- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sarnia—Lambton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $118,419.33
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I do see some irony in the fact that the budget bill is called Bill C-69, because one might remember that the last Bill C-69 ended up being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court because the federal government was sticking its nose into provincial jurisdiction. Here we have, in budget 2024, the government sticking its nose into child care and creating fewer spaces than ever existed and into dental care and not consulting the dentists, and decriminalizing more hard drugs than are actually in its pharmacare plan.
Why is the government pouring $40 billion more on the inflationary fire so that the Governor of the Bank of Canada cannot reduce inflation rates and get inflation down?
120 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, here we are again at the eleventh hour. The government has waited on something that it has to put in place; otherwise, on March 17, people whose only condition is a mental illness will be able to apply for medical assistance in dying.
The Liberals are not virgins in the parliamentary process. They understand very well that, typically, for a bill to go through three readings in the House and through committee meetings, and then go to the red chamber, where a similar number of readings and committee meetings take place, takes about 18 months. If there is goodwill among all parties and we agree, it may be six months. It is ludicrous to me that less than two months before the deadline, the government put forward this legislation. It is really putting a gun to the head of opposition members, because if we decide not to pass the bill, on March 17 people who suffer only from a mental illness will be able to receive medical assistance in dying.
I have a lot of compassion for people suffering from mental illness. In many cases, they have suicidal thoughts and are not full of hope for the future, so it is easy for them to say in despair that there is no way out. However, a lot of people get better and go on to live full lives. They are not in a place where they can really take that decision.
It is not the first time the government has waited until the last minute. I remember when the medical assistance in dying legislation in Bill C-14 was introduced, there was a lot of pressure for us to get along and pass the bill. I would have more confidence if it were not for the fact that the government continually brings forward legislation that is unconstitutional. Then it goes through the courts to the Supreme Court and, like Bill C-69, is declared unconstitutional. The bill for the welfare of indigenous children was also declared unconstitutional. It is our job to give due process to bills and to make sure they are a good idea, rather than just rubber-stamping them and passing them along.
I do not want to have the consequence that people who are mentally ill would receive MAID if we do not pass this legislation in time, but we have no guarantee that the Senate is not going to delay the bill. There was a question for the member who gave the last speech about how the Senate may choose to block the bill. That would delay it even further and we would not make the timeline. It is not a sure thing that the bill is going to get across the line.
We have to look back to the Carter decision. We spent a lot of time talking about what the response would be, and it was the court's order that the criteria be an irremediable condition with imminent death. That is the path we started on. I was very concerned at the time because every recommendation from the special committee that studied this said that without good-quality palliative care, one really does not have a choice.
At that point in time, I found out that only 30% of Canadians had access to palliative care. That is what prompted me to bring forward my private member's bill to get consistent access to palliative care for all Canadians. That bill unanimously passed in the House. Since then, we have doubled access, from 30% to almost 60%, which is a great thing, but there is more to go. If people do not have good-quality palliative care, they really do not have a real choice.
The government needs to refocus itself. I saw in the report that after five years of progress on palliative care, there are still identified gaps. The government needs to pursue that with passion and aggressiveness because that is the answer. If people have good-quality palliative care, they do not choose medical assistance in dying, and that applies everywhere. I met today with some of the representatives from palliative care, and they informed me that when people go to hospice, nine out of 10 of them are asking for medical assistance in dying, but very few of them actually take advantage of it once they experience palliative care.
Why are nine out of 10 of them asking for medical assistance in dying? It is because the doctors are recommending it, and I do not have any confidence that the safeguards that were supposed to be in place are actually being adhered to. A doctor from the Liberal Party who spoke before me cited five examples that he is aware of where clearly people did not meet the conditions but were given medical assistance in dying.
Canada is on a very slippery slope. If we look at the history of countries that have implemented medical assistance in dying, the Netherlands was sort of at the forefront, and it took a while for it to experience a rise in the percentage of people who were dying from medical assistance in dying. However, last year in Canada, 4% of people who died did so by medical assistance in dying. We set a world record. We are top of the charts on killing people with medical assistance in dying.
I think this is absolutely the wrong direction, so to broaden medical assistance in dying to include people who are mentally ill is absolutely ill-informed, at the very least. I would say, without being insensitive, that people who are mentally ill are actually able to kill themselves. Sadly, in their despair, many of them are taking their lives every day. They do not need the government to enable them.
The Conservatives warned the government, when this ill-advised amendment came from the Senate, that this would happen. Instead of realizing the mistake and backing off, the Liberal government is kicking the can down the road for another three years, where the next government will deal with it, instead of recognizing that this is not a good idea.
Doctors are saying that 50% of the time they cannot even identify whether somebody's condition, when they suffer from mental illness, is irremediable. If that is the case, then half of the time, they are going to kill someone who might have gotten better. This is a totally bad idea. The government should stand up, say it realizes the mistake it has made and that it should have introduced legislation to eliminate that mistake. However, that is not where we are today. Today, here we are: If we do not make a decision and pass the bill in a hurry, people with mental illness are going to start dying from MAID on March 17.
I would say that there is a lot scope creep that has been suggested. Where do we stop? There has been a suggestion that if we approve those with mental illness, maybe minors should be added, or maybe the option of advance directive should be added. It looks like the solution to all of these things is death. We hear that homeless people are requesting medical assistance in dying. We hear that veterans are being advised to take medical assistance in dying. This is just scope creep and broadening who is dying in this way, without having proper controls in place. I do not think that is acceptable.
One of the things that has been totally ignored is the conscience rights of doctors. The federal government will always say it did not preclude that in its bill, but the fact is that provinces are forcing medical doctors and nurses to participate, even if it is against their religion and their conscience rights, and the federal government has done nothing to correct that situation. That is a problem.
The other thing I would say is that in the creep that is happening, they have created an express lane for the disabled. It is disgusting to the disabled community and disgusting to me that they would say that if someone is disabled, they should go to the front of the line. For the vulnerable, the mentally ill and the disabled, we need to protect those people; we need to stand up for their rights and know that we can give them hope.
I do not agree with the way this was brought forward. I think the government should have appealed the Truchon decision. When Quebec decided this needed to happen, the government should have said no, that it had thought about it, studied it and spent a long time on it. It should have said it was going to appeal that decision, because what it brought in at the beginning was at least better than the scope creep we are seeing now.
I have talked about the many examples of things that are not good with the legislation. Obviously, I do not want to see anymore people die. I will definitely work with the government to see the legislation pass as speedily as possible, and I encourage it to use the same leverage it used on Bill C-234 to help its Liberal-appointed senators do what it wants. I hope it does the same on this bill and that it receives speedy passage, and that we do not have people with mental illness being killed by the government.
1579 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, that was a good speech.
Before question period, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government said that Canada was a good place for investors.
However, investors keep leaving. There are a lot of rules, like those arising from the passage of Bill C‑69, the carbon tax is too high, and we have measures that do not exist in other countries.
Why is there nothing in this bill to deal with that problem?
78 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I am rising today to express my serious concerns about Bill C-50. This bill is called the sustainable jobs act, which is typical of what Liberals do. They pick a name that sounds good. Who does not like sustainable jobs? I like sustainable jobs. I think all Canadians want sustainable jobs. It sounds really good, but the problem is that in this bill there is no plan to create sustainable jobs. This is a plan to get a plan.
The bill outlines how the Liberals are going to put together a council. Based on past behaviour, I suggest that it would be highly paid Liberal insiders who will get these jobs and advise on what the plan ought to be. As to the timeline of when they are going to come up with what the plan ought to be, it be should by 2025, coincidentally just after the next election.
The Liberals do not have a plan. Nothing says there is no plan like a bill that is introduced to get a plan. That is the first thing.
The second thing is the Liberals have another role, a secretariat, that is going to do some coordination, with another highly paid Liberal insider when they get the plan. The problem is that is it; that is all. It is a plan to get a plan, with some principles that are motherhood and apple pie and that we would all agree on, such as well-paying jobs, caring about the environment and the need to respect labour, all of these good things. They are all motherhood and apple pie, but the bill does not have a specific action that is going to help.
On the other hand, it is going to hurt. The analysts of the government have said that Bill C-50 would kill 170,000 direct Canadian jobs, would displace 450,000 workers directly and indirectly working in the energy sector and would risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadians across all provinces. The bill would destroy as many as 2.7 million jobs when there is not a single action in it to create any sustainable jobs at all. That is a problem.
The other thing is that it is going to cost a lot of money. Right now the energy sector provides 10% of Canada's GDP and pays over $20 billion in taxes to all levels of government every year. Last year, $48 billion in royalties and taxes were contributed by the energy sector. This bill purports to get rid of that by eliminating the sector.
We can look at other places in the world that have come up with a sustainable jobs plan and are starting to implement it, Scotland being one example. If we took the cost per person of its plan and did the equivalent thing here, it would cost $37.2 billion. The Liberals are taking away as much as $48 billion and adding a cost of another $37 billion. If we do the math, they are increasing by greater than $70 billion the loss to the Canadian economy.
I do not know why the Liberal government cannot learn the lesson when countless people can, like former Liberal John Manley, who said that when it runs these huge deficits, it is putting a foot on the inflationary gas pedal, which is causing the Bank of Canada to put its foot on the brake with higher interest rates. This raises the cost of mortgages. Canadians are suffering from coast to coast, so definitely not only is the bill not going to create jobs, but it will come with a huge cost.
It is not like this is the first time there has been an attack on oil and gas and the energy sector. This has been a continual theme from the time I got elected in 2015. Let us start with the tanker ban, Bill C-48, to keep Canadian oil from getting out there when everybody else's ships are out there full of oil. Then we had Bill C-55, which created marine protected areas so we could do no oil and gas development there. Then there was Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” bill, which was just called unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. All of these things were intended to be a war against creating oil and gas projects.
There is evidence. When the Liberals took power, there were 18 LNG projects on the books and there were four pipelines. Zero pipelines have been built and all the LNG projects but one are cancelled. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our friends in Germany were going to give us $59 billion to replace their Russian oil and coal with our green LNG. The Prime Minister said there was no business case, so Australia took that deal.
Then Japan came up with a similar deal and again we would not take the deal, so Saudi Arabia took it. Then came France and the Netherlands. There were all these opportunities for Canada to be a leader, supplanting higher-carbon fuels with our green LNG, the most responsibly produced product in the world with the best human rights record, but again the Liberal government refused. Instead, it is focused on its own ideology and things that it wants to do that continue to destroy the economy.
We can talk about the electric vehicle mandates. That was another great idea. Let us give away $31 billion to create 3,000 jobs. For those who can do the math, if we just gave each of those 3,000 people $10 million, they would never have to work again and there would not be any footprint. There is a total misunderstanding of how to create a growing economy.
Then there is the clean electricity standard, another hugely divisive bill that was introduced by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, clearly not understanding that where the Liberals want to go with all the electric vehicles, electricity and the grid would require building the equivalent of 19 nuclear facilities, like the one from Bruce Power. They cannot build anything, so I do not know where they get the idea that they are going to be successful in achieving that.
At the same time, they are ignoring the fact that only 7% of the public even wants an electric vehicle because the technology is not there. No one wants to be trapped in a snowstorm at -30°C because the batteries do not work. They catch fire. In addition to that, they do not have a very long range. Instead, the government decided to pick a winner and loser with the battery plants that are being built.
Now Toyota has come out with a solid-state battery, with a 1,275-kilometre range, that works at -20°C and does not catch fire. That will make our technology obsolete, with $31 billion after the fact. Maybe the Liberal government needs a few more engineers so that it can actually make science-, fact- and data-based decisions, but that is not what is happening today.
The Liberals continue to move ahead with the carbon tax and the second carbon tax, putting punishment on the backs of Canadians and achieving nothing. Emissions have gone up under the government. At the 2005 level, we were at 732 megatonnes. We needed to get to 519 and now we are at 819. They are not achieving their targets and keep putting bills like this in place, talking about sustainability, the environment and creating jobs. They are not actually achieving that.
Sarnia—Lambton has a huge oil and gas sector, but it knows how to do a transition and is doing a transition. It is creating good-paying, sustainable jobs like the ones at Origin Materials, a net-zero plastics plant in my riding. My riding has one of the largest solar facilities in North America. There is a whole bio-innovation centre that is growing different kinds of bio-facilities that are all either carbon sinks or carbon-neutral. These are the kinds of actual solutions and actions we need. That is not what is in Bill C-50. It is a plan to get a plan with nothing else. For that reason, I will not be supporting Bill C-50.
1396 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I apologize.
Sustainable Marine Energy started developing an alternative energy project in the Bay of Fundy. After 10 years of hard work, it was providing clean, green energy, which is what we all want, to Nova Scotians. For all their trail-blazing efforts, Sustainable Marine Energy was awarded a tide of red tape from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The repeated delays and a bombshell permit rejection, which the Liberal government refused to justify, were the straw that broke the camel's back. After five years of insurmountable regulatory challenges, the pilot project in Digby county was cancelled.
Let us think about the common elements here. Even though the project was the kind of renewable energy that the Liberal government is saying it wants to have, the company had to jump through hoops for 10 years. Finally, the government was able to pull the permit. The federal government can pull the permit without any justification. This is just a precedent of what is to come with the other projects currently existing in the petroleum sector on the coast. I am very concerned about that.
The other thing I would say is that Bill C-49 contains language to put Bill C-69 in it. It directly references the Impact Assessment Act, which, as I said, is a process that makes project approvals longer and their consultations more complicated. At the same time, someone could start and stop the process as many times as they wanted. There is lots of uncertainty. I am very unhappy about that one.
If we look at the access to offshore infrastructure, this bill says that the cabinet, the governor in council, would regulate access to that infrastructure, including enforcing tolls and tariffs. Here we go again. It is another opportunity for the Liberal government to toll, tariff and tax something that is already in place.
Who is going to pay the extra cost of those tolls, tariffs and taxes? The consumer of the energy that has been created will ultimately pay those costs. Have we not learned anything? We have seen the carbon tax get put in place. It drives up the cost of gasoline. It drives up the cost of home heating.
People in the Atlantic provinces are already struggling. All the premiers have asked for the removal of the carbon tax, and even the Liberal MPs from that area are asking for the removal of the carbon tax because it is increasing the cost of everything. It is increasing the cost of food.
They are not just taxing the farmers and putting tariffs on the fertilizer, which is another tariff and another cost that is being passed along, but they are also taxing the transporting of the goods to the processor. There is a carbon tax on the processor. They are shipping it to the grocery store with a carbon tax on that.
At the end of the day, the consumer is paying. When I see clauses such as this saying that the government can enforce tolls and tariffs on the infrastructure, I am concerned for the ultimate consumer because these costs are significant.
If we think about the carbon tax, we know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the carbon tax is costing, depending on what province one lives in, from $1,500 to $2,500. Then there is the second carbon tax that was put in place, and the cost of that is another $1,800. That one is in every province, even in Quebec, although they are trying to deny that it is.
We talk about extra tariffs on top of that, and Canadians are out of money. The government is out of touch when it comes to understanding that there is no more money that people can pay. They were within $200 of not being able to pay their bills before the pandemic. Now, with the increase of all these taxes, people are borrowing money to live, and some of them have lost their houses and become homeless. People are skipping meals. They cannot afford to eat. Honestly, I am very concerned when I see this kind of language in the bill.
There is also a financial stipulation in the bill. It came with a royal recommendation, which says there is some level of federal funding that is required. An obvious question may be how much the funding is. There is no answer to that. It was not in the budget. It was not in any of the forecasts.
Where is this magic money going to come from? Are we going to run additional deficits? That is inflationary spending. We keep telling the government about this. In fact, the finance minister herself said that it would be pouring fuel on the inflationary fire to have this extra spending, but then we see things such as this, where there is extra spending. It is not even defined how much it would be. That is not going to be an acceptable alternative, as far as I can tell.
I will be clear that Conservatives support the development of renewable resources, but we support those developments without political interference. We do not want the government of the day picking winners and losers and deciding what to shut down based on its ideology. That is not where we want to be. We want to see the free market drive this. There is an opportunity to create jobs, create prosperous industry and do the right thing for the environment. That is what Conservatives want to see.
I do not think this bill is capturing that. I think there is a lot of political interference put into the mechanisms of this bill in ministerial powers, cabinet powers, and tolls and tariffs. There are lots of mechanisms for the government to interfere.
Canadians are struggling, and the government's new draft regulations on clean electricity will push up costs even higher. Reporting from CTV in August indicates, “Electricity infrastructure expenses are expected to increase significantly over the next several decades as maintenance and increased demand is estimated to cost $400 billion”. That is already before we know how much the offshore renewables are going to cost.
I ask members to remember the lesson from Ontario, which was that it drove the price of electricity up so high that we were uncompetitive and people could not pay their power bills. This is not just a lesson from Canada. Germany experienced the same thing. It went heavy on renewables, which drove the cost of everything up. It then went back onto Russian oil and coal. Of course, we refused to take $59 billion to put Germany on low-carbon LNG from Canada, so Australia took that deal. It was the same thing with Japan, which gave us the same offer. Saudi Arabia took that deal.
Gee, I wish we had $120 billion more to put in our health care system so that everyone in this country could have a doctor. That is what I think. All I can say is that those are some of the concerns I have. There are many things in the bill that I do not object to. There are some administrative things that are taken care of. Those are fine.
Do I think we can fix all of this at committee? Call me skeptical, but my experience under this NDP-Liberal coalition is that its members will ram through an agenda to shut down oil and gas, and it does not matter what reasoned amendments the Conservative Party will bring at committee, as they will be refused. They will ramrod it through. They will time allocate it to make sure this thing is rushed through. They will be skimpy on the details and say, “Trust us. We'll get it in the regulations.” I have been here long enough to know that that is not good for Canadians.
Our job here as the official opposition is to point out what is wrong with these bills. It would be so nice if we could be consulted before the thing was written, when it could still be altered, but here we are with something that honestly has way too much political power in it. I do not think it is going to be good for the Atlantic provinces. They do not think it is going to be good for them. They are already crying out against the policies of the government with respect to the carbon tax.
Those are my initial thoughts. I may have more thoughts as we go forward, but I would be happy to take questions.
1441 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here, back in the House. Today I will be speaking about Bill C-49, which is the act to amend the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.
I have listened to the debate today, and a lot of times, members opposite have said they want to know what it is that the Conservatives do not like about the bill. Therefore, I am going to tell them what I do not like about the bill, and I am one of the Conservatives over here.
Let us start off with the name change to remove the word “petroleum” and change it over to “energy”. I am not opposed to “energy” at all, but words are important, and we have had an entire history of a war against oil and gas in this country from the NDP-Liberal government. Continually it has shut down projects. There were 18 LNG projects on the books when it came to office, and it shut them all down. It has shut down pipelines and shut down various expansions, so I think the removal of the word “petroleum” tells us where it thinks it wants to take this direction in the future.
We just heard the minister from Newfoundland talk about the importance of petroleum drilling projects there, so I am very concerned about the bill and the change to get away from petroleum, because Canada could be self-sufficient. We import $15 billion a year of dirty dictator oil, and the government seems fine to continue that. That is the wrong direction. We should be taking our environmentally sustainable oil and gas and making sure we are self-sufficient here in Canada. The whole eastern part of the country could use that.
That is the first problem I have with the bill.
The second thing about the bill is that it would award new powers to the regulators. Today we have people who are regulators in the petroleum drilling industry. Now, with a wave of the magic wand, they would be regulators of offshore renewable energy. This is another example of the Liberals expanding regulators' scope when they are not experts in that area. They did the exact same thing with the CRTC when we were talking about Bill C-11 and Bill C-18, and the CRTC has said clearly that it had no experience overseeing digital media, but the government made it the regulator of it. This is an opportunity for disaster.
I am not opposed to renewables. When I was a chemical engineer, I worked in renewables. I worked on solar projects, wind projects and even offshore Lake Erie wind projects, so I am a fan of transitioning and coming to better renewable energy, but let us learn the lessons from Ontario. All of those solar and wind projects were done in a hugely subsidized way that drove the cost of energy in the province of Ontario from eight cents a kilowatt hour to 23¢ a kilowatt hour and made us totally uncompetitive.
I am thus very interested in the details of this offshore renewable energy and what kind of subsidization the government is going to do, because if it does the same it did to batteries and puts $31 billion of taxpayer money into trying to attract people to build a facility, then the taxpayer is on the hook, and this is not an economically sustainable thing. It is another concern that I do not see that detail here in the bill.
The most concerning element of the bill is the addition of a new layer of decision-making and the granting of ultimate authority to federal and provincial ministers. It would increase the timeline for a final decision to 60 to 90 days from 30, with the possibility of an indefinite extension as the call for bids is issued.
I have an issue with letting federal ministers have the power to, first of all, issue land licences in a province. The province's jurisdiction has to be respected, and we have seen numerous occasions where the government wants to overreach into provincial jurisdiction, with the carbon tax, for example, and with many of the other health initiatives the government has had where it has wanted to reach into provincial jurisdiction. Clearly the provinces have pushed back, as they should. We need to make sure that, if ministers are being given these powers, there is some kind of limitation on those powers, because we know that we have already heard concerns about the bill with respect to indigenous consultations being given to the regulators.
The regulators would have the responsibility to consult with indigenous peoples. That is an abdication of the responsibility of the federal government. I am not sure that the regulators actually have the resources to do adequate consultations, which could result in court cases and challenges that would further delay and cause uncertainty in projects as they move forward. That is a concern to me, absolutely.
The other thing that gives me great concern is that the bill would give the federal cabinet the authorization to end any operational petroleum drilling on a whim. We have just gotten through saying that the government is against oil and gas. It is trying to shut down fossil fuels. Now we would be giving cabinet the power, federally, to arbitrarily, on a whim, shut down petroleum projects that we have heard from the minister from Newfoundland are extremely important to the province. This would be without the province's permission and without adequate consultation necessarily.
This is an obviously bad idea. We can see where this is going. The first initiative of the government would be to shut down as much oil and gas as it can. That is what it has done in Alberta. I am from Sarnia—Lambton, which accounts for 30% of the petrochemicals. Believe me, when the minister came to Sarnia to hear the concerns of the people about getting a transition, we were not even mentioned in the plan in the go-forward. That tells us exactly how much the Liberals care about the oil and gas workers at risk in this whole equation.
The bill would also create a new licensing system for offshore drilling. There is language in the bill that says the government would impose a 25-year cap on licences. Any licences would be limited. After 2050, everything would be off. Why would we do that to ourselves as a country? We do not know what is going to happen in the next 25 years. We do not know whether or not there will be wars or a need for those resources. Why would we arbitrarily limit our licences and cut them all off at 2050, especially considering the expression of indigenous people to have economic growth and get involved in projects? If they have a licence, is their licence going to be pulled as well after 2050, arbitrarily?
We do not need to restrict ourselves in this way. It is concerning to me that this would be in the bill, because there is no need to do that. If it is decided in 2050 that the situation warrants fewer licences, that is the government of the day's decision. Again, it is very troubling to see what is in here.
Today, petroleum activities are subject to a fundamental decision by the existing review boards in Nova Scotia and in Newfoundland and Labrador. A decision on approving or rejecting a project allows 30 days for provincial or federal ministers to respond, or the regulator's decision is accepted. However, for offshore renewable energy projects, under this new process, the regulator would give recommendations to the federal and provincial ministers. Ministers would have 60 days to respond, with a 30-day extension allowed if given in writing, and with, again, the possibility of an indefinite extension if they decide a call for bids is issued.
This is exactly, once over again, Bill C-69, in which the government took the approval process for projects and made it longer, and made it possible, at a minister's whim, to restart the process as many times as necessary to frustrate the private investors and drive them out of the country. This is what has happened with multiple projects: the LNG and the pipeline projects I have mentioned. More than $80 billion of foreign investment has been driven out of the country. The uncertainty of having to spend billions of dollars and wait six years to get a project approved keeps anybody from wanting to do a project in Canada unless the taxpayer is willing to give them $31 billion to do it.
This is not moving in the right direction. We need to be nimble when it comes to our decision, responsible but nimble. Again, I do not agree with the red tape regime that would hinder both traditional and alternative energy development in the bill. The broad, unilateral, discretionary cabinet power for arbitrary decision-making increases timelines and adds uncertainty around onerous requirements that are already driving away investment.
I want to read a quote from Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe, who talked about the lack of consultation with provinces. He said, “They’re un-consulted, notional targets that are put forward by the federal government without working with industries, provinces or anyone that’s generating electricity”. The provinces are concerned that they are going to see infringements from the government and I think, based on what has happened before, that they are right to think that.
There was a project that was a renewables project. It was in New Brunswick. It was the first North America tidal power project deal, and the Trudeau Liberals killed it. Sustainable Marine Energy started developing an alternative—
1671 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/1/23 1:28:57 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House and especially today for this opposition day motion, which talks about how the first carbon tax would increase the price of gas by 41¢ a litre and how the second, the clean fuel regulations, would add 20¢ more to that when sales tax is included. This will further exacerbate the cost of living issues that people are facing across the country.
What I want to do today in my speech is talk about what the carbon tax will do, talk about what it will not do and talk about what real solutions should be offered.
First of all, what does it actually do? It increases the price of things. It is not just the price of gasoline that is going up, because it is an escalator. For example, if we look at food, it has increased in price, on average, by 12%, but some items of food are up 30% and 40%.
When we are talking about a farmer who is producing the food, they will have to use more diesel and fuel to heat their barns and take care of growing their products and drying them. There is a carbon tax on that. To make it worse, there is a tax on the tax. The Liberals are applying tax on top of that, and it is a substantial amount of money. We are talking about $150,000 for a farmer. That is a real thing that they obviously have to pass on to the consumer.
Then they are shipping the product to a processing facility, and there is a carbon tax on that and a tax on the tax. Then at the processing facility, depending on the type of processing facility, there is a carbon tax on emissions. Then we are talking about shipping it to the grocery store. Again, that is another carbon tax and a tax on the tax. Then we get to the grocery store, and it has to be put in refrigerators. If the Liberal do not buy them, that is another expense, but then they are spending more energy trying to keep the products preserved.
What is happening is this is hurting individuals. Before the pandemic, the data reported said that half of Canadians were within $200 of not being able to pay their bills. Let us think about that. Then fast-forward to where we are now, where we have added a second carbon tax that is estimated, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, to cost each individual $538 a year. Half of Canadians were within $200 of not being able to pay their bills every month, and now the Liberals have added $600 more. That is on top of the estimated cost of the already existing carbon tax, which the Parliamentary Budget Officer says, depending on the province we live in, is between $1,500 and $3,000 a person.
By the time all these taxes, carbon taxes and the tax on the tax get to an individual, we are talking about $4,000 per Canadian. That is a substantial amount of money. If we break that down by month, we are talking $300 a month, which puts us way over the 50% of people who could not pay their bills if they had an increase of $200.
The Liberals are going to say that Canadians get back more than they give, but we know that is not true. I have seen my climate action rebate cheque come to me, $128.55 four times a year. Adding that up, it is nowhere near $4,000. It is absolutely a misrepresentation of the facts to say the government is giving Canadians more back. No, it is not.
I am getting calls at my office, continually, from individuals who are saying they cannot afford to pay their bills and are losing their house. I have a lot of seniors in my riding, and some of them have had to go back to work at 74 years of age in order to afford heating, gasoline, groceries, the whole thing. That is what the carbon tax is doing. It is adding to inflationary pressures that we already have from the out-of-control spending happening on the other side. That is what the carbon tax does.
Let us talk a little about what it does not do. It does not reduce emissions. It is a tax plan; it is not an emissions plan. If we look to who has met their Paris targets, our neighbours to the south have met their Paris targets, and they did it through emissions reduction technology and switching to fuels like nuclear, LNG and lower-carbon fuels. These are actual, concrete solutions. They put capital incentives in place so that businesses would put emissions reduction technology in place. That is how they did it, and they did it in four years.
If we look at where we are, we were supposed to reduce our targets by 30% from the 2005 level. The 2005 level was 732 megatonnes and we are now at 670 megatonnes. In 20 years, we have reduced 60 megatonnes, but the target we have to get to is a reduction of 538. We are nowhere near the plan.
In the approach the Liberals have, they talk about tree planting. They are going to plant two billion trees. Do members know how many trees we already have in Canada? We have 318 billion trees in Canada and this is two billion more. More trees are always better, but the reality is that recent reports said the Liberals have planted less than 2% of these in years. It is because the program that was introduced does not work.
I know a great group, Climate Action Sarnia-Lambton, that wants to plant trees. I approached the minister and said that we have lots of volunteers who are willing to come out. They have all the tools. We just need the money to get the trees and get them in the ground. Do members know what I heard? We have to plant 10,000 trees or we cannot get any money. We have to start somewhere with a program that works a little better than that. That is what the carbon tax does not do.
I have heard this a lot in the discussion today during the debate: Well, what about the wildfires and what about the floods? We are seeing severe weather events and we are seeing them at a frequency that we have not seen before. However, Canada is less than 2% of the carbon footprint of the world. We could eliminate the whole thing and we are still going to get all of those wildfires and all of those floods, because we have countries, like China and India, that are building coal plants. China is 34% of the footprint.
What would be better is if we exported Canadian LNG. We could reduce the global footprint by over 10%. We could reduce five times our existing footprint. That is real climate action. Instead, 12 LNG projects have been shut down by the Liberal government.
The Germans approached us. Germany decided to go down the green energy path, and they found out that it was so expensive that they got rid of it and went back onto coal and LNG. They approached us to get a contract with us for $58 billion, which we refused. The Australians used to have a carbon tax. They got rid of it. It made everything more expensive and it did not help them meet their goals.
We have a situation where countries are in need of our fuel. We are the most environmentally responsible producers of LNG in the world, but we cannot get anything built because a Bill C-69 project approval thing was put in place. We have seen the disaster that the government is making with the Trans Mountain project. It was supposed to be $7 billion and is up to $30 billion, and it is not even built yet.
The carbon tax hurts Canadians. It inflates their costs. People cannot afford to live. They are struggling. I know that Liberal MPs are hearing this from their constituents and they need to listen.
What we need to do is have emissions reduction technology, get on lower-carbon fuels, export them to the world and work together to get a better planet. That is what we need to do and that is the vision on this side of the House.
1431 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
