Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my fantastic and enthusiastic colleague from Cowichan—Malahat—Langford in British Columbia.

The matter before us today is very important. I am honoured to rise in the House to talk about the challenge facing our generation. I am speaking on behalf of my constituents and on behalf of Montrealers, Quebeckers and Canadians.

Let me digress for a moment and talk about forced migration around the world.

In the past decade, growing numbers of people have had to flee their homes, never to return. Today, 66.5 million people, about 1% of the global population, have been forcibly displaced. Never in our history have so many people been displaced. Violence, armed conflict, persecution, massive development projects that destroy environments and ways of life, extreme poverty and environmental issues, including climate change, are forcing people to leave their homes and their communities.

Asylum seekers and internally displaced people leave their homes because they fear for their lives, their freedom or their safety. These people need peace and stability. That is why an organization like Development and Peace—Caritas Canada works with organizations around the world to meet the basic needs of those who have been affected by some of the worst migrant crises the world has ever seen.

In order to put an end to forced migration, it is imperative that we address the root causes. To do that, we must work together as citizens, organizations, civil society, humanitarian actors and multilateral organizations, but also as parliamentarians and as a government, to address this historically unprecedented challenge.

This situation will likely only get worse, because climate change and climate warming will also create what are known as climate refugees. These are people who have to leave home when natural disasters, such as rising sea levels, make their homes, cities or communities uninhabitable. Obviously, there is the tragedy affecting all of the nations and peoples who live on small islands in the Pacific. We know that those islands are at risk of becoming submerged by rising seas.

That is not all. Some shorelines and islands like the Magdalen Islands are eroding. Droughts, floods and forest fires are going to make some areas uninhabitable. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of people the world over will be displaced and will have no choice but to relocate because the temperature of the planet will have climbed 3°C, 4°C or 5°C. That would be catastrophic.

The debate we are having today is not just about the cost of investing in renewable energy, public transit or the electrification of our transportation, or the cost of constructing our buildings differently, using a circular economy approach and salvaged materials. The debate is also about the cost of doing nothing.

In Canada, the people who are most concerned about climate change are certainly young people, environmentalists and the NDP, but also insurance companies. They are scratching their heads because payouts for people whose homes are destroyed by fires or floods keep going up every year.

I do not have to go too far back to illustrate that. Last summer, in British Columbia, forests were razed to the ground and people were displaced by forest fires the likes of which we had never seen. There is not only a human cost, but also a tremendous economic cost.

According to figures from recent media reports, 66 people died in last summer's heat wave in Montreal. They got so hot they died.

Climate change is going to accelerate and intensify. If we do nothing, this sort of situation will happen more frequently. Obviously, I cannot overlook the flooding we just experienced in the Outaouais region and in other parts of Quebec and Ontario.

Climate change and extreme temperatures are getting worse, and this is going to radically change our way of life. There is a reason people in Montreal, across Quebec and everywhere in Canada are taking action. People of all ages, both young and not so young, are calling on our governments to take action and make the right decisions, even if those decisions might be painful or politically costly in the short term. That is our duty and our responsibility.

Aurélien Barrau, a French astrophysicist I really admire, said something in a recent interview that really struck a chord. We have 12 years left to act. Without a major course correction right now, future generations will see us as criminals because we did not make the right decisions and did not change our habits. We continue to exploit natural resources like we always have, use yesterday's dirty energy sources, give society's biggest polluters a free pass and subsidize oil and gas companies. That is what we are doing. We are not doing enough. That is why our constituents say we must take action. We need to change course now. Unfortunately, the Liberal government is not getting the job done.

Some will say that I am saying this because I am an opposition MP and the election is coming. I will repeat what I told a journalist not that long ago. I will rely on numbers and facts. I will even rely on reports from Environment and Climate Change Canada, from the current government. In 2017, Environment Canada told us we were going to miss the Conservatives' targets for 2030 by 66 megatonnes. Last year, that same department told us we were going to miss the targets by 79 megatonnes.

Then the Liberal government told us that we are heading in the right direction. How did it come to that conclusion? Where does that information come from? I understand that this is politics, and the Liberals are trying to convince people to re-elect them because they are such nice people. However, the reality is that they are going to miss targets that were already insufficient.

The Liberals promised to stop subsidizing oil and gas companies, but they are still doing that. They give them roughly $3 billion a year, and that does not include the $10 billion from Export Development Canada. That is huge.

Then they sprinkle a few dollars here and there for public transit, not to mention their totally inadequate plan for vehicle electrification. The Liberals say that they are offering a $5,000 subsidy to people who purchase a zero-emission vehicle, but they are not telling the whole story. It is a bit like buying a car. We must be sure to read to the very end of the contract to find out what is in the fine print. The Liberals fail to mention that this subsidy applies to a maximum of 20,000 vehicles a year, which represents 1% of all new cars sold in a year. The Liberals' target is to have zero-emission vehicles account for 100% of vehicles sold by 2040, but today, zero-emission vehicles only account for about 1% of vehicles sold, and the Liberals' plan is to increase that number by just 1% per year. I do not know how they expect to go from 1% to 100% with that plan. The numbers just do not add up.

The government talks a good game, but it is not taking action. On the contrary, it is making decisions that go against our responsibility to future generations. That is why I am disappointed that the Liberals voted against the NPD's motion on the climate emergency. It set out real measures and real decisions to help us make the necessary first steps. Unfortunately, all of the Liberal members of the House voted against our motion. Today, they moved their motion on the climate emergency after we moved ours, but their motion is weak and vague, and it does not make any real commitments. That is extremely disappointing.

Once again, the Liberals are making a big show of saying how important science is. Of course we agree that science is important, but the IPCC report says that we have 12 years to take action. If we spend the next 12 years doing the same thing we have been doing for the past four years, then we will not meet the target. We have a responsibility to act for our children and our grandchildren.

Alexandre Boulerice

$522,455.00