44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 7, 2023 10:00AM
- Feb/7/23 10:08:38 a.m.
- Watch
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.
1247 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/7/23 1:07:35 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals in the debate, all day long, keep saying that Canadians have never had it so good. They seem exacerbated as, again, we fight against their punishing carbon tax.
We are going to keep fighting against the carbon tax so that Canadians can keep their heat on, can drive to work and can afford nutritious food. We will never apologize for that.
We have heard today some version of what they call an environmental plan, but make no mistake. The Liberals gave us an environmental plan, or they gave us a tax plan that was disguised as an environmental plan, and it was directly cited for the higher prices. In fact, their tax is working so well that we have already seen it raised three times. We are still no closer to meeting any sort of environmental goal.
In fact, Canada is the only G7 country, if we want to play the facts game, that has raised fuel taxes during a period of record-high inflation. That should tell us everything we need to know about where we are in this.
We are in the depths of winter and home heating costs are, in some cases, up 100%. Heating one's home in Canada is not a luxury. I do not know why we have to say it, but it is a necessity in this country. All one has to do is go outside for 30 minutes.
There is no denying that the government and its NDP coalition partners who vote with it every single time, although they get up in the House and scream at the government that nothing is going right and then continue to support it, are making prices higher for families. They make this necessity more expensive with a plan to triple the tax, no matter what they say outside of this place. No matter what motion they bring forward, they are the ones who support the government in making things more expensive for every single Canadian.
It is a plan that disproportionately punishes people in rural areas who have no choice but to rely on heating oil or other heat sources made more expensive by the carbon tax. It is a plan that disproportionately punishes families, including parents who are struggling to feed their kids, who are struggling to get to work and who are struggling to drive their kids to activities and school.
I know they do not like to hear it, and they certainly do not want to talk about it. We would be here for an eternity if they had to admit it. However, for more Canadians, things have never been so bad, and a little humility and an admission of responsibility would go a long way for the people across the aisle.
The Liberals laugh, and they say that the stories that we tell in the House are not real. They must not speak to the same people we speak to. They must not listen to the same people we listen to. They must not go to the places we go. If they did, they would know that these stories are very real.
They are painfully real for millions of Canadians, and they are growing in number. The most out-of-touch thing that anybody can do, while serving others in this place, is to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that everything is fine, because it is not. It is far from it.
Here in Canada, the Liberals have given us the highest inflation in 40 years, some of the highest interest rates in the G7, the highest in a generation, and the highest home prices ever. Add a carbon tax on top of that. We will continue to speak against that tax in the House until we have the opportunity, as a government, to remove it.
If the government was in touch at all with the economic reality, it would know that one cannot tax one's way to prosperity. It does not work. It never has.
With respect to our farmers, the hon. member for Foothills speaks with farmers, and I will be splitting my time with him.
On everything that we eat, on everything that we buy and on everything that we use, the Liberals have imposed a tax. It started at $30 a tonne, then it went to $40 a tonne and now it is at $50 a tonne. They promised Canadians, before the last election, that it would never go up. Never is a really long time, but it did.
We should have known better. We should have known that $30 was going to be $40, then it was going to be $50 and now it is $170. That might not mean a lot in terms of tonnage, but it makes everything that we buy, that we eat, that we use and where we go more expensive. It has an effect throughout the economy.
They will tell us that Canadians get back more than they pay. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said the opposite. Tripling the price, without even making a dent in emissions, and presenting it as if they are returning that money to Canadians is the only misinformation that we have heard in the House today.
Why, after all of this evidence, are they still saying that over and over again? All they have to do is open the report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the Liberals appointed. There are 20% of Canadians skipping meals just to make ends meet, because the cost of groceries has gone up 11%. They have not gone up because I have said they have gone up, but they have actually gone up. People are not angry because I said that they are angry. They are angry because they are hungry and the price of groceries has gone up 11%.
It is a direct result of the carbon tax, because it costs more to grow, more to harvest, more to transport and more to buy. The Liberals blame someone else, something else or somewhere else for that failure, but it is their fault. It is squarely their fault and they could show some humility in this House and take responsibility for it. It would go a long way.
We have the lowest projected GDP per capita growth of any advanced economy. This is not just in the G7, but of any advanced economy. The time to add taxes to the mix is not right now. It is actually never, when it comes to this tax that does not work.
Two years ago, the Leader of the Opposition, when he sat here as the member for Carleton, warned that if a government had unchecked and unrestrained out-of-control spending, it would lead to higher inflation and higher interest rates. The cost of government would drive up the cost of living, and that is exactly what we have seen happen.
The Liberals told us the only way to save ourselves on the environmental front is a carbon tax, but, again, that does not match reality. It turns out, once again, that our trust was misplaced in a Liberal government that said it would not raise the carbon tax. It has now raised the carbon tax, and it is about to triple it.
All one needs to do to verify the claim is just look around. Do we not have the highest inflation in 40 years? Do we not have the highest interest rates in a generation? Is home ownership not out of reach for Canadians? Are people not paying more for the cost of energy to heat their homes, to drive their cars and to buy their food? We know the answer, and it seems the Liberals know it too.
We bring this up every single day in the House. We quote testimony from experts and testimony from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom the Liberals appointed. We bring stories of the people who are hurting in this country, and the Liberals laugh it off or call it fake.
The response from the government is another program, another inflationary spending measure, a plan to triple the carbon tax, more platitudes and empty words and a few Instagram posts. Then they pat themselves on the back and clap for each other.
The Liberals can talk about the billions of dollars they have spent, and they can talk about it all they want, but that comes from the taxpayer. Never has so much money been spent to bring so few results to so few people in this country. That is a fact.
More of the same ideas that got us here in the first place are just not good enough. We have a different approach. Instead of giving more power to the government, instead of the central planning that we see from them, let us give more power to Canadians and let them spend more of their own money.
Let us put that money back into their pockets and help them live with dignity and help them survive. Let us help them pay to heat their homes, to drive their cars and to buy nutritious food for their families. Instead of raising taxes, leave workers with more money in their pockets, because they know how to spend their wages.
There is only one taxpayer in this country, and the Liberals ought to recognize that. The Liberals ought to show some humility, take some responsibility for the inflation crisis they have caused and not add yet another tax. Instead of throwing more money at the problem, let us invest in solutions that work. Let us reduce greenhouse gases. Let us get housing built. Let us build more transit.
In short, instead of telling Canadians that everything is fine and that they have never had it so good, let us have the government show some humility and take responsibility for the crisis that they have created.
1657 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/7/23 2:23:19 p.m.
- Watch
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?
108 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/7/23 2:34:54 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister's carbon tax, Canadians continue to struggle. They continue to struggle to be able to heat their homes, to be able to feed their families, to be able to commute to work. After eight years, things are not looking better.
Recently, a 70-year-old woman came into my office with her heating bill in her hand and tears down her face because she cannot afford it. She has turned her thermostat down to 17°C. It is -36°C outside.
My question is very simple: Why will the government not show a little compassion and take the tax off so that Canadians can keep the heat on?
119 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/7/23 5:07:03 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague and I agree on one thing, and that is that people are most definitely struggling right now. I can be on board with us identifying and moving forward with practical solutions, such as those the member was speaking of.
I am wondering if the member could explain why, when only certain provinces would benefit from this motion, he would not support us removing GST from all home heating, so we could look at, as he says, cutting a break for those who are struggling most.
90 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
