SoVote

Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

Dec/1/23 11:29:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always difficult to follow the member's large impression. After eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, Canada is facing challenges not seen since the Great Depression. Two million Canadians are visiting food banks a month. There has been a doubling of rents and mortgages. Perhaps worst of all, there are heartbreaking reports of children asking Santa for something to eat this Christmas. To quote the current Liberal finance minister, from 2015, “[t]his is no global problem, as the government likes to pretend to excuse its shoddy management. This is a made-in-Canada runway to recession. Why are the Liberals so hell-bent on impoverishing Canadians?

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

Dec/1/23 11:31:00 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want people at home to listen carefully, because what we will not hear from that side at all is “per capita”, “per Canadian”. Every Canadian, on average, is getting poorer. In fact, our economy shrank by 1.1%. Our per capita growth is the worst in the OECD. In the U.S., it has gone up by nearly 5%. I am just curious; what would cause the Liberals to reverse direction? Is it longer food bank lines, worse economic numbers or perhaps even worse polling numbers?

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

Dec/1/23 12:08:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I move that the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, be concurred in. It is always a pleasure to be here, and I will say, if I am allowed to make this observation to the Chair, that question period was well run. It kept people on time. Today I am going to talk about something incredibly important to the people of Northumberland—Peterborough South and those across Canada. We are talking about protecting Canada's food system. This report was concurred in when I was on the fabulous public accounts committee. Unfortunately, I have moved on to the finance committee, but I very much enjoyed my time on public accounts. We are talking about something near and dear to my heart, which is food security. Of course, food security is always an issue, but it was highlighted during the great pandemic years, when Canadians were reliant on food and we saw, unfortunately, shortages in our grocery stores. It was not too long ago, even though in some ways it seems like a lifetime ago, that grocery stores were short on food. It is incredibly important that we have food security in our country. One of the issues that will drive that is, of course, the carbon tax. The carbon tax is raising the cost of food. It is also driving food production offshore. There are those in the House who may have been here back in 2019 when I was elected. I found out early on in my time as an MP, in 2019, that I had won the lottery. I remember a staffer coming to me and saying, “Mr. Lawrence, you won the lottery.” Of course, I had no idea what that meant at the time, but it meant that I had won the PMB lottery. I actually got number six. We then had a very difficult decision to make, as there were lots of things that needed to be changed in 2019, and even more now in 2023, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, which is certainly not worth the cost. Our team did a search of various issues. Of course, a large portion of the Northumberland—Peterborough South economy is agriculture, so our farmers came to us and said the carbon tax was killing them. They presented me with bills for tens of thousands of dollars in carbon tax. That was back when the carbon tax was a lot lower than it is now, when it was only $20 a tonne. Now it is headed up to $80 a tonne next year. To everyone at home, that is quadruple what the current carbon tax is. We then said to farmers that they were right and we needed to provide relief. We would have loved to just axe the tax in a private member's bill, but that is not permissible because of the limited scope of a private member's bill. I was told I have to split my time. I was hoping to have a lot more time to speak here, because food security is important and critical. My mentor from Winnipeg North has taught me the incredible importance of brevity in this House, but I will be splitting my time with the wonderful member for Calgary Shepard. Farmers came to us and said the carbon tax was killing them, because not only is it potentially making them globally uncompetitive, but there are many markets where they simply cannot pass that cost on. The challenge is that it is making their farms unprofitable. In the system of capitalism we have, if their farms or businesses are not profitable, they simply cannot continue them.

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

Dec/1/23 12:13:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I continue to try to speak French. In the future, I hope to do an entire speech in French. For today I will continue in English. In 2019, we started a journey to remove the carbon tax on farmers. Our farmers said that it did not make sense to them that diesel and dirtier fuels were exempt for farmers but natural gas and propane were not. Propane's carbon footprint is considerably less, fully 50% less, than that of diesel. Here was my naïveté coming into 2019, which was not far from 2015, when we were hearing things like “sunny ways” and “open by default”. I thought the Liberals probably made a mistake, that it was probably a drafting error. I was positive that once I brought it to their attention, they would say, “We do not want our farmers to be suffering. We have that one farmer in Milton, so we need to take care of this.” I thought, in my naïveté, that when I would bring this to their attention, they would say we would not even need to pass legislation; they would fix it in their next budget. However, somehow that did not happen. We therefore brought it forward, and members will not believe this, but we got the support of the Green Party. We got the support of the NDP. We got the support of environmental activists; they were on our side. They realized that propane is cleaner than diesel, so why would we give an exemption to diesel but not propane? The Liberal logic world is a very muddled place, because we then found out that they doubled down. Instead of providing an exemption on home heating with natural gas, which is way cleaner than oil, they gave an exemption to oil. It boggles the mind. The logic behind the carbon tax is to put a cost on fuels with a higher carbon intensity to reduce their usage. If that is true, they should be making it go up eight or 10 times on fuel, but they know it is not true. The logic behind Bill C-234, which is in the Senate right now, is that if we give farmers an exemption and give them control of their resources, they will make the right decisions. They will invest in the technologies that will clean our planet. This ham-fisted stick-before-carrot approach of the carbon tax has been proven to not only increase costs but also increase global emissions, because it drives production, whether it be in a factory or on a farm, off clean Canadian energy and into coal-producing jurisdictions around the world. This is the ultimate in greenwashing. There is no bigger greenwashing tool than the carbon tax, because it moves farms and factories to Guangdong province, where, instead of being powered by clean Canadian hydro power in Quebec or Winnipeg or by natural gas in Alberta, they are powered by coal. We are raising worldwide emissions because of the carbon tax. Instead of energy being produced here in Canada in a clean, sustainable way, we are exporting it. Worst of all, we are impoverishing ourselves to do it. Instead of having paycheques going to workers in our clean Canadian energy sector, those paycheques are going to Dubai. What is going on in Dubai? I believe they are in an air-conditioned dome in the middle of the desert. Can we get any more ironic than that? The fossil fuels they are burning will somehow reduce the amount of fossil fuels. The hypocrisy has no end with the Liberals. Bill C-234 needs to be passed. Even if someone is a wholehearted believer in the carbon tax, Bill C-234 gives equity to our farmers. It does not matter if members are in the Green Party or the NDP. We all agree, except for the Liberals, that farmers deserve a break.

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Dec/1/23 12:20:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, unlike in Putin's Russia, this is not a dictatorship. We still get to vote and to have the ability to work in Parliament. Liberals do not get to decide everything. Conservatives support Ukraine. That is why we are going to send them arms and not a carbon tax.

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Dec/1/23 12:21:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we absolutely understand. That is why we want to send fuel, energy and arms, not the carbon tax, to Ukraine. The carbon tax and food insecurity are important in my riding. There are people lining up at food banks because the cost of food is so high, so I resent the member's saying that it is not important. Food insecurity is important. If he does not believe it, he should come to Cobourg and see the food bank.

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Dec/1/23 12:23:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I completely agree. We do need to focus on local farming. In my riding, there are some great farmers' markets in Port Hope and Cobourg. People driving from Toronto to Ottawa, or maybe people from Quebec who want to go to Toronto, though Quebec is beautiful and I do not know why anybody would want to leave Quebec, should come to my riding and stop at the Port Hope market or the Cobourg market from 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock on Saturday mornings.

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Dec/1/23 12:24:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have billions of dollars going to the Bank of Canada, by the way. Only the Canadian government could lose money selling drugs and running a bank. That is money that could go to health care, to education and to helping the most vulnerable.

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