SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 298 - Apr/11/24

Mr. Jeremy Patzer (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC)

Apr/11/24 11:57:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-50, which can be summed up in one short sentence: It is an act to promote Liberal friends to fancy boards and to destroy the economy of western Canada. There is an obsession by this radical socialist environment minister to push his not-so-hidden agenda on Canadians, to wipe oil and gas production off the face of the earth and ensure that we all live in energy poverty. If members do not believe me, they can listen to his own comments. He said that fossil fuels must be phased out by 2050, and even earlier if possible. Let us contrast that statement with some comments from Japan’s ambassador to Canada about the role we could be playing in the world’s future energy mix, in particular when it comes to LNG: “The world is waiting for Canada...Canada can and should play a very important role to support the energy situation not only in Japan and South Korea, but the world.” When it comes to Canada, we are the closest market to Japan and South Korea that could be providers of clean, sustainable and affordable LNG. Canada has a natural advantage in producing LNG, because of the naturally colder climate that we have for more than half of the year. Japan and South Korea are trying to find ways to avoid being energy-dependent on nefarious players like the Communist regime in Beijing. As the Japanese ambassador said, we have an important role to play, but the world is still waiting. Look around the rest of the world, and we can see what other options there are available to us for selling our LNG. Last year, we saw Germany, Italy and France sign long-term LNG supply agreements with Qatar, but only after they came to Canada asking us to be their provider of choice. They came to us because they did not want to go to a country with a deplorable human rights record, like Qatar. They did not want to go to a country that is housing the leaders of Hamas, but, because of the minister’s blind and radical loathing of our world-class energy sector, he said no. The Liberals left those countries with no choice but to basically support the enemies of one of our most important allies, Israel, and in February it was announced that India and Bangladesh are signing agreements, and so has a Chinese company as well. It is a shame, because if we look at the way the world is right now, there is both a moral case and a business case for producing and exporting Canadian energy, in particular our LNG, but the Liberal government does not get it. We have a radical environment minister and his incompetent Prime Minister, who apparently would rather see energy deals go to a country that houses the head of Hamas than to Canada, with our high standards for things like human rights, high regulatory standards and an abundance of supply. How does that make any sense? When the government stands against Canadian energy, we are not doing the world any favours. At the same time, it also hurts a lot of people in our own country, who benefit from having a successful energy industry here at home. There are so many communities that rely on the oil and gas industry for their survival. It is the industry that keeps the lights on at the hockey rink, at the community centre and at the seniors centre, and that pays the royalties and taxes that are needed to invest in things like hospitals, schools, libraries and emergency services. Here in Ottawa, if we walk down the street across from Parliament, there is a good example of two different billboards, one after the other, that highlight the social benefits of the oil and gas sector. The first billboard says that Canada needs a fully funded Canada disability benefit. The second billboard is a message from Canada Action, and it says, “As Long As The World Needs Oil & Natural Gas Shouldn't It Be Canadian?” Why are those two billboards related? It is because the royalties and the tax dollars that are raised when the energy sector is going strong fill the government coffers with the necessary money to invest in those types of social programs. They cannot exist or succeed in the first place without generating a significant amount of revenue from our energy sector. As much as the NDP-Liberals keep trying, we cannot get away with spending money that we do not have. Sooner or later, it runs out, and bad things start to happen, like some of what we are seeing now with inflation. As we know, the Prime Minister does not have the type of common sense or self-control as the Conservative leader, the member for Carleton, to be able to implement a one-for-one policy, whereby for every new dollar of spending the government has to find a dollar of savings. As such, when the government sets out to destroy the very industry that massively funds government programs and the equalization payments that prop up Quebec, everyone loses. That includes indigenous communities as well. Natural Law Energy is a company made up of a group of first nations in Saskatchewan and Alberta. They wanted to invest in the Keystone XL pipeline expansion so they could increase their cash flow, which would support their people. It would have been a great opportunity for economic reconciliation. Do members remember when the Prime Minister claimed that no relationship was more important to him than the one with first nations? Apparently, he said that for his own political gain, because once he had a chance to put his words into action, he was nowhere to be found, other than to say that, no, they do not get to participate in the economy or have any economic self-determination and reconciliation. Then there are the thousands of jobs and economic spinoffs that come from having a robust oil and gas sector in an area. There was a local news headline in my riding recently that read “April Oil and Gas Public Offering Shows Kindersley Area Generated $234,074.68 in Revenue”. That is just from one public offering. It does not include all the wages of workers in the area or the money they are spending in their community. This past winter was like every other winter across the Prairies, and we had some strong cold snaps. More urgently, there was a period of time when Alberta was sending warnings to its people to reduce their power consumption to avoid rolling blackouts during peak times when the temperature was in the -40°C range. How could this happen to a province like Alberta? It had an NDP government that drank the same Kool-Aid as the radical environment minister and decided to close down the reliable, affordable baseload power and replace it with expensive, intermittent wind and solar power. The irony is that it was not due to a lack of wind. There is enough wind most days to produce power. The issue was that it was so cold that it was not safe for the turbines to operate. I have actually worked in the wind industry, and I know that actually happens, because it happened all the time on the wind farm I worked at. Quite often, in the winter, it was also overcast, and the days are short, so there was next to no solar capacity that was actually available. The previous NDP government in Alberta literally almost killed people because of its radical ideology. Thank God that Saskatchewan had the ability and the capacity to fire up Boundary Dam Unit 4 to be able to help provide power to our neighbours. Thank God that our province has invested in natural gas power stations like the Chinook Power Station in Swift Current, which can provide the equivalent baseload power to hundreds of thousands of homes. If the Liberals’ radical agenda is allowed to proceed, this is only going to be the beginning, and this is just a snapshot of what we can expect. The Liberals have this idea that any new natural gas has to be phased out by 2035 too, if not sooner. I met with some of the turbine suppliers, and they were willing to tell me some of the timelines to get the parts needed to build a plant now. In some cases it might take up to 10 years to get all the parts they need to build a power plant. It is the same story about trying to procure solar panels and wind turbine equipment, because there is minimal manufacturing in North America for that equipment and that industry as well. However, in order to comply with the regulations that the government is rolling out, they have to be in operation before 2035. Simply ordering the power plant prior to the deadline is not good enough. Canadians are at serious risk of being plunged into widespread energy poverty, but the Liberals know that. The regulations that are published in the Canada Gazette told us that the people most at risk or most likely to already live in energy poverty are single mothers and seniors living on a fixed income, and those regulations would disproportionately impact those people. The Liberals also know the devastating unemployment that their transition is set to cause. The natural resources minister received a memo discussing exactly that. The Liberals' own government document says that their so-called just transition will affect over 200,000 workers in the energy sector. That is listed as 1% of our employment rate and, with how unemployment numbers are already rising, we really cannot afford for that to keep going up. The memo also happens to mention 292,000 workers in agriculture and 193,000 workers in manufacturing. Does anyone really believe that the Liberals are going to replace hundreds of thousands of jobs on the line? Combine all this with the carbon tax, the Liberal fuel regulations, the emissions cap regulations and other burdensome regulations like the unconstitutional Impact Assessment Act, and it is quite easy to see the place where the Liberals are trying to take us. Their plan punishes Canadians, and it will bring misery and devastation upon them. Thank God that there is an election on the horizon, in which Canadians can give this radical socialist environment minister the boot and get Canada back on track with a Conservative government that would axe the tax and fix the budget so that Canadians can get back to living in prosperity instead of poverty. Canada can become an energy-independent country that no longer relies on imported oil from dictators. We can use our own resources to produce what our country needs and what the world needs: clean, affordable, ethical and sustainable Canadian energy. Only a Conservative government would get it done.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/11/24 12:06:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to listen to Conservatives speak to this legislation. Obviously, they are four-square against the legislation. They are in election mode. They hate this legislation. Canadians need to have an understanding of what is actually in the legislation itself that the member is so adamantly opposed to, such as the sustainable jobs partnership council. What is wrong with a council working with Canadians in communities, looking at sustainable jobs into the future and providing a strategic annual report and a report that comes out on a five-year plan? What is wrong with that? The Conservative Party believes, at the end of the day, that anything that includes the word “sustainable” or “environment” is bad for Canadians. I have news for the Conservative Party: These are good things. Working with Canadians is a good thing. Why is the member opposed to that aspect of the legislation?

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Sustainable

Mr. Jeremy Patzer

Apr/11/24 12:07:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are so many things wrong with this bill. The member referenced part of it. As I said in my opening, this is an act to promote Liberal friends to fancy boards. That is all that is going to happen. There is going to be a board of Liberal elites who are going to write reports to talk down to and explain to the provinces and the people in the community I represent how they should live their lives and that what they are doing is wrong. We have seen the job numbers from the internal government briefing department that said there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that are going to be destroyed. Where are they going to be destroyed? They will be destroyed in southwest Saskatchewan, in Lakeland, in Battle River—Crowfoot, in Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, in Grande Prairie, in Fort McMurray and all over western Canada. It is going to have a ripple effect across the entire country. The Liberals have failed to recognize it, but Canadians know it.

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Saskatchewan

Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

Apr/11/24 12:08:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am a little shocked to see the use of yet another gag order in the House. The truth is, this principle does not respect the spirit of the Constitution. Here is another thing that does not respect the spirit of the Constitution: infringing on provincial jurisdictions. Employment falls under provincial jurisdiction. Has my colleague done anything to ensure that this will be respected? Do any of the amendments tabled by the Conservatives seek to defend provincial jurisdictions? This is a new card that the Conservatives are playing. We have been hearing about it since yesterday. I am curious to hear more about it today.

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Mr. Jeremy Patzer

Apr/11/24 12:09:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his great question because he is exactly right. The development of natural resources is the sole purview of the provinces. We have a government, propped up by the NDP, that wants to infringe upon provincial jurisdiction yet again. It likes to do it all the time and then it likes to blame the provinces when it does not go the way it thought it was going to go. I absolutely agree with my Bloc colleague on time allocation. When it came to tabling this bill, there was one day of debate, and the second day started with time allocation on the bill to make sure there was limited debate. This is a pretty substantive piece in the Liberal government's cog of shutting down the western economy and it wants to limit debate as much as possible. When it came time to have witnesses at committee, we also had a very limited amount of time to get witnesses from our communities to come to speak. If we want to hear from the provinces on this, we need to make sure people from the provinces can come to committee and speak.

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Allocation

Ms. Laurel Collins (Victoria, NDP)

Apr/11/24 12:10:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I hear that the member and his party are opposed to the legislation, but there is a climate emergency happening. There is a climate crisis and it is impacting Canadians across the country. We need to invest in sustainable jobs. Putting the legislation aside, I am wondering if he can at least agree to those principles.

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Mr. Jeremy Patzer

Apr/11/24 12:10:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the big crises right now, along with the energy crisis, is the food crisis. We have people lining up at food banks by the millions just trying to get a meal. That is the crisis our country is facing right now that needs to be addressed immediately. Let us also look at some of the data that exists. We know that the energy sector at large has reduced emissions intensity by over 30%, while increasing production. The province of Saskatchewan has reduced methane emissions by 60% without a government mandate, because industry has figured out a way to do it on its own and it knows it was the right thing to do.

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Mr. Chris Warkentin (Grande Prairie—Mackenzie, CPC)

Apr/11/24 12:11:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent to move the following motion: That, on Division No. 684, the votes of Mr. Davidson and Mr. Zimmer in favour of the motion be struck from the record; and that on Division No. 685, the vote of Mr. Zimmer in favour of the motion be struck from the record.

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Division

The Deputy Speaker

Apr/11/24 12:11:40 p.m.
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All those opposed to the hon. member's moving the motion will please say nay. I hear none. The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

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Mr. Earl Dreeshen (Red Deer—Mountain View, CPC)

Apr/11/24 12:12:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the father of 20th-century modern management, Peter F. Drucker, once said, “There is...nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” That quote depicts the foundation of the just transition act that we have before us today. There is nothing just about forcing a transition on an industry or on a community that has made it its life journey to produce the cleanest energy products the world has ever seen, especially knowing that through global turmoil, food insecurity and increased energy demands, the world's hydrocarbons will continue to be needed as a solution to humanity's woes and not, as ideologists would have us believe, as the cause of those woes. To ensure that, should the world decide that its energy demands will be satisfied by strong environmental hydrocarbon-producing countries, we as Canadians will continue to be there to answer the call, but we will not be there if Canada’s major economic driver is brought to its knees by the twisted ideology of the government and its anti-energy partners. The Conservative leader has said that we will unleash the growth within our economy, that with our most powerful resources, produced in the most environmentally positive way, there will be benefits to our people and to the environment at the same time. We will not follow the Prime Minister, with the help of his NDP masters, to push production out of Canada and, thus, toward other countries that pollute more, burn more coal and put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere with no remorse. The Prime Minister would sooner drive production away from Canadians, who already have the cleanest electricity grid on planet Earth, toward other nations that, frankly, are incapable of change or just do not care. By using the wealth generated by our essential hydrocarbon resources, we can protect the environment and prevent the loss of billions of dollars of stranded assets owned by provinces and first nations, and use our innovative skills to move the global needle of greenhouse gases to a level that would satisfy all but the most radical eco-activists. At the natural resources committee, we have had much debate on the future of Canada’s hydrocarbon industries. I find it unbelievable that the natural resources minister, along with his cohorts in cabinet, would actively pursue a framework to handcuff one of Canada’s greatest assets. Of course, all of this discussion has been created because of the planned attack on resource development in Canada. Had Bill C-69, the anti-resource development law, never happened and if tens of billions of investment plans not been shelved, then the government would not have had to produce legislation to prop up the ghost towns that it is actively creating. The Liberal just transition action plan is a dangerous government-mandated plan to kill off 170,000 Canadian jobs and to put at risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadian workers. This is a plan that creates subsidized jobs, not sustainable jobs. Conservatives do not believe in a central-planning “Ottawa knows best” approach that tells private sector energy companies how to run their operations. The government cannot even track emissions properly. As a member of the natural resources committee, I have asked multiple times for an analysis of the full life-cycle impact of all the projects we have, from the first shovel in the ground to the last shovel used to cover up those projects. The government has no clue, yet we are to trust it to dictate to industries how to best run their operations. I think not. Oil and gas are still Canada’s largest export sector, and it is so important in the development of renewable and alternative fuels of the future to have it strong and to keep it strong. The Liberals and their NDP cohorts are ignoring cost, technology and infrastructure demands. Reports vary on how the federal government has underfunded its climate plans. RBC had a report that stated that the government needed to spend $2 trillion to make it to net zero. It published a supplementary report saying Canada could capitalize on the global increase for oil and gas and still meet its net-zero targets with investments from the profits, but the government turned its back on our allies while peddling technology and alternative fuel sources that cannot be produced at a commercial rate. A Conservative government would unleash the energy sector while fostering technology and innovation to protect our environment, so that more Canadian energy would get to the world to displace dictator energy and create jobs and powerful paycheques for Canadians. Let us be clear. There is noting just about this transition and tax plan the Liberals have. Chief Dale Swampy said, “There is nothing fair or equitable about what is happening today.” After eight years of anti-energy messages, delays, arbitrary and inconsistent regulatory conditions, an outright veto of an approved export pipeline and the imposition of project-killing Bill C-69, despite universal provincial opposition, the Liberals have made no secret their intention to accelerate the phase-out of the oil and gas sector in Canada. It is sad. First nations communities are begging the government to get out of the way and let them produce the resources on their land so that their communities can thrive. Our global allies are begging for our help to get off Putin’s oil, so they can have a stable and ethical energy source. All the while, the government believes that if it cannot be produced, it cannot be shipped and, therefore, its ideological push will win. The reality is that everyone loses, but the government is too self-absorbed to see that. Canada should be the world’s go-to energy producer and supplier of choice, and be energy secure and self-sufficient as well. Instead, the Liberals put ideology and partisanship above reality and the economy. Politicians should be honest about the outcomes of their policies. Too often with these Liberals we see them fall back on wordsmithing and absolve themselves of any negative socio-economic consequences of the so-called just transition concept for Canada. This needs to stop. Many times we hear about how the world is changing and how important it is for us to keep up with our European partners. Perhaps the government should be paying attention to what is happening in Europe. The mood has changed. Governments in Europe are starting to recognize the consequences of this blind action. They are listening to their people. That is the problem: We do not have a government that is prepared to vary, in any way, from the path that it has set forward. It is not listening to the people. Here, it is understandable that they do not listen to opposition parties, but it had best be listening to the people in their ridings. The mood has changed, and it is important that all parliamentarians recognize that. If we do not, we will be left behind by a world that is looking for Canadian energy.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/11/24 12:21:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not quite understand why the Conservative Party is taking such an objection to having more workers and communities at the table. This legislation would create opportunities for connections and for providing annual advice to the ministers, ultimately leading to five-year plans. I actually believe the Conservatives used AI in order to generate 20,000-plus amendments.

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Workers

Mrs. Shannon Stubbs

Apr/11/24 12:22:43 p.m.
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That is false.

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False

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Apr/11/24 12:22:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member opposite says that is false. Maybe the member could tell me if the Conservative Party actually used AI to develop the 20,000-plus amendments that it introduced at the committee stage. Could we get a simple yes or no? Did Conservatives actually use AI?

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Mr. Earl Dreeshen

Apr/11/24 12:22:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have just gone through all of the amendments, and I agree with every one, especially the ones I put my name to that talk about making sure that we pay attention to indigenous groups and to our communities. Every one of those that I have put my name to has been researched and dealt with. That is the first part. The second part is about our five-year plans and new deals. We are all banned from Russia right now, but I was there back in the eighties playing hockey. When I did that, and when we were there, we happened to be there during the two weeks the Soviet party in congress was coming together to talk about what the next five years were going to be. Do members think they were listening to their people or to themselves?

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Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Apr/11/24 12:23:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and, especially, for the tone of his speech. We may not agree on the content, but I appreciated the thoughtful way he presented his arguments, which is in stark contrast to what happened at the Standing Committee on Natural Resources in December, when the heckling actually prevented informed voting by some members and was a health hazard for the interpreters. Does he agree with me that this was undeniably the wrong approach to take in committee? On behalf of his colleagues, does he regret that this happened? Should his colleagues have instead followed his example and presented their arguments thoughtfully and calmly, like he did today?

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Mr. Earl Dreeshen

Apr/11/24 12:24:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the compliment. I appreciate it. There are times when people are provoked, and I think this is the part that one should be aware of. Not everybody hears all of the things that are said, and that can be a reason behind tempers getting hot. I prefer to make sure that we keep the temperature cooler, but I also think it is important that we speak to the strengths we have as a nation. I have always stood up for Quebeckers, for their energy sources and for that type of thing. I get frustrated when people say, “That is fine, but we are just going to shut someone down”. That is a bit of a problem I have; nevertheless, I think we have all of these strengths in every province. That is what we should be concentrating on.

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Ms. Laurel Collins (Victoria, NDP)

Apr/11/24 12:25:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in response to my question to the member's colleague, the colleague really said that we need to let industry regulate itself. When it comes to oil and gas CEOs, they are raking in record profits. The CEO of Suncor, Rich Kruger, said that he is no longer going to focus on emissions reduction and that he is just going to focus on profits. Suncor is already making record profits, and these companies are gouging Canadians at the pump while Canadians are struggling with the cost of living. I am curious whether the member agrees with his colleagues that we need to let big polluters pollute for free and not be regulated, or whether he would stand up to say that these rich CEOs need to stop gouging Canadians and bring down their emissions.

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Mr. Earl Dreeshen

Apr/11/24 12:26:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Suncor is an energy company. Many of the items it is dealing with, and what it is doing, are renewable energy projects, so there is a mix. There is money being made throughout it. Perhaps there is money being made in the investments they have in solar and wind, but some of that is perhaps coming from government and the policies we have. I think that is important, but it is also important that we recognize what that does for our communities and what it does to make sure we have a health care system and a solid structure throughout our communities.

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Mr. Ted Falk (Provencher, CPC)

Apr/11/24 12:27:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a privilege today to rise to speak to Bill C-50. I have spoken to it before. As well, I sit on the natural resources committee, and this is a bill that we studied. We heard a lot of testimony from different folks with all aspects of concern for and support of the bill. I plan to use my time this afternoon to make my case as to why this legislation is bad for Canadians and show the correlation between this bill and the carbon tax. I will address the legislation directly, but I will take a bit of a roundabout way to get there, so I ask for the Chair's indulgence to do that. Only the Liberal government would have the audacity to put forward this piece of legislation and call it a “sustainable jobs” plan. Bill C-50 is simply a rebranding of the Liberals’ so-called “just transition”, a plan that would shut down Canada’s energy sector and move to what they claim will be a more green, sustainable and just economy. The Liberals could not sell it under that name. Nobody was buying it. Now, just like a shifty used car salesman, they have slipped on a new coat of paint and jacked up the price. It seems that the Liberals’ new approach to legislation is to title their bills to say the exact opposite of what they are actually going to do because, to date, the government has failed spectacularly at meeting one single environmental target. The Liberals love to talk about the environment, but their first act in office was to authorize the City of Montreal to dump eight billion litres of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River. I think most Canadians would call that making pollution free again. Their promise to plant two billion trees never materialized. The said it would be two billion tree over 10 years. They have now had eight years. The time is nearly up, yet how many have they managed to plant? What percentage of those trees are in the ground after eight years? It is 0.05 of 1%, which is not even 1%. They keep talking about net zero, and it is all over this bill, but the government has yet to meet a single emissions reduction target. It keeps upping what it says it will achieve, when it has not met a single target of it should have achieved. Again, the government talks a big game, but it does not execute. Across the board, whether it is the economy, immigration, getting a passport or something as simple as sticking a sapling in the ground, it just cannot get the job done. If we are going to talk about the environment failures, we need look no further than the carbon tax. The Liberal, NDP, and now the Bloc, carbon tax continues to drive inflation and drive up the cost of living for struggling Canadians because the carbon tax is a tax on everything. The only thing, it seems, that remains unaffected by the Prime Minister’s beloved carbon tax is the environment. That the carbon tax has made little to no difference to the environment should not surprise us. The whole thing is a scam. It is another smoke-and-mirrors sales job, just like its “just transition” to cover up the government’s actual goal, which is its real agenda, the one thing that it has so far been successful at achieving, which is the redistribution of wealth. That is what the carbon tax is all about. It is what a significant portion of its COVID policies were all about, and that is what this legislation is about. It is a classical Marxist redistribution of wealth. Members can remember that day a while back when the Minister of the Environment got up in the House to proudly proclaim that he was a socialist, and all the Liberals around him applauded. It was shocking, not just because of the dark and bloody history associated with such regimes, but also because a Liberal minister actually got up and told the truth about what they were doing. That is what this legislation is about. It is about the government picking winners and losers based on a warped ideology and redistributing wealth and opportunity to those it deems worthy. As retired General Rick Hillier put it just this week, “Ideology masking as leadership killed the Canadian dream.” Before they start to claim that this is some far right MAGA conspiracy, I would point my colleagues to an excellent article written by Dr. Vijay Kolinjivadi. He is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Development Policy at the University of Antwerp, an expert in the social and economic ramifications of climate change. Dr. Kolinjivadi is a firm believer that climate change is an existential threat. He says that we western governments are “'greening' ourselves to extinction”. What Dr. Kolinjivadi means by that, and he makes a very convincing case for it, is that the so-called green policies of this and other western governments, or what he calls “fake” solutions, not only do nothing to stop climate change but are in fact a smoke-and-mirrors job to help governments and wealthy investors get even richer off the backs of the middle class and the poorest, most vulnerable, people on our planet. That is what he meant when he said that we are “'greening' ourselves to extinction.” He is not alone. There is a growing recognition across the political spectrum that what these governments are doing, what our government is doing with these policies, is about wealth redistribution and not the environment. How do they do it? They do it by destroying the middle class. How did they do that? Members can look no further than the effect its COVID and environmental policies have had on our economy in just the last three years. Can Canadians, particularly those would be the most affected by this legislation, Bill C-50, trust the Liberal government to transition them in a just and sustainable way? I think not, but I like to judge a person by what they do and not what they say. That brings me back to the carbon tax. Let us look at the three main government talking points about the carbon tax. The first is that the carbon tax is putting a price on pollution. This is false. Eight billion litres of raw sewage went into the St. Lawrence River, and there was no price on pollution there. The carbon tax has made no demonstrable change to emissions, and no targets have been met, nor will they be, at least not from the carbon tax. Those on the political left say that the tax is too low to force people to modify their behaviour. They complain that it leaves exemptions for large emitters, which it does. Those on the right are equally correct that taxing carbon in Canada is virtue signalling at best as Canada accounts for a mere 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That means that, if we were to shut down every single carbon-producing thing here in Canada, shut our whole economy down, we would make a whopping difference of 1.5% globally. In questioning the sanity of ignoring actual pollution while taxing a life-enhancing element of the very air we breathe, now, with Bill C-50, Liberals want to spend billions more of taxpayers' dollars to shut down not only the largest private sector driver of our economy but also the largest private sector driver of green and renewable technology as well. The second talking point is that eight out of 10 Canadian families will receive more money back in rebates than they paid into it. That is false. Rex Murphy pointed out, in his excellent piece in the National Post: Name a tax that makes the taxpayer richer. What a strange incentive that would be. Half of Canada would be upping the thermostat, putting the air conditioner on in winter, and driving day and night to burn up oil and gas so that they could get more back than they put in. As the PBO has made clear, one is not getting more money back, and hardly anyone is. In fact, by the time the tax is fully implemented in 2030, eight out of 10 households will pay exponentially more, which is a fact even our proud socialist environment minister has admitted to. No tax makes the taxpayer richer. It only makes the government richer, which leads to the third claim. The third talking point the Liberals have about the carbon tax is that it is revenue-neutral. This is false. Even if we were to believe the principle that the taxes collected all go toward rebates, which makes no sense, the Liberals are charging GST on top of the carbon tax, and that goes directly into the government’s coffers. We have learned recently that it is holding back billions of dollars collected by the GST on the carbon tax. All three talking points are demonstrably false. By the way, the Liberals love to repeat their talking points, but one we have not heard in a while is that they are supporting the middle class and those working hard to join it. I guess that has changed. However, what is true is that this tax, like so many others, is costing Canadians more money at a time when most cannot afford it, and despite its obvious failures, the Liberals continue to double down on this failed policy. Why is that? It is because it is successful in one metric, and one metric only, which is the redistribution of wealth. It is to the destruction of the middle class to make more money for billionaires and Liberal insiders and to force more everyday Canadians into total reliance on government. This bill, Bill C-50, would do the exact same thing. It is just the next step in the plan. The Liberals’ so-called sustainable jobs plan would actually kill 170,000 Canadian middle-class jobs, displace 450,000 middle-class workers and risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadians. In short, the Liberal government's just transition is anything but just, and its sustainable jobs plan is anything but sustainable. When those jobs have gone, as they were during COVID, when everyone but the giant billionaire chains were shut down, where else will people turn to but the government?

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Mr. Ken Hardie (Fleetwood—Port Kells, Lib.)

Apr/11/24 12:37:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, really, the most difficult output of fossil fuels is when they are burned for fuel. However, other things could be done with the things that we dig up out of the ground. Could the hon. member talk about the innovation in the petrochemical industry? Has he heard from the industry about the sort of things that could be done that would certainly make for a very bright future for the petrochemical industry when we, at least, rely a lot less on burning it for energy?

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