44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 25, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/25/22 11:32:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's question. There is one issue where the hon. member could support us, and that is passing Bill C-8. In Bill C-8, there is a rebate program for farmers to get a rebate on the price on pollution, and that is an action his party could do right away.
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- Mar/25/22 11:33:26 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we thank the Parliamentary Budget Officer for his work, which confirms that the price on pollution has a progressive impact and gives eight out of 10 families more back through the climate action incentive rebates than they pay.
Putting a price on carbon pollution is recognized as one of the most efficient ways to drive down emissions and fight climate change. I would point out that the Conservative member for New Brunswick Southwest is on the record as saying that his province should go back to using the federal carbon price. We agree with him.
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- Mar/25/22 1:16:41 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, one of the interesting things that comes to my mind in listening to my colleague's speech is the fact that there was a time when the Conservative Party actually opposed the price on pollution. The member makes reference to a carbon tax. The party's most recent former leader, who took us through the last federal election, was actually a supporter of a carbon tax or a price on pollution. However, given the nature of a number of the speeches, can Canadians anticipate that the Conservative Party of Canada is going to be changing again? Instead of supporting the price on pollution, they are now lining themselves up behind, possibly, the member for Carleton, who does not support a price on pollution.
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moved that Bill C-234, An Act to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today on this bill. Through the years I have had the honour and privilege of presenting private member's bills and motions. I had one pass many years ago, and I had one or two that did not pass.
First of all, I would like to thank the member of Parliament for Foothills and the member of Parliament for Northumberland—Peterborough South who presented Bill C-206 in the last Parliament. I would also thank the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound and all of the other members of Parliament in my party and caucus who have a deep love and admiration for agriculture and the farm families that do the work each and every day.
The issue that I am trying to fix with this private member's bill is the application of the carbon tax on natural gas and propane. It is for on-farm agriculture uses to dry grain and heat livestock barns where there may be a variety of livestock, but mainly poultry and pork in these cases. The problem is with the current carbon tax on these areas. I will give one example of a pork farmer in my riding who sent me his December usage of natural gas. The natural gas bill for his hog barn was $11,391 in total. The carbon tax was $2,918, which is 25% of the base bill. When we throw the HST on, which is almost $1,500, 34% of the bill is in carbon tax and HST. That is really the problem.
There are tight margins in agriculture and, when we get into the drying of grains in the fall, these are foods that we eat. Farmers are price-takers; they are not price-makers. They do not set the price; they take the price. Anybody in the House or those listening today well understand the issue with that. On the flip side, when it is time to pay for inputs, machinery, etc., we obviously know the price. There are a lot of improvements we could make.
One of my other issues with the carbon tax specifically on farmers, which I have said in the House of Commons before, is that farm producers and farmers do not get credit for any of the environmental good that they do on their farms up and down the country roads. If we look at what farmers are able to do on their farms, first of all, they get no credit for any of the carbon sequestration of their crops. They get no credit for their grasslands or woodlots. There is no credit for that.
We are trying to right an environmental wrong and a taxation wrong to make it fair for farmers. It is very difficult to recognize all of the different ways in which farmers do good. Putting a carbon tax on their efforts does not really recognize the environmental benefit they have. Many members of Parliament in the House today have had the opportunity to tour many farms, conservation areas and livestock barns, and they see the good work that they do.
Another issue that is recognized in this bill is that farmers are always asked to be the government's line of credit. People may ask what that means. What I mean by this is that, if we look at the business risk management programs available to farmers, AgriStability being one of them, if they were able to trigger a payment with AgriStability, their expenses are incurred so much earlier. Farmers carry the cost and at the end they receive. It is the same with HST. There have been issues through the years with certain producers where their HST was hung up, so that they are the line of credit in some cases. It was three months, four months, six months, maybe even a year before they would get their HST rebate.
Now we have another program that is going to create a level of bureaucracy. We have a program that is once again going to ask the farmer to be the line of credit. To give an example, farmers could pay a propane or natural gas bill on their poultry or hog barn in January and February of 2022 and that almost $3,000 in carbon tax they paid on their bill could be carried all the way through the year. They could dry their grains in September, October or November, depending on how the harvest went, and then carry all of those costs all through the entire year and file their taxes, depending on when their fiscal year end is, in June of 2023. When do members think those farmers would receive their rebate?
That is a long time to be once again asking farm producers or farm families to carry these expenses. Then we also calculate the increasing costs of all the inputs, whether feed for livestock or fertilizer. We have seen the crazy prices. Their lines of credit are continually edging up and now they are faced with doing this.
According to Bill C-8, in the fall update on page 83, the rebate is $1.73. When I read that I thought it was per hundred dollars of eligible expenses, but it is actually per thousand dollars of eligible expenses. Therefore, if farmers have a million dollars in eligible expenses on their farms, they would not even receive a $1,800 rebate.
For the farm I spoke about a second ago, one bill was almost $3,000, so it is not neutral. It will not be neutral. If there are statistics to show otherwise, I would like to see them, but based on page 83 of this statement, it does not look like it. A month or two ago, the member for Foothills showed me a bill for a farmer in his province, and it might have been in his riding, I cannot remember, that was twice that amount. Can members imagine $5,500 being paid in carbon tax for one month? Therefore, $1,700 is not going to cut it.
We have talked about carbon sequestration through their crops, grasslands and woodlots. Farmers plant trees on their farms. They have windrows. In Ontario, and I am sure in many other provinces, we have nutrient management plans for how and when manure is spread across their fields. With technology we have precision spraying of herbicides and pesticides, and even precision fertilizing. This is not our great-grandfather's farms. These are very progressive farms across this country today with a high degree of professionalism and a love for agriculture and the environment.
If we take a woodlot in Huron County or Bruce County, we will see some of the best-managed woodlots in all the land. That is over the last 10 years when we have been dealing with the emerald ash borer on our ash trees. Most of those have been cleared out of woodlots and maple and other trees have come up in their place, but these are well-maintained woodlots that sequester carbon.
The other thing I would like to mention is crop rotation. I know the member for Foothills brought it up in question period today and the agriculture minister made a comment the other day in question period about it, as if it was some sort of new idea. I am sure she misspoke in question period, but we can go back to textbooks from probably the twenties and thirties talking about crop rotation and crop cover. Most of the farmers in my area plant late summer and early fall crops as well for cover crops. There is quite a bit that goes on.
The other thing I would like to recognize is all the conservation authorities and environmental groups in our communities. One that is not too far from where I live is the Pine River Watershed Initiative Network, which plants trees and manages water on farms. There are also crop and soil groups in Huron County, Bruce County and Grey County, all the way through the area, doing some amazing research on drainage and being able to hold some of those spring rains and thaws, hold some of that water, back in the drain itself. It is a very exciting technology.
Another thing I would like to talk about is our food sovereignty. We have seen a lot of this in the last number of years, maybe perhaps most recently in the past little while. In Ontario, we ship hogs, for example, to Burlington and other places like Conestoga. We also ship hogs to Quebec. We actually ship hogs to Manitoba as well, to Brandon. Although it is good for them to have those hogs in the production line, it makes no sense at all for farmers in southwestern Ontario to ship hogs in transport trucks across the provinces to their destination. We should be able to process them in our own regions. For that, I would say that I do think the government needs to take a real long look at food sovereignty in each province and, of course, in our country, as well as identifying strategic mines or opportunities.
Phosphates are a great example, with the latest embargo and tariffs from Russia, of where there are opportunities in our own country to speed up environmental assessments. Do it right but make sure they are streamlined so that we can mine our own goods and raw materials in our own country to support the entire cycle of agriculture in our country. Today we do not have that and I do think that should be a priority.
How much money does it take to make one dollar on a farm? It takes millions, and the margins are tight. People may drive up and down the road if they are going to their cottage or wherever else they are going on a weekend and the might look at how nice the farm looks from the truck they are driving. The reality is that it took multiple generations working seven days a week, 365 days a year, for margins that would put fear into most people. If they knew how much capital investment, debt and line of credit was at risk each and every day to earn a few dollars on $100, they would be so impressed.
The reason I am saying this is that the carbon tax is punitive even for the existence of a farm operation. I have numerous calls in a week from different farmers commenting on the cost of doing business in 2022. Yes, if one were to look at the spot prices or futures prices for soybeans, corn, wheat or any of those, it does look pretty amazing. Unfortunately, for farmers, costs have gone in lockstep. In some cases, they have actually increased at a higher rate.
Where can we help them? We can help them with the carbon tax. We can help them by cutting the carbon tax and eliminating the carbon tax on farms. It does not get recycled. The carbon tax that they collect on farmers does not all go back to farmers. It does not go back into some environmental farm plan. It does not. They may say that it goes in dollar for dollar, but it does not.
The quickest and most efficient way to help agriculture and to recognize the environmental benefit the industry provides the country, without creating a bureaucracy and without hiring consultants to walk the farm, go through the woodlot and come up with an idea of how much was actually sequestered, is to cut it off right at the source. Do not make the farmer be the line of credit for the government on one more program. Do not tell them it is going to be neutral when we know it is $1.73 per thousand dollars. Let us not do that.
There are certain industries, I am sure, in Canada that do not provide a whole lot of environmental benefit to the country. Farming is not one of them. It is an organization with the most grassroots, environmental preservation organizations someone will ever see. If one were to go to a Ducks Unlimited auction or a conservation authority fundraiser, who would be there? It is the townspeople, for sure, but it is also the farmers. The farmers come out. In some cases, it is the conservation authority that gives them a hard time, but they are still out there to support the cause because they understand the relationship between productive land and the environment.
I really enjoyed the debate today. It is an honour to do this. I look forward to having discussions, hearing what the other parties have to say and what their thoughts are, and hopefully, with their good will, seeing it in committee.
I am thankful for the opportunity today and I look forward to the questions.
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Madam Speaker, the price on pollution, or the carbon tax, depending on what one prefers to call it, is not implemented by the federal government across the country. There is a national expectation that every jurisdiction would put in place something to deal with climate change.
I am wondering if my colleague could provide his thoughts on whether he believes the provinces that do not have something in place, and therefore the federal government has something in place, should be more proactive in putting something in place to be able to deal with some of the issues he has made reference to.
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Madam Speaker, right up front, I acknowledge what our farming and rural communities have done over generations in elevating Canada as a nation to where we are today. I have had many different experiences and will provide some comments on that, but I will start off by thanking our farmers and those who contribute to our farming communities.
It is important for us to recognize that the most effective and efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is in fact by putting a price on pollution. This is not only believed by the Government of Canada. Governments around the world, provincial governments and individuals in virtually all political parties in Canada, at least elected political parties, have recognized the true value of a price on pollution.
Earlier today, I posed a question to some of my Conservative friends, when they were talking about the price on pollution, on where the Conservative Party might stand. I did not hear the member indicate that he was in opposition to the need for a price on pollution. I do believe there are a number of Conservative members who understand and value it. In fact, in the last federal election, as we saw in the Conservative Party campaign, part of its platform was to incorporate a price on pollution. It will be very interesting to see how the Conservatives move forward on that particular policy.
I can look at this in terms of the communities in Manitoba, an area that I am very passionate about. I have seen the valuable contributions that its agricultural communities and the whole sector have made to our province, Canada and the world. I would like to provide some personal examples of that.
Driving along Highway 2 in the evening, we can see a number of combines harvesting food to feed the world. It looks pretty impressive at night seeing the assembly of these combines and the trucks lined up to receive the grain. When we look at the way Manitoba has led the world with regard to the development of canola and the impact that has had, we see the technology there and the sensitivity to our environment, which has always been there, by our farming community. We have seen that in the ways that farming has changed over the years. I can remember as a 14-year-old, which is a number of years back, running a four-wheel John Deere tractor, pulling a cultivator and going through a field. More recently, last summer, I was on a farmer's field where they are raising cattle, in between visiting dairy farms and getting a better understanding of an industry that I often talk about.
If we do a history of some of the speeches I have given in the House, I often talk about Manitoba's hog industry and the role it plays in the province of Manitoba. We have an industry that is very much alive and doing exceptionably well, and it is growing.
We have stakeholders such as Peak of the Market. It collects vegetables and other things, promotes Manitoba-grown products and markets them not only to the province of Manitoba, but to the world.
We have seen the benefits of it. When someone thinks of a hog farm, we do not necessarily believe the first room we will go into will be a room in which we get ourselves cleaned up and put on a smock and then walk into a computer room, where, through technology, we get a better appreciation of how hogs are raised on the local farm nowadays and on some of those large hog plants.
It is very impressive, and it is the farmer who tells us what he is doing to ensure he has a positive attitude toward the manure generated by the hogs and how it is being used, as much as possible, in a responsible fashion.
If we go north of Winnipeg to the Gimli area, we will see the cattle farmers. Again regarding the issue of the environment, just last summer we were talking about the issue of drought and realizing that climate change is real.
When I took a tour of that particular farm, one could be very sympathetic to the needs of our farmers.
In fact, a week or maybe 10 days later, the Minister of Agriculture went to visit the very same farm because, when we think of Peak of the Market, there are many different stakeholders that are out there.
The Canadian Cattlemen's Association provided me with the opportunity to take a tour of that particular facility, and I indicated to Robyn that I would like to be able to get an even more comprehensive understanding of that industry, as I have of the chicken processing industry, from the way in which eggs are hatched to the filling of a barn to the processing at a plant.
I am absolutely fascinated by the way in which Manitoba farmers, in particular, have taken on the responsibility of society to be there to feed the world.
Within the Liberal government caucus, we have a rural caucus. We have individuals who talk about farms and agriculture daily. It is not only an issue of being sympathetic to farmers. It also means being there for farmers in real and tangible ways, as I have been, with ministers of agriculture on a couple of occasions in the province. We have taken tours or participated in gaining more knowledge about this industry that is so critically important to all of us.
I am very proud of the fact that the University of Manitoba has a department of agriculture. It is not the only post-secondary facility to do so, but I highlight this one because I know the fine work it does.
When we talk about canola and the development of canola, there is so much we can all move forward to. We can say that, as a government, we are sensitive to it and we will continue to look at ways in which our policies will not harm farmers but rather will support them.
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