On Thursday March 5th, I spoke in debate on an NDP bill which would have Manitoba be carbon neutral by 2050. Our Manitoba Liberal plan is to achieve carbon neutrality much faster. My speech, from Hansard, is below.
Hon. Jon Gerrard (River
Heights): Madam Speaker, I
rise to speak to this bill which deals with how Manitoba addresses climate
change.
First of all, we
believe, in the Manitoba Liberal Party, that 2050 is too slow
[for Manitoba to be carbon neutral]. We have committed and developed a green plan
that Liberals would move much more quickly than that. It would reach carbon
neutral by 2030.
That is an aggressive
target, but I believe that it is important that we have aggressive targets if
we are going to be leaders, and I also believe that it's important to have
aggressive targets because of the importance, the incredible importance of
action here in Manitoba to show what can be done and to address the climate crisis
that we have on a global scale. We have to save our planet. We have to do
nothing less.
As many, many
students have pointed out at rallies here at the Legislature, there is no
planet B. We need to make sure we're looking after the planet we have.
We see that in
order to reach the 2030 carbon neutral that we need to move from the current
system of annual reporting to quarterly reporting. Quarterly reporting will
give us much more timely assessment of what's happening and we'll be able to
react more quickly.
Currently, we don't get the carbon greenhouse gas production data from
Manitoba usually until almost a year after the fact, and that's far too slow if
we're going to be acting on a really urgent crisis situation that we have when
we're dealing with climate change.
Thirdly, we need
in our accounting to measure not just the emissions of greenhouse gases, which
are being done currently, but we also need to include the increases in carbon
storage. This is very important because, on a net basis, we have to be dealing
both with reducing emissions and increasing carbon storage, and we have to
develop tax credits for both decreasing greenhouse gases and for increasing
carbon storage, and this is particularly important in the agricultural area as
an example, where there are many opportunities for storing carbon in soils, in
wetlands, in trees. And we need to be able to work co-operatively with farmers
and to demonstrate the tremendous benefits there are from storing carbon.
The land itself
is more productive when it has more stored carbon, and we have an important
role for trees in the landscape, both in terms of storing carbon, but also in
terms of storing–managing water. There is a tremendous difference on a section
that has no trees and a section which has a lot of trees in terms of the runoff
of water, and I can take the members opposite to a place near Russell where
they demonstrated this very easily, and [where there were] huge amounts of
erosion as soon as the landscape was cleared completely of trees. And we need
to be cognizant of this and the importance of trees if we're going to manage
water well, as well as for having a better situation in terms of greenhouse
gases.
We need to be
able to measure this [carbon storage] accurately, on individual farms, so that
we can have farmers get the credit for the measures that they're taking to be able
to store carbon and whichever way that may be. We also need to provide credits
so that people who are decreasing greenhouse gas emissions can see the results
of those reductions in meaningful economic ways.
This approach, as
we have put forward, I believe, is vital if we're going to adequately address
climate change and do it from a Manitoba perspective. We have put, as part of
our action plan, instead of fighting every step with the federal government,
being able to work with the federal government, and be able as a result to
benefit from the ability to be able to use the dollars that are coming in, and
collect it in carbon tax in part, to provide the carbon credits that I've been
talking about, as well as continuing efforts which are being done at the moment
to make sure that those who are less well off will get supported by having a
net benefit from the carbon tax rather than a net expenditure.
I need to talk as
well about the boreal forest and how critical that is, and how critical our
stewardship and a plan for stewardship for the boreal forest is, in terms of a
climate change plan. There is evidence, I gather from studies of the boreal
forest in the last few years, which suggest that instead of being a sink it may
actually have become a net producer of greenhouse gas emissions as a result of
all the fires.
We need to develop
a new approach to stewardship in our boreal forest. We need to be able to
monitor the net storage of carbon in the forest and the net emissions in fires,
which are not adequately reported currently. And we need to be able to have a
stewardship plan which is going to move us forward and enable us to benefit
from the fact that we have a large area of boreal forest, and that this
boreal forest should be properly managed and with proper stewardship and with
working together with people in the First Nation and Metis communities.
We should be able
to develop plans which will protect communities from forest fires, which are a
major risk. We will also be able to have better stewardship, which not only
manages fires better, but increases the level of sequestration in the forest.
Very small
changes–because there's a huge amount of store of carbon in the trees in the
forest and in the peat moss, in the peat bogs–very small changes
percentage-wise in the amount that is stored can make a big, big difference.
And so this is an
area where we need the research, the action, to be able to move us forward in a
science-based way to be able to take advantage of the natural resources, in
terms of what we are provided and Manitoba is gifted, and to be able to use not
only the fact that we have a boreal forest but also the fact that we are
generating a lot of hydroelectricity.
And there needs
to be an improved system for being able to benefit from carbon credits if we
are sending electricity to Saskatchewan so that they are no longer using coal
but are using electricity as a carbon source, electricity which is provided through
hydroelectric power, which has very little in the way of carbon dioxide
emissions, then we should be able to get credits for those. And those net
reductions should be able to be counted in the Manitoba plan as well.
I also believe
that, from an agricultural perspective, we have not done nearly as well as we
should have done in terms of addressing methane and nitrous oxide, and these
two chemicals make up approximately 30 per cent of the greenhouse gas
production in Manitoba. And until we get a serious plan to reduce the emissions
of both of these, we're going to have a long, long way to go, in terms of
reducing overall gases–greenhouse gas emissions in Manitoba.
So agriculture
has a very important role to play. It's generally said that agriculture
produces about 30 per cent of the greenhouse gases. This is what the
government has said but, in fact, this is wrong. There is 30 per cent which is
produced through the production of methane and nitrous oxide and probably
another 10 per cent which is produced by agriculture in trucks and tractors and
heating barns and all sorts of other ways.
And so we need to
recognize and to work with people in the agricultural community much more
effectively than either the NDP or the Conservatives have done to date. We need
to benefit the agricultural community and show them what's possible, and get
them involved in making a difference for all of us, in terms of climate change,
and benefiting the agricultural community, in terms of the carbon credits which
are possible.
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