- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sarnia—Lambton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $118,419.33
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to address Bill C-380, a private member's bill from my friend and colleague, the member for Saskatoon—University, with the very important aim of repealing the government's irresponsible and senseless ban on single-use plastics.
This debate tonight is not about plastic waste, although certainly there is more to be done there. This is about whether plastic manufactured products are toxic, because that is what the government did. It had them labelled “toxic” and it was ruled to be unconstitutional.
In my speech today, I will first outline the history of the ban and its flawed premise, and then detail why it is ultimately unhelpful to the environment and talk about the harmful impacts on Canadians and Canadian industry. Finally, I will expand on the unintended and knock-on consequences of the ban, with a final appeal to the House for some common sense.
Canadians are now unfortunately well versed in the effects of climate change. The Liberals, with a need to be seen to be taking action, decided to place the blame for climate change exclusively on Canadian consumers, making plastics the scapegoat with a particular spotlight on single-use plastics.
In 2019, the Prime Minister announced bans on single-use plastics, and in May 2021, plastic manufactured items were added to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA, to be designated as toxic. In June 2022, six categories of single-use plastics, or SUPs, were banned, with a timeline to prohibit manufacture and import for sale in Canada, prohibition on sale in Canada and prohibition on manufacturing, import and export sales.
Unfortunately, quite in line with a government bent on destroying Canada's competitiveness and foreign direct investment, checkout bags, cutlery, straws, food service utensils, stir sticks, ring carriers and plastic straws packaged with drink containers were outlawed in one fell swoop. Yes, because banning the straws from juice boxes in the lunches of Canada's first graders will definitely beat climate change. No, it will not.
First, this ban on single-use plastics is unfounded and a serious overreach. Plastic manufactured items, as I referred to, do not rightfully belong in the CEPA list as a toxic substance. CEPA is a federal criminal statute and the enabling mechanism that the federal government is applying wrongly to provide a legal basis for usurping provincial powers over waste management and the local plastics economy.
Using CEPA, while unjustified, allows the federal government to take control of provincial waste management systems and centralizes all decisions related to what plastic products can be manufactured, imported, exported and distributed in Canada. CEPA is a chemical management tool for toxic substances. It was never intended to be an environmental management tool. This broadens the scope of the act, which was to list chemically harmful substances like mercury and lead as toxic. Therefore, listing the entire category of plastic manufactured items in schedule 1 of the CEPA without a chemical risk assessment testing for toxicity is a serious violation of the act.
What is more is that it is not even plastic itself that is listed as toxic. It is plastic manufactured items, things like medical supplies and devices, protective equipment, food packaging, fridges and cars. All of these are made with plastic. Are they all toxic? No, they are not.
I worked for 21 years as a chemical engineer in plastics. I designed many plastic products used in medical devices, medical supplies and food packaging. I was involved in the approval process to understand how we assess to make sure they do not have a negative medical impact.
People here in the House every day are drinking orange juice from a plastic container. Is it toxic? No, it is not. They are eating their yogourt in the lobby from a plastic container. Is it toxic? No, it is not. They are going to the hospital, and in the hospital they use a single-use plastic for blood transfusions. Is it toxic? No, it is not. We are putting contact lenses in our eyes that are plastic. Is it toxic? No, it is not. We are giving babies formula in plastic bottles. Is it toxic? No, it is not.
It is such a ridiculous argument to say that plastic is not toxic, but plastic manufactured items are. That is like me saying that the wool I am knitting with is not toxic, but the sweater I produce is. It is absolutely ridiculous.
Even the minister himself said at the environment committee, “Plastics are not toxic in the normal sense of the word that people use pejoratively,” and that he does not think anybody says they are. Then why are they on the list? This is causing a huge issue in the industry, threatening jobs and the environment. As usual for the Liberals, their words and actions do not line up.
Perhaps they think that by banning plastics and causing serious deleterious effects to Canadians and Canadian industry, they can fool voters into thinking they did something, but like most Liberal strategies, it is built on false premises. The Liberals want Canadians to believe that banning single-use plastics will assist with the reduction of plastic pollution and emissions production. However, the scale of plastic pollution is small, less than 1% of all litter in Canada, according to a report written by the Liberal government in 2020.
Further, only 1% of Canada's plastic waste is disposed of improperly. Plastic pollution is not a pervasive problem in Canada. Moreover, alternatives to plastic actually produce more carbon emissions, not less. We know the government loves McKinsey and its consulting work, so I will quote from one of its reports, “The potential impact of reusable packaging”. Modelling done by McKinsey in 2023 indicates that there would be a 150% increase in emissions due to the higher share of fossil components in materials, transport and energy use to make the alternative products. What a good job fighting climate change.
These so-called alternatives cost twice as much to make as well. Packaging accounts for 10% to 20% of a product's cost, and if the packaging now costs twice as much, as likewise estimated in that same McKinsey report, there will be a significant inflationary increase to consumers if the government introduces requirements related to use, recycled content and eliminating plastic from produce and meats. That is just what we need when Canadians cannot afford to eat and are going to homeless shelters and food banks in increasing numbers.
As it is, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business estimates the added cost to the Canadian economy is $1.9 billion to produce these alternatives to the banned plastic packaging. We use plastic for a reason. It is vital to extend the shelf life of foods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables. These fresh fruits and vegetables, even pet food, will face a reduced shelf life and increased prices due to the federal regulations on plastic.
The Canadian Produce Marketing Association estimates it will cost between $2.5 billion and $5 billion in costs for food losses, accompanying an estimated half million tonne increase in food losses. Rotting food increases methane emissions. At a time when so many Canadians are struggling and the food banks are seeing unprecedented usage, it is unconscionable.
Worse still are the effects on the thousands of families who rely on those working in the plastic manufacturing industry. More than 99,000 people work in the Canadian plastics industry, which is estimated to be worth $35 billion. The ban will impact 13,000 to 20,000 direct jobs and as many as 26,000 to 40,000 indirect jobs. Together, that is up to 60,000 Canadians who will face further hardship at the hands of the Liberal-NDP government and its ideology.
In my riding of Sarnia—Lambton, there are multiple plastics facilities that produce single-use plastics. In 2019, the federal Liberals decided they wanted Nova Chemicals to build a $3-billion plant in my riding instead of in Texas. They provided incentives and money to get it to build a single-use plastic production facility that would export plastics to the world. The very next month, they decided they were going to ban the products it is producing, and now they are planning to stop the export. They would shut that facility down, along with all the economic benefits. It is total hypocrisy on the part of the government.
Are we really going to destroy the lives and livelihoods of 60,000 Canadians and their families while putting increased costs and inconveniences on Canadians for a detrimental environmental and economic outcome? There is no benefit to this, and it was an egregious error to enact the ban in the first place.
Instead, efforts can be made to shore up recycling and recovery infrastructure to better manage plastic waste sources. These industries are willing to partner to address some of the issues that we know exist with plastics, like microbeads in the Great Lakes, for example. Let us work on those problems.
Plastics are not toxic, and plastic-manufactured products are not toxic, so I implore the government to listen to reason and common sense.
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- Feb/14/24 2:10:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, Canadians know that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. In this era of insane inflation, housing crisis and food prices that are through the roof, the Prime Minister is hiking the carbon tax again on April 1. The Liberals want to quadruple it to 61¢ a litre. Canadians are crying out for relief, but the government instead wants to keep digging deeper into our pockets to fund its corrupt overspending. The carbon tax makes food more expensive at every stage. When one taxes the farmer who grows the food and the trucker who transports the food, one taxes the people who buy the food.
The carbon tax does nothing to reduce emissions but forces Canadians into poverty and homelessness. The end result of the Liberals' failed carbon tax experiment is the two million Canadians who are now using food banks. This is unacceptable.
Conservatives will continue to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
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- Feb/1/24 3:29:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy that the member opposite likes our idea about technology, not taxes.
I would inform him that the U.S. is the only country in the world that met its Paris targets, and it did that by providing capital incentives to industry to reduce emissions and by implementing more nuclear technology and more green technology. That is the right direction.
Would the member admit that, since the carbon tax is not helping the Liberals meet any of their emissions target, it is time to abandon that, cap the increase planned for April 1 and focus, instead, on the same kind of incentives that were successful for the U.S.?
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Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party has an absolutely sound and real climate change reduction plan. We would reduce emissions, increase absorptions and get a plan to actually mitigate the impacts of climate change, floods, etc., that we are seeing.
The Conservative leader has talked about small modular nuclear reactors, which could replace diesel in the north and be used, for example, to generate electricity for greenhouses for food security. We have talked about the need to increase rail in this country and to build rail with housing close to it. We have heard about those things and about LNG. There are a lot of opportunities to reduce emissions in terms of increasing absorption. Carbon sequestration is a key technology that Canada should be leveraging. We would certainly be able to actually plant trees, not just talk about planting trees.
At the end of the day, we have to have a plan, because we cannot be calling in the military every time we have a flood or a fire. It is not resourced to do that work, and we have to have a plan, because we know we are going to continue to see impacts.
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Madam Speaker, at the start of the member's question, he talked about all the forest fires. I feel terrible about the impacts of the forest fires in B.C., but I want to point out that 14 years of carbon tax did nothing to help that.
I also want to point out that if we look at the 819 megatonnes of emissions we had this year, 290 megatonnes so far were due to forest fires. The Liberal government said that it was going to spend $500 million to buy more water bomber equipment and train more firefighters to reduce the length of time that these things burn. It has not done that.
Why does the member and his whole NDP team continue to support the government on disastrous policies that are not addressing climate change and are making life more expensive? Why do they not get a divorce?
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Madam Speaker, I am judging from experience. The behaviour of the past is a predictor of the future. The government continues to time allocate all the time. Am I saying this is not going to committee? No, I am listening to the debate and to what other people are saying, but I am pointing out the things that I think are shortcomings in the bill.
The government says that it is urgent, because we have climate change and it is an emergency. Let us talk about that for a minute. In 2005, our emissions were 732 megatonnes. Every party in this House committed to reduce that 30% by 2030. That means we need to get to 512 megatonnes. Today we are at 819 megatonnes. The government's plan has done nothing. I believe in real action. Using offshore renewables and reducing emissions are good things, but the government cannot be the one pulling the strings and deciding who the winners and who the losers are.
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- Jun/1/23 1:42:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is important to note that Conservative policy is typically set by the grassroots, and our policy has always been to oppose a carbon tax. Members can remember we had a leader with a different vision, and he is no longer the leader. Members can take what they want from that.
We have always been opposed to a carbon tax. The grassroots members are opposed, and they are opposed because they know it does not work. Even the cap and trade program in Quebec has not reduced emissions. It does not work, so we need to get technology solutions in place.
We will come up with a plan. We are expecting an election pretty soon, and if the NDP would do its part and help push the Liberals for a public inquiry or pull the agreement, we would be there with our plan.
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- Jun/1/23 1:39:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me talk as a chemical engineer about some of the things I have seen that are very effective at reducing emissions.
When I was the director of engineering at Suncor, for example, we had emissions reduction programs in place for all the refineries. We were able to reduce our GHG emissions by 25%. We were basically capturing the emissions and recycling them. Then there is carbon sequestration. Canada is a leader in this technology. It is a great carbon sink. That is a way of getting there.
In terms of energy, 40% of the energy in Ontario is nuclear. Of course, nuclear is carbon-free, so expanding into small modular nuclear reactors, especially in the emerging world, which is on coal and heavy carbon fuels, is a great idea. I also mentioned LNG supplanting coal. It is a lower-carbon fuel and is environmentally responsibly produced here.
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- Jun/1/23 1:28:57 p.m.
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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.
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- Apr/18/23 3:03:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, maybe the minister should do something because he has never met an emissions target.
Another day and another billionaire island boondoggle. This time, the Prime Minister jets off to Jamaica and costs the Canadian taxpayers over $160,000. Of course, he stays with a friend who has donated to the Trudeau Foundation because he is so independent from that foundation. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Canadians cannot afford a vacation. They cannot afford to eat and heat.
Will the Prime Minister end this double standard of living and axe the carbon tax?
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- Feb/13/23 2:34:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the reality is the Liberals have never met a single one of their emissions targets. They do not have an environmental plan; they have a tax plan.
The minister's answer is no help at all to John in my riding. John is struggling with the rising cost of gas, groceries and home heating. At 74 years old, on a fixed income, he has had to go back to work.
Will the Prime Minister axe the tax so John can keep the heat on?
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- Oct/3/22 2:10:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the new Conservative leader will put the people first: their paycheques, their savings, their homes, their country.
The carbon tax is an utter failure. The Liberal government would have us believe that it will drive emissions down, but emissions have gone up under its tenure. B.C. has had a carbon tax for 14 years and its emissions have gone up four megatonnes. Quebec has had a similar program for 12 years and its emissions have gone up four megatonnes as well.
The reality is that the carbon tax drives the price of everything up and it is punishing on Canadians who can least afford it. The Liberals would have us believe that they will get more money back than they pay, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said this is false and many Canadians will pay more. Still the Liberals are planning to triple the carbon tax in April of 2023. Clearly the Prime Minister is experiencing the carbon tax differently than hard-working Canadians.
Help is on the way. A Conservative government with its new leader will scrap the carbon tax.
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- Sep/27/22 10:50:58 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do feel I need to correct the record, because there are many errors in the speech of the parliamentary secretary
The first is the claim that the Conservatives do not have any targets for climate change and emissions reduction. In fact, the Liberals' targets are Stephen Harper's 2030 targets, so that is not the case.
The member said that we did not have a plan. Our leader outlined technologies such as nuclear, carbon sequestration and carbon capture, and leveraging LNG to other places in the world that would help reduce the footprint by a factor of 10.
Why does the Liberal government keep telling Canadians things that are simply not the case, such as they were only going to pay $50 a tonne for carbon tax or they were going to get more money back than they invested? Why does the Liberal government continue to do that?
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- Apr/1/22 12:04:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the NDP-Liberal government continues to try to destroy the oil and gas industry in Canada. First it had the carbon tax, then the clean fuel standards and now a call for a 42% emissions reduction.
My riding of Sarnia—Lambton, which produces a third of the petrochemicals in the country, will be hard pressed to remain competitive under these punishing rules that do not apply to foreign oil. The carbon footprint would not be leaving the planet; it would just be leaving Canadian jobs.
Why are the Liberals trying to destroy thousands of jobs in this country in order to give them to foreign producers with higher emissions?
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