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March 29th, 2022

NDP: We must fight the climate crisis like we actually want to win

In response to the government's announcement today, NDP Environment Critic Laurel Collins made the following statement:

"The climate crisis is putting everything we value at risk. Wildfires, flooding, and extreme weather are getting more frequent and more severe.

Today's emissions reduction plan clearly doesn’t meet the urgency of the crisis.

This is far from what is needed, both in terms of addressing the climate crisis and protecting workers that are impacted by it. Reducing Canada's emissions by only 40% is highly inadequate and it flies in the face of most recent scientific reports that recommend Canada must do significantly more.

For the past 6 years, the Liberals have been heading in the wrong direction. Instead of phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, they increased them - handing out billions to profitable oil and gas companies. Instead of lowering emissions, Canada is the only G7 country where emissions have risen every year since 2015, and Canada remains the highest emitter per capita. And a few days ago, instead of capping oil and gas emissions, the Liberals announced they will increase production by 300,000 barrels a day.

While we look forward to working with the government on the details related to the commitments on the Just Transition Act, the Clean Job Centre, the Future Fund and ecoEnergy Retrofit for low-income households, many of the other commitments in their plan are back-end loaded to the latter half of this decade, when we need strong actions now. The Liberals’ plan is also heavily dependent on massive subsidies to implement unproven Carbon Capture technology – a strategy that has been denounced by Canadian climate scientists as a risky and unproven solution that mostly benefits big oil companies.

The NDP will be using its power to deliver stronger climate action that will rise to the challenge we are facing. Climate delay won’t cut it, we must act now. The upcoming budget will be an important opportunity for the government to show that it takes the climate emergency seriously."