Bill No. 208 - Environment Act (amended) - 2nd reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : I'm going to rise and say a few words to this hoist motion, and I'm going to speak a few words in support of the motion.

We're often compared to school children in this Chamber, and tonight I spoke to my kids, and the first question I asked them after school was, did you do your homework? They said yes. I don't believe them, but what can I do? Here I am. This is the same question we need to ask about this bill: Did the government do its homework?

I think that when we saw this bill, the first response was, is that it? As I think has been pointed out, we were given some really clear options from the federal government. These aren't options like, "do you feel like?" or "gee, it would be awesome if." It was, you are required to price carbon, here are the options of how you can do that.

I feel like that logic is a little bit lost on the government right now, in particular the Premier. The Premier has now spent days somehow, mystifyingly, blaming the Opposition for the fact that he hasn't done his homework. That is probably, the dog ate my homework. There are lots of great examples of people doing that in other ways. I think it's really clear here and I think it's really important, because it's just spin and it's disingenuous.

I think it's important that we are really clear about what's happening here. We were given a task as a province. The minister and the Premier were given a task, which was to figure out a way to price carbon according to the federal benchmarks. First the government said, we're not going to do that. What happens if someone says, here's your homework and you say, I'm not going to do that? They say, okay, you still have to turn in your homework. Then they said, come on everybody, stand with us, we don't want to do our homework. That didn't work. The next tactic was, we're going to do a tiny part of our homework. Is that enough?

The answer clearly is no, because this isn't a request, it's a requirement. Quite to the contrary of what the government has been asserting, this bill ushers in a federal carbon tax. That is the function. If this is the only bill that we are going to see that contemplates carbon pricing, then the impact of this bill, in addition to pricing pollution from Lafarge and Nova Scotia Power - which is a good thing. We don't argue that that's not a good thing, that's important. But in addition to that, what this bill does is it ensures that a federal carbon tax will be imposed upon the Province of Nova Scotia.

Quite to the contrary of the assertions that this is somehow a nefarious plot of the Opposition, whom I remind you are sitting in a Chamber with a majority government who make all the decisions and have made it pretty clear through the way they run this Chamber that they're not that interested in what any of us have to say about anything.

What this government is doing is inviting the federal government to implement a carbon tax. I think that that point is really clear. That is why I am standing in support of the hoist motion. What this does is it says, finish your homework. It's a finish your homework motion. Please take this back. Go back to the table with the federal government and have the conversation that needs to be had. Figure out a made-in-Nova Scotia solution that retains the Green Fund, that protects consumers but that most of all protects our environment.

Mx. Speaker, I think it's really important that although we have the Environmental Goals and Climate Change Reduction Act, we don't have a climate plan. We have a history of opposition, in fact, to what I think are some of the progressive climate legislation that has moved through this House.

Basically, the made-in-Nova Scotia plan, that wasn't a plan that didn't price carbon - it said, take us at our word. That's not how it works. What we're saying is do your homework and show it to us. I think that's the same thing that the federal government is saying.

For those reasons, I support the hoist motion. I think it makes sense to send it back. I know that there are lots of brilliant people in the Department of Environment and Climate Change who can help us to finish the work that we have been asked to do.