Member's Statement
November 17, 2021
Climate change
Mr. Peter Tabuns: Everyone has been following the news. You know what’s going on in British Columbia. Climate-driven flood rains are having a huge impact, wreaking havoc in that province. At least one woman was swept to her death by a massive mudslide that buried the highway she was driving on. Towns have been flooded. Thousands of people are being evacuated This is a taste of the climate crisis, the future, that’s wreaking havoc today.
What’s extraordinary to me is that this government can ignore that reality. It’s plowing ahead with Highway 413. It’s plowing ahead with the Bradford Bypass, when we all know that these highways will be adding substantially to the climate crisis. They will accelerate the heating that will put people’s homes, their livelihoods and their lives at risk in the years to come.
We’ve seen in northern Ontario that communities have to be evacuated because of aggressive forest fires. We know what’s coming at us. The Premier needs to abandon these projects as soon as possible, and he needs to shift course and take aggressive steps to reduce our emissions, so we can at least slow down the climate crisis—at least slow it down. It is not too late to act, so act now.
Video of the Statement can be seen here: https://youtu.be/kvcjadrqevk