44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 27, 2023 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, before I start, I want to extend my condolences to the Cossey family who farmed down the road from where I grew up near Chipman, for the loss of their beautiful Veronica, a much-loved, well-known and universally admired nurse, farm wife and community member from Lamont county.
I appreciate this opportunity to stand up for people like the Cosseys, for people all across Lakeland, and for hard-working farmers and agricultural workers across Alberta and throughout Canada, against the rising costs brought on by the NDP-Liberal costly coalition's carbon tax.
I thank my Conservative colleagues, the MP for Huron—Bruce who brought in this bill and the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South who introduced it as Bill C-206, which was agreed to before the Liberals called the unnecessary 2021 election. That put it back to square one and blocked crucial relief for farmers of the carbon tax on their farm fuels for the past two years.
I am proud to represent all kinds of farms, ag businesses and farming families across Lakeland, which is the fourth largest rural riding in Alberta. It is home to nine first nations and Métis communities, and more than 50 municipalities and summer villages. It takes almost an hour to drive from end to end. Lakeland's economy mainly relies on agriculture, natural resources and small businesses.
I hope colleagues from urban and suburban ridings can begin to imagine the distances, infrastructure challenges, equipment required and costs involved in the daily lives and work of the people and businesses across an area larger than 86 countries around the world, especially for those family farms and related businesses that make a living off the land and who feed the world using the highest environmental and production standards of any farmers on Planet Earth.
Where I am from, while a lot of us use Starlink now for Internet, we still cannot haul cattle or seed a crop with a Tesla, and almost none of the towns have public infrastructure and transportation. It is in those rural areas that Canadian farmers live and work to feed their neighbours and cities.
As one of the world's largest producers of canola, oats, wheat, flaxseed and pulse crops, and the fifth-largest agricultural exporter in the world, Canada's agriculture sector accounts for almost 7% of GDP and sustains the livelihoods of 2.4 million Canadians. It is vital.
Farmers are the backbone of Canadian rural communities. They work hard days and late nights to put food on our tables. Canadian farmers compete with each other and globally, so they constantly innovate for the most efficient production of crops and livestock to maintain, improve and steward the land, water and air on which their lives literally entirely depend. They strive to reduce costs and offer high-quality but affordable products. However, despite their generations of excellence in environmental stewardship and emissions reduction, the Liberals slapped them with an ever-growing carbon tax. Farmers now struggle to provide for their families, to maintain their businesses, to contribute to their communities and to pass on their way of life.
Constituents often share personal trials and tribulations, and my dedicated staff and I work as best we can to solve the problems we can impact. We all agree that some of the most heartbreaking conversations are in farmyards or in the constituency office where farmers, some whose roots stretch back so far they have awards that celebrate more than a century of their families' blood, sweat, tears and work, painfully say they have resigned themselves to hope that their kids do not try to take it on and that they pick a different path because the costs are insurmountable. It is no wonder, when some farmers will face $150,000 a year in taxes just seven years from now if the Liberals stay on course.
Canadian farmers and ag-based communities have faced major challenges in recent years, as collateral damage in trade wars and diplomatic disputes has made the normal uncertain weather, growing conditions and global prices even worse. Back-to-back disasters have hit Lakeland with alternating harvests from hell and major flooding. Farmers lost a significant portion of their crops, with some being completely wiped out, and other farmers ran out of grazing area and feed for their livestock.
Farmers have clearly requested one thing: Axe the expensive and unfair carbon tax so they can continue to feed Canadians and the world.
Michelle, a farmer from Blackfoot, says that carbon tax hikes are “crippling”. She says, “In my opinion, the Federal Minister of Agriculture is not taking this issue seriously.”
Farmers already have to navigate challenging conditions, and carefully plan and save so they do not go bankrupt during bad years. When rural families have to watch their once-a-year paycheque burn, drown, rot, freeze on the field or get loaded for processing because they cannot afford to feed all year, or the costs for grain drying and heating barns are skyrocketing and too expensive, situations that are completely out of their control, the government should not use a tax to make it worse and take even more away.
Unfortunately, the Liberals' approach to farmers and farm families is mostly broken programs, endless platitudes and, at worst, layers of punitive policies and outright hostility to their way of life.
In 2016, the then ag minister said the Liberals would not exempt farmers from the carbon tax because “the impact is a very small percentage of operating costs”. Frankly, that is just not the reality for farmers, ranchers and rural Canadians. Farmers need specialized, expensive equipment powered by fuels that have no alternatives to grow and harvest their crops, to irrigate and to heat barns and buildings.
The carbon tax will cost the average farmer $45,000 a year overall, with estimates of $36,000 a year for grain drying alone. The worst part is that the Liberals were warned, but they ignored the CFIB's analysis that farmers would already be paying an average of $14,000 a year in federal carbon taxes when it was just $20 in 2019. The Liberals hiked it 150% a year ago, and days from now the Liberals will triple that carbon tax compared to 2019. Let us talk about the worst April Fool's joke ever.
It is not just the Conservatives saying the carbon tax will cost more. The independent, non-partisan PBO confirms it is a net loss for most Canadians. The truth is that 60% of all households pay more than they get back. That will rise to 80% in Ontario and Alberta by next year. The average Canadian family will pay an extra 400 bucks, and more than 840 bucks in those provinces, in carbon tax this year after Liberal rebates. Farmers and ranchers of course will pay even more, but Michelle from Blackfoot is right. The Liberals do not care about the disproportionate damage of their carbon tax for rural Canadians and producers.
It is even more galling that the Liberals refuse to reverse course. Almost half of Canadians are $200 away from bankruptcy, and food prices are skyrocketing so that Canadians are already skipping meals, turning down the heat or cutting out meat and veggies to make ends meet because of the Liberals' reckless tax and inflationary spending agenda. The Liberals' rebate program, which they claim is an offset, is really just a blanket return to producers that is entirely based on eligible farming expenses that needs a total of over $25,000 to qualify. It ignores the distinct impacts of carbon surcharges on particular farms, sector productivity and competitiveness.
The carbon tax affects the entire supply chain. It makes it more expensive for farmers to produce food, and more expensive to ship it, which raises the cost of groceries for all Canadians. In many cases, farmers are so cash-strapped, they cannot afford any more capital-intensive innovations and technologies for productivity and sustainability gains. That is the exact opposite of what carbon tax proponents claim they want.
A chicken producer and mixed farmer, Ross, from Lakeland, recently said to me in exasperation that he doesn't know what the Prime Minister wants him to do: use coal or just quit farming. Obviously, a full carbon tax exemption for natural gas and propane, lower-emitting, more affordable and actually available fuels would make a real difference for farmers struggling to pay their bills. However, the Liberals do not listen to everyday Canadians, Conservatives or apparently even their own public servants. They impose policies with arbitrary and impossible targets without a second thought to how it will hike costs for everyone and hurt some even more.
Of course, the Liberal government's own studies long warned of the major added costs of the carbon tax for farmers and all Canadians. In 2015, Finance Canada said imposing a carbon tax would “cascade through the economy in the form of higher prices...leading all firms and consumers to pay more”. That prediction came true. The Lloydminster Ag Exhibition Association also says the carbon tax is “crippling” and too much of a burden. Its bill is already $30,000 a year in carbon tax alone. Its building got major energy retrofits, but the carbon tax still hiked bills 30% and taxed away any cost savings.
However, the Liberals are happy to add disproportionate costs to farmers, farm families and rural residents, even while the carbon tax causes everyone economic pain with no discernible environmental gain. That is not where their votes are.
Ultimately, all Canadians, farmers, workers, consumers, business owners, the middle class, people on fixed incomes, the working poor, urban residents, all consumers and anyone who eats will pay the price. Conservatives will axe the carbon tax completely, but today we can at least exempt farmers from the carbon tax on fuels they cannot do without, for which there are no alternatives to affordably or immediately replace, and save them tens of thousands of dollars a year on necessary farming costs and operations.
I want to thank, again, our Conservative colleague from Huron—Bruce for giving us this common-sense opportunity to turn hurt into hope for Conservative farmers. I am proud of the agricultural sector in Lakeland and all across the country. I am grateful to all the farmers, producers, their families and their workers. That is why I support Bill C-234, and I encourage all MPs who claim to stand with Canadian farmers and ranchers to do the same.
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Madam Speaker, I have to say I was a bit nervous there for a minute after the Conservatives made it so I was unable to give my remarks last week. I was worried that was going to happen again. I am quite happy they are just cold at the moment.
As always, it is my great delight to stand in this House and represent the people of Edmonton Strathcona. Today, we are talking about something that is very close to my heart and something that I have been working on for most of my career. While I am delighted to stand representing the people of Edmonton Strathcona, I am not delighted to be having this conversation at this moment in time.
In February 2021, six months before the fall of Kabul, I wrote to Mr. Garneau, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and I explained to him what was going to happen in August of 2021 if the Canadian government did not take action. I raised that again during question period in May 2021 and spoke about how people in Afghanistan needed Canada to stand up.
We all know what happened in August 2021. We all know how we failed the people of Afghanistan in August 2021. We know the reasons for it. I am not going to get into that here. We failed them on immigration. We failed them on humanitarian aid. We failed the people of Afghanistan in so many different ways.
Today, we are talking about a bill that is supposed to fix that failure. Today, we are talking about Bill C-41, which is a humanitarian carve-out. Let me correct that; it is supposed to be a humanitarian carve-out for humanitarian organizations.
We are in this place right now debating a bill that took 18 months to come to fruition, while so many Afghans suffered and starved. The government took 18 months. What we have right now is not even what the humanitarian sector asked for. It is not even what we have been calling for the past 18 months.
I stood in this House and asked for a humanitarian carve-out for humanitarian organizations so that Canadians who wanted to help in Afghanistan could do that and so that Canadians who have decades of experience working with the people in Afghanistan could do that.
I raised that in the House on November 30, 2021. I asked if the minister, at the time, was going to act with the urgency required to make sure there was a humanitarian carve-out in place so that Canadian organizations could work in Afghanistan and could help people in Afghanistan who were suffering so much under the current regime.
Instead, what we have now is a bill that will limit the abilities of humanitarian organizations. Let us make this very clear: This is not just about Afghanistan. This is about all humanitarian contexts. What we decide with this legislation will have impacts in Gaza and Yemen, and it will have impacts in all kinds of humanitarian contexts. While we are looking at it within the scope of Afghanistan right now, it is not just about Afghanistan and every single person needs to understand that.
I was speaking to experts. I am sure many of us spoke to experts within the humanitarian sector. MSF recently put in a published response to Bill C-41. It said:
Criminalizing Canadian humanitarian agencies or their staff for working in territories controlled by terrorist groups would be contrary to existing international norms and laws, most notably the Geneva Conventions, and might even be unconstitutional. There is legal precedent in Canada supporting the claim that, owing to the life-saving purpose of humanitarian aid, it cannot be considered criminal to provide it, even when a terrorist group may accrue some benefit from that aid.
MSF works in some of the most horrendous circumstances in this world. It is saying that this legislation does not meet the needs that needs to be met. I have heard some interesting things.
I have spoken to the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Justice and the Minister of International Development. I have spoken to all these ministers and asked, “Who is responsible, and when is it coming?” I have also listened to all three ministers tell me that it is someone else's problem, that it is someone else's fault and not to worry, that someone else is dealing with it or that it is too complex for them to undertake.
I want to tell members what some of the other countries have done. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade announced that:
Australia [would implement] the [UN Security Council's humanitarian] exemption immediately relying [upon] the Charter of the United Nations Act 1945. Accordingly, assistance or activities covered by [the Security Council's exemption]...do not constitute an offence under Australian sanctions laws.
The United Kingdom amended its regulations to indicate that its financing prohibition does not cover the delivery of humanitarian assistance or other activities that support basic human needs in Afghanistan. There is also the U.S. and the European Union. They all amended their legislation. In fact, with respect to the United Nations, on December 22, 2021, the UN Security Council decided through resolution 2615, the drafting of which was spearheaded by the United States, “that humanitarian assistance and other activities that support basic human needs in Afghanistan” do not violate the council's sanctions regime.
The council also specified:
[T]hat the processing and payment of funds, other financial assets or economic resources, and the provision of goods and services necessary to ensure the timely delivery of such assistance or to support such activities are permitted.
That happened on December 22, 2021. Therefore, countries around the world that are our allies who also believe in the rule of law, humanitarian assistance and humanitarian law were able to make this humanitarian carve-out. However, Canada took 18 months and has not provided a carve-out. Let us be very clear: This law is not a humanitarian carve-out. Why is this so important and pressing? Why have I brought this up in the House and written to the ministers time and time again? Why has every party in the House raised this issue?
My colleague from the Bloc just brought up recently how long he has been calling for this. The Special Committee on Afghanistan was calling for this. Why have we all been acting for this? It is because a record number of people in Afghanistan need our help.
Hunger does not wait. It is not waiting for us to have time or for it to be convenient for the rest of us. People are starving to death in Afghanistan. I have to say, Canada has spent billions of dollars, and we have lost the lives of Canadian soldiers on Afghanistan soil. We have a relationship with Afghanistan. We have an obligation to the people of Afghanistan.
They do not need our support when things are going well. The people of Afghanistan do not need us to step up when all is well. However, when six million people are at risk of severe malnourishment, tens of millions of people are food-insecure and cannot have enough food to eat, the economy has failed, there are drought conditions and climate change has made it impossible for the people of Afghanistan to feed themselves is when they need Canada to step up. That is when we need to do the work to help the people of Afghanistan.
Do not get me wrong, Madam Speaker: The Taliban is a horrendous terrorist organization by all definitions. What the members of the Taliban are doing to women and girls in that country right now is so repugnant and disgusting to me. However, we cannot stop helping people because of that. We still have to help people who are there. I would like to have every single schoolgirl be able to come to this country because if they cannot learn in their country, I would like Canada to do everything it can. I would like to say that an unlimited number of Afghans should be able to come here and study.
I know that I am very angry right now, but I will say one thing. I give speeches in my community all the time. I go and talk to students. It is a really important part of our role as parliamentarians to be in our communities.
I was talking to a grade 6 class about the importance of being a parliamentarian and my role as the foreign affairs critic. I talked about how one of the worst things for me was knowing that women and girls could not go to school in Afghanistan. Teaching women and girls fundamentally changes a country; it is the best thing we can do to deal with climate change, to teach women and girls all these reasons.
This beautiful girl in the front row put up her hand and told me that she was a refugee from Afghanistan, and she was in Canada studying and learning. It was such an incredible and beautiful thing to see.
I will come back to Bill C-41. One of the things that I think is very interesting about this is the way our humanitarian assistance has developed in this country. We have an Official Development Assistance Accountability Act in law. There is a law in our country, put in place in 2008. I was thrilled to be part of the civil society groups that were pressing for some of the legislation back then.
We have a law in place, and it says that Canada's humanitarian and development assistance would go to those most in need and that we would support those most in need. Not only is it law; it is Canadian values. My goodness, every Canadian wants to support people who are most in need and who most require our support. How can there be a better case for providing humanitarian support? How could that be possible?
Over the past eight months, close to 10,000 Canadians have joined the Aid for Afghanistan campaign, calling on the federal government to remove barriers to life-saving aid and assistance in Afghanistan. It is absolutely clear that Canadians support providing this humanitarian assistance. This is what they have been asking for.
The restrictions that Canada has in place have prevented Canadian organizations from doing that, from getting life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable and actually living up to our obligations under international law.
This is a country that has a feminist international assistance policy and is supposed to have a feminist foreign policy. From what I have been told, we have one; it is just not written down. I do not know if the government knows how policies work. This a country that is supposed to be a feminist leader and that is supposed to be leading the world, but we know that the impacts are disproportionately felt by women and girls. The impacts of the poverty in Afghanistan are being felt by women and girls. The human rights abuses that are happening in Afghanistan are disproportionately happening to women and girls.
All the rhetoric that we use with regard to humanitarian assistance impacts women and girls more, and yet this carve-out does not help us. I am going to say why it does not help us. First, and I have mentioned this already, it is a registry. It is not a humanitarian carve-out. It is not a carve-out in the same way that the UN, the U.S., Australia, the EU or the U.K had carve-outs. It is not that.
It was also developed despite the expertise in our country. The government did not liaise with, listen to or hear the sector. The sector was clear on what they needed. The experts in humanitarian aid, those who are experts at what they do, told the government what was needed and what they needed to see.
That is not what this legislation is. For the life of me I do not understand why the government would not want to listen to the experts in the field, who know what they are talking about.
Another thing that is wrong with this is that because of the way it is drafted, it puts humanitarian organizations at risk. It does that by actually interfering with their ability to be neutral and to be seen as humanitarian.
I was quite concerned when the current Minister of International Development was appointed. Humanitarian and development organizations spend all their time making sure that they are not associated with the military or defence, that they have neutrality and the ability to do their work on the ground. This bill would limit that. That is why neither the International Committee of the Red Cross nor MSF supports this bill.
We do not know what the bill would look like in other contexts. Right now, the bill has been developed because of what we are seeing in the Afghanistan situation. However, as I raised earlier, it does not talk about what happens if we are talking about other terrorist groups or listed entities. What would the bill mean in northern Nigeria? Can we not provide humanitarian aid there? What about Yemen and Burkina Faso? All these countries have similar challenges, and the legislation would apply to those groups as well. However, we have not heard from the government how it intends to deal with that.
We do not know if the bill is just for Canadian citizens working for Canadian organizations. What about a Canadian citizen working for another organization? What if there is a Canadian citizen working for the United Nations? Do they need to apply to be able to do that work? All of a sudden, the clarity is not there, and organizations that desperately want to get into Afghanistan and provide that help do not know what the bill would mean. They do not know what those expectations would be. They do not know what they would be legally allowed to do, and for an organization, that is terrifying. It is very frightening for any organization to think that it may be forced to stop doing the important work it does because it has broken regulations the government has put in place that the organization does not even understand and that have not been explained.
We do not know how the bill would work with smaller organizations or diaspora organizations. For a long time I have called on the government to increase the support for small and medium-sized organizations and for diaspora organizations. These organizations on the ground know the context and the communities. They have long relationships with these communities, but the legislation before us would make it much harder for them to be able to provide support.
Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan is a phenomenal organization in Alberta. Right now it is doing everything it can to get educational products to women and girls in Afghanistan. Despite not being able to receive funding and all the things that are happening right now, it is still trying so desperately to get education to women and girls in Afghanistan. As Canadians we should be proud of an organization like that, but the legislation would make it harder for Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan to do the work it needs to do.
Then, we look at the processing piece of the bill. We have a situation right now where Global Affairs Canada is not able to process things as quickly as it promised. This is not a slight in any way on the overburdened bureaucrats at Global Affairs Canada. It is not able to move things forward as fast as it would like because it is understaffed and overburdened; moreover, the clarity from the Liberal government has not been there.
We can think about the urgent situation we find ourselves in, and then we have a situation where urgency is required and we are asking Global Affairs Canada to add another layer of burden to those who cannot keep up with the current burden. This is not a system that will work. A carve-out would mean that all humanitarian organizations would be free to go forward. The legislation before us would mean that we have just kicked that can down the road again; once more, we are failing Afghanistan. Once more, the Canadian government has failed to live up to its obligations to Afghans.
I, for one, stand in this place. I am happy to work with anyone to make the bill better so that it meets the needs it has to meet for the people of Afghanistan. I am ready to stand in this place and work with anyone to make sure Afghans are no longer being failed by the Canadian government.
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Mr. Speaker, the member has cherry-picked a year when Canadians were basically told to stop going to work, go home and get paid $2,000 a month. What were they going to do? What did I do until we had what was not even a hybrid Parliament but a virtual sort of Parliament where we did not do anything other than talk?
An hon. member: We interviewed.
Mr. Blaine Calkins: Mr. Speaker, yes, we interviewed each other online.
In all fairness to the member's question, I have the privilege of representing the find people of Maskwacis in central Alberta. The thousands of people in the four bands of Samson, Ermineskin, Louis Bull and Montana are amazing representatives of their culture: the dancing, the music, the drums and all of those things. I have complete confidence and faith that if the government gets out of the way of first nations people in this country, first nations people, who are intelligent enough and hard-working enough to do everything they need to do to take care of themselves, will not only be successful but thrive in Canada. I do not know anybody in a first nation who says that another solution from Ottawa is probably going to help them out.
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