Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to have a chance to speak to today's emergency motion and the amendments to the motion put forward by my hon. colleague, the member for Abbotsford.

As indicated in the Paris Agreement, the issue of climate change will take a joint global effort to reduce emissions going forward. The whole world needs to be involved.

I strongly feel that most Canadians understand this and are willing to do their part to reduce emissions where they can. In fact, this past weekend, I had the opportunity to visit some friends at a campsite. A number of the young children there were talking about the issue of climate change and the issue of the carbon tax. Their point was that this carbon tax is being put on them to reduce emissions, but every one of them said that it is not going to do it and that it is not going forward. Canadians understand that. At the same time, we recognize that Canada is responsible, and these young people understood that. However, it has just 1.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is minuscule compared to other countries. There truly needs to be an international, co-operative effort to address climate change.

The Liberal motion we are debating today will, unfortunately, do nothing to address climate change. There are no concrete actionable items in the motion. It asks that we in the House recognize that climate change is a real and urgent crisis. Yet it is only now, three and a half years into the Liberals' mandate, just before an election, that this issue has suddenly become urgent. We have known about climate change for decades. It is not a new concept. Why, days before the House rises for the summer, have the Liberals decided that it is urgent now?

Furthermore, the motion fails to acknowledge the fact that Canada continues to fall short of its emission reduction targets. Just weeks ago, the Minister of Environment appeared at the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development and was asked point blank whether Canada could meet its targets as set out in the Paris Agreement. She answered that yes, we are “on track”. However, we know that she was not telling the truth, as figures show that Canada fell 44 megatonnes short of its target in 2016, 65 megatonnes short in 2017, and 79 megatonnes short in 2018.

I cannot understand why the minister would mislead and provide misinformation to Canadians in this way. Perhaps it is embarrassing, given that the government painted itself as a champion of the environment. It seems that the Liberals are trying to save face with the motion we are debating today, yet anyone can see that this motion will have zero impact on reducing emissions and will not get Canada any closer to meeting the targets we agreed to under the Paris Agreement.

We know that there are many great innovative ideas being developed every day in our great country. People all over Canada are coming up with innovative and knowledgeable ideas that utilize the natural resources we are blessed to have here. I would like to speak about some of the efforts that are ongoing that are actually having a measurable impact on emissions reductions and climate change in Canada.

A recent report conducted by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined how crucial the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is in reducing emissions, and one of the ways that this is done is through carbon capture and storage. Many of my colleagues have heard me speak about this incredible technology in the past.

Carbon capture and storage, CCS, is an innovative green technology that allows the capture of waste CO2 emissions produced by industrial large emitters, including coal-fired power plants. The technology allows for underground storage of the waste CO2, which can then be utilized for things such as enhanced oil recovery. This means that the CO2 produced by a generator that has been fitted with CCS will not enter the atmosphere and will be reused in other industries or absorbed three kilometres below the ground. Furthermore, the waste product generated as a result, fly ash, is also used by other industries and can be sold for cement production. In fact, the City of Vancouver is currently using this very fly ash in the construction of its sidewalks. The use of fly ash in cement further reduces emissions, this time for the cement company that utilizes it, for which CCS does not get credit.

Also worth noting is that the flue gas from coal-fired power plants is almost the exact same flume gas that comes out of cement and steel plants, among others. CCS can take that gas and remove the particles from it. This means that this great technology could be moved into all these other areas and do the same thing. By utilizing this knowledge, CCS has a wide range of applications that will only benefit the environment.

In my riding of Souris—Moose Mountain, there are three power plants: the Boundary Dam Power Station, the Shand Power Station and the Poplar River Power Station. CCS is installed on unit 3, or BD3, at the Boundary Dam Power Station. Boundary Dam was the first power station in the world to successfully utilize this technology. BD3 went online in October 2014, becoming the world's first utility-scale, fully integrated post-combustion carbon capture facility. With CCS, BD3 now produces 115 megawatts of power, enough to power over 100,000 homes in Saskatchewan annually. It is capable of reducing SO2 emissions from the coal process by up to 100% and of reducing CO2 emissions by up to 92%. So far, the use of CCS technology on BD3 has resulted in the capture of over 2.5 million tonnes of CO2 since its operational start-up. Let us not forget nitrous oxide and particulate matter, at 99.95%, or the fact that sulphur dioxide is sold to chemical companies and that CO2 is sold to oil companies.

This is innovation. This is exactly what the minister and Prime Minister should be championing when it comes to emissions reductions in Canada. CCS is the technology that will allow power plants in Saskatchewan to continue operating for their functional lifespans, rather than shutting down in 2030 with no solid alternative available for the production of electricity. This is something the Liberals should be promoting, yet the minister has barely made mention of this world-first technology, despite the fact that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that CCS is considered essential in three of four pathways to keeping global warming within 1.5°C. The government should be shouting this from the rooftops, but unfortunately, the silence with respect to CCS has been deafening. Not only is this technology appropriate, it continues to allow for the employment of over 400 middle-class workers at the power plant and 365 at the Westmoreland Coal Company. These are skilled, trained, knowledgeable, hard-working Canadians who simply want to continue to work.

In the past, one of the issues governments worldwide have had with CCS is the cost. It is not cheap to retrofit a power plant, but I have some good news on that front. A report released by the International CCS Knowledge Centre, “The Shand CCS Feasibility Study”, addresses this concern. It states that retrofitting Shand with CCS would be 67% cheaper per megawatt hour compared to Boundary Dam. Again, that is a 67% reduction in cost. That is huge. With economies of scale, we should continue to see even further cost reductions.

With the full-scale CCS facility at Shand, roughly two million megatonnes of CO2 could be captured every year, which is twice the capacity of Boundary Dam. Clearly, CCS technology is getting better and better as it is refined and optimized over time, and that is something the Canadian government should be supporting wholeheartedly.

Furthermore, up to 140,000 tonnes of fly ash could be resold in the concrete market, which could offset emissions in concrete production. This equates to a potential net reduction of 125,000 tonnes of CO2 each year, resulting in a facility with net negative CO2 emissions. This means that the facility could be considered carbon neutral. Is this not exactly what the minister wants? Shand would be a power plant that was actually carbon neutral. It would drastically lower emissions while allowing hundreds of hard-working Canadians to keep their jobs.

Today's motion, which again is being classified by the Liberals as urgent and an emergency, is simply ineffective. The amendments put forward by my colleague from Abbotsford have substance and call on the government to produce a real climate change plan that will enable Canada to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions according to the targets in the Paris Agreement. That is real, measurable action, and by working with our international counterparts and ensuring that we are all doing our part, we will make a difference toward emissions reductions worldwide.

Robert Gordon Kitchen

$487,440.00