44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 9, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/9/24 3:53:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, since the carbon tax does not affect Quebec, I will engage my Liberal colleague on another topic. In his speech, he acknowledged that times are tough. Housing is one of the major concerns for any household.
I have just spent two weeks in my riding. During those two weeks, I have been hearing about these attempts by the federal government, particularly through the Programme de la taxe sur l'essence et de la contribution du Québec, or TECQ, to impose conditions on housing.
Where I come from, people are not having it. Cities have land to protect. Cities have urban plans. What they want is for the federal government to do what it has to do, which is to transfer the money and not impose an additional tier, additional delays and duplication.
The cities back home really do not want these housing conditions for the TECQ.
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- Apr/9/24 3:57:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is what Danielle Smith said, “Let's begin with talking about when carbon pricing at the federal level was first introduced. We talked about it being $50 per tonne, and then recently we heard it's actually going to be $170 per tonne over the next nine years. That seems like somebody sat down and done some number crunching and they've come up with [the] optimal value, as well as the optimal period of time to phase it in, and from the work you've done on this, you've even said that they're suggesting that this is going to have no impact on the gross domestic product...this almost seems like the perfect policy.”
Danielle Smith had all the trust in the experts in 2021 to develop the pricing mechanism on their own, but now, suddenly, there is an issue with those experts. Members can judge this for themselves. What has happened between 2021 and now? She became the leader of the far right party in Alberta.
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- Apr/9/24 3:58:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the federal government is increasing the price on carbon to $80 per tonne, and I thought it would be interesting to look at what the biggest emitters in Canada are paying per tonne for their pollution. The Canadian Climate Institute says that the average price they are paying is $4.96 per tonne. That is $80 versus $4.96.
Now, before the member for Kingston and the Islands says that consumers get a rebate, etc., etc., the industry gets something much richer than a rebate. It gets $18 billion in subsidies. I bet the industry will get more in subsidies than it pays in carbon pricing.
Why does the government keep letting the biggest polluters in our country—
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- Apr/9/24 4:11:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague likes to play with numbers, but when Canadians go to the pump and pay 25¢, 30¢ or 40¢ on every litre of gas every time, that is taking a lot of extra money out of their pockets. Every time something is transported in Canada, the carbon tax applies.
The facts are simple. Two million Canadians are struggling to eat, to the point where a national program is needed to feed kids at school. The same thing was needed for third world countries about 10 years ago. We have reached that point here.
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- Apr/9/24 4:11:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hope my colleague knows that there is no carbon tax in Quebec. I think that would guide him a bit in his remarks.
The Conservative Party is so much the party of big oil and big gas, which have seen their profits increase, that when that party was in power, environmental groups were asking us to keep Conservatives out of meetings, because not only were they not helping, they were hindering the fight against climate change.
If Conservatives do not want a price on pollution, if they think pollution should be free, if they think technology works miracles like a magic wand, and if they want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, let them tell us today what their plan is to fight climate change, if they want any credibility.
The Conservatives do not want to do anything. All they want to do is give carte blanche to big oil and gas.
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- Apr/9/24 4:12:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, science and technology will be a huge help as we face climate change.
I would like to tell my colleague that the carbon exchange does exist in Quebec. Every time I go to the pump to fill up my car, part of the price of gas goes toward the carbon exchange. Right now, that money is doing nothing for Quebeckers. It goes to California, and we get nothing in return. Whether it is called a carbon exchange or a carbon tax, as it is in the other provinces, it is the same thing. The money is coming out of Canadians' pockets.
I would rather work for Canadians than ideologues.
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- Apr/9/24 4:22:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the issue of affordability has always been important to the Liberal government. The distortion of facts and the misleading information the Conservatives continue to spin, day in and day out, whether inside or outside the House, is ridiculous. When we talk about the impact of the carbon tax or the carbon rebate, then let us think about the carbon tax and the Governor of the Bank of Canada. We are talking about a fraction of a percentage point in regard to the impact on inflation. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, in a quote referring to that said, “Yes, but I would assume that the impact of the carbon tax on the price of food is probably not significant, even though there have been increases in the price of food. Not all of it—only a fraction of it—can be attributed to the carbon tax.”
The Conservatives spread misinformation after misinformation.
However, having said that, I am interested in my colleague's response. We had the April 1 increase of 3¢ a litre in the province of Alberta, and the Premier of Alberta increased the cost of a litre of gas by 4¢. Why did we not hear screaming and yelling coming from the Conservative Party members? Why are they not saying that 4¢ a litre was more than the price increase on pollution or the carbon tax? Why are they sitting on their hands and saying nothing? Is it because they are so partisan that they close their eyes and have nothing to do but just target misinformation—
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- Apr/9/24 4:24:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, perhaps the member opposite did not hear or was not paying attention, but I did highlight, in my speech, the testimony of the PBO, who stated, “once you factor in the rebate and also the economic impacts...the majority of households will see a negative impact as a result of the carbon tax.” Stats Canada figures prove that without the carbon tax applied to home heating, the inflation rate would decline.
I have a couple of questions. They hired over 400 employees to administer the plan at a cost of $200 million. Do we know how many trees that would have planted?
I would also like to know this from the hon. members across the way. I spent the day, on New Year's Eve, volunteering at the food bank. I saw, first-hand, the lineup of people who were struggling and embarrassed but needed to get to the food bank to support their families so that they could sit down to a half-decent New Year's Eve dinner. Where were they?
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- Apr/9/24 4:39:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting to hear the Liberals stand up for the environment.
We keep repeating that the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. We have opted for a carbon exchange instead. More and more states, including Washington, will be joining this North American exchange.
It is time to send the message that this system can work, and that other places in North America are interested. Nevertheless, the Liberals are still investing in oil companies and ensuring that those people receive these credits.
Would my colleague not agree that if the government really wants to send a strong message on the environment, it absolutely must stop investing all this money in the oil industry and instead invest in a green transition?
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- Apr/9/24 4:40:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague said she is surprised to see the Liberals standing up for climate action. The fact remains that our government has invested more than any other government in recent years. Over $100 billion has been invested in the fight against climate change. This amount alone is very tangible proof of our commitment and our willingness to take action.
In Quebec, the carbon exchange does work very well. Various American states are looking to us to see how we can work together. I think that is the direction we need to take in order to ensure that we are protecting our environment.
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- Apr/9/24 4:52:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, ultimately, I would take a look at the carbon rebate and carbon tax issue as more of a price on pollution and an environmental issue. However, I think that we lose that thought.
The best way to illustrate the politicization of the issue is to take a look at what is happening in the province of Alberta. One only needs to look at the current premier. Before she was premier, she seemed to be of the opinion that we were going in the right direction on a price on pollution and the impact it was having; she even cited a personal example. Today, she is a premier and one of the individuals who have really focused on getting rid of the carbon rebate or the price on pollution.
Could the leader of the Green Party provide her thoughts on the degree to which the politicization of the issue can be very damaging for good, sound public policy.
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- Apr/9/24 4:54:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on the one hand, we are seeing a desire to reduce our carbon footprint, but on the other hand, we are seeing investments in the oil industry, in particular, as well as in carbon capture, which is not very effective.
Does my colleague not think that there is a double standard here? Should we not be more consistent in regard to the measures we are taking to fight pollution so that we can become a world leader and keep other countries from making the same mistakes we made?
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to follow up on a question I asked the government in December about the carbon tax and Bill C-234. Notably, the question I asked got over 13 and a half million views on Instagram; clearly, many Canadians are very interested in the issue. It also might have had something to do with the hearty laughter from the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, who was sitting behind me at the time.
The issue is with Bill C-234, which we continue to champion today in this House. Conservatives are fighting for farmers to be exempt from the carbon tax.
We believe in axing the tax completely. However, in this Parliament, in order to make some incremental progress, we have put forward a bill that has gained the support of a majority of the House of Commons, seeking to exempt farmers from the carbon tax.
This bill was on the verge of passing in the Senate when the government started to lean into their supposedly independent senators, making personal phone calls to try to pressure them to change their vote. The bill is now back in the House of Commons, and Conservatives are pushing to pass it in its original form, to exempt our hard-working farmers from the carbon tax.
Applying the carbon tax to farmers does not make any sense even if one believes in the carbon tax in general. The carbon tax is designed to be a Pigovian tax, that is, a tax on something that is believed to generate a negative externality in order to try to discourage that behaviour. That is the theory behind the carbon tax.
It seeks to make gasoline and airplane travel more expensive in the hopes that people will drive less, fly less, etc. That is the theory of the government's carbon tax. However, on what basis is it applied to our farmers?
Does the government hope that people will farm less if it makes farming more expensive? Does it think that farmers should do the essential work of farming less in response to the Pigovian tax that they are applying? It does not make any sense.
Farming is not an activity we want to discourage. Farming is an activity we should be encouraging. We should be making it easier for people to go into farming, to work in farming, to continue with this critical livelihood, feeding people across the country wherever they live.
Why is the government applying a punitive tax on farmers? What possible rational policy objective could taxing farmers in this way have? It just does not make any sense.
To be clear, Conservatives oppose the carbon tax in general. We will axe the tax after the carbon tax election. At a minimum, the Liberals should understand that, even in theory, the carbon tax makes no sense. Even on its own justification, the tax makes no sense when applied to farmers. That is why Conservatives have championed and will continue to champion the passage of Bill C-234, to push the government to pass the bill in its original form.
We have also called on the government to meet with the premiers; along with the Canadian public, they overwhelmingly oppose the carbon tax. Liberals are afraid to gather and meet with the premiers to have a carbon tax conference. I am sure that, if they did, they would clearly hear a call from the premiers to axe the carbon tax on farmers and on all Canadians.
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- Apr/9/24 7:40:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when I last spoke in the House on this particular issue about the carbon tax being imposed on Canadians, including to a young farmer trying to raise a family, the response I got from the minister was far from satisfactory. As long as the Liberals decide to keep the carbon tax in place and raise it every year, there is nothing they can say. Canadians will not be satisfied until the government finally gets rid of it.
Conservatives will not stop until we axe the tax for good. That is why we have been debating a new Conservative motion in the House today on the carbon tax. Maybe the members from all the other parties are tired of talking about it, but they need to continue to hear it because the issue is not going away. More and more people are doing their best and working hard every day, and they can barely afford to live anymore. Instead of easing that burden, the NDP-Liberal coalition went ahead with its out-of-touch plan to raise the carbon tax by another 23%.
Before the Liberals did that on April 1, we heard from a growing number of Canadians telling them not to do that. Apparently, they were not paying attention and they ignored all this. I want to at least highlight the impact the carbon tax is having back home. Hopefully it will help the government to understand the damage it is doing.
The mayor of Shaunavon wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister and broke it down for him. He offered a straightforward explanation of the problem created for a rural community like this one.
This is what Mayor Bennett had to say about the carbon tax increase that impacts communities like ours all across the country. He wrote, “the Town of Shaunavon's total utility costs for public buildings on an average monthly basis during the winter months amount to... about $38,477.18. It is highlighted that a total of 14% or $5,267.91 of this total is paid toward the Carbon Tax. This Carbon Tax is set to increase by 23% as of April 1, 2024, amounting to a new total of approximately $6,500 per month”, which is an an annual impact of $78,000.”
To understand this in proportion, that alone would require a town such as Shaunavon to increase its municipal taxes by 8% or more to generate enough to cover the federally implemented carbon tax.
The mayor continues, “We bring this to your attention out of concern towards the Federal Government's lack of transparency around the Carbon Tax and that personal tax rebates do not accurately reflect the actual costs of this program.”
Unlike the federal government, municipalities do not have the ability to borrow and spend like the feds do. The mayor of Swift Current also released an open letter to the Prime Minister. He included this information in his quote: “Two percent...of our municipal taxes will be required this year to pay the carbon tax—this 2% comprises more than half of the property tax increase we requested from our ratepayers in 2024. We estimate that over $400,000.00 in carbon charges will be paid by the City of Swift Current to the federal Government of Canada this year alone.”
The Liberals have the nerve to tell the public that they are not increasing the tax burden, but that is misleading. What is really going on is that their federal policy forces taxes to go up at the lower levels. How is that fair to anyone? I shared two examples, but it happens in a lot of other places. The carbon tax adds to the cost of everything, and some of the worst damage is done indirectly. Along with municipalities, small businesses have not yet received a rebate of $2.5 billion in carbon tax revenue. The government has repeatedly said it will return that money, but the delay has continued.
There are so many ways that the carbon tax is harming families, communities and businesses. That is why it is not good enough for them to pretend that a rebate will solve everything. It does not cover all the costs for everyone. A strong majority of Canadians oppose it. I am going to ask the question on Canadians' minds: Why will the NDP-Liberals not axe the tax, or at least pause it? What excuse do they have left?
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- Apr/9/24 7:44:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me first correct my colleague. As the Supreme Court has recognized, the carbon price is not a tax. It is a regulatory charge that is essential to reducing the pollution that is causing climate change and all the money is returned to Canadians. In fact, eight out of 10 households receive more money back through the Canada carbon rebate than they pay toward the fuel charge, with lower- and middle-income households receiving the most. They benefit the most.
Claims that the carbon price is increasing the cost of living are false. It has been widely refuted by hundreds of economists across this country. The math has been done by those who conduct the research on a regular and frequent basis and the fuel charge is a slow and steady increase, which does not affect inflation to a large degree and also does not increase the cost of living.
I have been reflecting on why the Conservatives have taken this approach on April 1. I started considering who they are working with. The fact is that, on April 1, Danielle Smith increased the price of fuel in Alberta by four cents. That was more than the increase. They talk about a 23% increase. That 23% increase on just the very small carbon price on gasoline added up to three cents. There is a three-cent increase in the price of a litre of gasoline, but Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, increased it by four cents. The difference between those two increases is that the four-cent increase did not come with a rebate, whereas the price on pollution with the Canada carbon rebate is sent back to Canadians. It is an incentive. It is a proven strategy and it works. It is lowering our emissions in Canada.
However, my colleague is not from Alberta, so who might he then be working for? There are a couple of options, I suppose. One is that big oil and gas posted record profits last year. The vast majority of the price of fuel goes to profits for big oil and gas executives, which is worth considering, but there have also been calls in Saskatchewan, the home province of my colleague across the way, to reduce its provincial tax, which is in excess of 15¢ per litre. The Saskatchewan government has refused to, despite the fact that other provinces have recognized that there is an affordability crisis and their governments ought to do what they can to lower the cost of fuel.
One might say that the federal government just increased the cost of fuel with the price on pollution going up on April 1. That is true, but the rebate went up as well. It is a fully rebated increase on the price of fuel, but the provincial excise tax in Saskatchewan is the highest in the country. It does not come with a rebate and Saskatchewan has refused to cut it. It is also possible that Conservative members are kind of creating this Conservative cover-up campaign to make it look like gas is expensive just because of the price on pollution, whereas there are multiple factors. There is corporate greed from big oil and gas. There are provincial excise taxes that are not rebated and a lot of other global factors, including climate change, which has an impact on the price of fuel.
Climate change is the number one cause of the increase in the cost of living with respect to groceries. It is another well-documented thing by the 200-plus economists from right across the country who the member for Carleton, the leader of the Conservatives, called “so-called experts”. That is unfair. Those experts are experts. They work at Canadian universities and conduct that research, and that is the evidence, the facts and the science, the pure mathematics, that the government relies on when making decisions.
Carbon pricing is a proven strategy to lower emissions. It is working. Since 2018, our emissions are down 8%.
I would remind Canadian voters that Conservatives ran on a plan to price pollution in the 2021 election under the auspices of Erin O'Toole, the former Conservative leader. The member across the way ran on a promise to price pollution. He went door to door with that campaign commitment and platform. Since then, the Conservatives have decided that carbon pollution and climate change is not an issue. However, it is an issue and it requires all of us to work on it.
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