44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 19, 2024 10:00AM
- Mar/19/24 10:16:00 a.m.
- Watch
moved:
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.
He said: Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost. While the Prime Minister wants to drive up the cost of literally everything, common-sense Conservatives are focused on axing the tax, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime.
Today, we are going to focus on that first piece of it because, on April 1, the Prime Minister has a cruel April Fool's Day joke planned for Canadians. As if prices were not high enough already, the out-of-touch Prime Minister is going to raise the carbon tax by a staggering 23% in just a couple of weeks.
I know that I speak on behalf of all my Conservative colleagues when I say that we sympathize with the struggles hard-working Canadians are going through. We see it in our ridings. I have been in grocery stores where well-dressed people who look like they have jobs and have means go through the meat aisle, pick up a package of beef, stare agonizingly at it, and then put it back when they realize they just cannot afford it. That is what life is like after eight years of this Liberal government.
On April 1, those prices are going to go up, yet again. Common-sense Conservatives are fighting all week to spike the hike and to convince the Prime Minister and his NDP coalition partners to, at the very least, not raise it any more. The first thing we can do to help Canadians is to hold the line on this punitive tax and to not make it any worse.
I will deal with some myth-busting of the carbon tax. Do members remember when the Prime Minister promised that the carbon tax would do a few things? First of all, he said that it would be revenue neutral, that it would help Canada reach its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and that Canadians would be better off with it because of a rebate scheme he had developed.
At this point, I will remind the House that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry.
Those are the three pillars that the Prime Minister built his carbon tax on: revenue neutral, reduce emissions and help Canada reach its targets, and he would give out more than he would take in from Canadians. Let us bust all three of those myths.
First of all, it is not revenue neutral. The government keeps a sizable percentage of the carbon tax. In fact, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, or CFIB, estimates that the carbon tax alone costs small business $2.5 billion, which is $2.5 billion sucked right out of the economy, and those costs that those businesses have to pay gets passed on to consumers. The government keeps far more of what it collects than it gives out with the carbon tax. That myth is completely busted. That pillar has been completely demolished.
On emissions reductions, let us take a look at what experts say about the Liberal government's plan. It has not helped it hit a single emissions target. The Climate Change Performance Index ranks Canada 62 out of 67 spots. Canada has actually fallen several spots on that ranking under the Liberal government, after eight years of the Prime Minister. Canada now ranks behind countries like Kazakhstan, Algeria and Belarus. Those countries are doing better than Canada under this government. The environment commissioner said that this government was stacking failures on top of failures; that is the environment commissioner the Prime Minister appointed. His own environment watchdog has concluded that this government is stacking failure after failure. It is clearly not an environment plan; it is a tax plan.
Let us take a look at the impact it has on families, which is the third myth that somehow Canadians would be better off if they paid this tax. That has been completely shattered. We know that it adds to the cost of fuel, heating and groceries. Let us take a look at some specifics.
Starting April 1, the carbon tax will add 17¢ to every litre of gasoline and 21¢ to every litre of diesel. We are looking at staggering costs that Canadians just cannot afford. The food experts, the people who monitor the grocery industry and the price of groceries in the aisles, are saying that Canadians are going to have to pay an extra $700 in grocery prices this year, before the carbon tax hike is even factored in.
If we factor in all of the secondary costs, we can see the ridiculous rebate ruse that the Liberals are trying to sell Canadians. Somehow, magically, if people pay these higher carbon tax costs, the government will take the money, will swoosh it around in Ottawa, and then will spit it back out in various parts at various times, and somehow, Canadians will be better off. The only problem is that once one takes a look at that scheme, it falls apart almost instantly.
What the Liberals did was something very tricky. It was very clever, but very tricky. They designed the carbon tax rebate to only capture the direct costs, which is only what someone sees as the carbon tax on a bill, whether it is filling up one's car with gas or paying one's home heating bill. One will only see that line item cost. That is the only thing that the rebate scheme factors in. However, what it does not factor in is how all those costs in the economy get passed on to consumers. We pay that higher carbon tax every time we buy something that had to be grown or manufactured, that had to be transported, that had to be cooled or refrigerated or that had to be warmed or heated. Any time a retailer has to pay the carbon tax on their heating bills or on their utility bills, all of that gets cascaded on, and consumers and Canadians pay for that.
The rebate scheme captures absolutely none of that, but do not take my word for it. I know many Canadians might say that the Liberals have a tale to tell and that the Conservatives have their perspectives. Let us look at what independent experts say about this part of the carbon tax plan.
The Prime Minister's own budget watchdog, the independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer, did this analysis and went through all of the numbers. He broke Canadian families into various groups that he calls quintiles. Basically, he took all Canadian wage earners and divided them up into different groups based on their income levels. This is based on income earners who are the middle group; these are middle-class Canadians who are average, middle-income earners. In Alberta, they would be $1,400 worse off, and in Saskatchewan, they would be $929 worse off once the carbon tax is fully implemented. In Manitoba, they would be $1,000 worse off. In Ontario, they would be $1,200 worse off. Nova Scotians would be $1,100 worse off. Prince Edward Islanders would be another $1,100 worse off. For the people in Newfoundland and Labrador, they would $680 worse off, even after the rebate scheme. We are talking about average middle-class Canadians.
If we look at one income bracket just below that group, they are still worse off too. They are not better off. These families are still paying more in the rebate, but that middle group is significant. That is almost $100 a month that Canadian families just simply cannot afford. They cannot afford groceries, cannot afford to keep the heat on and cannot afford to pay higher costs through the carbon tax. Again, these are the independent analyses of the Prime Minister's own budget watchdog.
The final point I will make is the role the carbon tax plays in inflation. The government tries to say that the carbon tax is not a significant driver of inflation. Let us look at what the Bank of Canada governor himself said. I am just going to quote very briefly from committee evidence, and then I will yield the floor.
Mr. Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, told the committee that eliminating the carbon tax would drop inflation by 0.6 percentage points. My colleague from Northumberland asked him to clarify because 0.6% might not sound like a lot. However, when inflation is at 3.8%, with the target of 2%, and if the Bank of Canada can start cutting interest rates once inflation gets closer to the target, that means 0.6% is about a third of the 1.8% that Canada has to eliminate in inflation to get back down to the target so that interest rates can come down. In other words, the carbon tax is responsible for about a third of the extra inflation that is plaguing Canadians and is forcing the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates high. If the government eliminated the carbon tax, it would be one-third of the way to getting inflation back down to the target, which means interest rates and prices can come down.
This week, Conservatives are going to stand with the 70% of Canadians who oppose this carbon tax hike and the 70% of premiers who oppose the carbon tax hike. We are going to fight to spike the hike so we can axe the tax.
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- Mar/19/24 11:04:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a reality in Canada that we live in a cold country in the winter, but it gets pretty warm in the summer. A lot of our goods come from far away, and that requires a lot of transportation costs. Canadians have a carbon footprint.
There is a way we could increase that carbon footprint. We could ignore climate change and say to heck with it, we are just going to let carbon emissions fly and that we do not care about climate change.
However, there is an alternative. We could consider a heat pump. We could consider more fuel-efficient vehicles. We could consider more locally grown produce and meat. These are ways to lower our carbon footprint. We are supporting Canadians through those choices.
In Saskatchewan, where my colleague is from, there is a $1,504 rebate.
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- 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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- Mar/19/24 12:28:28 p.m.
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By the way, I will be splitting my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent, so it is not just the rest of my speech that you will have a chance to enjoy, Madam Speaker, but also his incredible oration. It will be a real treat to hear from him.
After eight years, the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost. He is not worth the cost of food, which has had the worst inflation in over four decades, with two million people, a record-smashing number, lining up at food banks across the country. Chaos broke out the other day at the food bank in Montreal, where the police were forced to intervene, as the food had run out and many stomachs were still hungry waiting in line. A third of charities are turning Canadians away because they no longer have the resources to feed them after eight years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister.
After eight years, we now have a Facebook group called the “Dumpster Diving Network”, where 8,000 Canadians share tips on how they can climb into a garbage can and pull out food to feed themselves because they cannot afford groceries. There is nothing left on the shelves at the local food bank; therefore, people have to go digging in garbage. This is the dumpster economy that the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister has given us after eight years. He is not worth the cost of food.
He is not worth the cost of housing, which has doubled after eight years of funding local bureaucratic gatekeepers who block homebuilding and printing cash, which inflates housing prices.
After eight years, he is not worth the cost of taxes. He punishes work. People make it and he takes it. He punishes the people who get out of bed in the morning and work hard by taking the cash off of their paycheques, paycheques that have less purchasing power because after eight years of doubling the debt and printing $600 billion of new cash, he has caused the worst inflation in four decades. That has spiked interest rates, which now force many Canadians to sell their homes or face bankruptcy, which is rocketing higher. In fact, the pace of increase in bankruptcies is vertical. If we look at the graphs, it is straight up, as more and more businesses are declaring bankruptcy because the Prime Minister's inflationary spending has sent interest rates on their debts skyrocketing.
It is in this miserable environment that the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister proposes yet another cruel tax hike. He plans to do it on April Fool's Day. It is an April Fool's Day tax hike. Just like him, this tax is not worth the cost.
Let us go through the facts.
There has been a lot of disinformation spread by the NDP-Liberals and their friends in the bought-and-paid-for media about the economics of the carbon tax, claiming that people are better off by paying the tax. Here are the facts from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Albertans, this coming year, will pay, on average, $2,943 per family while they get only $2,032 back in rebates. That is a $911 net cost. In other words, they pay about 50% more than they get back. In Saskatchewan, the average family will pay $2,618 this coming year and get only $2,093 back, a net cost of $525. In Manitoba, they will pay $1,750 and get back only $1,250, for a net cost of $500.
In Ontario, the average family will pay $1,674 and only get back $1,047, a net cost of $627. In Nova Scotia, they will pay $1,500 and get back $963, for a net cost of over $500. In Prince Edward Island, it will pay $1,605 and get back only $1,055, for a net cost of $550. In Newfoundland, it will pay $1,874 and get back only $1,497, for a net cost of $377.
I dare the Liberal media that have been pushing this disinformation to contact the Parliamentary Budget Officer, run all those numbers by him and ask him if I have it right. We already did, and he confirmed that we do.
Why does this matter? It is because we have to stop the disinformation, the disinformation that has not only polluted the debate but sent countless people to food banks as they cannot afford to pay their bills, the disinformation that will grow in importance as the Prime Minister quadruples the carbon tax. The gap between the cost of the tax and the rebate people get back grows massively, forcing more people to live in these awful tent cities and lose their homes, forcing seniors to choose between eating and heating as they shiver, hungry, in the cold, in their modest homes.
That disinformation is dangerous. It must be corrected because the truth is that the carbon tax is just like the Prime Minister. It is not worth the cost.
Only common-sense Conservatives will spike the hike on April 1. After the carbon tax election, we will axe the tax. Let us bring it home.
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- Mar/19/24 3:47:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to take to my feet. First of all, I am happy that the member for Kings—Hants found his voice. Obviously, it is nice for him to speak when the front row is not here, so he is allowed to. I am glad they freed him so he got to speak.
Secondly, on a more serious note, Saskatchewan did submit a carbon plan similar to New Brunswick's plan, and his government turned it down, so what he said was untrue. There were many untrue statements the member made. He said the provinces should have a plan. The Province of Saskatchewan submitted a plan; the government turned it down based on ideology.
I would ask the same question that our leader asked the member for Kings—Hants during question period. On this motion, 70% of his constituents want to spike the tax and to make sure it does not increase on April 1.
Will he vote with his constituents, or will he vote with the front benches who do not want him to speak?
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Mr. Speaker, there was a lot in that question, and I hope you will give me the proper time to respond.
I am going to ask something of the hon. member. He mentioned the leader of the official opposition in question period today asking questions of the Chair of the committee. This is the proper form to be able to answer those questions.
Let me say this: He talked about farmers in Kings—Hants. I need the member for Regina—Lewvan to walk into his caucus tomorrow and to ask the leader of the official opposition to let Bill C-234 come to a vote. We have an opportunity to help support farmers today. The Conservatives put up six speakers, and they are delaying the passage of a bill that could make a difference for farmers in my riding and indeed across the country. Why is it that they stand in the way of Canadian agriculture and put their partisan interests ahead of farmers in this country?
To answer his question, and to the members of the Nova Scotia assembly who have talked about the fact that they would like to see a pause, I will happily engage with every one of those members to talk about how we could work with Premier Tim Houston and with premiers across the country to be able to put forward not just a plan, but also a plan that meets the federal standard.
That is what the member missed in his question. Yes, Saskatchewan put forward a plan. In fact, it actually adopted a form of carbon pricing at the industrial level. Let us work together with the seven premiers to be able to establish a national cap and trade so that this terrible federal backstop that the Conservatives hate no longer has to be in place.
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