and absolutely bring imports from other countries to zero.”
“I want to state right off the top, and we often fail to say this, even as Greens, but we need to say it, that the cheapest way to move people around in vehicles and the cheapest way to power those vehicles is to move 100% off fossil fuels. I want to say very quickly, before friends anywhere get angry with me, that this is not a useful choice if it is not there for them. Let me give a contrast. In Germany, pensioners can hang solar panels off their balconies in urban places, and they have the capacity to safely plug their home appliances into the solar panel, just as friends of mine in the Cobble Hill area in British Columbia have solar panels on their roof and plug their car into their house. This means that the source of energy is abundant, renewable and essentially free once everything is in place.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to have the opportunity to rise in debate today on the opposition day motion, and I have the great honour of splitting my time with the terrific MP for Vancouver Kingsway . I want to start by saying that this is a thoughtful motion. I will be voting against it, but I do think it is important to have Canadians use this moment as a teachable moment. There is no question that the price of fossil fuels, particularly gasoline, throughout North America and around the world, has felt the shock created by Donald Trump's and Benjamin Netanyahu's illegally bombing Iran. It had an immediate effect on gas prices around the world. Yes, it is worth Canadians asking, given that has had a global impact, how come gas prices are higher in Canada. As such, I want to dig into that a bit.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a point of order that I hope the hon. member who has the floor at the moment, will appreciate. There is far too much noise entering the chamber for me to give respectful attention to the hon. member from Kings—Hants. I do not know if you could hear it from where you are, Mr. Speaker, and it is beginning to come down to a dull roar, but it was really difficult to hear the hon. member for Kings—Hants.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his speech. My question is about the temporary suspension of the federal fuel excise tax and the fact that, under former prime minister Stephen Harper, that tax was used exclusively to fund urban transit. If this fuel excise tax is suspended, what revenue will go to urban public transit? That is the responsibility of another level of government, local government, which depends on this tax for urban transit.”
“Mr. Speaker, I would like to agree with my colleague. The sovereign wealth funds of other countries, particularly Norway's, were designed on Peter Lougheed's plan, which was to take oil revenue out of government rents and using it as a set-aside for a rainy day, which is not what the Liberals' fund proposes to do. I wonder if my hon. colleague has any comments.”
“Mr. Speaker, in Bill C-30 , there is not much climate commitment at all. We now know, concerning the MOU with the province of Alberta, that whereas the November 27 MOU said Canada and Alberta are committed to net zero by 2050, the May 15 MOU said they are committed to tangible progress toward net zero by 2050. Has the Prime Minister now completely withdrawn from our legally binding commitments to reductions by 2035? Are we now retracting the commitment, which was already too late, to the year 2050?”
“Mr. Speaker, the second petition comes from constituents concerned with the status of animals in this country. Under law, they are seen only as property, without recognizing that they are sentient beings, living beings, with the ability to feel pain, fear, comfort and other experiences. The petitioners cite the support of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association in saying that animal sentience should be formally recognized in Canadian law. The e-petition, which was signed by many Canadians, asks that the Government of Canada take this consideration. We have tried before in this House to have legislation to cease treating animals as property. The petitioners hope that we will take this up again and consider legislation to recognize the nature of animals as sentient beings.”
“In pursuit of an international peace charter, the petitioners have developed a strong campaign calling for self-determination, finding truth and countering disinformation, and promoting human dignity, diversity, justice and accountability. I am honoured to present this petition today.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present two petitions today, the first of which is an e-petition that received over 1,000 signatures from Canadians across the country, and particularly from my riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands. It is a civil society-based effort, launching as well this week in Victoria, with support from many nations around the world. The petitioners hope that Canada will take the lead in seeking the ratification of an international peace charter. The petitioners note that global conflict is increasing and geopolitical instability threatens lives and livelihoods, and of course peaceful coexistence all around the world.”
“Minister of Finance to please reconsider the amendments to the Pest Control Products Act. There are parts of this bill I would vote for, but please, to the Minister of Finance, do not reduce our health protections pretending it would bring down food prices.”
“Mr. Speaker, there are parts of every omnibus bill that need to be studied, but when there are omnibus bills, they rarely are. I was the only member of Parliament to vote against part 1 of Bill C-5 last June. Why? It was because the Canadian Cancer Society reached me and asked me to please oppose reducing measures that would make it easier for toxic chemicals that are carcinogens to cross provincial borders. I am very similarly concerned that this bill, in division 8, would increase carcinogens in our foods and in our environment because of changes being proposed to the Pest Control Products Act on the scanty evidence, or I would say the assumption without evidence, that somehow food would be cheaper if we made it easier for corporate profits to accrue in the chemical industry. I ask the hon.”
“Petitioners ask that the government take action to regulate the mining, use and export and import of thermal coal, in accordance with our international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases.”
“Mr. Speaker, petitioners have asked me to present a petition around the export of thermal coal. We note that if Bill C-33 had not died on the Order Paper on January 6 last year, that bill would have banned the export of thermal coal as the government had previously committed to do. Petitioners point out to the government that it has the mechanisms now. By listing thermal coal as a toxic product, it could immediately ban the export of thermal coal through CEPA. They also note that we export thermal coal through the port of Vancouver, first importing it from the United States. U.S. ports no longer allow the export of thermal coal, so we ship it for them.”
“This Mother's Day, whether it is for mothers in Israel or in Sudan, we know that Mother's Day is all about love, but let us take a moment and let Mother's Day be a cry for peace.”
“Mr. Speaker, Mother's Day was not invented by Hallmark Cards. In the late 1800s,there was an annual mother's day for peace. It was started by mothers and women who were sick of seeing the ravages of war after the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. They started an annual day to call for an end to war. In 2026, let us think of the mothers of Ukraine, whose children are being stolen by Putin to erase their culture. Let us think of the mothers of Palestine, whose grief is unending. Let us think of our indigenous mothers, whose daughters are still missing and murdered. Let us think of the mothers of Russia, whose children are being stolen by Putin for an illegal war.”
“In fact, we do not have people to maintain the vessels that were purchased for oil spill emergencies, in what I would call the greenwashing of saying, “We are prepared,” and with no oceans protection plan. Where are we now for the impacts of the build Canada strong major projects?”
“Mr. Speaker, forgive me if I am not impressed with the government's attempt to run balanced budgets when we now have a $66.9-billion deficit. We also know that where there are funds that could be accessed through reasonable shifts in taxation, such as a wealth tax, those opportunities are being avoided. So too is a financial transaction tax that would affect no one but multi-billionaires. We also see a boost in subsidies to fossil fuels, and there is a real cost in the climate impacts that will happen across Canada, not to mention specifically the one I keep trying to find an answer for: cuts to the workers who should be ready in the case of oil spill emergencies.”
“However, I rather think, as ever, that when a government is putting through significant cuts that affect the services that Canadians want, it does tend to downplay it and say that it will do it by attrition, that it will find some people it could give a buyout package to and encourage them to leave now, knowing that their job is hanging by a thread anyway. I never did get a clear answer to my specific concern about the workers who are supposed to be ready, although we know that, if ever there were ever a spill of diluted bitumen, we do not have the technology to clean it up. I hope that tonight we can get a clear answer.”
“Again, there are cuts in science, agricultural research stations across Canada and the oceans protection plan, which appears to no longer exist. We are looking at significant cuts across the board. As I said, the Public Service Alliance of Canada representatives are estimating 8,000 workers. The answer I got on January 28 was from the minister himself, which is somewhat unusual. The President of the Treasury Board did stand to answer my question and did say that there were going to be cuts through voluntary measures.”
“We are seeing some reduction in an area where I am very concerned. We could see cuts in federal spending, which is in the billions of dollars, on outside consultants. We have civil service workers with expertise and if they are put in the role of delivery, they are a lot less expensive than asking Deloitte or McKinsey or other billion-dollar management consultants all around the world that have been getting too much of the public purse in Canada to do the work that we should be doing internally with our own public sector workers. I saw a recent statement that the Government of Canada, in budget 2026, was going to cut by 20% the amount it is spending. That still, by my calculation, leaves us spending about $4 billion on outside consultants, which are for-profit agencies from outside Canada for the most part. What are we cutting here?”
“On the same day, the Public Service Alliance of Canada held its own press conference to say that it was informed that about 8,000 workers of the federal civil service were to be terminated. Since the time I asked the question, it is now confirmed that about 800 of those people are from Parks Canada. Today, I heard from concerned constituents that an interpreter position within Gulf Islands National Park Reserve is being terminated, an essential connection for the visiting public on Saturna Island. The list goes on, including many workers within Environment and Climate Change Canada, particularly those who do critical work in understanding and tracking what we are doing to respond to climate change, which is less by the day so there is less to track. However, there is no question that we are seeing significant cuts to the civil service.”
“Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my friend from Simcoe North . Those who started watching at late show will not know what just happened. In any case, that was a good moment. I am speaking tonight to a question that I asked in question period on January 28, related to what the government had announced as intended cuts to the civil service. I was particularly concerned because within my riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands and elsewhere on Vancouver Island we were getting news that people involved in the critical work of emergency response in the case of oil spills were already receiving their pink slips. They were being told that they were to be removed from their position. It appeared to be everyone in that department.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a shame that Richard Moody was a thief. It is a shame the Government of British Columbia did not long ago negotiate in good faith with the Cowichan. It is a shame the Government of Canada did not long ago negotiate with the Cowichan. With this degree of shame, we must not let the honour of the Crown be dishonoured now.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Repentigny. It is a bit difficult because various issues are being conflated. From this confusion, untruths may grow. We are in a situation where, for natural resource projects, we need to establish honest and thorough consultation mechanisms before the projects are implemented. At the same time, the decision from the B.C. Supreme Court in the Cowichan case has no impact on issues like major natural resource projects.”
“Mr. Speaker, I know a lot of my Conservative friends are wondering about the expropriations built into Bill C-15 for Alto. That is basing it on what kind of title rights we have in this country. Nobody's title rights in fee simple are absolute vis-à-vis our own government, but they are absolute vis-à-vis potential indigenous title, which has not in any way been put forward. As my hon. colleague from Winnipeg Centre says, there has been no case ever where indigenous title has resulted in fee simple title rights being lost for settler culture Canadians. Fee simple rights are only taken when a government expropriates for something big, like the Mirabel airport or what have you.”
“Mr. Speaker, it has already been quoted by my hon. colleague from Winnipeg Centre that the court confirmed that the Cowichan nation did not seek to invalidate or render ineffective fee simple lands. It is true there are some fee simple lands within the area that used to be the village. It is primarily federal land, it is City of Richmond land, and it is the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. However, the declaration by the court does not affect one iota the fee simple property rights of those people. The burden is on the Province of British Columbia, which for 100 years ignored its duty to properly negotiate this dispute and to pay attention to the rights of the Cowichan nation.”
“(1620) To all concerned, let us please not allow people to believe something that is not true. This Cowichan decision does not threaten fee simple land or property rights. Let us wait for the courts to conclude, and let us stay calm.”
“Lots of luck. Section 35 of our Constitution says indigenous lands are inherently held and are indigenous title. It is very important, and some of us in this place have gone to law school, like the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith , so I know she knows this stuff, that we cannot conflate indigenous title with fee simple title. Crown land is in a different kind of category, and in that sense, indigenous title is more akin to that. As my hon. colleague from Winnipeg said, we have the Haida decision, and there is the Delgamuukw decision, but really the Tsilhqot’in decision of the Supreme Court of Canada made it really clear. Fee simple title is held specifically and personally and can be bought and sold. Indigenous title, as the court said in the Tsilhqot’in decision, is collective and intergenerational.”
“Then the court said that, because the land now is basically Crown land, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, and the B.C. government has no legal right to extinguish title, that is the honour of the Crown to these peoples. My friend Adam Olsen, who was once the Green Party member of the B.C. legislature representing me, and who is a member of the Tsartlip First Nation, in response to this Cowichan decision tried to emphasize, “When First Nations win, the rest of society does not lose.” I would like my hon. colleagues in this place to think about how significant it is for us all that what may knit us together, our sovereignty as a nation, is better protected by the honour of the Crown and its relationship with indigenous nations than almost anything else if we are dealing with a U.S. President who thinks we could be the 51st state.”