SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mar/19/24 11:02:02 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it does feel as though the Conservatives do not have any plan to address the climate crisis. They cannot even really admit that there is a climate crisis. However, the Liberals have failed to communicate what their silver bullet solution is for carbon pricing. To double the rebate right now for rural Canadians and try to gain back some ground, they will be increasing the carbon price on small businesses. The Liberals already owe small businesses and indigenous groups $3.6 billion. Why would the Liberals not make big oil pay what it owes by implementing an excess profits tax? We just saw polling that says the majority of Canadians wants an excess profits tax on big oil and gas. Why will the Liberals not do it?

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Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

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

Mar/19/24 11:38:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member who just spoke. I dream of having that kind of presence and the skill to deliver that kind of speech. What I want to do is present the facts that were recently reported by Radio-Canada about the whole carbon tax issue. I think it is extremely relevant to today's debate. As my colleague said, today's fairly concise Conservative Party motion is based on the results of a survey of Canadians. The motion reads as follows: That, given that 70% of provinces and 70% of Canadians oppose the Prime Minister's 23% carbon tax hike on April 1, the House call on the NDP-Liberal coalition to immediately cancel this hike. The Conservative Party claims that 70% of Canadians are against this carbon tax hike, so I took a look at the survey to see if that is actually true. I discovered that the poll was about the government's measure to exempt home heating oil from the carbon pricing act, not about the existence of the act itself. The Conservative Party therefore chose to put their spin on the numbers, perhaps because “Axe the tax” makes a good slogan. However, it is not really true that 70% of Canadians are against the 23% increase that will take effect on April 1, because this increase will be gradual. It is true that, at some point, the carbon tax will reach a certain amount, but these amounts will be spread over several years, until 2030. What they are claiming here is a bit of a stretch. As my colleague who spoke before me was saying, this is one of the reasons why the Bloc Québécois is against the Conservatives’ motion. I looked for other figures. It is funny, because I found the same numbers, that is, 70% and 23%, but they refer to something completely different. I found out that 70% of the global GDP has a carbon price. More than 48 countries around the globe have a carbon tax or a cap and trade system. It is now standard in most industrialized countries to put a price on pollution, and that is what Canada did a few years ago. The 23% is simple enough. According to the same study, 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions are covered by a price on pollution. I thought it was funny to find these same numbers but then realizing they mean different things. Obviously, I did not pull these figures out of a hat; they were published by France’s ministry of energy transition. It is interesting to see what other countries are doing instead of complaining of what we have at home. The Conservative motion asks that “the House call on the NDP-Liberal coalition to immediately cancel this hike.” That is interesting because it is the first time the coalition is being called “la coalition entre les libéraux et les néo-démocrates” in French. Normally, the Conservatives use different formulations when they talk about the coalition. In English, they say that it is the NDP-Liberal coalition, or a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP, but when they are talking to Quebeckers in French, they say that it is a coalition between the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals. Unfortunately for them, the motion does not include this nuance. It mentions only a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP. Let us get back to the famous carbon tax hike. It will indeed reach $170 by 2030. For now, it is set at $65 per tonne. Unlike what the Conservative Party would have us believe, it is not the Bloc Québécois that says we must increase the price on carbon pollution to help Canada achieve its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. It is the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO. The Office of the PBO is a well-respected institution. I think that the Conservative Party should believe the figures published by the PBO. Not so very long ago, he said that, to achieve the Paris Agreement targets by 2030, we would have to increase the price on carbon to $239 per tonne. The carbon tax is a tool Canada uses to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and this tool should benefit people who are a bit more economically conservative. It is therefore a little hard to understand why the Conservatives are so against the price on pollution. Radio-Canada’s Fannie Olivier published an analysis a few days ago entitled “À quoi ressemblerait un Canada sans prix sur le carbone?” or what would Canada be like without carbon pricing? The Conservative Party is threatening to axe the tax as soon as it comes to power. Let us go back to 2016 when the Prime Minister took advantage of a debate on the ratification of the Paris Agreement to announce a price on carbon. He told the provinces that they would have to comply. He gave them two years to do so. Then, he would start imposing a tax of $10 per tonne that would gradually increase. Obviously, a few provincial environment ministers did not take that very well. In Quebec, we were not concerned, because we already had a cap and trade system in place with California that has been working perfectly well since 2013. Therefore, this carbon pricing has no impact in Quebec. My colleague explained that. The carbon tax does not apply to Quebec, despite what some may think, because, unfortunately, people have been spreading misinformation. Some provinces even challenged the tax before the Supreme Court, but they were unsuccessful. There is a real power struggle with the provinces. It must be said that the Liberal government, as I mentioned earlier, has not done a very good job of explaining this environmental measure. It recently created a loophole in its own legislation by introducing a three-year exemption for heating oil with the aim of quelling discontent in the Atlantic provinces. That did nothing to help its popularity ratings, unfortunately. What would happen if we woke up tomorrow and there was no longer a carbon tax in Canada? Sébastien Jodoin, a professor in the faculty of law at McGill University, says that there would be significant consequences, starting with the hit on the pockets of many Canadians. That is interesting. Conservatives often tell us that people have no money, that they are poor, that the carbon tax is making those who are poor even poorer. However, we know that 80% of Canadians who pay the tax receive a refund from the federal government that exceeds what they pay. Should carbon pricing be abolished, they would have less money in their pockets. I find that interesting. Pierre-Olivier Pineau, Chair in Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal, says that “the great irony is that the majority of Canadians in provinces that pay the federal tax, earn money from it. Abolishing it would impoverish Canadians.” That is interesting. Unfortunately that is not a speech we hear often from the Conservative Party. Obviously, removing it would also have an impact on greenhouse gases. The government is trying to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions with this measure. Getting rid of it would have consequences in the short, medium and long terms. The carbon tax currently being used by the Government of Canada seeks to reduce one-third of the emissions in the country by 2030. It must be said that the way things are going, we are nowhere close to meeting our greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2030. I would even go so far as to say that we need other measures, starting with the money that is given to the oil and gas companies. These companies make billions of dollars in profits every year and the government keeps taking taxpayer money and giving it to those people. I think we could take that money and help people cope with the cost of living. We could invest in green energy, such as wind, solar and hydroelectricity in Quebec. We need investment in these economic sectors that are good for the planet. We need to find other ways. If the Conservative Party wants to abolish carbon pricing, then it needs to come up with other, meaningful ways to fight climate change. I want to come back to the fact that 23% of global emissions are now covered by a carbon pricing or emissions trading system. That statistic is also from the World Bank. In her article, Fannie Olivier said that the number of countries that have such a tax has significantly increased in recent years. We are talking about nearly fifty countries or states that have made the leap. Take, for example, Vietnam, or even Turkey. Doing away with the tax on carbon would really go against what is being done internationally. I still have a lot more I would like to say, but I see that my time is up, so I will stop there.

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Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith

Mar/19/24 4:50:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a great question because the answer is no. In fact, the Financial Times had an article the other day that said that insurance premiums are a hidden carbon price and that we are going to pay for climate action one way or the other. What I would put to my Conservative friends is, if we are going to pay one way or the other, surely we want to harness the power of the free market and pay as little as we possibly can.

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