44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 7, 2023 10:00AM
- Feb/7/23 10:07:37 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that,
(i) the Bank of Canada governor has admitted that the carbon tax contributes to inflation,
(ii) the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that households will pay more in carbon tax costs than they get back,
(iii) the government plans to triple the carbon tax, which will increase the price of gas, groceries, and home heating,
the House call on the government to immediately cancel the carbon tax.
He said: Mr. Speaker, after eight years in government, the Prime Minister is out of touch and Canadians are out of money. Nowhere is that more evident than in the words of the Prime Minister's own top minister from Newfoundland and Labrador, who said he is “sick and tired of people talking about the cold winter”. He is sick and tired of hearing the stories of seniors in his riding calling to complain that his tax is making it impossible for them to heat their homes.
If he is sick and tired of hearing about the pain and suffering that his Liberal government is causing after eight years, why do they not stop causing that pain and suffering? If he is still sick and tired, why does he not get out of the way and let another government step in and stand up for the people who are trying to heat their homes? Maybe this out-of-touch Liberal minister needs to hear more, not less, of the stories of his own constituents.
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- Feb/7/23 10:08:38 a.m.
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I have an article from the government's own propaganda arm, the CBC, entitled “Diesel, home heating fuels see significant price spike in unscheduled adjustment”. It reads, “Diesel and two types of home heating oils saw massive price increases Friday”, which was the Friday that just passed, “in an unscheduled adjustment by the Public Utilities Board.”
What is the solution the Liberal minister from Newfoundland and Labrador has to these skyrocketing prices? It is not to produce more affordable energy here in our country, even though his province has access to immense offshore reserves that the Prime Minister has discouraged. His solution instead is to triple the carbon tax on his own residents.
If he is tired of hearing about the cost of home heating now, just wait until he imposes that tax increase. This tax is particularly painful for those people who are already living in economically depressed parts of this country and who are forced to heat with oil and propane, the cost of which is already higher than it is in other places.
As we see across northern Ontario, Canadians will be paying drastically increased home heating bills, with the support of the NDP in its coalition with the Liberals. We have, for example, the member for Timmins—James Bay voting to raise home heating bills on his constituents. An NDP member who was elected to serve his constituents is now serving and bowing before the Liberal Prime Minister by raising taxes on his own constituents.
It is not just in oil-heated communities; it is also in places like Hamilton. The suffering is now spreading. A headline from The Hamilton Spectator reads, “‘What am I going to do, go cold?’: Natural gas bill sticker shock triggers anger for inflation-weary Ontario residents”. What is the solution from the NDP member for Hamilton Centre? He wants to triple the carbon tax on hard-working blue collar folks in Hamilton. Thankfully, even though they are temporarily stuck with an NDP coalition member as their MP, the Conservatives are fighting for the hard-working people of Hamilton and opposing this carbon tax increase.
Let me quote further from the same article:
When a nearly $250 natural gas bill arrived for November, Lily Francisci called her parents with questions. Her dad's response: “Get used to it,” the north-end Hamilton resident said, or keep your house at 20 C.
Then December’s bill arrived: $353.08.
Imagine what January's bill will look like, as it was even colder than December. The bills keep rising and the temperature keeps dropping.
Therefore, I announce on the floor of the House of Commons today that the Conservative Party has launched a nationwide campaign to get the NDP-Liberal costly coalition to wake up. This coalition is taxing our people and we have had enough, so we are launching a campaign to keep the heat on and take the tax off.
We will keep the heat on this costly coalition to take the tax off so that not just heat becomes more affordable but food does too. Remember, the carbon tax is actually a tax on the food we eat. Why? It is because when we tax our farmers who produce the food and tax the truckers who deliver the food, we tax the food itself.
Let me note the data provided to me by a major mushroom farm just south of here, about half an hour south of Parliament Hill, called the Carleton Mushroom Farms. It is an unbelievably successful farm that employs about 100 people. It supplies the nation's capital with the mushrooms we eat. Its natural gas carbon tax bill was $9,000 for the month of July. The bill expected for January is $14,275. That is for one month.
Do members think that does not get passed on to consumers? Ultimately, at the end of the day the farmer has to pay the bill somehow. Ultimately, Carleton Mushroom Farms will take a hit. It will suffer, and probably produce fewer mushrooms than it otherwise would, which of course means that we will import more mushrooms from foreign, polluting jurisdictions, driving jobs out and pollution up. The consumer will also have to pay a higher price for those mushrooms.
Why do we not take the tax off Carleton Mushroom Farms so that it can lower the cost of its produce and increase the amount of food it produces in this country? We should be more self-reliant. We have the fifth-biggest supply of farmland per capita on planet earth. It is unacceptable that we cannot feed ourselves. We should be a nation that stands on its own feet, kneels before no nation and feeds itself. That is what will happen.
The pain and suffering is spreading across the land. For example, the other day, I was in an east end Ottawa grocery store and a cook walked up to me. He said that he had to delay his retirement because, after eight years of the Prime Minister, inflation is at a 40-year high and he cannot afford to retire on schedule. The thing that really broke him up was that he could no longer buy the ingredients to cook at home that he uses at work.
He held up a frozen pizza and said that he was stuck eating that frozen pizza rather than making his own food. It was probably a foreign-made pizza that was produced in some faraway land that is generating a lot more pollution, with processed ingredients that are not as nutritious. This gentleman, who has worked all his life feeding other people, is not able to feed himself better than that.
That is because of the inflationary deficits and taxes that the government has imposed. These are the inflationary deficits and taxes that the hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn, as my finance critic, has been fighting against. That is why I am so proud to be splitting my time with him.
His story epitomizes the Canadian dream. His parents came here with modest means as immigrants. He grew up in a tough but proud neighbourhood. He went on to study finance, got a finance degree and then went off and opened his own business. He built homes to house our people and paid paycheques to other Canadians.
Do members know what I am so proud of? It has been the tradition that we have big shot Bay Streeters as ministers of finance. Our shadow minister of finance has created real jobs, worked with his hands, built businesses and helped troubled youth. He has the practical hands-on experience to know what this country should be: a country where everybody who works hard gets a fair shot at life.
When we get rid of the carbon tax, when we cancel the inflationary deficits and when we reform our tax and benefits system so that people bring home more of each dollar they earn, it is not just about mathematics. It about restoring Canada's promise: a country where hard work pays off and where everybody who gets out of bed in the morning and contributes to their country can make it better for themselves and their families.
That is the country we are going to restore. Let us keep the heat on and take the tax off. Let us bring it home.
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- Feb/7/23 10:19:57 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for acknowledging the 150-day mark of my leadership. I am just disappointed he did not get me a nice present to honour the occasion. Maybe that question was the present. He often lobs me these softballs across the way.
The member wants some ideas. Here are some ideas: Why do we not use technology instead of taxes to fight climate change? Why do we not support our energy sector in pumping the carbon back into the ground through carbon capture and storage? Why do we not speed up nuclear power so that we can have more emissions-free electricity on our grid? Why do we not get out of the way of the people of Quebec and speed up the approval of future hydroelectric dams so they can produce even more prodigious emissions-free electricity? There are some ideas that would actually protect our environment and our customers.
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- Feb/7/23 10:20:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, first, the member is wrong. She says that we have not come up with any proposals to abolish unjustifiable corporate profits. In fact, yesterday, we moved a motion in the House of Commons to take away McKinsey's unjustifiable profits. We said no to the big contracts the Liberal government awards to major corporations and the contracts worth $1,500 a day, or even an hour.
We are the ones going after the subsidies to Liberal businesses that profit from Liberal gifts. What is more, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of these gifts. We want to lower taxes that are weighing heavy on ordinary Canadians, but we do not want to lower them for Liberal businesses.
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- Feb/7/23 10:22:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I am hearing is that the NDP-Liberal plan to triple, triple, triple the carbon tax will do nothing to fight climate change. The NDP has nothing to say about workers. It has abandoned workers. The NDP members believe that the greedy government, of which they are a part, should have more of workers' paycheques.
There was a time, way back in the day, when the NDP actually fought for working people. Now they fight for big government and special interests in Ottawa. They have abandoned and are now attacking the working people by raising their home heating bills, raising their gas bills, raising their grocery bills and raising their taxes so the government, the bureaucracy, the special interests in Ottawa, the McKinseys of the world who get these juicy contracts, for which the NDP voted, get more and the working people get less. We believe exactly the opposite.
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- Feb/7/23 2:19:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, health care in Canada is broken. He has accomplished the impossible. He managed to double our national debt, adding more inflationary debt than all prior prime ministers combined, without improving health care. In fact, it is worse than ever.
Today, the Prime Minister admitted that the system does not meet our expectations. Will he finally take responsibility so that we can fix what he broke?
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- Feb/7/23 2:20:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, health care in Canada is broken. He has accomplished the impossible: He managed to double our national debt, adding more debt than all prior prime ministers combined, without improving health care. In fact, by his own admission, it is worse.
Now will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility for the problems in health care he has caused so that we can fix what he broke?
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- Feb/7/23 2:21:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, inflation is at a 40-year high.
Former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau said that the Prime Minister spent too much. Another former Liberal finance minister, John Manley, said that this spending caused inflation. The current Governor of the Bank of Canada says that government spending is causing inflation and Mark Carney, the future Liberal leader, agrees.
Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for the inflation he caused so we can fix what he has broken?
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- Feb/7/23 2:23:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, his investments in pharmaceuticals? He gave $170 million to a pharmaceutical operation that is shutting down; that is a prime example.
After eight years of the Prime Minister wasting our money, inflation is at a 40-year high. Now home heating bills have doubled. Seniors wonder how they are going to keep the heat on because this tax is going to be tripled, tripled and tripled under the NDP-Liberal coalition.
Will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility for the misery he has put on household heating bills, and will he accept that we are going to keep the heat on to take the tax off?
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- Feb/7/23 2:24:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that this government does not have their back; the government has its hands in their back pockets. That is what is happening.
There is $170 million dollars here for this wasted investment, $54 million for the ArriveCAN scam and, of course, $2 billion invested in a company that does not actually exist. Who is paying for it? Well, people are now seeing the bills on their home heating, which has doubled with higher gas prices and, of course, when our farmers and truckers are taxed with a carbon tax, they have to raise the price of the food that comes to our grocery stores.
Will the Liberals finally back down from this crazy carbon tax scheme? We are going to keep the heat on until they take the tax off.
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