44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 27, 2022 10:00AM
- Sep/27/22 1:24:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today I rise to speak to the first opposition day motion of the fall. It is one that has great significance given the cost-of-living crisis that Canadians are currently facing. As we all know, this unprecedented situation is due to record-breaking inflation while wages stay the same. People are working harder and falling further behind.
This 40-year record inflation, not seen since Pierre Trudeau, means life has become more expensive for Canadians trying to pay rent and buy food. Housing is twice as expensive as it was in 2015 when the Prime Minister took office. Food prices are up 10.8% on average. The average family of four is now spending over $1,200 more a year to put food on the table. However, the government is resorting to one-time rebates and a bunch of platitudes rather than solving the problem. Life is getting more expensive for Canadians.
Last week, I spoke to Bill C-30 and how the current government’s spending and money printing have caused record-breaking inflation. However, an equally impactful aspect of inflation has to do with the tax that is being applied to everything. The imposition and tripling of this new tax in Nova Scotia will make fuel cost an extra 40¢ per litre by 2030 for moms taking their kids to hockey and for those forced by the policies of the government, like me, to heat their home with oil from Saudi Arabia. It is a tax that will cost families hundreds of dollars a year when they are trying to make healthy meals. It is a tax that will make home heating more expensive for seniors living through frigid Canadian winters. I am talking, of course, about the carbon tax.
If the Prime Minister was serious about making life more affordable for workers, families and seniors, he would cancel the carbon tax increase immediately. The carbon tax hike is coming at the worst possible time for Canadian families, which are struggling with rising costs. Instead of freezing taxes, the Liberals are raising taxes on people who are struggling to make ends meet. Of course, the Liberals will try to pretend that their cherished carbon tax is the only way to address climate change, but this, of course, is false.
Take my own province of Nova Scotia, for example. The provincial government has some of the most aggressive targets in the country for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We have more wind power in our power grid mix than eight other Canadian provinces. We surpassed the federal government's 2030 targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 13 years early. Our electricity generation from coal is down from 76% in 2007 to 52% in 2018 and will be eliminated, as all coal-fired plants will be closed with the creation of the Atlantic Loop. Our clean electricity generation has tripled in the last decade. Energy efficiency programs prevent one million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. Also, a new 2030 goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% to 50% below 2005 levels has been legislated, and this is more aggressive than the federal targets.
All of that work is in a small province, the vast majority of which was done with no prompting or pressure from the federal government. Nova Scotians have stepped up to fight climate change. We are punching above our weight, all without imposing a new tax on everything.
While the NDP-Liberals stick to their ineffective high tax, we say this carbon reduction can be done through technology, not taxes. Nova Scotia has shown the way and is the model. The federal government rejected Nova Scotia's common-sense environmental policy, which would tackle climate change without making life more expensive for those who are struggling.
The Liberals have blinders on. All they want is more tax and more money from hard-working Canadians to spend on their woke agenda. Nova Scotians live in the highest taxed jurisdiction in the country. The imposition of this tax makes no sense in a region where climate change has been taken seriously for more than 20 years.
The Liberals think that imposing taxes will actually change the weather. They never met a tax they did not love. We reject the point from the Liberal Party that this tax is revenue-neutral, and so does the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The common rebuttal by the Liberals is that eight out of 10 families will receive more money in rebate cheques than they pay out. We have yet to see any cheques in Nova Scotia from the federal government. That is magic math. It must be the new math where one plus one equals three.
However, members do not have to just take it from me. They can take it from the independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer, who stated, “most households in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario will see a net loss resulting from federal carbon pricing by 2030.” By then the carbon levy will have increased to an incredible $170 a tonne. As the PBO said, “The moment you decide to decarbonize the economy in a relatively short period of time — and we’re talking here less than 10 years to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions — it’s clear that there is going to be a cost.”
Additionally, the PBO expects that, in the end, Albertans will end up paying $507 per household on average more than they get back. The PBO has calculated that, by 2030, the net loss on average for households will be $2,282. The PBO goes on to report, “Most households under the backstop will see a net loss resulting from federal carbon pricing under the HEHE plan in 2030-31.” He continues by stating that household carbon costs, which now include the federal levy and GST paid on top of the carbon tax, lower income and that the amount they paid exceeds the rebate.
Trudeau’s tax is bad for Nova Scotians. It will have no effect on the excellent work Nova Scotians have done and will continue to do to reduce our carbon footprint. There is an alternative to this dogmatic—
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- Sep/27/22 1:31:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know how that one slipped by, but I thank the member for Winnipeg North. I will repeat the sentence altered.
The Liberal tax is bad for Nova Scotia. It will have no effect on the excellent work that Nova Scotians have done and will continue to do to reduce the carbon footprint. There is an alternative to the dogmatic approach of Ottawa, which was proposed by Premier Houston. If the Liberal government was serious about tackling climate change, it would encourage innovation and new approaches to the problem. Instead, it has a rigid set of rules that do not allow for programs that go beyond the realm of its tax agenda.
As families across the country struggle to make ends meet, dirty oil continues to be shipped to ports in Atlantic Canada from places like Saudi Arabia. This means human rights-abusing dictators are getting rich on Canada’s oil needs while a single mom in my riding cannot afford nutritious food. There is, of course, a solution to the problem. By unleashing Canada’s natural resource sector and approving good Canadian projects, global emissions will be reduced, which is our goal. That is because we have some of the strictest environmental regulations in the world.
The oil cultivated and extracted in Canada is the cleanest, most efficient energy in the world. On top of that, the emissions produced by shipping oil across the Atlantic Ocean to New Brunswick from the Middle East completely negates any benefit from a carbon tax. Let us green-light Newfoundland and Labrador’s planned increase in oil production, which will allow us to fully replace every single barrel of oil we are importing from abroad to Atlantic Canada within five years. Let us tackle climate change by unleashing Canada’s mining of minerals needed to produce the batteries for electric vehicles. Let us make Canada a place where nuclear and hydroelectricity generation is welcomed and not admonished.
The carbon tax does not work, and it is time for it to go. Canadians just cannot afford the government.
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- Sep/27/22 1:34:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Kingston and the Islands is right. We do have a cap and trade system in Nova Scotia that adds 1¢ a litre to gas. The federal government wants that to triple, which would immediately add 14¢ more a litre to gas in Nova Scotia, and it would build that to 40¢ a litre by 2030.
That is the plan of the federal government, to push up the cap and trade system and costing Nova Scotians more, and that is what we reject. We reject that approach when all these other methods, which I have outlined in my speech, show how we can get there with technology and not taxes.
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- Sep/27/22 1:35:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member is always a very entertaining member in the House.
I can say what we really need, and I applaud the innovation that is happening in Quebec. We have innovation happening in Nova Scotia too, but the federal government is ignoring that innovation. It thinks there is only one way to deal with this issue, which is a tax that is not working. The government has had this in place for almost seven years, and it has missed its carbon target every single year. That is the proof. British Columbia has had the tax even longer, and it has missed all its targets. Therefore, I would ask the government to take the blinders off and look at alternatives that work.
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- Sep/27/22 1:37:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Nancy in my riding is a single mother living on disability near Bridgewater. She makes $875 a month. In the winter, she has to heat her home with oil from Saudi Arabia. That costs $700 a month. The government wants to increase the cost of that by 40¢ a litre. Why is it that members of the NDP–Liberal coalition do not care about people like Nancy in my riding?
The dental care program proposed by the NDP–Liberal government, one-time payments to duplicate what provincial governments already provide, is ridiculous.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Sep/27/22 2:35:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if a tornado tore up the 401 in Toronto, the government would already be repairing it. The government is not even in the communities assessing the wharf damage from the hurricane. How do I know? It is because fishing organizations are out there but no one from DFO is.
This will require new programs or we cannot earn a living. Will the minister commit that new programs to repair wharves will be 100% financed by DFO since port authorities do not have the financial resources to do this?
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- Sep/27/22 2:36:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since the hurricane, I have been speaking every day with fishermen and fishing organizations about the damage caused by the hurricane and the needs of the industry to recover. As I said, it is clear that we need some new programs to deal with this.
It has been four days since the hurricane, and the minister has yet to call a single fishing organization in Atlantic Canada. How do I know this? It is because I talk to them to every day and she does not.
How will the minister design new programs that respond quickly if she does not talk to the fishing organizations and the people most impacted?
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