SoVote

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

Mr. Eric Duncan (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, CPC)

Mar/19/24 10:32:33 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has done a great job in the last little while of uniting the country. There is a great Canadian tax revolt against him and the constant never-ending tax increases that are coming. After eight years, Canadians know they have had enough. They cannot afford the cost of the Prime Minister any longer. He is uniting the country against him and the constant tax increases Canadians are facing. Seventy per cent of Canadians are opposed to the latest spike in the carbon tax, which is a cruel April Fool's Day joke coming on April 1 that is going to see a 23% increase in the carbon tax at a time when millions of Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. The punishment and the never-ending tax increases under the Prime Minister, which are fully propped up by the NDP every step of the way, are all part of the plan to quadruple the carbon tax in the coming years. Seventy per cent of Canadians and seven premiers from every part of this country are united against this latest tax hike. It has become so bad that the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador has called out the Prime Minister and demanded a stop to this latest increase. Even provincial Liberal parties in New Brunswick and Kathleen Wynne's party in Ontario are against this. The Ontario Liberal Party is now so tired of the Prime Minister. He is so toxic now and so unpopular that he is uniting the country against him, including the Ontario Liberal Party, which is now coming out and not just saying it wants to spike the hike but even saying it is going to axe the tax entirely. When the party of Kathleen Wynne will not even support the carbon tax anymore, one knows Liberals are on the wrong track. The great Canadian tax revolt is well under way. The numbers speak for themselves. I am going to talk about a few numbers of fact about the struggle Canadians are going through. Seven hundred dollars is how much more a family of four in Canada is going to pay on their grocery bill in 2024. That does not even factor the increase of the carbon into it. This latest increase, a 23% hike, is going to drive up the cost of food, heating and filling one's car even more. It is getting worse. Sadly, we have have seen food bank reports over and over again these past few years talking about a surge in the number of visits in this country. The Liberals and the NDP say all the time that they have a plan and that their plan is working and helping. It is not. A recent food charity report said that food banks in this country are bracing after record usage in 2023. They are bracing for one million more visits by Canadians to food banks this year. This is insanity. The Prime Minister and the NDP are absolutely tone deaf to keep doubling down, or quadrupling down, frankly, on the carbon tax and think this is not going to get even worse. It has become so bad for charities that 36% of charities last year had to turn people away because they were running out of resources. The Liberals and the NDP, this costly coalition, are about the only ones left in this country, and there are the very few, who are not getting with the program. Canadians are tired of the tax hikes. They cannot afford 61¢ a litre on the price of gas in the coming years. It is driving up the cost of living. It is driving up the cost of groceries and the cost of doing business and is taking business away from this country. Even with the abundance of great agricultural land in this country, we are now seeing companies and grocery stores importing food from around the world rather than having it grown here close to home when Liberals are nailing greenhouses with the carbon tax and farmers with an astronomical amount in carbon tax. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for one grain-drying operation in my riding, and they're on their way to quadrupling it. Enough is enough. We know the Liberal math and their promises never add up. That is why the budget just does not balance itself. It is because their math never makes sense. It makes sense to the average Canadian, who knows that it is driving up the cost of their household budget. It is driving up their mortgage now. It is driving up groceries. It is driving up heating. It is driving up having a car and taking one's kids to hockey or to go out and about like Canadians do. The Liberals promised $50 a tonne. That is as far as they were going to go with the carbon tax. They broke that promise and they tripled that to about $170 a tonne, after promising it would not go above $50. They promised rebates for businesses. For all of the carbon tax that small businesses and businesses pay in this country, they give them zero rebates, let alone the rebates they give to households, which we know, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer says, do not cover the carbon tax costs that families pay. Businesses get nothing. Liberals broke their promise, and now they are trying to get us to believe in their talking points and their little chart, saying that Canadians are better off with the rebates they get. It is nonsense. Nobody believes it and neither does the Parliamentary Budget Officer. In his report, the facts are clear. The average family of four in a Canadian province that is projected to get a certain amount back on the rebate are out hundreds of dollars, regardless of which province they live in. If one is in Ontario, one is out, on average, in 2024 and 2025, $627. For Alberta families, it's $911, and it's $502 in Manitoba. The list goes on and on. The more they increase this carbon tax, the bigger the difference, debt and struggle Canadian families are going to face. One of the important things is to read the fine print when it comes to these Liberals and their NDP coalition partners. They never just give a straight answer. Watch question period any day. They will never give a straight answer. The carbon tax in the coming years is going to quadruple. Here is how. They do not just do it with one carbon tax. They have two carbon taxes. There is the first carbon tax, which is going to total 37¢ a litre on the price of gas in the coming years. The rebates, as I have just confirmed, do not even cover that. They now have a second carbon tax coming in every part of the country. They “word salad” these things. They changed the name, a “clean fuel standard”. It is a second carbon tax with zero rebates for anybody. That is going to be 17¢ a litre on the price of gas in the coming years. If that is not bad enough, what really triggers and infuriates Canadians is the fact that the Liberals and the NDP do not have only one carbon tax. They have a second carbon tax and then they tax the tax. They put the GST and HST on carbon tax one and carbon tax two, for a total of 61¢ a litre. They are out of touch. Here is the thing that, I think, puts the cherry on top of just how out of touch and aloof, after eight years of the Prime Minister, the Liberals and the NDP are. Over the last year, Canadians are united, as I mentioned, more than ever before against the carbon tax and against this latest April 1 increase. The PMO put out talking points last week. The title is “Is the carbon tax suffering from a failure to communicate?” I am sorry. That was not the PMO. It was the CBC that wrote that article. I am sorry. I think it was probably provided by the PMO to the CBC to write, where they try to defend. Again, the entire argument, for the last year, from the Liberals is that it is just a communication problem, that they are just not explaining themselves enough. Canadians know themselves. They cannot afford the Prime Minister. They cannot afford this carbon tax. They cannot afford a 23% increase on it on April 1, on its way to quadrupling in the coming years. If this was a communication problem, it would have been solved, because the Prime Minister loves photo ops. He loves all of these news conferences and these flashy word salads. In the last year, as a million more food bank visits are expected this year, more people than ever before are using food banks. There are mortgage defaults. The economic news gets worse. The only thing the Prime Minister has done in the last couple of months is rename the carbon tax. That is how out of touch Liberals are. This carbon tax and the cruel, latest increase, the never-ending increases, are not a communication problem. They are a tax problem. Canadians have finally realized. They have had enough. It is time. Spike the hike. Axe the tax, and finally give Canadians some relief.

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

Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Leader of the Opposition, CPC)

Mar/19/24 2:30:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the April Fool's Day carbon tax hike of 23% will hit Nova Scotians especially hard. The Prime Minister's tax will cost $1,500 for the average Nova Scotia family, far more than they get back in rebates. That is why Nova Scotia's assembly passed a unanimous motion, with all three parties supporting it, calling for federal MPs from that province to vote with Conservatives to spike the hike. One of those is the MP from Kings—Hants, the chair of the agriculture committee, which has been studying the carbon tax pain for farmers. The question is for the chair of the agriculture committee. Will he vote with us to spike the hike? Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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

Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Mar/19/24 2:35:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the censored champion may break his silence and tell us this: Will he vote for his constituents to spike the hike or will he rip them off on April Fool's Day?

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