44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 27, 2022 10:00AM
- Sep/27/22 10:32:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, during the Leader of the Opposition's speech today, we were very quiet on this side of the House. We did not say a word.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Sep/27/22 10:39:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would really encourage the opposition leader to reach out to one of his own members, the member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, to talk about the incredible work that is going on, the multi-billion dollar plant for producing electric batteries for vehicles, which will be established in her riding right next door to me, if the member is so concerned about importing products and resources for those batteries.
I will go back to the question from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. She asked the member about his position on cryptocurrency and he did not answer. Can he even just get up and say the word “cryptocurrency” and sit down? Is it even in his vocabulary anymore?
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- Sep/27/22 1:33:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I could be wrong, but I thought I heard the member say in his speech that Nova Scotia does not have its own system in place and, as a result, it is subject to the federal regime, but that is actually not the case.
In Nova Scotia, if one goes to Canada.ca, it shows that it has its own cap and trade system, so Nova Scotia is not subject to the federal regime as it relates to the price on pollution. As a matter of fact, Nova Scotia, at least according to the government's own website, is doing a very good job and, therefore, does not need federal government intervention.
I am wondering if the member would help export from that province the system Nova Scotia is using to encourage other provinces and territories throughout the country to use it, so they will not have to rely on that. Finally, I want to congratulate the member from Nova Scotia for having it.
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- Sep/27/22 3:59:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg North.
Here we are, once again, debating this concept of a price on pollution. Like the member for Winnipeg North said a few moments ago on a question that he had, the Conservatives are just flip-flopping back and forth on this issue repeatedly. It is like Groundhog Day when we get here to discuss the price on pollution.
I am going to read something for us. This is a proposal and it is called the “Personal Low Carbon Savings Account”:
Canada’s Conservatives will work with the provinces to implement an innovative, national, Personal Low Carbon Savings Account.... Canadians will pay into their Personal Low Carbon Savings Account each time they buy hydrocarbon-based fuel. They will be able to apply the money in their account towards things that help them live a greener life. That could mean buying a transit pass or a bicycle, or saving up and putting the money towards a new efficient furnace, energy efficient windows or even an electric vehicle.
This is from the 2021 platform that the Conservative Party of Canada ran under. Here we are, just around a year since that election, and once again Conservatives are back to railing against this idea of pricing pollution, when all of the members who sit in the House ran on this very platform with the words that I just read out to us. They ran on the idea of pricing pollution.
We get to this place and, once again, Conservatives are trying to suggest that pricing pollution is not the solution, trying to play, in my opinion, to the lowest common denominator here, to enrage people in order to get them to react in a certain way to government policy, but it is policy that they agree with. It is policy that 14 out of the 31 OECD countries agree with. Pricing pollution is the solution to dealing with carbon.
It is very simple. It is just about saying that it is not free to pollute. It is just like when one is manufacturing a product and one has waste that is produced out of the product. If we take that waste, what do we do with it? Sometimes we can recycle it if we are lucky. Sometimes we can recycle it at a premium and we are actually making money, but sometimes we have to pay to recycle it. Sometimes we have to pay to put it in a landfill. It is the exact same concept.
We heard members from across the way, earlier today, talking about a market mechanism or trying to influence the way that people make consumer decisions. Well, it is also the way that corporations make decisions. I will point out to us that this is not just about individuals making decisions.
Umicore is going to be breaking ground just outside of Kingston, actually in a Conservative riding, the riding of the member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington. This will be the largest battery manufacturing plant in North America for electric vehicles. They are set to break ground in 2023 and be fully into production by 2025.
The Prime Minister came to the announcement of that opening back in the summer of this year. Who was there? The member for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, a Conservative member, who was so excited to see this new opportunity in her riding, as she should be.
What I found really interesting though is that the question was asked of the CEO of Umicore as to why they had picked Loyalist, which is right outside Kingston, instead of the other options. Another option was Detroit, Michigan, and there was another location in the States. They were debating and deciding among this short list of locations.
The president for Umicore said that one of the defining reasons why they chose Ontario and, in particular, Loyalist was that they were a company that was producing a sustainable product and they wanted to make sure that sustainable resources went into the sustainable product that they were making. Because the vast majority of their production is done with electricity, they knew that the electricity in Ontario was cleaner than the electricity in the other two locations they had to choose from.
Now we are seeing corporations making decisions based on sustainability. It is no longer an issue of just individuals talking about making the smart, green, energy-efficient choices. It is about corporations investing and saying they want to go and be located where they have access to energy that is not produced in an environmentally unfriendly way.
I go back to the point that we have been through three elections now in which we have been talking about this. In 2015, we ran on the idea of pricing pollution. We were elected and we implemented the idea. Conservatives railed against it. In 2019, the electorate had the opportunity to weigh in on that legislation. The electorate decided that it was in favour of seeing through pricing pollution, because we know that the majority of the parties in this House support pricing pollution.
What happened in 2021? The Conservatives kind of came around and the previous leader, the member for Durham, said that they seemed to be losing the war on this front and perhaps people are in favour of pricing pollution and do not think it should be free, so he put it in their platform. He said they would run on this concept and tweak it a bit to be more like a rewards program, which is what they did, but they still ran on it. Still the electorate said no, the Conservatives' half-baked kind of pricing scheme that they were proposing was not good enough and the electorate was going to stick with the plan that had already been put in place and adopted.
Here we are, years later, five or six years into this since the legislation passed, and we are still debating this. We have been through multiple elections since then. I cannot understand why the Conservatives continually rail against this.
I heard the member for Cumberland—Colchester talk earlier today about letting provinces determine their own fate instead of forcing these schemes on them. That is exactly the point. The whole point is that we have set standards. This was done back in 2017 when the legislation passed. We said we were going to establish standards and that if the provinces' own programs met those standards then they did not have to have the federal government's backstop.
In fact, many provinces and territories meet the standards, including British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. All of these provinces meet the standard and do not have the federal backstop of pricing pollution.
Some of the provinces are somewhat there, such as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, and the balance do not have anything in place and therefore needed that federal government backstop. It is a way to be equitable across the country and all provinces and territories with regard to how aggressive we have to be on this, but it is about letting provinces determine their own path, providing they can meet those requirements. That is exactly what we have seen. For the member for Cumberland—Colchester to somehow suggest that this is not in the provinces' hands is just disingenuous.
One of the things that Conservatives routinely leave out of this debate is the fact that, yes, the price of carbon will go up, but the rebate also goes up. That is why this is a market mechanism. That is why this is not a tax. It was never intended to be a tax. It was always intended to be a market mechanism to encourage decision-making, not just among individuals but also among corporation stakeholders, away from carbon emissions and toward cleaner and more environmentally sustainable options that could in turn produce a cleaner economy for us. Therefore, it is extremely important that when we have this discussion and when we talk about this, we need to remind people that the rebate goes up as well.
I would remind members that the rebate in particular will be going, primarily because of the decisions that are made in terms of the purchasing, to those individuals who need it the most. That is what we have seen and that is what the data supports. We know that ensuring that we are providing that money back will continue to ensure that people have options to pollute less by making the decisions they make.
It goes without saying that I will be voting against this opposition motion. We are well beyond this discussion. We have had it a number of times before and we have had three elections on this, including one in which the Conservatives supported pricing pollution.
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- Sep/27/22 4:11:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is great advice that the member gave at the beginning about arguing with fools, yet I still come back here day after day and subject myself to it. I guess I will just have to deal with it, because I keep doing it.
The member, again, is missing the most important part of this, which is the fact that yes, the price on pollution goes up, but so does the rebate. The member wants to talk about making life more affordable. I would encourage the member to start voting in favour of some of the legislation coming before this House.
We know that the Conservatives have just recently said they will support the increased GST top-ups, but what about dental care? If we want to talk about affordability and helping individuals who really need help, will the member vote in favour of that? Will the member vote in favour of some of the various other measures that have been brought forward by the government? I highly doubt it.
The Conservatives have perhaps been pressured into voting in favour of the GST top-ups, but I think that is where we will see the end of their collaboration with this side of the House.
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- Sep/27/22 4:13:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for bringing that up. Quebec has an incredible system, the cap-and-trade system.
It was actually Ontario, under the leadership of an environment minister with my last name, that went to California back in 2006-07. They negotiated that deal with California to put California, Quebec and Ontario in that agreement. Unfortunately, it was the first thing that Doug Ford threw out when he got into government.
I also want to commend the member for the initiative. He brought up my electric car and travelling through Quebec. Quebec has by far the best electric charging infrastructure in the country. It is light years ahead of many of the other provinces. We will see that Quebec will win the game as it comes down to it.
He asked a question about what to do between the various provinces and pipelines. I am personally not in favour of purchasing pipelines. I have made that case known. I have said it in this House before, and I stand by that position today. It is unfortunately one of the areas that I depart from some of my colleagues on, but I respect everybody's position on it, and that is my position.
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- Sep/27/22 4:15:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are saying we are doing too much, and the NDP is saying we are not doing enough. Perhaps we are landing where we are supposed to be.
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- Sep/27/22 4:40:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in his discussion today, the member said that any plan has to have a carbon tax. That is simply untrue. Quebec does not have a carbon tax. Quebec has used a very progressive system of cap and trade that was done through collaboration with Ontario and California, as I indicated earlier in my questions and comments.
In the United States, several jurisdictions have various different forms of pricing pollution. One of them I just mentioned. In fact, 14 out of 31 OECD countries have some form of pricing pollution. Therefore, for this member to make a comment that any system has to have a carbon tax to be effective, that is just not the reality of what is going on in Canada right now and in the rest of the world.
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