Merci, Monsieur le President. In December 2019, I called on this Cabinet to declare a climate emergency. I tabled a draft motion, I got resistance from Cabinet; what's happened since?
I confess I gave up on a motion with the COVID pandemic which seems to have overtaken everything we do as a government. However, there are now over 650 Canadian governments that have made a climate emergency declaration including the federal, territorial, provincial, municipal, and Indigenous governments. This government's climate emergency failures and lack of leadership has got me going again.
On April 1st, 2023, the Premier finally fulfilled one of her leadership campaign promises, to change the name of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. That's great, but it doesn't get this Cabinet off the hook from an astoundingly bad track record on the climate emergency.
Look no further than the socalled establishment policy for this new department that the Premier signed off on. The definition of climate change doesn't even acknowledge that climate change is the result of human activities. The new department is charged with helping us to understand and adapt to climate change. There is nothing about mitigation or complying with national and international commitments and targets. This policy is so weak it doesn't even incorporate the statement of environmental values or state that climate change presents a crisis or an emergency situation for the Northwest Territories. Maybe Cabinet hasn't been paying enough attention during the recent unprecedented floods, fires, and extreme weather events.
In fact, during my more than seven years in this Assembly, I've only heard one senior government official use the words climate crisis or climate emergency. Only once, Mr. Speaker. Not from this Cabinet or any of its Ministers. It's all about using these events to leverage federal money for infrastructure for adaptation rather than doing anything about mitigation or changing our business as usual trajectory.
This government is on a clear path of failure to achieve its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This government doesn't even acknowledge that our carbon tax is a tool to help with those reductions as there is nothing to link the climate emergency to a carbon tax in that legislation.
I will have questions for the Deputy Premier on Cabinet's climate emergency failures later today. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member for Deh Cho.
