(Ottawa) The entire Conservative caucus voted against the motion presented by the Bloc Québécois to stop funding fossil fuels and step up the fight against climate change. The Liberals and New Democrats supported it.
“This government, which speaks green easily, will have to follow its boots and stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry directly or indirectly, as it is doing at the moment,” reacted the spokesperson for the Bloc. from Quebec on the environment, Monique Pauzé.
The 115 Conservative MPs voted against it and 210 Liberal, New Democrat, Green and Independent elected officials supported it, including Richmond–Arthabaska MP Alain Rayes, who was on the Conservative benches before Pierre Poilievre took over as leader. of the Conservative Party of Canada. He recently gave his support to the Deputy Leader of the Green Party, Jonathan Pedneault, for the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount by-election.
The Bloc Québécois used its opposition day last week to force a debate in the House of Commons on the issue of climate change in the wake of the numerous forest fires burning in Quebec and elsewhere in the country. The vote took place on Monday after question period.
She demanded that “the federal government stop investing in fossil fuels” and “develop incentives […] to stimulate the use of renewable energies and public transit” while respecting Quebec’s areas of jurisdiction.
The Conservatives, who staunchly oppose the carbon tax, attempted to introduce their own motion to acknowledge that climate change “exacerbates the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather and climate events” and that the federal government must ” invest more” in its fight against global warming without, however, mentioning fossil fuels or their role in the climate crisis.
This Conservative motion presented by the Deputy House Leader of the Official Opposition, Luc Berthold, was quickly defeated. It needed the unanimous consent of the House of Commons to pass.
Forest fires led to the evacuation of 11,000 people in Quebec last week, in addition to threatening the forestry industry. Their smoke invaded the skies of several major cities in the northeastern United States.
The Bloc Québécois is calling for an end to all investments made in the oil and gas industry, including those intended for carbon capture and storage, which could encourage it to produce more. The last budget notably contains a tax credit of $520 million over five years for this purpose.
Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault defended this approach last week because the government is already supporting other industrial sectors “to reduce their carbon footprint”. “If we do it for these sectors, we will also do it for the oil and gas sector,” he said in an interview with The Press.
He said the government had already eliminated international fossil fuel subsidies last year, an effort hailed by Oil Change International. These amounts granted to Canadian companies for oil and gas projects abroad totaled 2.5 billion in 2018, according to his cabinet. It must also present a framework by the fall to eliminate domestic subsidies.
The direct and indirect financing of fossil fuels, direct and indirect, amounted in all to more than 20 billion in 2022, according to the group Environmental Defense which has tried to count it.
The government has set itself the target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. It is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050.
Mike Norton, director of the Northern Forestry Centre, a research center of the Department of Natural Resources, said in a briefing last week that “wildfires are inevitable in Canada, but climate change make them more serious. The peculiarity this year is the fact that they occur in the spring due to abnormally hot and dry weather instead of occurring later in the summer.