SoVote

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

Mar/19/24 11:11:48 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I expect a little better from the member in the seriousness of this debate. I know he believes passionately about this. Speaking about farmers back home, just a couple of years ago we saw a 25% loss of vines in the grape industry in Niagara. We are seeing catastrophic losses in British Columbia. I know that some members represent those farmers. Again, as I said, there have been historic fires and floods. Those costs are borne by Canadians, and what do Conservatives have to say to those Canadians? They have no plan. There is nothing on the table, and those costs will continue to increase. People may not be able to get insurance. That is a reality as one's insurance costs will go up, but that is ignored. It is funny. The first time I heard a Conservative politician even mention a rebate was when the premier of the government in Saskatchewan was trying to reassure Saskatchewan residents that they should not worry as they would still get their rebates, and that is because Canadians look forward to seeing that. Conservatives ignore that whole aspect of it. They do not address it, and they make up numbers on the cost of the price on pollution, even though they know full well that Canadians, especially lower-income Canadians, are much better off. By cutting the price on pollution, the biggest recipient would be the oil companies, and they would not pass that along. As we have now seen, oil companies are having record profits. It is a commodity-based industry. They are not going to pass that profit onto us. This is about the Conservatives standing up for big oil, which is truly unfortunate. I believe some of them do understand that there is a climate crisis before us, but why is there no plan? All of them ran on pricing pollution. A couple of years ago it was fine for them to go door to door to say that they were going to price pollution. It was not a plan that I particularly agreed with, but it was nice that every party in this country, including every member sitting here, ran on pricing pollution, knowing we need an environmental plan. This evening there will be tributes to the late prime minister Brian Mulroney. In all of the speeches yesterday, there was talk of him being a great statesman. We are lucky as Canadians to have had him at the helm to work with the United States and other countries to get things done, whether that was for apartheid or environmental issues. One of those issues was pricing pollution. I think we can all remember the scourge of acid rain, what it was doing, the concerns Canadians had and the way to fix it. An hon. member: It was not a carbon tax. Mr. Chris Bittle: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member heckled me that it is not a carbon tax. The way to fix it was to price pollution, to price the thing one did not want so one has less of it. This is cognitive dissonance. They cannot get it through their heads that this works. They can yell and try to shout me down, but it worked. Former prime minister Mulroney worked with his counterparts in the United States. They are laughing, which is unbelievably shocking. However, it worked. They worked with premiers across parties. They worked with the Liberal premier in Ontario. They worked with the president of the United States. They worked across the world to get a price on pollution so that they could eliminate the scourge of acid ran. We saw that it is not an issue. Canada can be a leader, which we choose to be, or we can go the Conservative way and just deny this incredible threat that is facing us. In 2015, Canada was on track for our emissions to grow to 815 megatonnes by 2030. Conservatives had no climate plan. It was free to pollute, and oil and gas companies were allowed to emit unlimited pollution. Our latest update projects that our emissions will be 467 megatonnes in 2030, which is 43% below where they should be. I would have thought that in this place we could all agree that we do not like pollution. I would have thought that this would be a consensus we could all come to. Unfortunately, it is not. As a result of our work, our emissions have declined by 7% since 2015 for the first time ever and we are on track to meet our climate targets. I occasionally speak of them as my two favourite constituents, Hannah and Ethan, who are my son and daughter. They are seven and five years old. I am disappointed that we do not have conversations about what the future will look like for them in 2030 or 2050. We look at a party that only wants there to be profits for oil companies right now. I am hoping that for the rest of day we can have that debate.

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

Hon. Chrystia Freeland (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Lib.)

Mar/19/24 3:06:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for that MP from British Columbia, but I am really disappointed that he seems entirely ignorant of how the price on pollution works in B.C. There is no federal backstop in B.C. There is no federal backstop on B.C. small businesses nor on the people of B.C. B.C. has an exceptional system for pricing pollution, which the province has had in place since 2008. The people of B.C. are proud of it, and they should be.

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

Mr. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (Beaches—East York, Lib.)

Mar/19/24 4:36:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will get to the conversation around pricing pollution, but I want to start with a threshold question that we all have to answer: Do members care to take action to save our planet? Do they care to reduce emissions for our kids? Do they care? If the answer is yes, then we get to a different question, which is how we are going to reduce emissions in the most efficient way. If we want to respect taxpayer dollars, then we reduce emissions in the most efficient way. We hear a lot about common sense from across the aisle. Common sense presumably should be that polluters pay, and pollution, members should know, is a classic market failure. I have heard some people bandying about different economic opinions on what a market failure is. In this case, the cost of polluting is costless to the polluter and is borne collectively by all of us. What is the answer to that? The answer is a price signal. The common-sense answer, very simply, is to make polluters pay. That is what this price on pollution does. We do not want to penalize people or make them worse off. We just want to change the behaviour, so matched with that price, internalizing that negative externality, we make sure there is a rebate and recycle the revenue. I have heard people go back and forth on this. The fact is that, of the 100% of the revenue that goes back to the provinces of origin, 90% goes back to households directly. If there were a motion today that said that 100% should go back to households, I would vote for it for sure. We could improve it, but the fact is that 90% goes back. It is largely revenue-neutral. I heard a question asking if it works. Of course it works. This is not me saying this. If we look at the emissions progress report for 2030, we see more than a steady decline. We see a decline from business as usual. If we had taken no action from 2015 on, or the kind of action we saw under the Harper government, we would have seen emissions rise to 815 megatonnes by 2030. If we look at that progress report, does anyone in the House know what it stands to be with all of the action we have put into place? It stands to be 467 megatonnes, which is not nearly enough and not where we need it to be, but that is a 43% reduction from business as usual and 36% toward our 40% target. We are very close to being where we say we want to be. By the way, a good amount of that is because of the price on pollution. The progress report says that 30% of that reduction in emissions comes from the price on pollution. When we look at that delta of 815 megatonnes down to 467 megatonnes, 23% of that total reduction from business as usual comes from the price on pollution, so, yes, it works as part of a very serious overall comprehensive climate plan. It is easy to care about climate change when we are well fed. I have heard a lot of talk in the House that the price on pollution is making people poorer, the worst among us, and it is hurting those who are already hurting. It is deeply cynical to trade on a real affordability crisis, to trade on the real stress and real struggles of so many people in need, to undermine an effective and efficient climate action that makes most households whole. It does not increase the cost of everything to send people to food banks. I said this when asking a question of a colleague and did not receive a good answer. We have seen 20% food inflation these last two years, and the price on pollution, economists tell us, accounts for under 1% of any inflationary impact. That is not the cause of the affordability crisis. We could have a very interesting debate about interest rates. Maybe the member for Carleton would tell us that he wants to fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada. We have had very interesting debates about interest rates and what is truly driving the cost of living crisis. It is absolutely not, economists will tell us, the price on pollution. We could also have an interesting debate about social welfare in this country. We have increased the Canada child benefit significantly. We have brought hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty. We have increased the Canada workers benefit. We have increased the GIC for seniors. Do members know what provincial governments have done, largely Conservative provincial governments? They have not increased welfare and disability supports in line with the rise in inflation. I am standing here in Ontario, and the member could tell me what the Ford government has done to make sure disability payments keep pace with the cost of inflation, but Conservatives have done next to nothing. Do we want to talk about the real cost of living crisis and what drives that cost of living crisis? We could talk about food inflation. We could talk about interest rates, and we could talk about the lack of provincial action in their areas of responsibility. What we should not talk about, if we care about facts in the House, is the price on pollution. Much has been made of the PBO report. I wonder sometimes, listening to the debate in the House, whether anyone has actually read this report, so let me quote from it. On a fiscal basis, “most households will see a net gain [versus] the...fuel charge...and related GST”. As well, “The fiscal-only impact...is broadly progressive.” Hang on. What is this about? The PBO says it is going to cost us more. I am going to be absolutely fair in this, and there is a real debate we should have because what the PBO actually says is that, on a fiscal basis, for the cash-in, cash-out money that households pay and get back, 80% of households are, in fact, better off. What the PBO goes on to say is that, when one takes into account GDP impacts from the price on pollution, we see modest GDP reductions, though they are significant on a household basis, so most households are worse off if one includes fiscal and economic factors. They do not say that about low-income households so, again, trading on food banks and offering no real suggestions for helping people out of poverty is completely incorrect, even in the PBO's analysis. Let us focus a little more on whether the PBO is right. Fiscal analysis is easy. It is money in and money out. On an economic basis, I would say they are wrong. It is not gospel. We have this from the American Economic Journal, for example, on the macro impact of carbon pricing: “We find no evidence for a negative impact on employment or GDP growth but rather find a zero to modest positive impact.” There is also this, from the IMF, from June: “Countries that do not recycle revenues experience a substantial economic downturn while countries that recycle revenues only display a muted impact on economic activity.” For those keeping track at home, Canada recycles revenues. Worse, and this is fatal, let me quote the PBO as well. I wonder how this is not part of the conversation: “The scope of the report is limited to estimating the distributional impact of the federal fuel charge and does not attempt to account for the economic and environmental costs of climate change.” Maybe Conservatives could explain to me why we would consider the negative economic impacts of one side of the ledger of the price on pollution, and the fiscal impacts are better for households, but we would not consider alternative scenarios. We hear about “technology, not taxes”, but that is going to cost households more. It is going to be paid for by taxes or, worse, if we do not take into account the real economic costs of unchecked climate change. Let us be absolutely clear. If one does not have a serious climate plan in this country, and the federal Conservatives are not interested in a serious climate plan, we are going to see unchecked climate change. Let us return to costs. We have Conservatives who have no plan. Since I have been in Parliament, they have had no plan, except for Erin O'Toole, who was promptly ousted. Why was he ousted? For having a plan, and “technology, not taxes” is not a plan. What does the price on pollution do? The price on pollution says to consumers that it will be more expensive to pollute. Consumers will seek out cleaner alternatives and businesses will respond by innovating to meet consumer demand. If one does not have that price, which is internalizing that negative externality, businesses are not going to innovate. We are not going to see serious climate action from the private sector. If one wants technology, not taxes, it is going to be left to government subsidies alone, and where do government subsidies come from, Conservative friends? They come from taxes. If one wants one's taxes to go up, then axe the tax.

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