SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 134

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 24, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 134 - Nov/24/22
Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)
  • Nov/24/22 5:45:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to be here in the House today to ask a question that I initially asked back in June about inflation. Members will notice that inflation has not abated as much as the government thought it would. In June we were at 7.7% and the latest number is 6.9%, so if people think we are moving down, we are still sticking around that 7%. One thing about inflation in Canada is this. When the government trumpets that it is less here than in the rest of the world, it is because of how we measure inflation in Canada versus the rest of the world. If I ask Canadians and my colleagues outside of the House if they believe inflation is lesser here than elsewhere and why they think that would be, the answer is because we measure it differently. We do not count as much for housing in Canada. We use a thing called owners' equivalent rent, which has consistently, over 30 years, underestimated what the inflationary effects of housing are in Canada. However, in June it was at 7.7% and it continues to go up. It is 6.9% now. The minister wants to increase taxes on fuel. We hope the minister would drop the taxes on fuel. I know a lot of the members in the House say that the issue around petroleum is that the companies that produce petroleum are earning excess profits. They are earning profits for the first time in seven years because the commodity has gone up in price. However, the last time the commodity cost this much on the world market, gas in my province was worth $1.40 a litre. Now it is worth $2.10 a litre, so there is a disconnect here. Where is that extra 70¢ per litre, that extra 50% uptick, in gas? I will tell members right now that it is in the extra taxes and the extra regulatory costs that the current government has imposed upon Canadians to get the fuel they need to get to work, fuel their homes and get things done, because energy is essential to getting everything done in Canada, especially with respect to our food. Seven years ago was a long time, but Canadians need to ask why things are getting so much more expensive when the actual cost on the world market is the same as it was seven years ago. Again, it is taxes. These are inflationary effects. I know the current government has a number of taxation measures that are built into gasoline now, which includes the clean fuel standard. The new clean electricity standard is going to add more costs for Canadians. However, the big one here of course is the carbon tax. Seven years ago there was no carbon tax. It was zero. Then it went to $20 a tonne. In the election in 2019, the Prime Minister said that it would remain at $20 a tonne and then immediately moved it to $50 a tonne. Now it is going to move up to $170 a tonne, but this will not be inflationary of course. Let me give members a quick education here. Inflationary taxes are designed to be inflationary. They raise the cost of everything. That means that things are going to go up in price and consumers are going to feel it, no matter what the current government says. I know the Liberals will say that they give a whole bunch of it back to Canadians anyway. They give a bit of it back. Yes, there are some Canadians who get some of the money they spent back. Let us think about that, the churn and burn the government goes through with respect to this. Let me ask it to actually think about it. I am going to pre-empt my respondent here to get past the doublethink that will be part of his notes when he says that we can have our cake and eat it too, because I heard the minister say again in the House the other day that the government is going to raise taxes on all the things Canadians consume and that it will not make it financially punitive to Canadians. That is absolute hogwash. When the government increases taxes on Canadians, it is going to make things inflationary. Things are going to go up in price and, therefore, it is causing a problem where we are going to pay more for everything we have to buy in Canada. That is a fact. We cannot get over it. I have a lot more to say on inflation, but I know my time is up. I also know that my colleague across the way has some kind of response for me on this.
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Context: House Hansard - 134 - Nov/24/22
Mr. Greg McLean
  • Nov/24/22 5:52:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the first thing I asked for in this debate was for my colleague across the way to pull his head out of his Liberal notes and actually do some thinking on this, but a bunch of what he said is malarky. In any event, let us go through the actual numbers. He talked about the G7. He talked about how Canada performs on a net debt basis. His numbers, his government's numbers and his speaking point narratives are far different than those of any other body in the world that measures where we are economically in the world, including the IMF, which has recently ranked Canada far lower than his vaunted expectation of where this country is. That is because some people know how to count. I do not think anybody on that side of the House knows how to do the math on this. On the G7 countries he talks about, Canada is the only G7 country that has not either reduced its carbon taxes because of inflation or done away with them completely. How does he respond to that?
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