44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 29, 2022 10:00AM
- Sep/29/22 1:21:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in the House today on behalf of my constituents in Chilliwack—Hope.
I will remind everyone that today we are discussing a motion that states:
That, given that the cost of government is driving up inflation, making the price of goods Canadians buy and the interest they pay unaffordable, this House call on the government to commit to no new taxes on gas, groceries, home heating and pay cheques.
It is a pretty simple motion. Basically, we are asking the government not to make things worse. It has already gotten us to where we are today. The price of gas in my hometown in British Columbia is $2.25 a litre today. That means a student driving a Honda Civic has to pay over $100 to fill the tank to get to school. The cost for a mother to fill up her SUV is over $135, and a contractor filling up their pickup has to pay over $250 just for the fuel to get to work to conduct the duties they perform in our communities. In my community, that is often agricultural work. It is work done in the construction industry, work that cannot be done with a Prius, work that needs to be done with a truck.
My community is rural. It is a community where there are not a lot of rapid transit options. There are long distances between places people need to go to. However, the Liberals want to make the cost of gas, which is $2.25, a record high, worse. They propose tripling the carbon tax next April.
B.C. has its own carbon tax. It has been a failure on every level. It has not reduced emissions; it has increased the cost of everything in British Columbia and, unlike in some of the other provinces in the country, there is no federal rebate. The money goes to Victoria to spend as it sees fit. It gives some of it back in rebates, but the rest of it goes into government coffers. This is just what the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer indicated, that 60% of Canadians pay more in the tax than they get back in rebates. I would anticipate that in British Columbia it is at least that bad, but this is what the government wants.
It pays lip service every once in a while and pretends that it cares about these high gas prices, but that is actually what it wants. It wants the prices for Canadians to go up. It wants people who are driving their aged parents or grandparents to doctor's appointments to pay more for gas. It wants moms and dads who are taking their kids to after-school activities to pay more. We heard it in the House earlier this week. It is a market incentive somehow. It is trying to incent people to drive less.
In my community, people have to drive to get from place to place to place. The government disrespects rural Canadians. It disrespects people who need to drive to get from A to B. It also disrespects, quite frankly, people who need to heat their homes. It tells seniors that it is going to drive up the price of their home heating fuel, whatever that may be, natural gas or furnace oil, etc., and that it is going to triple the price of the carbon tax, further driving up the fuel price. It suggests that maybe they can do without, perhaps turn the heat off. Seniors can shiver so that the Liberals can put more money in government coffers. It is unacceptable, and Conservatives are calling on them to stop making it worse.
There are articles that we should all be aware of and be seized by: “B.C. soup kitchens, food banks struggling with increased demand, decreased donations”. We heard this yesterday in question period. The member for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte indicated that former donors to a food bank have become clients, and, according to Food Banks BC, “the number of new clients accessing its 105-member hunger relief agencies has increased 50 per cent between December 2021 and March.” We are also seeing that the majority of Canadians are making changes to their grocery store habits amid higher prices. According to Bloomberg, almost a quarter of Canadians are cutting back on how much food they buy, because of higher inflation. This is more prevalent among female shoppers, such as single moms in many cases, with 29.6% of them buying less food, compared to 18% of men who are making that choice. It is not a choice, though; they are forced into it.
What do we see? We know that when the price of fuel goes up, which the government wants, as that was its policy change and the effect it desires, the price of transportation goes up, which means the price of the goods that need to get to a grocery store go up as well. We are already at a 40-year high in grocery inflation. It is up over 10% year over year, and growing at a rate that is at a 40-year high. We have not seen these numbers since the eighties.
The response of the government should simply be to stop making matters worse, stop raising the carbon tax and stop taking more money out of the pockets of workers through increasing taxes on their paycheques, which is what it is planning to do on January 1.
I have heard the Liberals now say that it is not a tax and that these are not taxes. Their website says they are taxes. The Government of Canada's website lists these as taxes because they result in lower take-home pay for Canadians.
Paul Martin thought they were taxes when he made it a priority to make the country more efficient and more competitive. He said payroll taxes kill jobs and drive down competitiveness. He got it, but he would not recognize the Liberal government today because it has abandoned all of its fiscal anchors. It has completely—
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: I wonder what Brian Mulroney thinks of that.
Mr. Mark Strahl: Madam Speaker, the member does not seem to care that the price of food has gone up for Canadians. He laughs when I bring up things about food banks. He simply cannot stand to hear the truth, and he wants to make it worse.
The member for Kingston and the Islands wants to vote to make gas prices higher. He wants to vote for less money in the pockets of Canadians. He can defend that, and I will defend cutting taxes and holding the line for Canadians.
If the member is not hearing from his constituents about affordability, that means he is not listening, which would put him in good company with the Liberal government. All of us on this side of the House are getting messages. A message I received said the following:
Budgets were tight and money was short before, and now with rental prices almost doubling, gas higher than we've ever seen, and grocery prices increasing, it is getting impossible to afford the bare necessities.
Having a child, I'm not left with many options. I already have a second job, living in my car is not an option and moving back with parents also would not work so I'm not sure what else I can do. Will there be any solutions? I know I'm not the only one struggling.
For this constituent, the solution is not to have more money taken off her paycheque. The solution is not to have more money taken away from her when she has to fill up her car to take her son to school. She said she had to drop out of university because the affordability is so bad under the government.
Another constituent wrote:
My husband and I work full time [at] great paying jobs and we are still struggling. [We] can hardly afford groceries because the costs are rising in B.C. The fact that families cannot even purchase groceries without repercussions is astonishing to me. We are dual income...and we struggle. We don't spend on anything but the bare minimum necessities and even then sometimes we try to do without.
People are struggling and the government is threatening to make things worse. It is set to raise taxes on paycheques on January 1. This motion calls for it to stop that. It is set to raise prices on gas, groceries and home heating in April. We are calling on the government to stop those tax hikes.
We will be voting to protect the interests of Canadian workers and Canadian families, and to leave more money in their pockets, because they know how to spend it better than the wasteful Liberal government.
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- Sep/29/22 1:32:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would suggest that the member from British Columbia is not listening to his constituents. They are struggling, just as my constituents are struggling. However, he says that we have never had is so good, that at $2.25 a litre, what is the big deal? To them it does not matter, and they are going to raise the price, which is what the Liberals are promising to do. They will triple the carbon tax, which will turn $2.25 a litre into three dollars a litre under that member's plan.
The member can go back to Fleetwood—Port Kells and try to sell that. I will stand up for the people of Chilliwack—Hope to demand that these taxes not be raised.
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- Sep/29/22 1:34:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course, my colleague is wrong about the issue with gas prices. When governments across the country cut sales taxes or gas taxes in places such as Alberta, the prices plummeted overnight. The price per litre plummeted for people in those regions.
For people in regions like mine, we had another motion where we tried to get the GST cut on fuel and to suspend the carbon tax. Of course, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and Liberals all voted to keep gas prices nice and high, because that is actually what they want.
When we talk about the standard of living for seniors, in my riding, seniors who drive to see their grandkids or drive to their doctor's appointments are paying $2.25 a litre. If the member wants that price to go up, he will have to come through the Conservative Party to make that happen.
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- Sep/29/22 1:35:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what would have helped in my region of the Fraser Valley would have been raising the dikes, not raising the carbon tax. We could have used multiple governments, including the NDP B.C. government, which had failed to invest in the infrastructure necessary to protect our communities.
My constituents are tired of hearing about fancy conferences around the world where they discuss raising the price of everything. They want to actually see investments in infrastructure that will protect our community. That is what Conservatives believe in. We do not believe in raising the price of everything through a carbon tax.
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- Sep/29/22 2:35:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are struggling to make ends meet under the Liberal government. In B.C., the cost of gas is now over $2.25 a litre. The cost of groceries has skyrocketed to a 40-year high.
The Liberals are set to make things worse. On January 1, the government is planning to increase taxes on paycheques, ripping money from Canadians' pockets and stuffing government coffers instead. Why will the Liberals not give Canadians a break from just inflation and just cancel their planned tax increases instead?
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- Sep/29/22 2:36:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the B.C. price on pollution, as the minister calls it, has not reduced emissions, and the rebates do not go back to British Columbians. They go to the NDP government in Victoria. What he would see is the tripling of the carbon tax, which would result in the $2.25 going to $3 a litre. We will never accept that.
Why will he not cancel the tripling of the carbon tax and stop gouging British Columbia families?
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