44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 28, 2023 10:00AM
- Nov/28/23 4:39:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, here we are having another debate on carbon pricing. It feels like the only thing we talk about here in the House is carbon pricing. Some claim that it is a “carbon tax”.
I know all about taxes. Taxes generate revenues that the government pockets. In the case of the price on carbon, all revenues, all the funds generated are returned to individuals or, in some cases, to businesses to allow them to invest in the transition to a clean economy.
I have been sitting here, day after day, listening to what I consider to be a false narrative on the price on carbon. First of all, it has been given an incorrect name. It is not a carbon tax. A tax is something that generates revenues that go to the government coffers. When one talks about a price on carbon, and this is the beauty of it, as it is extremely effective, all of the monies received from the price of carbon are returned to Canadians or Canadian businesses. As a matter of fact, if the price on carbon were removed, the climate action incentive payment would disappear and a vast majority of Canadians would be worse off. We do not hear that truth from the Conservative Party.
What we hear is what my former colleague and Canadian hero and hockey great Ken Dryden used to call “truthiness”. Truthiness is something that sounds true, but it is just not true. Day after day, we are treated to a simplistic but false chain of causation that the Conservatives trot out. It sounds true and anyone listening would say, “Yes, that sounds very logical”, but the chain breaks all along the length of it if one spends any time thinking about what is being said.
Every day in question period, it sounds like the ankle bone is connected to the shin bone, which is connected to the knee bone, which is connected to the thigh bone, except they say, “If one has a price on carbon, it costs a trucker a little more to ship. That means the distributor has to pay a little bit more, and that means that the retailer pays a little bit more, and then Canadians pay a little bit more.”
That is not how it works at all. As a matter of fact, studies, and we know that the Conservative opposition is not keen on academic studies or rigorous studies of any kind, have shown that the price on carbon contributes very little, an minuscule or infinitesimal amount, to the food price inflation. Although we would not want to let academic studies get in the way of a good “truthy” argument coming from the other side.
I think the Conservative Party is using the price on carbon as a red herring. I get very frustrated when constituents write to me and say, “Please take the price on carbon off”, and I write back to say, “Sir, madam, the price on carbon does not apply in Quebec.” Quebec has been pricing carbon since 2007, and B.C. has been pricing carbon since 2008. It does not apply in Quebec.
I have had other people come to me, and I guess they listen to Conservative propaganda because they say, “Where is my climate action incentive payment?” I have to say to them, “Sir, madam, I am sorry. You do not get the climate action incentive payment because you do not pay the price on carbon.” They write back and thank me for explaining it to them. They did not realize. That is a bit of the job of a member of Parliament, which is to explain the facts about government policy and why government policy is the desired policy.
I have talked about this before in the House, but I will mention it again. The Leader of the Opposition fancies himself to be a great monetarist economist in the tradition of the Chicago school of economics, the school that was made famous by Milton Friedman. However, Milton Friedman thought that the price on carbon was a wonderfully simple and effective policy instrument for pricing pollution. It is what we call an externality, which is something that is not priced and is therefore not reflected in the market, so it leads to a greater use of something that is not necessarily a societal good, which is what the price on carbon is really all about.
We can keep talking about this, I am sure, until the cows come home, and I am prepared to stand up in the House over and over again to set the record straight about the price on carbon. However, let us face it, we are going through an affordability crisis in Canada and around the world, as a matter of fact. Fortunately, in Canada we have one of the developed world's lowest inflation rates. As I said, the challenges remain, but I think we have to look at the international context and see where we fit within it.
Now, the government recognizes that we have an affordability crisis, and it is acting to help Canadians weather this crisis. Fortunately, we have seen the inflation rate come down recently, and this was predicted a couple of years ago. I wanted to wait and see because we want to see the reality, but many economists were telling us a year and a half to two years ago that, by this time, inflation would start to come down. In fact, it seems to be happening, but we will wait and see over the long term. In the meantime, the government is acting, and I will give members an example of one of the inflation relief measures that our government instituted to help Canadians weather the inflationary storm.
Budget 2023 introduced a new, one-time, targeted grocery rebate to provide inflation relief for 11 million Canadians and families who needed it most, which is over a quarter of the Canadian population. That is not peanuts. The grocery rebate provided $2.5 billion in targeted support, with eligible couples with two children receiving up to an extra $467 and single Canadians without children receiving up to an extra $234, which included single seniors. Now, the Conservatives may say that is not enough and does not really count, but they can tell that to somebody who is dealing with the high cost of food as a result of international developments, such as the war in Ukraine. I do not think it is something to sneeze at.
The government, of course, is doing other things. For example, it is addressing junk fees. Junk fees are taking a real bite out of Canadians' incomes, and they are having a disproportionate impact on lower-income Canadians. Through budget 2023, we announced our government's intention to work with regulatory agencies, provinces and territories to reduce junk fees for Canadians and continue to ensure that businesses are transparent with prices to help make life more affordable for Canadians.
At this point, I want to digress a little bit because we have noticed that the price of automobiles has been rising. It is not because of the price on carbon that the new car a person is leasing or buying has gone up a tremendous amount of money. I will explain why this has happened, and it is related to the pandemic. That is not a novel idea. On the other side of the House they seem to have forgotten the pandemic and the impacts of it, but there is a lot going on in the economy still today that is related to the pandemic. What happened in the pandemic with the sales of automobiles is that supply chains were interrupted for car dealers.
I was just getting going, but I am out of time, so I will stop there. Maybe some other day I will talk about why the price of cars has gone up, but it has nothing to do with the price on carbon.
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- Nov/28/23 4:50:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Bank of Canada has said that the price on carbon is not contributing in any significant way to food inflation. Now, I do not know, maybe the hon. member does not accept studies and analyses by the Bank of Canada as legitimate academic studies. I know his leader does not think much of the Bank of Canada and puts the blame of everything on the shoulders of the Bank of Canada.
There is a price on carbon. It is being added to the cost of things. The point is that it is not responsible for the biggest chunk of the rise in food prices.
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- Nov/28/23 4:52:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I find it unfortunate that some people appear to want to use tactics to draw partisan attention. These tactics can have consequences. That is what happened when two women senators were targeted. Unfortunately, some people react badly when they see things like that on social media. Fortunately, in this case, there were no serious consequences, but it could have encouraged angry people to do things that could hurt someone. We need to be careful. These types of tactics do not work in the long run.
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- Nov/28/23 4:54:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is another thing we have been hearing ad nauseam, which is the idea that there are Liberal senators in the Senate. I have been here for quite a while, and I remember, and the hon. member from Winnipeg remembers as well, when we decoupled from the Senate. Now the senators are appointed there by the Prime Minister because they are independent spirits. They are independent thinkers who are highly qualified and, quite frankly, have minds of their own.
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