Today, the NDP Government, together with the BC Liberals, voted in favour of financial incentives in the form of tax credits to LNG Canada in the third and final reading of the Income Tax Amendment Act, 2019.
As I was delivering my final speech on this bill: a survey of the information that has come to light on climate change since the bill was introduced on March 25th. However, I was interrupted by the deputy speaker, on more than one occasion, and eventually had to give up on my speech.
I did speak to the Amendment that Andrew introduced, which was to refer the bill to committee, and then I was able to speak to the hoist amendment put forward by Adam, which would have moved reading of the bill to six months from now – providing time for MLAs to reflect on the decision they were making. I was the final speaker on the bill. After several days of trying to convince the other MLAs to vote with us, we lost the final vote 76-3.
I strongly believe that the support of this bill by the government and the official opposition goes against all that we know about the urgency of climate change. The last thing we should be doing in 2019 is giving government subsidies to a fossil fuel project that will be the single biggest point source of emissions in Canada’s history.
We will not relent in our efforts to put our vision for a sustainable, clean energy future for BC forward, and we will work tirelessly to push our province in the direction that will create a healthy and safe future for our children and their children.
Today, we did not win the vote, but we stood up, again and again, for what we believe in.
