The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - July 30, 2019


A Real Plan to Protect Our Environment


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

165.7947

Word count

2,588

Sentence count

211

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Blueprint, Conservative MP and Shadow Minister for the Environment Ed Fass joins me to talk about the Conservative Environmental Plan and why it's so different from the Liberals' carbon tax and carbon pricing plan.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.220 Welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton-Korthaleg's Brock, and our topic is a real plan to protect the environment.
00:00:11.200 You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:16.860 The cost of living keeps going up, deficits keep going up, and he has to raise taxes to pay for his out-of-control spending.
00:00:25.440 Talk is cheap, except when this finance minister does it. It's very expensive.
00:00:30.000 It's the fact that he punished two strong women for doing the right thing, while he moved hell and high water to protect his buddies at SNC-Lavalin from facing a day in court.
00:00:45.120 Welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament's Halliburton-Korthaleg's Brock.
00:00:51.500 With me is Ed Fass, the Member of Parliament for Abbotsford, and also the Shadow Minister for the Environment.
00:00:57.960 It's an honour to have you on the show after the big release of the Conservative Environmental Plan.
00:01:03.960 Well, good to be on your show, Jamie. The release yesterday of our Conservative Environment Plan.
00:01:10.120 Absolutely. And when Ed Fass comes on the podcast, we get a banner, and we get flags and everything. It's amazing.
00:01:16.280 Wonderful. I'm honoured.
00:01:17.940 You're on every week. Actually, maybe you're just going to replace me.
00:01:21.320 No, that I'm not going to do. I've got other work to do. I'm better at other types of work.
00:01:25.740 What are you saying about me, then?
00:01:28.440 I'll share that with you in private.
00:01:29.820 Oh, thank you. You're too kind. You're too kind. Re-elect Jamie Schmael.
00:01:33.660 Anyways, we're going to talk about the Environmental Plan because it is a pretty amazing document.
00:01:38.460 It is pretty massive in terms of its size, scope, depth, breadth.
00:01:43.780 It kind of covers all the bases, but also focuses on our Conservative principles by letting people keep more of the money they earn and helping them get ahead in life.
00:01:53.280 Absolutely. Our plan is one that shifts the focus from taxes to clean technology because we know that you can't tax your way to a clean environment.
00:02:04.900 So how do we get to the targets that Canada has?
00:02:07.820 That's the million-dollar question.
00:02:07.900 That's the question. Well, we know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that focusing on clean technology and accelerating our clean technology development can actually gain us 100 megatons worth of emissions reductions,
00:02:23.060 which, of course, are credited to Canada under our Paris Agreement targets.
00:02:27.480 So this is really good news. It's a shift to clean tech away from taxation.
00:02:32.220 But beyond that, we're also including the large emitters.
00:02:35.700 You may recall under the Liberal plan, they were, for the most part, exempted from the carbon taxation, carbon pricing model that the Liberals brought in.
00:02:45.360 Ours is quite different because what we're saying is, yes, you are going to be required to meet certain thresholds of environmental performance.
00:02:52.540 If you exceed those thresholds, you will be assessed an amount that will be invested either by your company or by your industry or in a pooled fund or perhaps in a university research and development investment.
00:03:11.320 But you will be investing in your own environmental success.
00:03:15.380 We'll make sure that you do that.
00:03:17.180 So the money stays in the hands of the private sector.
00:03:20.000 Yes, I think that's the key.
00:03:21.060 It's not government.
00:03:22.060 Right.
00:03:22.580 Because whenever money ends up in the government's hands, it is spent on the government's own political priorities rather than things like the environment.
00:03:31.060 $12 million for Loblaws for freezers.
00:03:33.220 Yeah, what a disgrace that was.
00:03:34.700 $12 million of taxpayers' money that presumably came out of the carbon tax.
00:03:39.340 I think so.
00:03:40.000 Going to billionaires.
00:03:41.160 Billionaire families, one of the richest families in Canada.
00:03:43.660 That's the problem.
00:03:44.420 Well-lawyered, well-lobbbyed. 0.79
00:03:45.640 They're connected, right, to government.
00:03:47.260 That's the problem.
00:03:48.120 To the Liberals.
00:03:48.740 To the Liberals, absolutely.
00:03:50.100 And that's the problem I think we have as Conservatives.
00:03:53.020 The plan that the Liberals had was more about taxation and redistribution.
00:03:57.200 We are talking about encouraging the private sector to create the best product at the best price that the most amount of people can afford.
00:04:05.500 And then we'll clean our environment domestically but also internationally.
00:04:08.960 Yes, and our plan, of course, also has a number of programs that will be very attractive to Canadians.
00:04:17.440 For example, Canadians who own homes.
00:04:19.200 Yes.
00:04:19.700 We're going to allow them to retrofit their homes.
00:04:22.140 We're going to support them in that effort.
00:04:23.820 Because we know that clean technology offers likely the best prospect in terms of technology to move us forward in the future in terms of reducing greenhouse emissions.
00:04:46.080 Why do I know that?
00:04:47.780 Because the United Nations itself has said so.
00:04:50.760 And Canada is a world leader in clean technology.
00:04:53.400 Things like carbon capture and storage, right?
00:04:55.720 And carbon capture and reuse.
00:04:58.660 For example, Carbon Engineering, the company in Squamish.
00:05:01.700 That is actually, literally, sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, repurposing it for automobile fuels.
00:05:10.880 I mean, who would have thunk it a few years ago that you could do this?
00:05:14.440 They are doing that.
00:05:15.380 It's Canadian technology.
00:05:16.820 And by the way, Bill Gates has invested in that technology.
00:05:21.180 But that's what we're talking about, the rapid innovation, letting the private sector do what they do best, right?
00:05:25.820 When you give the private sector the tools to do what they do best, which is create the next best thing, they will do that.
00:05:32.420 And the project you just mentioned is a perfect example.
00:05:35.500 Another project is, of course, the Boundary Dam Carbon Capture and Storage project in Saskatchewan, in Estevan, Saskatchewan.
00:05:44.580 I visited that project recently.
00:05:46.920 What they're doing is they're taking a highly polluting coal-fired electricity plant.
00:05:53.200 They're basically taking the flue gas coming out of that plant.
00:05:59.200 They're running it through a process where they're taking out the sulfur dioxide, the acid rain component.
00:06:06.020 And then the next part of the process, they're sucking out the carbon dioxide.
00:06:11.140 They liquefy it under high pressure.
00:06:13.820 And then they pump it back into the ground, deep into the ground.
00:06:16.720 We're talking about a mile into the ground, in liquid form, where it becomes part of the geological formation.
00:06:23.800 Where it came from, by the way, in the first place, Canadian technology.
00:06:27.340 Canadian technology.
00:06:28.200 Canadian technology.
00:06:28.760 Jobs here.
00:06:29.320 Yes.
00:06:29.700 Which could be used in places like China and India, which have serious air pollution problems, and, of course, greenhouse gas emissions.
00:06:36.380 So how do we do this?
00:06:37.200 How do we ensure that we are getting our technology out into the world, out into the marketplace, when we know that emissions have no borders?
00:06:46.800 Well, one of the ways we should be doing that is by promoting the clean brand that Canada has.
00:06:53.180 And our plan actually does that.
00:06:55.100 It brands Canada as the cleanest source of not only energy, but other products that can lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions.
00:07:06.880 That's one thing we haven't seen from the Liberal government at all, is promoting our expertise, our knowledge, our know-how, our innovation as a country.
00:07:16.620 And by the way, we don't have to do much to market this, because we know the Chinese are already knocking on our door.
00:07:22.940 They've visited the CCS plant in Saskatchewan.
00:07:27.360 The South Koreans are knocking on our door. 1.00
00:07:29.680 The Germans have invested in CCS technology in Canada.
00:07:34.000 So the world knows that we are world leaders, so why aren't we promoting that?
00:07:39.660 The Liberal government has stood in the way and has not been helpful at all.
00:07:43.540 You talk to some of the folks that are involved with this technology, they're saying,
00:07:46.880 hey, listen, the Liberal government just has not been supportive of our technology.
00:07:50.220 We don't know why, but they haven't.
00:07:52.940 A Conservative government will.
00:07:55.260 And I think you raise a very good point, because we could actually boost our economy.
00:07:59.820 When the left talks about the green jobs, right, it's usually the government investing in whichever pilot project or pet project the government of the day wants to invest in.
00:08:10.760 But this way, even by unleashing the private sector, we don't know what the next great fuel of the next generation will be, right?
00:08:19.500 We don't know what it will be.
00:08:20.520 But by letting them do what they do best, we will get to that point.
00:08:25.320 Absolutely.
00:08:25.800 I know that government is not as well positioned to make the proper decisions when we're talking about choices, choices in the marketplace.
00:08:35.960 Well, they limit choices, government.
00:08:37.260 They do.
00:08:37.720 They do.
00:08:38.260 And the problem with the Liberal plan is, of course, they're sucking all this money out in terms of carbon taxation.
00:08:43.740 So it sits in a pot.
00:08:45.580 They spend it on their priorities.
00:08:47.340 They pick winners. 0.95
00:08:48.400 They pick losers.
00:08:50.000 And government is so bad at picking winners.
00:08:53.280 Our plan is quite different.
00:08:54.940 We're saying, listen, you guys are going to have to meet our targets.
00:08:58.160 You're going to have to meet the thresholds that we set.
00:09:00.280 However, if you're above those thresholds, obviously, you need to do something to improve your environmental performance.
00:09:07.060 But we're going to leave the money in your hands, provided that you meet our certification standards.
00:09:12.740 You're going to invest it in your own R&D, research and development.
00:09:17.780 And by doing that, we're letting the private sector identify what are the best solutions for them to actually achieve the results that all of us Canadians want to see achieved.
00:09:26.660 The biggest problem I had with the carbon tax, especially from a rural area, is the lack of choices at the moment.
00:09:32.120 The lack of affordable choices for those people.
00:09:35.100 The people that don't have natural gas in my area, they're heating their homes with oil or propane.
00:09:40.580 And right now, they're just being punished by the carbon tax.
00:09:43.780 But right now, there are a few options, but not many that are very affordable for the average Canadian.
00:09:50.160 But that's something you just mentioned many times.
00:09:52.600 That's exactly what we're talking about.
00:09:54.560 Providing people with the options and the ability, through the tax credit, to move into cleaner energy for their homes.
00:10:04.080 That's so true.
00:10:05.360 And by not taxing them, we're leaving that money in their pockets so that they make those choices.
00:10:11.560 And by the way, the suggestion that you need the heavy hand of government to get Canadians to act in an environmentally responsible way.
00:10:18.960 I think most people want to.
00:10:20.100 Yes, they do.
00:10:21.220 There's just not enough options that are out there.
00:10:23.160 Exactly.
00:10:23.480 And if we encourage them to explore options, whether it's electric vehicles or making their homes more energy efficient.
00:10:31.060 Every little bit helps.
00:10:32.080 Yes.
00:10:32.420 And we're introducing this Clean Homes Credit Program to provide Canadians with a bit of an incentive to look at, okay, this is an opportunity.
00:10:42.720 Because 12% of our emissions are related to buildings.
00:10:47.360 Now, will this solve the whole problem?
00:10:48.940 No.
00:10:49.100 But it's part of the solution.
00:10:50.900 Absolutely.
00:10:51.400 And it also creates value within your own home when you choose to sell it.
00:10:55.000 Of course.
00:10:55.660 It's more energy efficient.
00:10:56.840 That's right.
00:10:57.280 It makes sense.
00:10:58.300 And one of the topics, if I quickly touch on it, because I think it's a very important piece to this whole puzzle, is the agriculture side.
00:11:07.000 Our farming community is doing some amazing things with technology innovation right now.
00:11:12.420 But our plan also includes that in part of the plan.
00:11:17.600 Because we acknowledge that there is a role for the agriculture sector to play.
00:11:21.600 They're already moving in that direction, but we're supporting them.
00:11:24.520 Very good point.
00:11:25.660 Now, I'm going to ask you a question.
00:11:27.580 How many times have you heard the Liberals, and more specifically our Environment Minister, Minister McKenna, mention the agricultural sector?
00:11:37.660 I don't think many.
00:11:39.680 I've never heard her talk about the…
00:11:41.460 I don't think the Liberals have many times at all, anyway.
00:11:44.800 I haven't heard her speak at all about our farmers and how they steward the land.
00:11:50.760 The low-till and no-till methods that they use to keep carbon in the ground, which is, of course, also better in terms of the yields they get.
00:12:00.180 That's right.
00:12:00.720 Absolutely.
00:12:01.100 This is really, it's groundbreaking technology, right?
00:12:06.620 It is.
00:12:06.820 In the true sense of the word.
00:12:08.720 And the farmers have never gotten credit for it.
00:12:11.460 Our plan actually recognizes their contribution and says our government is going to stand in the gap next to them, helping them to continue to expand their ability to act in an environmentally responsible way.
00:12:24.960 And which I think they're, I agree with you, I think they're doing that already, and they want to continue moving in that direction.
00:12:30.220 But, you know, they want to do that, but also I think the marketplace is demanding that as well.
00:12:35.440 So I think it connects two of them.
00:12:37.800 It brings everyone together.
00:12:39.400 Absolutely.
00:12:39.760 I mean, the marketplace is the best place for ideas to percolate, for ideas to be promoted.
00:12:47.440 The idea that government is a solution to all of men's problems, all of women's problems, it's just false.
00:12:54.520 Government is inadequately positioned to actually make key decisions that can be better made in the marketplace, which is why, again, we're saying,
00:13:03.160 let the private sector identify the green tech solutions that are going to work best for them.
00:13:10.960 Let consumers keep the taxes in their pockets and make their own choices.
00:13:16.680 And along that way, occasionally, we'll help them make those choices simply by providing incentives for them to actually go out there and make some choices.
00:13:26.240 So what have we not touched on that you would like to finish with?
00:13:31.000 Well, the thing I would finish with is our plan isn't only about clean technology.
00:13:36.760 It's about pivoting in part to the global community and saying, listen, greenhouse gases and climate change are a global problem that requires global solutions.
00:13:50.100 And there's no country that is better positioned to deliver those solutions than Canada, because we are so innovative.
00:13:58.220 We have the know-how to help other countries around the world that are much more polluting than we are.
00:14:03.900 So we need to start focusing in on technologies and products, even clean energy, that can help displace dirtier products elsewhere around the world.
00:14:16.640 Canada is arguably the cleanest manufacturer of aluminum products.
00:14:22.160 Why aren't we shipping more of aluminum around the world and displacing aluminum that's been created under very dirty production processes?
00:14:29.860 And even the technology, the carbon capture and storage that I mentioned, why aren't we transferring that technology to key countries around the world that have significant pollution problems, reducing their emissions, Canada stepping into the gap, being a global partner and showing global leadership?
00:14:47.440 What a message to end on.
00:14:49.500 Ed Fast, it's an honor to be in the same room with you as always.
00:14:52.300 The honor is mine. Thank you.
00:14:53.560 Well, look at all the new surroundings we have in the podcast.
00:14:56.640 It's not bad. Well, that was because of you, not me.
00:14:58.380 No, and you're profiling our leader, Andrew Scheer, up here, which is great, right?
00:15:01.620 Absolutely. Well, thank you, Ed Fast, Member of Parliament for Abbotsford.
00:15:04.740 Also, the shadow critic for the environment. It is always a pleasure.
00:15:08.700 I'm your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Korthalikes.
00:15:11.780 Brock, this has been The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:15:14.640 And remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's The Blueprint.
00:15:23.300 Thank you for listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:15:26.300 To find more episodes, interviews, and in-depth discussions of politics in Canada,
00:15:32.180 search for The Blueprint on iTunes or visit podcast.conservative.ca.
00:15:36.440 Thank you.