SoVote

Feb/7/23 11:05:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her advocacy and for her friendship. We are turning the Queen Mary, as they say. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper did nothing on climate change for 10 long years. We are reversing that trend. We are investing billions of dollars in climate action and into the new economy. We have eliminated six fossil fuel subsidies and are on our way to eliminating nine. We need to use every tool in the tool box to reduce our emissions, including carbon capture.

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Ms. Monique Pauzé (Repentigny, BQ)

Feb/7/23 11:06:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the motion before us today—which, as everyone can imagine, the Bloc Québécois will not be supporting—deserves to be defeated and deconstructed. That would allow us to point out the nuances that should be part of it, but that, not surprisingly, are completely missing from the wording of this motion. Before I focus my remarks on environmental concerns, which should still be part of our debates in 2023, I want to criticize the official opposition's approach with the amendment introduced by my colleague from Calgary Forest Lawn. I would submit—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Feb/7/23 11:06:17 a.m.
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I am sorry, but I must interrupt the hon. member. I would ask hon. members who want to have conversations to have them in the lobby. The hon. member for Repentigny may continue her speech.

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Ms. Monique Pauzé

Feb/7/23 11:07:03 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, using institutions such as the Bank of Canada and the parliamentary budget office to lend the motion credibility in points (i) and (ii) is misleading, to say the least. I am compelled to speak out against this kind of manipulation. At point (i), the motion states that “the Bank of Canada governor has admitted that the carbon tax contributes to inflation”. Inflation was not caused by the new tax. The tax is a necessary measure designed to change and orient the behaviours of Canadian society as a whole to achieve a net-zero future. Perhaps the official opposition needs to be reminded that Canada made a commitment to the global community to achieve net zero by 2050. There is a global economic context that gave rise to the conditions we are experiencing now. Simplifying inflation like that is irresponsible, and I think the public deserves a much better motion than this one. It goes without saying that taxes affect inflation, but any motion we put forward should be grounded, first and foremost, in the concatenation of factors and economic circumstances. One-dimensional motions like this are best avoided, but that is not what we are seeing here. The official opposition appears to be unaware that there are many sectors of the global economy that have been adversely impacted by the pandemic, and that there has been an associated domino effect. I will spare the House the details of the other factors involved, including the war in Ukraine. Point (ii) of the motion states that “the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that households will pay more in carbon tax costs than they get back”. I am not sure how they so carelessly arrived at this conclusion, because what they are really doing is using the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s words for their own ends. They skilfully cut out all the nuances necessary to understand and appreciate the results of the analysis, namely that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is focusing on household net carbon costs for 2030, the year in which the tax should reach $170. Things will change between now and then. The Parliamentary Budget Officer analyzes both the fiscal impact, namely the levy of the goods and services tax, and the economic impact, meaning the lower income as a result of pricing. I forgot to say that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia. When the Parliamentary Budget Officer considers only the fiscal impact, the vast majority of households in backstop provinces see a net gain, as they receive rebates that exceed their carbon costs. It is also important to note that, even considering the economic impact, net carbon costs have a progressive impact. Pricing affects households differently, depending on the composition of their spending on goods and services. According to one report, “high-income households, which have relatively high carbon-intensive consumption, bear a larger cost burden compared to lower income households”. It is therefore absolutely false to claim that, in the current context, households will be paying out more than they receive. That would be in the 2030 fiscal year. The Conservatives’ motion is first and foremost an attempt to eliminate the measure required in Canada, the country that, after all, still subsidizes hydrocarbons; the country where the most polluting vehicles on the planet are made and driven, according to the International Energy Agency; and the country beset, dare I say it, by a type of political schizophrenia in the fight against climate change, which results in contradictory announcements with meticulously crafted virtuous words and messages. I will agree that, with this motion, the Conservative member is taking a direction that differs from that of the government. I just presented a few truths about the current situation in Canada and summarily described the government’s approach to climate change, because, as I would remind members, Parliament has a responsibility to be transparent to voters. I am not naive, and I do not believe in miracles, but I believe that it is important to raise the issue of transparency. It is a well-known fact that the Conservative Party is first and foremost concerned about the oil and gas industry. That is essentially its whole vision. Its approach, which I would call demagogic and populist, is patently obvious. The carbon tax does not even affect the largest emitters, since the government built in safe-conducts, mitigation measures to ensure that the shock to these poor companies would not be too brutal. This bodes well for a sector with record-breaking profits, a boon for shareholders. Need I remind members that ExxonMobil, or Imperial Oil, raked in $74 billion in profits? We would not want the shock to these companies to be too brutal. This is absolutely ridiculous. The elimination of the carbon tax seeks first and foremost to help the oil and gas industry. It is the best solution to lock society into negative behaviours that hinder our fight against climate change. Since I am a proponent of transparency, I must say that I do not believe that the Conservative Party will see the value of implementing any meaningful measures whatsoever to encourage Canadians to change their behaviours and reduce their dependency on oil. I also do not believe that they will see the value of supporting public policy focusing on energy efficiency. I certainly am not expecting the Conservative Party to support the measures proposed by the Bloc Québécois, which would have a direct impact on the very people the Conservatives seem to want to help. For example, we are proposing adjusting the increase in old age security, building social and community housing to meet current needs, improving the energy balance of hundreds of thousands of commercial buildings by fostering energy efficiency policies aimed at breaking our dependency on oil and gas, and taxing massive fortunes, even temporarily. It is our responsibility to implement measures that will ultimately change people’s behaviours. I will give the example of cigarette companies. In 2015, the British Medical Journal analyzed 100 Canadian and American studies on tobacco taxes. Findings showed that taxation was a powerful tool to reduce smoking. Thanks to the tax, people who smoked either quit or began to smoke less, and that had a positive impact on young people. Measures like this are necessary to change our behaviours, and we need to change our behaviours if we are to take up the climate challenge. The oil and gas sector has been aware of the impact of its pollution since the 1970s. The harmful effects of air pollution on human health have been widely documented. This is compounded by the impact of the growing levels of greenhouse gas emissions. We need to stop pretending that we are not dependent on oil and gas or that this dependency has no financial, economic or health repercussions. I am not talking about the benefits to oil companies, which, as we know, are considerable. Their senior executives, the insurance sector and the banks continue to allot a disproportionate share of their investment portfolios to the oil industry. I am talking about the health and environmental costs. Air pollutants such as toxic gases like nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide reduce people’s quality of life and increase the prevalence and incidence of acute and chronic disease. Since air pollution affects almost everyone on earth, it is a global public health priority. Moreover, as the World Health Organization put it, climate change is the greatest health threat of the 21st century. The stubborn refusal to link pollution to extremely serious health problems and to recognize that dependency on fossil fuels adversely affects human health and the environment is irresponsible. I would even say that it is cowardly not to make the connection. Medical and scientific researchers who study the causal links between the environment and the development of human pathologies are now planning their work on the “multimorbidity” phenomenon. We need to keep the fuel tax. We cannot give in and cancel it, which would be dangerous and get us nowhere. I never said it would be easy. It is not easy, but we have to do it. There are solutions when it comes to improving the quality of life for most people in the current environment. I would like to end my speech by saying that all we need is the political courage to implement them and find a way to strike a balance between the most pressing needs and interests. Most importantly, we have to stop repeating falsehoods in the belief they will come true, and we need to be transparent.

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Mr. Lloyd Longfield (Guelph, Lib.)

Feb/7/23 11:16:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. colleague across the way sits with me on the environment committee, and we have great discussions there. I am glad to have a discussion with her today through you, Madam Speaker. I really appreciated her pointing out the Parliamentary Budget Officer's numbers and how they are being interpreted. When we go from annual payments to Canadians to quarterly payments, the amount going out in the financial period is going to be smaller. When we look over the whole year, it is going to be the same, but at a point in time, they can say we are not returning the money to Canadians. Could the hon. member comment on how the money is getting to Canadians and Quebeckers throughout the course of the year?

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Ms. Monique Pauzé

Feb/7/23 11:17:21 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the House adopted a carbon tax that sets out just such mechanisms. In our opinion, the great thing about those mechanisms is that the biggest polluters, meaning those with the biggest environmental footprint, will pay more than the most vulnerable members of our society whose environmental footprint is smaller. That is how this tax is assessed. We are pleased to note that this provides some measure of fairness for taxpayers.

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Mr. Damien Kurek (Battle River—Crowfoot, CPC)

Feb/7/23 11:18:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I find many of the conversations around the carbon tax interesting, especially those coming from the Bloc Québécois. They have a cap-and-trade system in the province of Quebec that is quite different from that in the rest of the country. How does that member feel about a federal government that is imposing its will and its specific requirements? It seems as though the Liberals and other left-leaning parties within Canada's Parliament talk about this somehow being a market mechanism, yet it seems to me more like a bureaucratic heavy hand from the nation's capital. How does the member, who is in a party that talks often about standing up for its province's interest, reconcile a government that is imposing on, rather than collaborating with, provinces?

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Ms. Monique Pauzé

Feb/7/23 11:19:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, who also sits on the same committee as I do. There is one thing I find a bit surprising in the official opposition's position. The carbon tax is a market-based solution, and usually the official opposition supports market-based solutions rather than direct regulation. This is true of the cap-and-trade system. Every year, new money flows in from different sources. Another thing I found surprising from the official opposition is that we are talking about a lot of money. Money is important for the Conservatives. However, let us look at a few figures. The current economic cost of the health impacts of pollution represents 6% of the GDP, and that figure is already a few years old. It is from 2018, I think. People are being affected financially. They are sick and going to the hospital with kidney problems, asthma, pulmonary diseases and so on. That also has to be taken into account in the money taxpayers have to pay. All of these public health problems are a result of pollution, of industrial and oil and gas emissions, of all of the emissions that are in the air.

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Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

Feb/7/23 11:20:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. I would like her to talk a little bit more about the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, who was attacking the official opposition, saying that it has no plan, that its plan is non-existent. I would like my colleague to talk about the fact that, despite the price on pollution, the Liberal government is failing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Is that not a result of all the conflicting decisions, such as Trans Mountain, Bay du Nord and oil subsidies, that are undermining the efforts of this government, which talks out of both sides of its mouth?

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Ms. Monique Pauzé

Feb/7/23 11:21:19 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would just like to remind my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie that I mentioned this in my speech. Indeed, when they are putting forward measures to fight greenhouse gases but are also increasing oil production in the oil sands or natural gas and investing in fossil fuels, there is something wrong. They are saying one thing and doing the complete opposite.

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Ms. Kristina Michaud (Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, BQ)

Feb/7/23 11:21:50 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what a surprise this morning's motion is. For the umpteenth time, the Conservatives are proposing that the carbon tax be eliminated, because they believe this is the best way to help ordinary people deal with the rising cost of living. This is the result of the brainstorming they did over the holidays five weeks ago. They racked their brains and looked for solutions. Now they have decided to propose the same thing they have proposed to Parliament four or five times already, even though the other parties said no every time. Once again, the Conservatives are trying to solve real problems with fake solutions. People are rightly concerned about the rising cost of living, particularly at the grocery store. However, that does not mean that the price increases are a direct result of the federal carbon tax. Eliminating the carbon tax would have a limited effect. As my colleague so ably explained, it would have a one-time effect, but no real impact in the long term. Inflation hits across the board, so eliminating the tax on one product will have no effect on the overall problem. The Conservatives are using the skyrocketing prices of food and other goods to pursue their long-standing ideological crusade against the principle of putting a price on carbon pollution, by attempting to link it to the ongoing inflation crisis. However, the price of grain, which includes the price of meat because cattle feed on grain, is negotiated based on the Chicago Board of Trade. It is hard to see how carbon pricing in the Canadian Prairies, for example, could affect the Chicago Board of Trade. Ironically, of all the tools available to fight global warming, which today's Conservatives claim they want to do, carbon pricing is probably the public policy approach that is most compatible with their political philosophy. It is a solution based on market forces rather than direct regulation. As we know, since we have often discussed it, pollution pricing is a system that varies depending on the government. The provinces and territories either adopt a pricing system tailored to their needs or join the federal system, which includes a regulatory charge on fossil fuels and a performance-based system for industries. I should remind my colleagues that the federal pricing system does not even apply to Quebec. I would be curious to hear my Conservative colleagues try to explain how eliminating the federal carbon tax will help Quebeckers save money, since I admit I do not understand. If, as the Conservatives claim, the federal carbon tax were responsible for price increases, then inflation would be higher in the provinces where carbon pricing exists than in the provinces where it does not. That is not the case, however. The wording of the Conservatives’ motion looks serious and has the ring of truth. However, if we look a little more closely, we can see that that is not necessarily the case, as happens all too often with the Conservatives' motions. Point (ii) of the motion states that “the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that households will pay more in carbon tax costs than they get back”. We only need to read the document in question once to realize that the Conservatives' motion distorts the Parliamentary Budget Officer's findings regarding the federal carbon pricing system. Contrary to what the Conservatives have been saying, the tax does not end up costing 60% of households. That is a projection for 2030-31 at $170 per tonne. Moreover, the tax is progressive because of the refund: lower-income families will see a net gain. Currently, 80% of households get more back than they pay in carbon tax. That includes all low- and modest-income households, and that is as it should be. As we all know, inflation hit basic necessities hardest in 2022. Housing prices went up by 8.7%, food by 9.8% and gas by 28%. Core inflation, which excludes the food and energy costs that eat up a disproportionate amount of low-income households' budgets, was 5.3%. The problem with the carbon tax has more to do with the rules for businesses. Small and medium-sized businesses are being penalized while major emitters take advantage of carbon tax relief programs designed to increase fossil fuel production. Oil companies pocketed the proceeds of massive oil and gas price increases attributed to international tensions and the war in Ukraine, reporting record profits in 2022. I will repeat something my colleague said, because it is important. Imperial Oil raked in $58 billion U.S. in profits, which corresponds to $74 billion Canadian. That is unprecedented. Oddly enough, the Conservatives are not proposing to tax these excess profits and redistribute them to those who are paying the price. Why would we not do that? It seems to me that this could help Quebeckers and Canadians cope with inflation. Why should we let the oil companies make billions of dollars on the backs of poor people who are struggling to pay their housing, grocery and electricity bills? Last August, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced the greed of the big oil and gas companies, which are making outrageous profits on the backs of the poorest people and at great cost to our climate. In their motion today, the Conservatives are proposing instead to exempt them from the carbon tax. This is nonsense. Let me remind the House that Canada's greenhouse gas emissions have increased by more than 20% since 1990, largely due to emissions from the oil and gas sector. The real challenge is to create a sustainable and resilient economy, one that creates wealth while respecting nature's limits, and to make this transition to the new economy in a way that is fair to workers and families. This requires reflection and searching for more far-reaching and perhaps more complex solutions than what is on offer in the usual Conservative rhetoric. We should also remember that most of the Conservative's solutions deprive the government of revenue. That does not necessarily mean that household incomes will increase. It also does not mean that big corporations will pay their fair share of taxes or that the banks and multinationals will reduce their profit margins while people are making sacrifices and seeing their purchasing power decline sharply. As was mentioned, inflation is real and affects all sectors, including housing, food and motor vehicles. This requires measures that are far more comprehensive than those proposed by the Conservative Party's rather populist position. I would like to see the Conservative members propose concrete solutions to fight climate change instead of spending their time trying to abolish measures that will fight the climate crisis. However, like the abolishment of the carbon tax, it will probably never happen. In any event, hopefully that will not happen as long as the Liberal government is in power. As parliamentarians, we must force the government to take further action to address the risks of the climate crisis. We do not discuss this enough. Obviously there are many solutions for helping the public get through the unfortunate effects of inflation. The Bloc Québécois has proposed several. I will leave it to my colleagues to talk about that later, but the solution that really speaks to me is reducing our dependence on oil. The price of gas, which jumped by 33.3% between December 2020 and December 2021, is a major determinant of inflation. It drives up the price of every good whose production requires fossil fuels. Beyond the conditions around the economic recovery from lockdown, the price of oil is chronically unstable and known for its tendency to increase suddenly and drastically, so much so that inflation metrics do not factor in energy. Since the cost of oil is essentially tied to the London and New York stock exchanges, there is little that can be done to mitigate the fluctuations and price hikes. However, it is possible to make the economy more resilient to these fluctuations by reducing our reliance on oil and by accelerating the transition to renewable energies. We need to take real action to accelerate the energy transition to shelter the economy from sudden spikes in the price of fossil fuels. This can be done in several ways. I will name a few and I invite the Conservatives to pick their favourite one. There is the electrification of transportation, energy retrofitting and support for businesses that want to move away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. Financial flows could also simply be redirected toward green economic development. There are many options, and they would have a real impact on people's wallets. There is another easy solution that I think several parties in the House like, and that is making things fair and taxing the ultrarich. As I mentioned earlier, why not tax oil companies, which are generating enormous profits? I think that the proposal that has been made several times to do away with the carbon tax is not the right solution. I invite my Conservative colleagues to propose better solutions to help citizens deal with the increased cost of living.

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Mr. Kody Blois (Kings—Hants, Lib.)

Feb/7/23 11:31:48 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for her remarks here today. She and I have had contrasting views regarding the importance of the Canadian oil and gas sector and overall prosperity, including in her home province, where the revenues of that industry help contribute to a lot of social good, not only in Quebec, but also in Nova Scotia. My question for her is about Quebec's energy future. Estimates suggest that we have to double our electricity generation across the country. That would also be the case for Quebec in the energy future she is talking about. I am curious what her view is, specific to Quebec, on what she would like to see her province do to generate and double electricity in her province, whether that would be through more hydroelectricity, or whether she is open to the idea of nuclear energy. I am curious where that might fit into what her view for Quebec is so it can position itself, as a province, in the days ahead.

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Ms. Kristina Michaud

Feb/7/23 11:32:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what my colleague is saying is very interesting. Those kinds of decisions are made by the Quebec National Assembly. However, when it comes to what we do here, I invite the federal government to look to Quebec for inspiration. Quebec has been relying on green and renewable energy for a long time. Obviously, we need to do our part like every other nation in the world, but I think that Canada has better things to do. I heard my colleague say that some of the profits contribute to the social good in other areas. Wait a minute. Do we want to start looking at all of the negative effects of climate change and how they affect people's health? We are going to have to pay an increasingly higher price in the coming years. I would invite my colleague to pay attention to that.

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Mrs. Cathay Wagantall (Yorkton—Melville, CPC)

Feb/7/23 11:33:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this morning I had a great meeting with representatives from the CLC. We talked about the issues around a just transition, and they were very concerned. Right now, there is funding to assist people in retraining into more environmentally friendly jobs, however, they are very frustrated because the government has indicated that they have to quit their existing jobs before they can get this funding, which is counterintuitive to the fact that people need to continue to earn a living in a means available to them while they seek these other roles. I would like the member's feedback on that. How does she feel about being required to stop one's source of income in order to get funding for training in another area?

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Ms. Kristina Michaud

Feb/7/23 11:34:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, without a doubt, as the federal government transitions to a greener economy, it will need to support affected workers, families and industries. However, the government still needs to start that transition, first. Unfortunately, it is clear yet again that it has not. We are waiting for the government's plans detailing future climate action initiatives. We know that our economy will need to be broadly transformed in the coming years. However, we still have no idea how this will be accomplished. I can understand why workers, who feel uncertain about the future of their job or the industry in which they have been employed for years, are concerned. Perhaps the government needs to ensure greater transparency and predictability, and to support workers during this obviously major process. Perhaps the government could also help us better understand, too.

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Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

Feb/7/23 11:35:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. I would like to circle back to a point that I find particularly relevant, and that is the Liberals' fear or reluctance to go after big oil's profits. There is a double standard towards ordinary Canadians. We have pointed out that the oil companies have doubled their profits, that the government continues to hand them subsidies and that it does not dare tax them more, despite pleas from the UN Secretary-General. In my colleague's opinion, why do the Liberals not dare go there, when it is a pretty easy and obvious answer?

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Ms. Kristina Michaud

Feb/7/23 11:35:57 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was getting to that in my speech. I know my colleague has already mentioned several numbers. The Canadian company Cenovus Energy posted net earnings of $2.4 billion in July, which is more than 10 times its earnings for the most recent quarter last year. The same goes for Suncor, which is making huge profits. I do wonder why the government refuses to go there. What we have seen so far is that the government is struggling to make tough decisions, struggling to go up against industries that are putting enormous pressure on the government. Why is the government holding back from making those tough decisions? It is because it knows that it will have the NDP's support no matter what it does. Why bother wading into difficult situations? The government is comfortable in its partnership with the NDP, which backs up every major decision it makes. That is my answer to my colleague's question.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Feb/7/23 11:37:04 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak, once again, on the important topic of climate change. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, I think we have had seven motions on the carbon tax and not a single one that talks about the problem of climate change. We know that even if we had stabilized climate change in 2015, the costs already would have taken $25 billion off of GDP growth in Canada. Therefore, the economic costs of not acting on climate change are quite large. We can talk about economic costs all day long, but we also need to talk about other direct costs like fires and floods. We need to talk about health care costs, increased lung problems, asthma problems. We need to talk about the results of fires with respect to smoke, and drinking water quality, as toxins are released into the atmosphere and end up in our drinking water. In all those things, we also need to talk about the actual losses suffered by families and individuals. We had a huge heat dome in British Columbia and across western Canada in 2021. In the week from June 25 to July 1 of 2021, the B.C. coroner's office estimated that there were 619 heat-related deaths, 619 families losing loved ones as a result of an event, which the Columbia Climate School of Columbia University studied very carefully and laid squarely at the feet of climate change. It said that there were two factors that caused that heat dome. One was the disruption of the jet stream and the other was the warming of oceans and of the soil. Instead of expecting something like a heat dome once every 100 or 200 years, the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University now says we need to expect those kinds of events once every 10 years. During that week, the village of Lytton set a new record for a temperature in Canada, 49.6°C. The next day, after setting that record, a wildfire swept through the town, killing two people and destroying the entire town of Lytton. More than 200 homes were lost. We can talk about large numbers in climate change, but when we actually look at what happens to individuals, to families and to communities and what will happen increasingly often as climate change proceeds, it seems misdirected to spend all our time talking about a carbon tax, misdirected for two very good reasons. One is, again, the fact that the larger impacts of climate change will cost far more than any climate-related carbon tax. I have not even talked about things like the drop in agricultural yields and the loss of fisheries that are coming up, all of these things we see on the horizon as a result of the climate change. I forgot to say at the beginning, Madam Speaker. I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver East, so I apologize for that. When we are talking about the Conservative motion today, the Conservatives continue to repeat and bring back their slogan, and I hesitate to repeat it myself, which has something to do with something tripling. In fact, we know that nothing has actually tripled. In fact, we know that where families will face increasing costs directly through fires and heat-related costs, they will also face it in increased insurance premiums for their home insurance, as insurance companies attempt to recover their losses from these climate disasters. In fact, if we look at the increase in the carbon tax, which is designed to reduce our emissions and has been proven as one of the most effective ways to do so, on April 1 of this year, the tax will increase from $50 per tonne to $65 per tonne, and I do not see any system of math where that is a tripling. When we look at the increase of the tax on a litre of gas, it goes from 11¢ a litre to 14¢ a litre. Again, there is no tripling there. Also, that is way less than the inflated profits that the oil companies have been squeezing out of all of us during this climate crisis. Focusing on the carbon tax seems misdirected at best, especially when over half the households in Canada are not affected by the carbon tax when it comes to things like home heating. In British Columbia, we have a different scheme. Therefore, taking the carbon tax off home heating would nothing to relieve costs for British Columbians or Quebeckers, who also have a different scheme. I will politely call this a sleight of hand with figures. We know right now that eight out of 10 households get more back on their rebates than they pay in carbon tax. The Conservatives like to cite a parliamentary budget office report, which talks about 2030 and about estimates of what might happen in seven to eight years from now. Again, speaking about tripling and using figures like those being used here is at best inaccurate. What has the NDP said about things like home heating costs? At this time of inflation that is certainly a great concern. I remember that one of the times this motion came forward we asked the Conservatives to accept an amendment to their motion to support removing the GST off home heating for every household in Canada and they refused. They were so focused on the carbon tax that they refused a measure that would have helped every Canadian household meet both the costs, specifically of home heating, and the generalized squeeze that they were finding on their incomes and on their ability to make ends meet at the end of the month. In his opening speech on this motion today, the Leader of the Opposition talked about nuclear power. I have heard some other members in the House, including some on the government side, talking about nuclear power as if it somehow provides some kind of solution to climate change. The member for Carleton said that it would be a good way to combat emissions. Let us take a look at that backward-looking, rear view of the world. Nuclear power is far too expensive and far too slow to provide any solutions to our emissions crisis at this time. We need to reduce emissions right now. The average planning time to construct a new nuclear facility is over 10 years. That is from start to finish. We know when construction delays are factored in that the actual time for a new nuclear plant to come online around the world now is about 15 years. That is way too late to address the climate crisis we are in now. Let us say we ignore that and nuclear power were to go ahead. What would it cost to build nuclear power as opposed to renewables? If we take the all-in costs right now, the best figures I could find for solar and wind power, including the cost of storage and the cost of the networks that must be built, is about $2,000 per kilowatt hour of production for renewables. That has dropped 69% over the last decade. Technology is improving and with economies of scale, the cost of renewables continue to drop each and every year. Over the past decade, nuclear costs in contrast increased 25% in that same period. There is no indication that those costs will drop any time in the future. If we are talking about large-scale nuclear power projects, the costs are estimated at over $10,000 per kilowatt hour. That is five times the cost of renewables. That is five times as much energy one could produce for the same investment from renewables over nuclear, and of course it could be done now instead of in 10 to 15 years. If we are talking about what some people like to talk about, the new technology of nuclear, which is small-scale nuclear reactors, the cost for small-scale reactors is estimated at $16,000 per kilowatt hour. That is 16% more than a large-scale project and eight times mores than renewables. Therefore, by any stretch of the imagination and by any measure we want to use, it is foolish to talk about nuclear energy as a solution to our climate crisis. Instead, we need to be talking about renewables. The other part, which I have been interested in ever since I became a member of Parliament, is that these jobs in renewable energy use many of the same skills that workers have in the current energy industry in places like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. We need to focus on investment in those renewables and investment in creating those well family supporting jobs in renewable energy. We cannot really ask ordinary working families to pay the cost of this transition with their jobs and with their houses. We have to ensure that those new jobs in renewable energy, those sustainable jobs, will be in place for workers as we head into a future where hopefully we can avoid the climate disaster that is on the horizon.

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Mr. Lloyd Longfield (Guelph, Lib.)

Feb/7/23 11:47:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, British Columbia has participated in the global carbon market for a number of years now and has had the economic benefit of that as well as some climate change benefits, as the member has mentioned, with new industries coming to British Columbia. I have seen a lot of EV adaptation in British Columbia compared to places that do not have participation in the carbon market. The member also mentioned health benefits. As someone who has asthma, I know that having clean air is very important to being able to breathe everyday. Could the hon. member talk about what it means to be in the carbon market versus sitting on the sidelines of the carbon market, as this opposition day motion would ask us to do?

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Mr. Randall Garrison

Feb/7/23 11:47:51 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member gets to the real heart of the matter. We can talk about what might happen in the future, but we know what we can do about this now. By being in the carbon market, we can provide the right signals in the economy. However, I am a bit of a skeptic about how fast that carbon market would bring about the changes we need. What I would like to see is large-scale investment right now in renewable energy projects, starting in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, where the need to replace jobs right away for workers who face job losses as we go forward is most acute.

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