44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 27, 2022 10:00AM
- Sep/27/22 10:12:13 a.m.
- Watch
moved:
That, in the opinion of the House, given that the government's tax increases on gas, home heating and, indirectly, groceries, will fuel inflation, and that the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported the carbon tax costs 60% of households more than they get back, the government must eliminate its plan to triple the carbon tax.
He said: Mr. Speaker, today we are debating the government's decision to break its electoral promise by tripling the carbon tax on gas, home heating, groceries and all other essential items Canadians need to survive.
We have to recognize that this is a tax increase that will apply everywhere in Canada and will increase the prices in every province, even in the provinces where there is no refund from the federal government.
This tax hike comes at a time when inflation is at a 40-year high and nine out of 10 young people who do not already own a home do not think they ever will. It comes at a time when students are living in shelters because they cannot afford rent. It comes at a time when four out of five Canadians have to cut back on food because they cannot afford groceries. It comes at a time when Canadians cannot even fill up their car or truck to go to work. This is exactly the wrong time to raise taxes on paycheques, gas and other things.
Let us start by talking about fried green tomatoes. The little miracles of Manotick, SunTech tomatoes are from a beautiful little tomato farm about 40 minutes south of here, in the heart of the great Carleton riding, where some entrepreneurial farmers opened a greenhouse to sell beautiful local produce to residents in the area. They are delicious and they are legendary right across the region.
Unfortunately, the farmers learned that the carbon tax from the government would apply to the CO2 they release into the greenhouse. Now, of course, CO2 is required to expand growth and increase the produce that comes out of the greenhouse. This CO2 does not even go into the atmosphere; it goes into the plant life, something the Liberals may have missed in grade 4 science class. The reality is that it makes the tomatoes more expensive.
What is the consequence of the tax on these tomatoes? Well, it is, at times, more expensive to buy a Manotick tomato in Manotick than a Mexican tomato in Manotick. Why? It is because the taxes are lower in Mexico, even though the pollution is higher. What does this price signal do? It tells the customer to buy a tomato from the other side of North America, which has to be trained and trucked all the way up to Canada, burning fossil fuels the whole way there and increasing emissions along the way.
What happened to the local 100-mile diet that environmentalists used to promote? Well, this tax makes that diet more difficult and less affordable, the big logical fallacy of the Liberal carbon tax. It drives up the cost of domestic production and drives that production to foreign, more polluting jurisdictions that then require higher transportation costs and more emissions to bring products back to Canadian consumers here at home.
Our approach should be exactly the opposite. We should bring production home and have our food, our energy and our resources right here in Canada.
Let us look at the three falsehoods of the Liberal carbon tax.
The Liberals said it would help us meet our targets for emissions reduction. They have now been in power for seven years and have not hit a single solitary emissions reduction target. In fact, even in the year 2020, when large parts of our economy and our population were locked down and unable to even drive, they came nowhere close to reaching their targets. Let me tell the House how far they missed them. They missed them by 57 megatonnes. That is equivalent to all of the emissions of the four Atlantic provinces or equivalent to our entire electricity sector.
In other words, if we had turned off all of the electricity in Canada in that year, in addition to having been locked down during COVID, then we would have still fallen just short of meeting the targets the Liberals set for themselves. In order words, the carbon tax did not hit those targets. It did not come anywhere close and, in fact, we expect the emissions will again start rising now that the lockdowns are fortunately behind us. That is the first falsehood.
If the Liberals were really serious about reducing emissions, they had many options. They could have signalled their support for small modular nuclear reactors so that we could use our prodigious know-how to supply Canadians with emissions-free nuclear energy. We have the biggest supply of uranium as feedstock right in Saskatchewan and the best nuclear engineers right here in Ontario. We have a need for this electricity in provinces nationwide. We have provinces that have signed on to memoranda of understanding to replace high-emitting sources of electricity with small modular nuclear reactors, but of course our Minister of the Environment has said that he does not even agree with nuclear. I do not know where he expects electricity to come from, but certainly nobody is going to invest in creating these modular reactors if the Minister of the Environment himself is against them.
The Liberals could have backed up carbon capture and storage, of which the Canadian energy industry is leading in the world. It is the industry putting carbon back in the ground where it came from, the carbon trunk, which allows that carbon to go back to geological formations where it can be safely stored. The government was slow to support it and insufficient in that support.
The Liberals could have incentivized industry to further reduce emissions. They could have also used Canada's clean energy production to displace dirty foreign production. We have 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas right here in Canada. With the hydroelectricity in Quebec, Newfoundland and British Columbia, we can liquefy that natural gas without any emissions at all. In fact, we have the shortest shipping distances from North America to both Asia and Europe, allowing us to reduce the cost and the emissions necessary to get that energy to those markets. That clean Canadian natural gas could displace dirty coal-fired electricity around the world.
Liberals might want to dispute this today, but that was their contention not long ago. The Prime Minister showed up for a photo op to take credit for the previous Conservative government's approval of the LNG Canada project in northern British Columbia. He said at the time, “We know LNG produces...half the amount of carbon emissions as coal.” He then said that this project would have the effect of reducing global emissions by displacing dirtier sources of electricity in Asia. This is the quote: “So by sending Canadian LNG to markets that are today powered by coal, we will help those jurisdictions transition away from this energy source.”
According to Rob Seeley, president of E3Merge Consulting, “for every unit of GHGs that British Columbia produces to get that LNG to market, the overseas production of GHGs goes down by a factor of 10.” In other words, by replacing foreign coal-fired with our Canadian energy, we can reduce emissions.
Further, this same expert said:
Shipping LNG at design capacity from Kitimat to displace coal-generated electricity in China would reduce global GHG emissions by 60 to 90 million tonnes annually, equivalent to the annual production of GHGs in all of B.C....
Would that not be something? What an achievement that would be.
By the way, 60 million to 90 million tonnes of greenhouse gases is exactly what the Liberals promised the carbon tax would eliminate. It did not happen, but this project would have allowed it to. However, projects like this are not able to go ahead because of government gatekeepers standing in the way.
When this Prime Minister took office, there were 15 LNG proposals on the table. Not a single one has been completed, seven years later. Imagine the emissions we could have reduced and the paycheques we could have grown if we had gotten out of the way and allowed these projects to proceed.
We could export more of our civilian-grade uranium, so that foreign jurisdictions could shut down dirty coal and replace it with clean Canadian energy. We could support Quebec and Manitoba as they attempt to export and get better revenues for their hydroelectricity. There are countless ways we can combat the emissions of our country and the world without taxing and punishing our citizens, and if the Liberals had done that, maybe they would not have missed every single target they have set.
The second promise the Liberals made is that the carbon tax would make everyone better off. Everyone would pay this tax, but there would be a cheque in the mail that would compensate them for it. It sounds like one of those scam emails that I get that say, if I just give them my bank card information, they will make a big deposit and I will be rich, and it is always from an uncle on the other side of the world somewhere. It turns out that the cheque bounced.
According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and I am looking at the numbers right here on the table he set out, the net cost to Albertans of this carbon tax when it is fully implemented will be $2,282 per household. In Saskatchewan it will be $1,464 per household, and in Manitoba, it will be $1,145 per household. In Ontario it will be $1,461. That is in net costs, so it is with the rebates the government has promised.
That is, by the way, the least of the problem. For the six provinces that do not get any rebate, they will be far worse off. We must remember that the carbon tax may be provincially administered in British Columbia, Quebec and some other regions of the country. However, it is federally imposed, so even if provinces have their own regimes, they will have to triple their carbon tax in order to meet the mandate the federal government has put in place, and they will get no rebate at all. Those provinces will be vastly worse off than the cases I just mentioned.
This, at a time when Canadians cannot pay for their groceries, cannot gas their vehicles and are fearing the cost that winter will hit them with in just a few short months. This is exactly the last time we need to raise a tax. Think about it. The Liberals are proposing to bring in a 40¢-a-litre tax on gasoline. How many of the single mothers, of the working farmers, of the welders or of the waitresses can afford to pay another 40¢ a litre in gas taxes. Every party in this House, except the Conservatives, want to hit those working people with those higher taxes. We will stand in the way. We will fight back. We will defend consumers against this tax.
The final falsehood is that the Liberals said this carbon tax would never go above $50 a tonne. That was it. They said at $50 a tonne they would be done. That was before the election. After the election they said the tax would have to be tripled. They said it was so ineffective that they needed to make it three times the size in order to do the job, and that is just what we know about. If they are going to triple the tax after just one broken election promise, we can imagine if they were, God forbid, given another mandate. What surprise would we hear the next day after the election? How high would the tax have to go, a dollar a litre in new taxes or tripling home heating bills?
What other costs would the Liberals surprise Canadians with if they got the chance? They have broken their promise on this. They have broken their promise on income taxes, which they said would go down. They have broken their promise on countless other taxes, and we can expect that they will only break more promises, because they need to raise taxes in order to feed their insatiable appetite for spending.
Canadians will not let them. Conservatives will run on a low-tax agenda in the next election, and we will win and deliver that low-tax agenda.
We forget sometimes that it is our small businesses that will be asked to bear a disproportionate burden. They get no rebate at all. Unlike large industrial corporations that get a complete exemption from the carbon tax, small businesses have to pay it on the cost of heating their restaurants, firing up their stoves in order to feed their patrons, transporting their goods and running their factories.
All of them have to pay those taxes, because they are not big enough to get the exemption that the large industrial corporations have received. Therefore, we can expect more small businesses to make up the difference by having to raise prices on consumers or lower wages on their workers, all making Canadians worse off at a time when they can least afford it.
Small and medium-sized businesses do not get an exemption. The tax will cost them more, three times more if the Liberals stay in power thanks to their coalition partners, the New Democrats. That is why we are going to keep standing up for our small and medium-sized businesses, which are creating jobs and providing goods and services to consumers. The Conservatives will always stand up for small and medium-sized businesses by cancelling this tax increase.
Of course, this tax comes on top of other taxes. The Liberals propose to raise taxes on paycheques. Starting January 1, they will raise EI and CPP payroll taxes, even though they have enough funds at the current rates to fund both of those programs, including with the regular increased benefits that can be expected. They want to jeopardize the paycheques of Canadians to raise taxes and run big surpluses in the EI account, which they then will use to fund overall government spending rather than to provide workers with protection against unemployment. Conservatives believe that EI should not be a cash cow for government. It should be a protection for our workers, and we will not support any increase in the EI payroll tax.
Our theory, our principle, is that a dollar left in the hands of the person who earned it is always better than in the hands of the politician who taxed it. We want this to be once again a country where hard work pays off, where the person who puts in that extra hour, takes that extra shift or earns that extra bonus keeps that money to give their kids a summer a camp or to give their family an opportunity for a small camping trip or, God forbid, to upsize their house or move from an apartment into a place of their own. This should be a country of opportunity, of boundless possibility, for anyone who is prepared to put in the work.
It is appalling to me that a single mom of three earning $55,000 a year who goes out and earns another dollar loses 80¢ in government clawbacks and taxes. That is according to a study by this very finance department of the current government. We are punishing the people who do the work of this nation.
Our workers deserve rewards for their work. Our small business owners who take risks and mortgage their homes to survive and to supply our communities with services and our people with jobs deserve to keep the fruits of their labour. That is why Conservatives will always stand on the side of the people who work hard, who pay their taxes and who play by the rules. We will put Canadians back in control of their money, their lives, right here in Canada, the freest nation on earth.
2722 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:03:41 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I listened to the speech, which was mainly about the carbon tax. I am not going to talk about that. I do not think it is a good idea to reduce or cancel it. However, I would like to ask my colleague a question.
We know that inflation is a concern for most Quebec households and workers. Does my colleague believe that it is time to acknowledge that the people most affected by it are those on fixed incomes who cannot count on wage increases to make up for what is happening? Would my colleague and his government be ready to change their minds and increase, for example, old age security for people aged 65 and up?
A whole segment of retirees who only have pension income is being abandoned, and the government decided to only increase the pensions of those aged 75 and up.
I believe that there is something that could be done. Why did they not do it?
163 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:08:44 a.m.
- Watch
Usually, in economics and the humanities, and even in the pure sciences, if you want to solve a problem, you have to define it first. Then, you need to find the sources of the problem. Lastly, you need to address those sources.
The problem is inflation. Is inflation purely a Quebec or Canadian problem? No, every country in the G7 and the OECD is dealing with inflation. That is the first element. Is it the fault solely of the federal government, then? I do not think so. Did it act appropriately on every aspect of the inflation issue? I am not sure, but it does not bear sole responsibility. That is what I want to say.
Then, we see that inflation was at 7% in August and that it dropped a bit because of the price of oil. That means that it is relatively high. Everyone is affected by inflation. No one is immune, but the most hard hit are people on a fixed income: seniors and people with low incomes. We need to focus on these people and try to find solutions to lessen the impact of inflation on their lives. That is the intelligent approach.
That is what the Bloc Québécois is doing. We asked ourselves how we could help these people. Once we have determined what the problem is and who is affected by it, we must determine why we have inflation. There are two factors. One, the demand for goods and services has risen sharply. Interest rates have gone down and federal assistance has been astronomical, which has greatly increased the demand for goods and services. That, in turn, has created inflation. Two, the supply side of the equation has shrunk.
Madam Speaker, I listened respectfully to members of the Liberal Party and I would like them to show some mutual respect, if at all possible.
314 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:16:33 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the hon. member addressed the point I was going to bring up.
In his speech, the Leader of the Opposition accused a member of the House from Quebec of wanting to tax Quebeckers through carbon pricing. He does not seem to realize that, since 2013, Quebec has had its own carbon pricing and that, as a result, the federal carbon pricing does not apply to the province.
Does my colleague not find it strange that the Leader of the Opposition, who wants to get votes in Quebec, is so disconnected from what is happening in the province?
99 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:17:20 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, that, in a way, sums up what I was getting at. I thank my colleague for the question. It allows me to elaborate a bit.
In politics, as members know, we try to reach people to listen to their problems and to offer them solutions. We then come to the House to represent them and speak on their behalf.
When a party leader comes here but does not even know the reality of the Quebec nation and is incapable of understanding it, how can he possibly represent Quebec in the House of Commons? It is impossible.
I know that the number of Conservative MPs is now nine and is trending downward. I would therefore suggest that the Conservative MPs from Quebec reason with their leader and have him stop talking nonsense about Quebec.
135 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:19:03 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the two bills seek to help lower-income households deal with inflation. We obviously agree with increasing the GST credit. We have been talking about that for a long time, and we are glad that the government is waking up.
However, there is one thing we do not like as much.
It is a Liberal tradition, one they learned from the NDP. The NDP are Liberals in a hurry. What they want is to have every possible reason to interfere in the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces.
They told themselves they were going to help households. Some, wanting to go even further, thought they would help households while sticking their their noses in the business of Quebec and the provinces. They thought it would be really cool, because they believe they are smarter than everyone else and know what Quebeckers need better than the Quebec government does. They figured they would show up with their nice cheques adorned with a maple leaf and just bypass Quebec's authority. That, however, is not a good idea.
178 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:20:04 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague, who is always very reasonable, on his speech. I really appreciate the fact that he is always so measured.
I was shocked earlier to hear the Leader of the Opposition say that he did not know that Quebec had its own carbon exchange. Seriously? A party leader who wants to become prime minister does not know that Quebec has its own carbon exchange?
Does my colleague think the rest of the opposition leader's speech makes sense if he really did not know that?
90 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:20:41 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am still in shock. I would like to thank my colleague for his question, because it gives me a chance to gather my thoughts. In fact, this is all so absurd that I am struggling to make sense of it.
It is important to understand that the leader of the Conservative Party is not crazy, not at all, so we have to ask why he did not know that. The answer is that he does not care. He is switched on to what western Canada wants. He listens to what his cronies in Alberta and Saskatchewan want and caters to their needs.
Then he says he wants to be the prime minister for all Canadians and expects us believe that. What he really wants is to defend the views of western Canada and then try to sell those views to everyone else, including Quebec.
I have to tell my Conservative friends that they will find us, the Bloc Québécois, standing in their way.
170 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:21:33 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, it is always a bit difficult to speak after the House leader of the Bloc Québécois. He is such a colourful speaker that I cannot hope to outdo him, even when I dress in yellow.
He is an economist, and he explained clearly that a better knowledge of the technical details is necessary before proposing measures that could have major repercussions on the public.
Of course, we all agree that inflation is very real and that it affects everyone, all the people in all the ridings we represent, and we want to propose solutions. However, before rushing to introduce concrete measures, we need to know whether or not it is the right thing to do.
Today feels like Groundhog Day. Back in June, the Conservative Party moved a similar motion with almost identical wording. That motion talked about the rising cost of living and proposed, once again, to abolish the carbon tax in order to put money back into the pockets of Quebeckers and Canadians. However, I find it a bit odd to hear the Conservative members from Quebec say that this measure will put money back into Quebeckers' pockets when the carbon tax does not even apply in Quebec.
As my colleague clearly explained earlier, the carbon market is working very well in Quebec. Unfortunately, the goal of this Conservative measure may not actually be what they say it is. They are proposing a solution to inflation, which is a very real problem. However, instead of helping families, this measure would help the oil companies, which are not currently doing their part. Families are doing their part and getting money in return. It is a system that works quite well, and that is what the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said.
The Conservatives have a gift for twisting people's words. Just yesterday, during the debate on hurricane Fiona, I made a connection between extreme weather events and climate change. In response, the Conservative Party leader said the Bloc Québécois was in favour of importing foreign oil into Canada. That is not it at all. We want to cut fossil fuels out entirely and invest in renewable energy.
They did the same thing with the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report. The Conservatives hand-picked one section and put their own spin on it. What the Parliamentary Budget Officer actually said was that the general consensus among economists is that explicit carbon pricing is the most cost-effective approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I think we can trust the Parliamentary Budget Officer on that. Of course, he did not study Quebec's carbon market, which the Bloc Québécois considers to be the best system. It works very well in Quebec, anyway.
I will not repeat all the causes of inflation, since my House leader did an excellent job of that earlier. However, I would like to emphasize the repercussions that inflation is having on people in my region, eastern Quebec.
The average salary in the Gaspé region is $52,000 and in the Lower St. Lawrence, it is $40,000. That is not a lot of money for a whole year. With the rising cost of living, the cost of groceries, the cost of gas and the price of housing, people are already struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis, and have been for many years. They have to count their pennies and stick to their budgets. Now they are really stretched to the limit.
I visited a few farms this summer. With skyrocketing input costs and shortages of parts needed for farm equipment, our farmers' job is getting harder and harder. We are talking about the people who help put food on our tables three times a day. Inflation is having an impact on these people and on the people they feed.
As I have said before in the House, a protest was organized recently by low-income people in the RCM of La Mitis, in my riding. Their slogan was: “I paid my rent. Now I have a place to starve to death”. These people were telling us that they have to choose between paying the rent and buying groceries. They have to choose between food and shelter, both of which are basic needs. We are at a point where people are having to choose between these two basic needs. It is frightening to see what an impact inflation is having on the people in my riding.
Over in the Avignon RCM, in Chaleur Bay, the Gaspé wardens' table offered financial incentives for building housing. Obviously the spike in construction costs has turned off the developers. There are not a lot of people who want to invest, and that is leading to a housing shortage in the region.
The housing investments that the federal government is making are good, but sadly insufficient. Often these big amounts go to large cities, and the regions are overlooked. We are seeing a positive demographic shift in the Gaspé and Lower St. Lawrence for the first time in 20 years, and we would love to welcome more people, but we have nowhere for them to live.
The same goes for the labour shortage. We are eager to bring in workers from other parts of Quebec or Canada and from around the world, but there is nowhere to put them. That is having a direct impact on the people in my region.
Gilles Dufour, executive director of Moisson Mitis, told us that requests for assistance have increased by between 30% and 40%. That is not insignificant. Every holiday season, I like to go and help distribute Christmas baskets to those most in need. We are seeing just how much those numbers are going up. Also, fewer people are available to help out or to donate goods or money because they are dealing with the rising cost of living. It is a vicious cycle and we are having trouble helping each other out.
I believe that we all agree with the first part of the Conservatives' motion. Inflation is very real and we must find solutions. However, I do not believe that scrapping the carbon tax is the magic solution.
As I mentioned, this is the second time they have tried to pass this in the House, but a majority of members rejected it because we know there are other solutions on the table. Of course we have to have these debates and use all means necessary to implement measures quickly. The Bloc Québécois has proposed several measures and I will come back to that. My colleague spoke about solutions that could be implemented.
I think the Conservatives are misrepresenting what the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, said about the carbon tax. This tax would not cost households 60% more, as the Conservative Party is claiming. Once you dig deeper into the facts and into the technical details, it becomes clear that this claim is incomplete and lacking specifics. As I said earlier, the tax does not apply in Quebec. It applies in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. The government committed to giving the proceeds of the gas tax directly back to individuals and families through climate action incentive payments.
The PBO did his analysis in March 2022. In his report, he said that the federal carbon tax is set to rise by $15 per year from $50 per tonne in 2022 to $170 per tonne in 2030. The Conservatives claim it is 60%, but the PBO based his analysis on the 2030 price per tonne, which is $170, so that is not the current price, but the Conservatives are muddying the waters. That will not happen until 2030-31, which is when some families might feel the pain.
We know oil companies are not contributing their fair share. They should be paying more. Eliminating the carbon tax will not help us fight climate change and meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Yes, there is room for improvement. Nothing is ever perfect, but for the time being, that is not the solution that will put money back in people's pockets, certainly not for the low-income families that get that tax refunded.
What we need to do is focus on the subsidies being given to oil companies, the money being taken from the wallets of Canadians and Quebeckers and given to oil and gas companies.
I am running out of time, but we will have plenty of time to talk about this later.
1436 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:31:35 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. It is good to hear the Bloc Québécois praise pollution pricing, the carbon tax, regardless of the fact that the Quebec government went all the way to the Supreme Court to challenge our national plan.
Is the Bloc Québécois ready to admit that we are acting within our jurisdiction and that our carbon tax is a good thing for the provinces that do not have one?
83 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:32:17 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am pleased that the federal government did not interfere in this particular Quebec jurisdiction. The carbon market is working very well in conjunction with California's, and we would not have wanted the federal government to proceed as it did in health care, for example, when it talked about hiring nurses, doctors and so forth and wanting to put conditions on the funds it gives to Quebec and the provinces. We would not have wanted it to do that with the carbon tax because we have a system that is already working well.
I may have said a few positive things about what the government is doing, however, much more needs to be done on the environment. The government says it is green. It says it is a champion of the fight against climate change, but that is actually not true. The reality is that we can never reach our greenhouse gas reduction targets. We continue to finance the biggest polluters. The government is implementing a polluter pay system, but we are helping polluters continue to pollute.
More needs to be done and the Liberal government needs to do better at this time.
196 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:34:36 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, if I may, I would like to correct my colleague. I do not think that abolishing the carbon tax will help Quebeckers. The carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. That was what my speech was all about.
We have not heard many speeches from our Conservative friends proposing effective environmental measures. I do not think I have heard any at all, actually. We are hearing more and more about new technologies. Perhaps that is what the hon. member was referring to. For example, carbon capture technology costs millions of dollars, and we do not yet know if it really works. By the time this technology is actually used by most major polluters, our greenhouse gas reduction target dates will have come and gone.
In conclusion, I think we could be doing more on the environment, but what the Conservative Party is proposing here today is certainly not the solution.
152 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 11:36:32 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I liked what my colleague said at first when he was criticizing what the Liberal government is doing. He then asked me if I would prefer to side with the NDP or the Conservative Party.
We know that the NDP is walking hand in hand with the Liberal government, so I prefer to side with the Bloc Québécois, which says that we should take all the money that is currently being given to oil companies to help them pollute less and invest it in renewable energy. Let us invest it in wind energy and hydroelectricity as Quebec has done for years. That is what the Bloc Québécois is saying.
119 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 12:05:12 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the carbon tax is not working, but the Liberal government still plans to increase the tax and force Quebec to increase its tax too.
What does my colleague think of that?
33 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 12:05:27 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the federal tax on carbon does not apply to Quebec. Quebec already has its own cap-and-trade system. I think the point is moot.
I would say that taxing pollution, putting a price on pollution, works because it changes people's behaviour and the choices they make. They will make a choice that is cheaper, but also greener at the same time.
This tax cannot be the only tool. It does part of the job, but it is not enough. We need a comprehensive strategy that is much broader than this simple tax.
96 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 12:06:11 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, my colleague opposite said that he expected the new Leader of the Opposition to bring in new ideas.
What does the member think about the fact that the new Leader of the Opposition does not know that the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec?
In addition, with inflation as it is, all economists are saying that we need targeted measures. In Quebec, however, there are some people whose livelihoods are at risk. Does my colleague support highly targeted programs to help people like farmers, taxi drivers and truckers?
This is something the Bloc Québécois is proposing.
103 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 12:06:51 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
How can the Conservative Party be unaware that the federal carbon tax does not apply in Quebec? I do not know. Perhaps we should ask the newly appointed Quebec lieutenant of the Conservative Party. I am not sure he has much influence over his leader right now.
As for the second part of his question, yes, our party agrees that we need targeted measures for certain economic sectors or communities. I think targeted measures to combat inflation and the rising cost of living and to facilitate the energy transition would also be worthwhile. For example, I am thinking about the electrification of transportation and public transportation, two subjects the NDP is quite fond of.
123 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 12:07:27 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his incredible work for workers in Quebec and across Canada.
He mentioned the way workers were being impacted in his home riding. I am hoping he can expand on ways in which a New Democratic plan might provide for a just transition and actually get to the heart of the matter of inflation.
63 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 12:51:27 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about housing affordability as if the government were very active on this front and the measures it is putting in place were working well. However, I would like to remind the House that earlier this year a Scotiabank report stated that 3.5 million units will have to be built in Canada over the next 10 years just to address the current crisis.
According to a report from the National Housing Council, only 35,000 new homes were built and 60,000 were renovated under the national housing strategy launched in 2017. That is roughly 100,000 units over the past five years. There are five years left in this national strategy, but there is a need for 3.5 million housing units in Canada over the next 10 years, including 1.1 million in Quebec alone.
Where are those measures?
151 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/27/22 12:52:19 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am a bit confused. I understand that housing is a very important issue. If I understood the interpretation correctly, my colleague's question was entirely on housing. However, today, the debate on the opposition motion is on the carbon tax.
The Government of Canada will work with all the provinces and territories, including Quebec and, of course, the members of the sovereignist party. I expect the Government of Quebec will propose some solutions. Why does my hon. colleague think that the federal government has to provide the entire solution?
That is my opinion in answer to his comments.
101 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
