44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 7, 2023 10:00AM
- Feb/7/23 1:02:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I heard my hon. colleague start his speech talking about Bitcoin. I would like to remind him that Bitcoin has increased in value by 37% in the last month. He is such a stalwart member of the carbon tax cult, but if he looked deep inside himself and reflected, he would need to question some of his beliefs.
The Governor of the Bank of Canada says carbon tax is intrinsically inflationary. The PBO says that most Canadians will pay more in carbon tax than they will receive. However, Liberals constantly refute that. Every time we question them about carbon tax, they always come back and say that the carbon tax is going to stop the hurricanes that start near Africa from moving up the Atlantic coast into Atlantic Canada. He must know Atlantic Canadians are not that stupid. They all know the carbon tax cannot stop hurricanes. Maybe you could explain this wonderful technology, the dome that is going to protect Atlantic Canada from hurricanes.
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- Feb/7/23 2:17:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, Canadians are out of money and cannot afford food, heating or housing. I spent the last month in my riding talking to friends and neighbours, and they all expressed the same sentiment: Life under the Liberal government has gotten too expensive.
Mary told me she is overwhelmed every time she goes to the grocery store. The cost of groceries has skyrocketed in the last year. She wonders how she is going to keep food on the table for her and her three children. After eight years of the Liberal government, she has had enough.
I spoke with John and Francis, a hard-working middle-class family who say their heat bill has doubled. They do not know where they will come up with the extra $500 a month to put oil in their tank. They are out of money. They cannot afford the Liberal government any longer.
A Conservative government will keep the heat on and the tax off.
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- Feb/7/23 4:32:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just heard my hon. colleague reference atmospheric rivers. I wonder if he could let the House know if we can dam those atmospheric rivers and make hydro power. That would be a wonderful thing to do to get some emissions down.
We always get one thing from ministers in the Liberal government when we question them about the carbon tax: They try to shame us into thinking the carbon tax is going to stop storms that start in Africa from reaching Atlantic Canada. Does the member think the second-largest country in the world, which produces less than 2% of the world's emissions, is going to stop hurricanes from happening by bringing in a carbon tax?
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- Feb/7/23 4:37:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, “I am sick and tired of people talking about the cold winter”. These are the famous words used by the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl in response to a previous Conservative motion to have the carbon tax removed from home heating fuel. Here I stand again on behalf of the great people of Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, and in fact all the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and Atlantic Canada, to proudly support yet another Conservative motion to axe the carbon tax.
The cult-like Liberal plan to triple, triple, triple the carbon tax on Canadians is a recipe for disaster, yet my fellow Newfoundland and Labrador MPs who sit on the other side of this House continue to push that agenda. Everyone knows the carbon tax is intrinsically inflationary. Carbon tax drives up the price consumers pay for things produced and delivered using fuel. This includes, well, everything.
According to the chair of the Atlantic Canadian premiers, energy poverty in Atlantic Canada is nearly 40%, the highest in the country. Newfoundland and Labrador's Liberal premier, Andrew Furey, begged the Prime Minister not to put carbon tax on home heating fuel. It will drive up heating costs by over 20% when it kicks in on July 1. Premier Furey, a close friend of the Prime Minister, said in early September that ending the current carbon tax exemption on heating fuel would place “undue economic burdens on the people of this province.”
The four Atlantic premiers wrote to the federal environment minister around the same time to request an exemption on the January 1 deadline to end the home heating fuel carbon tax exemption. They were flatly turned down by the Liberal government, whose intent to tax the right to heat one's home reflects its cult-like beliefs that taxing the essentials of life will lower carbon emissions. Its NDP coalition partners are partial to the same cult-like beliefs.
When asked about this in question period, Liberal ministers try to shame us into thinking that somehow a Canadian carbon tax will magically shield us from hurricanes that start off the coast of Africa. Atlantic Canadians do not buy it. The Liberal carbon tax is thus far a complete failure.
Since the government took office in 2015, our emissions have increased, along with the carbon tax, with the exception of 2020, when they dropped, probably because the Prime Minister and his World Economic Forum buddies parked their private jets.
The leader of this carbon tax regime, the Prime Minister, brags that Canadians receive more in rebates than they pay in carbon tax. He should stop misleading Canadians while he contradicts the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the PBO, who said in March that carbon tax will deliver a net financial loss to most households. The Prime Minister should listen to experts like the PBO, but what can we expect from a guy who said that the budget will balance itself?
The failure of carbon pricing in Canada is in stark contrast to the success Americans have had in reducing their emissions. They did not bend to climate activists, but instead used technology and did things like converting coal plants to natural gas. The people of my province do not have the option of converting to natural gas, so they will need to continue for the most part with diesel heating fuel. I will say more about natural gas a little later on.
When implemented, the carbon tax, combined with HST and heating fuel, will be more than 14¢ per litre. According to Premier Furey, this constitutes a 20% increase on the cost to heat a home. This is with carbon pricing at just $50 per tonne. This is set to rise to $170 per tonne by 2030. That will drive up the carbon tax on that same litre of fuel to about 55¢ per litre with the HST included. This is nothing short of a disaster created by Liberal government members, whose least concern is the real lives of Atlantic Canadians. It is a complete slap in the face to the very people who have put so much faith in them since 2015.
I hear from nervous constituents all the time, constituents already stretched to the breaking point by out-of-control inflation. Winter is here. Atlantic Canadians are choosing between food on the table and a warm home. Recently, the environment minister bragged about his new program to switch homeowners from heating with fuel to heating by heat pumps, a plan that can help, at best, 3% of homeowners.
Where does this leave people like Corey from Gander? Last year, Corey spent $4,000 on oil to heat his home. The Liberal carbon tax will add $700 to his annual heating bill. Corey considers himself middle-class, but with this inflationary tax increase, he is worried about paying his bills.
Felicia from Pikes Arm told me that she spent $6,000 in only 10 months last year to heat her home. The carbon tax on just 10 months of fuel will cost Felicia over $1,000 extra if the Prime Minister does not back down on his tax-hiking plan.
Felicia and Corey do not need a carbon tax to force them to adjust their thermostat. The price of oil has doubled in the last year. The people of Atlantic Canada cannot take more of this inflationary tax pressure on their lives. Real people with real bills to pay are really fed up. They are much more intelligent than the Prime Minister and his climate change cult make them out to be. They know that this is a tax-and-spend climate plan, and it is not going to work.
The Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador knows it is not working and says that it is completely unnecessary, with the price of oil where it is and where it is projected to go. According to most experts, oil is forecasted to be, on average, about $92 per barrel this year and will rise to $125 per barrel by 2025. With these prices where they are and where they are going, there is already enough pressure on consumers to cut their consumption.
According to the CBC, which, by the look of it, is abandoning its carbon tax love affair, Nova Scotians alone will pay $1 billion extra on home heating fuel by 2030. That is quite the tax grab. Can members just imagine $1 billion, and no guarantee that a tangible tonne of carbon emission reduction will take place? The one thing that is guaranteed is that money in people's jeans will be reduced by this inflationary tax pressure.
If the Prime Minister was serious about cutting emissions, he would be supporting countries around the world like Germany and pushing to supply them with natural gas. However, what did he say when the German chancellor came begging? He said that there is no economic case for shipping natural gas from Newfoundland and Labrador to Europe.
The island of Newfoundland is 4,000 kilometres from Europe. Meanwhile, in the U.S., LNG plants all through Texas are shipping liquefied natural gas with the value of $1 billion a day to Europe. The Gulf of Mexico is twice as far from Europe as Newfoundland is. Argentina, in a partnership with Petronas, is building a $10-billion LNG facility to export natural gas. The only place further from Europe than Argentina is the South Pole. However, our wise Prime Minister says that the island of Newfoundland is too far from Europe to make economic sense to take on such a project. Meanwhile, Germany has had to convert its natural gas plants back to burning coal, which doubles the emissions it produces.
Instead of helping our allies, harvesting the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas on the Grand Banks and boosting the prosperity of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, the Liberal government promotes air pollution in Europe and energy poverty in Atlantic Canada.
To wind down, the carbon tax drives inflation. There is one country in the G7 that has managed its inflation, but it does not have a carbon tax and its inflation rate sits just above 2%. That country is Japan.
So, the verdict is out. The carbon tax is inflationary and does nothing to cut emissions. That is why I am proud to support our current Conservative motion to axe the carbon tax, and I hope that my colleagues on the other side of the House, especially those from Newfoundland and Labrador and the Maritimes, stand with their constituents when they stand to vote on this Conservative axe-the-tax motion.
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- Feb/7/23 4:48:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank my colleague, the hon. member from British Columbia, a fellow member of the FOPO committee. I always like to work with him.
Since 2015, there has been an attack on the oil and gas industry in Canada by the hon. member's party. I am sure he is ashamed of it. We have oil and gas to produce here that could bring down inflation.
We need to produce more of what money buys, including oil. That would take on these dictators all over the world. If we were to compete with them in their own market, that would be how we bring them to their knees and help our own people at the same time.
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- Feb/7/23 4:49:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, even though Newfoundland and Labrador right now is not a have province, we are still paying into the equalization formula here.
Bay du Nord is going to produce the cleanest oil in the world. It is going to allow Newfoundland and Labrador to give some equalization payments to Quebec so it can help the poor. It is a great privilege for a small province such as Newfoundland and Labrador, with a population of just over 500,000, to be able to produce our oil, get royalties from it and be prosperous, while reducing dollars for dictators and helping the people of Quebec enjoy some of the royalties we get from our oil.
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- Feb/7/23 4:51:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would just like to say that my hon. colleague from Tobique—Mactaquac is going to take over after me here shortly.
Yes, I understand. What we propose to do is this: We are going to use the technology to capture the carbon and reinject it. We do not think that cutting a quarter of a per cent of the world's carbon, produced by the largest country in the world, is going to save British Columbia from atmospheric rivers.
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- Feb/7/23 5:22:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my riding is one of the strongest mining regions in Atlantic Canada. I have a copper mine very close to where I grew up. Right now it is struggling to stay open because of the carbon tax. Every megawatt of wind energy that is generated needs 1,500 kilograms of copper to produce wind energy.
I know my hon. colleague from la belle province represents, for sure, lots of mines in his area. Mines are being developed to produce minerals for the green economy. Does he think that those mining companies should be subjected to a carbon tax when they are in fact producing things to produce green energy?
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