44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 9, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/9/24 4:40:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives will not do anything about the climate crisis, but the Liberals are flailing about doing all sorts of conflicting things.
I hope my colleague does not count in the $100 billion the $36 billion the Trans Mountain pipeline is costing us, or the authorization of the Bay du Nord gas project, or the $18 billion handed out to oil and gas companies in subsidies every year, or the $14 billion we learned today was not spent on the climate crisis.
How is it, and how does she explain, that they failed to spend $14 billion on the climate crisis, when that is so urgent?
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- Apr/9/24 4:41:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there are two things on which I completely agree with my colleague: the fact that urgent action is needed and the fact that we have invested money and must continue to do so.
The crisis is here now. The Conservatives' lack of a plan is certainly not the solution.
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- Apr/9/24 4:41:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the parliamentary secretary, for giving me the opportunity to make a brief speech on today's motion. I thank him profusely.
I have been here for the full day of debate. Let me break down what the supply motion today from the Conservative Party deals with. It posits that we have a carbon tax crisis and suggests that the solution is to bring the premiers to Ottawa, or somewhere, and have a first ministers conference.
I am going to try to address two very large and complex questions in the next 10 minutes. One is the climate crisis, and associated with that, the role of carbon pricing. The other is the nature of our federation, the role of first ministers conferences and what else might work.
The first thing to do is to clearly state that there is no carbon tax crisis. The real crisis, the real urgency, is global warming and climate change. It is almost too late. Time is running out.
We have a very large climate crisis, which threatens all aspects of our lives in Canada. In British Columbia, in four days, 619 people died in the summer of 2021 because of a heat dome. Those were preventable deaths, but 619 people still died, according to the B.C. Coroners Service, which studied those deaths. In the same season, we had wildfires that also compromised our health and threatened lives.
That fall, we had the atmospheric rivers that were responsible for billions of dollars of infrastructure needing to be replaced, which was a huge hit to the economy. We also had the other side of the country dealing with hurricane Fiona, which lifted houses up along the shore of Port aux Basques and deposited them in the ocean. In other words, we have had loss of life, as well as unprecedented fires and floods that threaten lives.
We are seeing a climate crisis that requires us to pull together, yet how do we behave in terms of the question of a first ministers conference? I look at the European Union and at Canada, and I think we have a crisis where, for some reason, we cannot even think like a country. We act like a vulcanized group of federations that do not like each other very much. We have 10 provinces, three territories and one federal government, and we do not have our act together nearly as well as the European Union does.
It has 27 separate sovereign nation-states that are not part of the same country. In fact, they have countries that were, in my parents' lives, at war with each other: Germany and France. The European Union has 27 nation-states and 24 official languages. From the very beginning of addressing the climate crisis, going back to Kyoto in December 1997, the European Union came with a collective pledge, divvied it up among all the nations and started achieving it. Every single European nation more than achieved their Kyoto targets to well below 1990 levels, while Canada continued to soar above 1990 levels.
When Putin invaded Ukraine, the European Union said, “We'd better help Ukraine and make sure it can get electricity, because clearly Putin wants people to freeze.” It took a matter of weeks for the European Union to tell Ukraine it was going to plug Ukraine into its electricity grid. We cannot get Quebec hydroelectricity into Nova Scotia, where the electricity is still generated by coal, because we cannot get Hydro-Québec to work with Emera in Nova Scotia to deliver zero-carbon hydroelectricity. We cannot get our clean electricity from southern Canada up to Nunavut so it can stop burning diesel. Why is this? We do not seem to be able to coordinate very well.
I will look at the history of first ministers conferences. We had a lot in the past, and maybe it is not the best way to get action. If we look back at the Mulroney government, action on acid rain was not taken by pulling everyone together into the same room. Mulroney's genius on this was to get one deal at a time bilaterally. If they were going to shut down the pollution that causes acid rain, they started with the easiest of the provinces, the one that polluted the least but was having a lot of damage. Prince Edward Island was the first bilateral deal between the federal government and a province, Canada-P.E.I.
The last one was the federal government and Ontario, because Ontario's Inco smelter was the single largest point source of acid rain causing pollution in all of North America. One at a time, we got deals with each province all the way across; the Mulroney government then told the Americans that it was coming to them with clean hands. It had already cut its pollution in half, so the Americans should do the same; in that way, they could clean up acid rain.
Mulroney did have a lot of first ministers meetings as well. If we look at his history on this, Pierre Trudeau had five first ministers conferences, some of them historic. Repatriating the Constitution was a rather big first ministers meeting. Former prime minister Mulroney, whom I have mentioned, had 14 first ministers conferences; Jean Chrétien had seven. However, they came to a grinding halt under Stephen Harper, who, over a nine-year period, had two, one in 2008 and one in 2009. The current Prime Minister, over a nine-year period, has held three. It is not a great record in terms of collaboration, but at least there were far more first ministers conferences than under Stephen Harper.
Are first ministers conferences the way to go? How do we do it? What is the best way to get our country to think like a country? Today, April 9, happens to be the 40th anniversary of the day that the House unanimously passed the Canada Health Act. I was reminded of this fact by our former colleague and friend Jane Philpott, who has written a book about how we need to collaborate for health care.
We do not have a carbon tax crisis. I would say we have an affordability crisis right across Canada. There is no question. The carbon tax plays, according to every economist, a minuscule role in the affordability crisis. We have a health crisis. Family doctors are not available to everyone. Is health care a right in this country? That would be a good place to have a collaborative first ministers conference. Could we do that? We certainly have a climate crisis. How do we address that? How can we get ourselves to pull together?
Canadians pull together when the climate crisis hits home. When people are out of their homes because of floods or fires, we know Canadians pull together. We still have no national firefighting force or plan for it. We do not have water bombers sufficient to deal with the summer of climate crisis fires that we can expect to see. There is so much more we could do if we tried to figure out how to get collaboration to occur.
One thing we need to do is agree that electrifying almost everything is one of the best ways to reduce emissions, and the best way to make that reliable is to treat the grid like a battery. Let more people produce. Let more people into the market. Let indigenous nations produce solar and wind. Let coastal communities produce tidal and wind power and sell it into the grid, and when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, pull it out of the grid.
Going back to Europe, Denmark's excess wind is sold to Norway. Norway takes that excess wind power, pumps it up into reservoirs and lets it flow down to create electricity when the sun is not shining in Denmark. This is not rocket science. For God's sake, as Canadians, we know we are the same people and the same communities. We basically love each other, and we have to start acting like a country, because the climate crisis threatens our kids' future in a real way that carbon pricing does not. Carbon pricing, at long last, has gotten some reduction in emissions. However, the truth of the matter is that, for so long, the government in Canada, regardless of Conservative or Liberal, has been so busy trying to build up the fossil fuel industry and throw it tens of billions of dollars in subsidies that we have not confronted the problem.
The problem is big polluters. We need to address that. We need to move off fossil fuels. We need to do it quickly while we still have time to save our future. We need to tax the excess profits. So far this year, Shell has had $28 billion in profits and paid it out to its shareholders. For Heaven's sake, this is not rocket science. We can get this right. Let us move this debate to solutions.
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- Apr/9/24 4:51:49 p.m.
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It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Carbon Pricing; the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, Public Services and Procurement; the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Carbon Pricing.
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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 4:53:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the actions of the premier of Alberta are quite baffling, because her decision to put a pause on renewables when there are billions of dollars of investment trying to get into Alberta makes no sense.
Alberta has the best potential for solar, and that is where Alberta is a real energy powerhouse. The facility that was recently put in place near Okotoks is delivering solar power at under three cents a kilowatt hour, and it rolled out fast. There is nothing that can compete with that.
If we look at solar and wind as sources of electricity, the price to consumers plummets. However, when the marginal cost of a kilowatt hour is zero, the utilities are resistant. Their profit model, their business model, is that they make energy in big megaprojects and sell it along long, stringy lines, where it loses efficiency, to consumers who have no choice but to buy it.
We can bring down the price of electricity. Let little communities, indigenous nations and people produce their own electricity with renewables. If we bring down that price, it will help everyone except, for some reason, the Premier of Alberta.
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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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- Apr/9/24 4:55:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Government of Canada is making decisions that are big mistakes. The biggest mistake is to continue to give huge subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. That makes no sense.
For example, $34 billion in taxpayers' money was invested in the Trans Mountain pipeline. Not only does that not make any sense economically, but it is also a big threat to our environment. That was done with public money. That is more than all the subsidies for clean, green energy.
It makes no sense.
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- Apr/9/24 4:56:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I share the member's dismay; on issues like this, it feels as though we are less and less a single country pulling in the same direction.
The motion before us calls for a first ministers meeting, and I cannot help but feel that the only path towards greater unity involves talking to each other. Does the member feel that, if such a meeting were to take place, if the Prime Minister were to heed this motion and call a first ministers meeting to talk about this, the premiers would engage in that meeting in good faith?
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- Apr/9/24 4:56:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Skeena—Bulkley Valley, who, by the way, was one of the few MPs able to attend COP28. There, the decision was taken to triple renewable energy globally and double energy efficiency by 2030. These are important decisions that we should be moving on quickly.
I would like to think that every premier would participate in good faith. We can start naming the ones we think would, but let us start with the evidence. Let us have a first ministers meeting that has scientists present to explain the real crisis we are in.
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- Apr/9/24 4:57:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very much looking forward to hearing the speech by my colleague, the member for Yellowhead, and I will be splitting my time with him.
It is my pleasure to join the debate on our official opposition motion to have the Prime Minister take the time to meet with the 14 premiers of the country. I do not think it is too much to ask, and I find it interesting that all the government members are very opposed to having the Prime Minister do his job.
He has not met with the 14 first ministers since 2016. I remember that because, during that time, I was an MLA in Saskatchewan with former premier Brad Wall. I remember Premier Wall came back and said that the Prime Minister committed to not announcing any forced carbon tax until there were discussions and the premiers had had the chance to come back and bring forward options. That is what the Prime Minister said to the 14 premiers at that meeting.
I also remember that the environment ministers were called to have a meeting with then-environment minister Catherine McKenna to talk about the backstop of the carbon tax on provinces that had not yet gotten their plans in place. There was good faith. The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley asked about good faith. In that meeting of environment ministers, they announced the backstop of the carbon tax. That is when our environment minister walked out of that meeting. When we talk about good faith, a lot of that good faith has to come from the federal government as well. When we talk about good faith, it is very important.
A lot of the Liberal and NDP members of Parliament have talked about misinformation. I will stick strictly to the facts for the member for Winnipeg North, so he cannot talk about misinformation.
It is a fact that in our country, over the last year, two million people have accessed a food bank. The expectation is that a million more people will access a food bank in 2024 because of high food prices. That is a fact and is not to be disputed in the House. I do not think any of us think that is the type of country that we should be living in, where that many Canadians, and especially those in our armed forces, have to access a food bank just to get by. That is something we should all take to heart and try to do better.
This has been caused by the continuous rise in inflation. The fact is that the Parliamentary Budgetary Officer and the Governor of the Bank of Canada have said that the carbon tax adds to inflation. These are undeniable facts.
I would also say that, throughout the years, we have done some studies in Saskatchewan, and the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan has said that the carbon tax will add $1.93 per acre in 2019, increasing to $7.42 in 2024. This is something that is amazing. The carbon tax will cost $17.31 per acre by 2030, once it gets to $170 a tonne.
There is no way a rational person could look at those numbers and think that the carbon tax is not increasing the price of our food. If we tax the farmer who produces the food and we tax the trucker who trucks the food, we tax every single Canadian who goes to the grocery store to buy the food.
Talking about continued increases, we can see that across this country rents have doubled and mortgages have doubled. When I was younger and we bought our first home, it took 25 years to pay that home off. Now it takes 25 years to save for a down payment on a home. Eight to nine out of 10 young Canadians do not think they will ever own a home in our country. That is not the country our children should grow up in. There should be hope. There should be optimism in this country.
We should take some of the members of the Liberal caucus at their word. A couple of years ago, the member for Whitby stood in his spot in this chamber and said that Canadians would feel pain. There is a success. Canadians are feeling pain, and it is because of their out-of-touch policies.
Let us look at the Prime Minister. He just did an interview in Alberta saying that life was going to get more expensive. He made an out-of-touch comment that, for people who own a pool or drive three vehicles, life would get more expensive. That is not the fact. The fact is that, in this country, life is more expensive for each and every Canadian. There is always more month left than paycheque now for Canadians. That is because of the out-of-touch policies brought forward by the government.
I find it very interesting that Liberal members are still talking about the rebate. They think they are heroes. I congratulate them for giving rebates to Canadians. It is their money in the first place. If they did not take the money from them, they would not have to bend over backward to give it back to them. Government never earns a dollar ever. It only gets money by taking it from Canadians and businesses who have earned that money first.
I would like to end by saying that it is not unreasonable for us to ask the Prime Minister to sit down, defend his flagship carbon tax policy and explain why the government should take more money from Canadians than it is going to give back in front of our premiers. If he is so proud of his carbon tax and it is doing such a wonderful job, when we are ranked 62 out of 67 in the world on the environmental index because he is doing nothing to meet that target, he should have no problem defending his policies to our premiers.
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- Apr/9/24 5:04:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, ironically, there was a provincial budget in the Province of Manitoba that saw the price of a litre of gas drop because it reduced the tax.
In the province of Alberta, the Conservative premier, who has been so critical and onside with the leader of the Conservative Party saying to axe the tax, actually increased gas in Alberta four cents a litre, which is more than the three cents from the carbon tax, yet Conservatives collectively have been silent on that. They will criticize the federal government on a three cent a litre increase, but are absolutely silent on a four cent a litre increase from an Alberta Conservative premier.
The member posed the question about two million people going to food banks. How does that four cents a litre factor into that?
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- Apr/9/24 5:05:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I would love to do this summer is to go on a rural tour in Manitoba with the member and ask all the farmers there how they feel about the carbon tax costing the agricultural producers of our country $1 billion in 2030, and if they think that would be fair.
It is going to cost the average farm of 5,000 acres $175,000 a year in carbon tax. I want to know if the member thinks those farms are going to be able to survive.
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Madam Speaker, related to today's discussion is Bill C-234. Conservatives have been campaigning loudly about how they would like to see the Senate amendments to that bill rejected and it be passed in its original form. I can say now, as I have said before, that the NDP supports that position because we think the bill's principles are in line with what is in the original Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act. Every time the bill has come forward to the House, it is lined up with Conservative speakers; thus we never seem to get to a stage where it will come to a vote.
I hear Conservatives complaining about all of these costs. When is the member's party going to let the bill come to a vote so that we can actually get these changes implemented?
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- Apr/9/24 5:06:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to join with this member and say we should pass it right now with unanimous consent. Then it can go back to the Senate and we can get the relief our producers need.
One more thing I would like to say about the Liberals' rebate program is this. They say it is revenue-neutral. If they thought the carbon tax was revenue-neutral, they would not have exempted home heating in the Maritimes and across the country. They have admitted that the carbon tax is not revenue-neutral by bringing in exemptions, because they knew that people were out more money than they were getting back.
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- Apr/9/24 5:07:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to ask my colleague the same question I asked earlier.
Canada's provincial premiers are not Parliament's puppets. They will never be Parliament's puppets, no matter who is in power.
Should it not be up to Canada's provincial premiers themselves to demand a meeting as soon as possible, and with our support, since it is important that they are heard? Is it not actually their prerogative to put their foot down, pound their fists on the table and say they want a meeting?
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- Apr/9/24 5:08:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member opposite. The premiers of Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have all written the Prime Minister to ask for a meeting. Adding our voice to support those premiers is something the House has the ability to do and should do. The problem with the Prime Minister is that he just does not give a damn what the premiers say.
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- Apr/9/24 5:08:51 p.m.
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I would advise the member to be a little more careful with his language.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for Yellowhead.
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- Apr/9/24 5:09:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in a move that can only be described as completely out of touch, the NDP-Liberal coalition has once again chosen to burden Canadians with a staggering 23% increase in the carbon tax.
As we gather in the House, families from coast to coast to coast are struggling under the weight of soaring prices for essentials like fuel, food and heating. This tax hike is a direct hit on the wallets of hard-working Canadians, particularly in Alberta, where the carbon tax costs by far the most.
Opposition is not limited to just voices in this chamber. It echoes from the west to the east, with premiers across Canada standing united against this absurd increase. The message from Canadians is loud and clear: Enough is enough. It is time for the Prime Minister to convene an emergency carbon tax meeting with all of Canada's first ministers.
This issue is bigger than just partisan politics. It is about the livelihoods of our citizens. We demand action and we demand it now, for the future of our federation and the well-being of every Canadian family.
The April 1 23% increase in the carbon tax orchestrated by the NDP-Liberal government significantly inflates the cost of living, affecting not just the cost of gas but everything that goes through our supply chain. The burden is most felt in Alberta, where, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the average family will pay a staggering $2,943 in carbon tax this year, which is the highest in the nation.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer also disproves the claim that the government keeps making about the rebates. The rebates fall dramatically short of offsetting the financial impact on families, no matter whether they reside in urban centres or rural Alberta.
This tax hike is not an isolated issue. It is representative of a broader, more concerning trend of inflationary pressures made worse by the government’s fiscal policies. As prices soar, the government's insistence on increasing the carbon tax adds fuel to the inflationary fire that is engulfing Canada.
The notion that the rebates would cushion the blow has proven to be false, leaving Canadians to grapple with diminishing household budgets. This policy does not discriminate. Its reach extends to every corner of the country, leaving no one insulated from its effects. From the single parent in Edson struggling to make ends meet to the small business owner in Rocky Mountain House facing increasing operational costs, the message is clear: This carbon tax increase is financially and morally wrong and one that demands immediate re-evaluation.
The fiscal health and well-being of Canadians must be the priority, not the relentless pursuit of a tax scheme that deepens the divide between fantasy policies and real-world outcomes. The backlash against the carbon tax is not just a small group of angry Canadians. It is a national outcry for change from millions.
Representing the will of the people are the premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and P.E.I. These leaders, representing diverse political and geographical backgrounds, have united in their opposition. Their stance reveals a critical flaw in the carbon tax policy, which is that it fails to acknowledge the unique economic and environmental realities of each province. This united front of opposition is mirrored by the Canadian people, with two-thirds expressing opposition to the tax hike.
On April 1, I met with many of these Canadians who are frustrated, and I joined them at axe the tax protests along Highway 43 and in Drayton Valley. Every business owner I meet and every person at the homes I door knock has shared their experiences with the worsening cost of living because of this tax.
Between the provinces and the federal government, the essence of Canadian federalism is collaboration and respect for jurisdiction, yet the current approach to the carbon tax defines the NDP-Liberal government’s preference for unilateral decision-making. It disregards the principle that provinces should have the autonomy to pursue their own economic objectives. This moment calls for a return to true partnership, where provincial voices are not only heard but answered, crafting a more cohesive and effective strategy for Canada’s future.
Aside from this, the imposition of a steep carbon tax by the government, under the banner of environmental preservation, presents a glaring problem. Despite the financial strain this policy places on Canadians, there is a troubling lack of evidence and measurable targets concerning its impact on emissions.
Astonishingly, by the government's own admission, specific outcomes tied to the tax's effectiveness in reducing emissions do not exist. This is further compounded by an inconvenient truth: emissions in Canada are on the rise, not the decline. Our country finds itself ranked 62nd out of 67 countries on the climate change performance index, a clear example of the policy's ineffectiveness.
I would like to move an amendment.
I move that all the words after “That” be replaced with:
the House note:
(a) that the federal carbon tax is causing a debate in the country, and
(b) that, while Quebec, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories already have their own systems in place, the federal government mandates carbon tax policy;
that the House call on the Prime Minister to convene an emergency carbon tax and tarification meeting with all of Canada's 14 first ministers; and
that this meeting be publicly televised and held within five weeks of this motion being adopted.
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- Apr/9/24 5:17:44 p.m.
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We are taking the amendment under advisement and will be back in a few minutes, as soon as it is considered.
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