44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 9, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/9/24 3:30:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, perhaps I will start where the last question left off, which was the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman's asking why the premiers cannot get together to come up with a new solution.
I realize that is what part of the motion gets to, and my response would be that the whole point of the program that is set up is that we do not need to have one solution for the entire country. As a matter of fact, premiers are encouraged to come up with solutions that work just for their provinces; that is the whole point of the system. It is only when a premier refuses to do anything that the backstop comes in. For example, B.C. might decide to put a price on consumer use or put a consumer price on carbon. Quebec might decide that it might partner with other jurisdictions in North America through the western initiative on cap and trade. Another province might come up with a different solution.
All that matters is that they reach a benchmark in terms of their commitment to reduce emissions. It is only when no plan is put forward by provinces that the backstop kicks in. Therefore I find the discussion we are having about premiers really interesting, when the Government of Canada is making it very easy for the premiers to develop and set up their own systems and their own plans to deal with carbon emissions.
My assessment is that the current position the premiers have been taking on the price on pollution, the carbon tax and the federal backstop, is that they are just using the narrative of the Leader of the Opposition, what he has been saying about the carbon tax while never mentioning the rebates, as an opportunity to ride his political coattails to keep hammering down on an issue they know is false.
No premier in this country knows that what the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Carleton, is saying is misinformation better than the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, does, because in 2021 she had a lot to say about pricing pollution. One would have thought that she was promoting the policy on behalf of the federal government with her conviction and the manner in which she had so much to say about pricing pollution.
These are not my words, but the words of the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith. She said this in an interview for the Fraser Institute, in a discussion she was having with someone: “Let's begin with talking about when carbon pricing at the federal level was first introduced. We talked about it being $50 [a] tonne, and then recently we heard it's actually going to go to $170 [a] tonne over the next nine years.” She goes on to say, “That [sounds] 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 gross domestic product either...this almost seems like the perfect policy.”
That was from Danielle Smith, who is now the Premier of Alberta, but when she made those comments in 2021 she was not.
She went on to say, “I do my family's taxes, so I know we got $808.50. We get an extra little bump for me and my husband because we live in a rural environment. When I go back and look [to see] what I spent last year in carbon taxes, because I was working from home, I wasn't commuting, my gas bills were way down, and even the amount of tax that I paid on my home heating because we're principally natural gas where I live, I would say that I probably ended up better off with that transfer. I think a lot of people would be of the view that, if you're going to implement some kind of carbon or revenue-neutral carbon pricing, that is probably not a bad way of doing it.”
These are Danielle Smith's own words from 2021, saying how much she believed in the carbon pricing system that we had developed and that is known throughout the world, and speaking in favour of it. Not only that, but doing the math herself and adding up her bills, she came to the conclusion that she gets more back than she pays. What happened to Danielle Smith since 2021? Oh, she became the leader of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, and now she has to suddenly start spinning the rhetoric of the Leader of the Opposition in the House because she looks at it as an opportunity for political gain.
That is what we are dealing with right now: premiers in this country who are looking for short-term political gain, and it is all at the expense of future generations. It is all at the expense of doing what is right. Danielle Smith knows what is right in terms of pricing pollution. She said it herself. She did the math herself. She came to the conclusion herself that she was better off, but it did not stop her from doing a complete about-face the moment she started to represent the far right ideology of the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Carleton.
Therefore, Canadians have to genuinely, legitimately ask themselves why the premier would make such glowing comments about pricing pollution and how she was better off, only to flip the switch. They can say a lot of things about the government when it comes to pricing pollution, but what they cannot say is that we have not been consistent, from day one, in terms of our commitment to putting a price on pollution, because we have.
That side of the House has been all over the map. Stephen Harper first floated the idea around 2007 or 2008. The Conservative members who sit in the House, and everybody who ran under the Conservatives' banner in 2021, ran on a platform of pricing pollution. Now they have flipped back because they see an opportunity for a bit of political gain by confusing Canadians and intentionally misleading them, which is what they are doing.
Inspired by Premier Smith, I did my own research on this because I wanted to see how carbon pricing is affecting me. I did the same thing as Danielle Smith did. In 2023, I took my Enbridge bills in Ontario; my natural gas is supplied by Enbridge. I added up the carbon levy on each bill, and in 2023 it came out to $379.93. I drive an electric car and my wife drives a hybrid electric car. Let us just assume for a second that we both drove internal combustion fuel vehicles. The average vehicle in Canada uses 1,667 litres of gas every year. If my wife and I were both driving, each had our own cars and were both filling up with the average amount of gas, we would have paid $238.55 each in carbon tax.
I added my home heating, a car for myself and a car for my wife, with both of us purchasing gas. The total amount came out to approximately $830. Then I looked at my bank statement, at what got deposited into my account, not what the minister told me was going to be there or what were the talking points, but what actually got deposited. It worked out to $884.50 in 2023.
I was over $50 better off, living in a house where I am using natural gas, and assuming my wife and I were both driving gas-consuming vehicles, which we were not. For the sake of the experiment, I assumed that we were. We are better off, just like Danielle Smith. I am better off with the price on pollution.
Conservatives are going to say what I think I heard one member earlier today refer to it as the ripple-down effect. When a trucker has to move some groceries, and people buy them, those people are going to pay the extra amount; the carbon tax gets added onto it. I want to thank somebody on TikTok or Instagram who actually did the math on this. I was pretty impressed and told my staff that we should do similar math on this so we can confirm it.
This is the conclusion he came to: There is an average of 120 boxes of cereal on a skid. Each transport tractor can carry 26 skids of cereal. That is a total of 3,120 boxes of cereal on a truck. The extra fuel costs that he calculated for driving an eighteen-wheeler 1,000 kilometres was $53.01. If he had driven 2,500 kilometres, it would have been $132.52. I am sure everyone can see where I am going with this. Take the added amount and divide it by the 3,120 boxes of cereal, and the increase to a box of cereal on a 1,000-kilometre drive was 1.7¢. That is what Conservatives are getting all worked up about: 1.7¢ on a box of cereal.
Meanwhile, on the same day that the carbon price increased, April 1, I did not hear any outrage from my Conservative colleagues from Alberta about how Danielle Smith conveniently added another four cents to a litre. That would have done more damage to the math; it would have more than doubled it. That is what we are dealing with. With respect to other items, on milk for example, it works out to 1.4¢ for one package. This is what Conservatives are talking about. Then what they want to do, and I will hand it to them that they have done a decent job of doing it, is confuse Canadians.
They want to tap into the anxiety created by inflation and the anxiety created by greedflation, and they use that anxiety against the very people who are experiencing it. They want to use it against those who are struggling right now, to make them think they are worse off with a price on pollution, although Danielle Smith herself said they are not but that they are better off. As a matter of fact, 94% of individuals who make less than $50,000 a year get back more than they put in. When the Leader of the Opposition gets up and starts going on about the impacts that people are going to feel as a result of this, he is intentionally misleading people. He is intentionally trying to tap into anxieties. People should be aware of that.
The motion specifically asks to bring premiers together. As I said in the House earlier, they want to bring people together, but they do not even really have to because we do not need a collective idea for the whole country. Each province is at will to develop the system it wants. However, the Premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, was at committee on March 27, and this is what he had to say when asked what he is going to do, what plan he might have to deal with this if he does not like the federal backstop:
The goal is not for our employers to pay more. The goal is for them to emit less and to displace higher-emitting...like competing industries around the world. That is how we [will] build a strong Canadian economy. That is how we [will] lower global emissions...that's how we [will] employ Canadians in your community and in mine.
That is a complete non-answer. The Canadian Press summed it up perfectly when it said, “Big polluters shouldn't be punished financially -- they should just emit less.” That is the position of the Premier of Saskatchewan: just pollute less.
Earlier today in an exchange, I heard a Conservative member say that what Canadians need are just more options, options where they could be purchasing products that are contributing less. We incentivize the marketplace for a reason. We did not just magically get off the incandescent light bulb and find out that the LED light bulb was so much better. Jurisdictions throughout the world were saying that incandescent light bulbs are very inefficient and that maybe we should start phasing them out. Incentivizing the marketplace to start coming up with new solutions is how we got to the compact fluorescent bulb. Then someone said we could do the same with LED light bulbs and make them even more efficient, and that is how we got to the LED light bulb.
We did not get there because those who were making the incandescent light bulbs, which only lasted six months, suddenly said, “I have a better way of doing this.” They did not suddenly realize that they could give people a better product that would be more efficient, last longer and be virtually the same price, after it had been introduced in the market for a long time. Of course they did not do that. They were incentivized by the decision-making in the marketplace, and that is exactly what the price on pollution is.
It is about encouraging people to make different decisions. When somebody says that they are currently using natural gas to heat their home and could go to a heat pump, or somebody says that maybe it is time to look at an electric vehicle, those people are making new decisions about the products they want to use and the services they want. As a result, they can end up better off, especially when we look at the rebates that are available at federal and provincial levels to do things such as install heat pumps or buy electric cars.
This is where we are right now. We are making a transition.
Conservatives want to pretend the world is not changing. They want to pretend oil and gas will be here forever. All they care about is, “Burn, baby. Burn,” and “Drill, baby. Drill.” We could do whatever we wanted to in this country to try to halt the production of electric vehicles and prevent the sale of them, but the world is changing. Of cars sold in China last year, 40% were electric vehicles. The world is changing.
Conservatives need to figure out that it is time to get on board. It is time for Canada to be a leader. It is time for Canada to be at the forefront of these new technologies, so we can be developing them and exporting them around the world, not living in the past. Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition is looking to do anything to assume power. Even if that means exploiting Canadians' fears and their anxieties to do it, he will do it. This is because, at the end of the day, he does not care. He does not care that 94% of those making less than $50,000 get more back in the rebate than they pay on the price on pollution.
All he cares about are the big emitters and the big companies and allowing them to continue to pollute for free, but we do not pollute for free anymore. It is the exact same concept as paying property taxes back in our constituencies. We pay to get garbage picked up at the side of the road. We pay to recycle. We pay to compost. That is us paying for pollution, and there is no difference when we talk about paying to pollute into the atmosphere. It is the exact same concept, but for some reason, nobody on the other side bats an eye when someone says they have to charge money to take a bag of garbage to the dump. Nobody bats an eye at that, but as soon as we say we have to charge money to put those pollutants in the air that will be there for generations, then the Conservatives suddenly have a problem.
This is the right thing to do. It is what is happening around the world, and it is really time for the Conservatives to get on board.
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