- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $135,225.85
- Government Page
- Oct/31/22 6:21:42 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Mr. Speaker, what I will say to the NDP on this front is that the last thing we need is an escalation and a tripling of the carbon tax for families, including those in the city of London and across the province of Ontario.
The record that we hold up on Bill S-5 is that the NDP keeps falling for Liberal promises when they do not deliver. It is time for them to stop backing them up. It is time for them to start holding Liberals to account on the environment and everything else.
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- Oct/31/22 6:19:47 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Mr. Speaker, I will respectfully completely disagree with the premise and principle of what the Bloc is saying. At the end of the day, it is using the carbon tax as a tax to add to the price of doing business, whether it be in the oil and gas sector or any other sector.
What we have seen is the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Green Party support carbon taxes over the course of the last several years. We have not seen emissions go down in any meaningful way in the right direction. What we have seen is the cost of living, groceries and home heating rise and a cost of living crisis in this country. When we talk about emissions reductions, we are talking about that coming from technology, carbon capture and storage, small nuclear modular reactors and so forth, which can be in our energy sector. That is a good way to keep the cost of living down and keep our emissions down as well.
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- Oct/31/22 6:18:06 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Mr. Speaker, I thank my Liberal colleague for raising the carbon tax during this debate and giving me the opportunity to respond. I really appreciate it, because when he talks about 80 euros over in Europe and only $50 here, it gives me the perfect opportunity to remind the Liberal benches and the NDP that they are going to triple the carbon tax in the coming years to $170.
It gives me the opportunity to raise the Parliamentary Budget Officer report that says, “most households will see a net loss resulting from federal carbon pricing” and household costs “exceed the rebate and the induced reduction in personal income taxes arising from the loss in income.”
It gives me the opportunity to remind the Liberal government that, on every single environmental target and promise it has made when it comes to emissions reduction, it has failed. All it is doing is raising the cost of living on people at a time when they need it the least.
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- Oct/31/22 6:05:10 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Mr. Speaker, I want to start my speech tonight with an example from the real world. Let us say that Bob, for lack of a better name, was hired by a company to specifically develop targets to meet the goals of that business, and they wanted Bob to set not only the goals and the targets for that business but also the plan to achieve them. If I said that Bob had been working there for seven years, had presented numbers and targets that he was going to do for the company multiple times and failed every single time, most Canadians would rightfully think that Bob does not deserve a seventh chance. Bob deserves to be fired. The company may want to take a different approach to how they meet the goals and targets they set for themselves.
We have watched the exact same thing happen here in Ottawa for the past seven years. For seven years, we have had our own Bob on the Liberal benches. We have had numerous ministers stand time and time again, who always have nice backdrops and use every buzzword, platitude and virtue signal possible, to talk about what they are going to do for the environment on issue A or B, how they are going to set a new target and how they will meet it. Every single time, they have not met any of the targets they set when it came to emissions reductions. One would think maybe they came close a couple of times. They did not come close even once.
During the pandemic there was a drop in emissions when we were locked down, businesses were shut down and people were at home. As we have opened up in the past couple of years, we have returned to the same failed results that the Liberal and NDP coalition have come together on: higher emissions and the absolute opposite of what their plans and targets were.
Tonight, we are on the floor of the House of Commons talking about environmental issues and, specifically, the confidence the House has in the Liberals and NDP over the course of the next couple of years, however long that arrangement may last, and the faith and confidence that Canadians do not have in them to follow through on anything they have to say when it comes to the environment.
In this country after seven years of a Liberal government, we have an emissions crisis, according to its own numbers that we need to reduce, which are going up every single year. It has a record of setting targets, never following through and breaking every single promise it has ever made on it. It also promised to cap it at $50 a tonne. That will triple in the coming years.
Not only do we have an environmental crisis, according to the government's own targets, but we have an economic one created here too. We spend a lot of time on the floor of House of Commons talking about inflation, talking about the cost of living and, more than ever before, talking about how more Canadians are struggling to make ends meet while the environmental promises that were made, with all the right words, at the end of the day achieve very few results. It is actually the opposite. Again, they are not even coming close to what has been said and promised to Canadians.
A key piece of that plank of the Liberals' environmental platform, we argue, is not actually an environmental plan. It is a tax plan when it comes to the carbon tax. The carbon tax is driving up the price of everything, and it is now creating an economic crisis in our country when it comes to gas, transportation, home heating, groceries, rent, construction or whatever else.
We have the opportunity. When the Liberals propose and bring forward a bill on anything to do with the environment, after several years, numerous broken promises and the number of times the Liberals promised something they did not actually have the ability to deliver and follow through on, when they seek forgiveness afterward and ask for that fourth, fifth or sixth chance to say that this time they mean it and this time they have a plan to actually do what they say they are going to do, Canadians, rightfully, do not buy it anymore.
When we look at a specific piece of legislation, Bill S-5, and what the government would be tasked with doing in the coming years when it comes to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, Canadians rightfully have watched public accounts, read the environment commissioner's reports and read the Auditor General's reports, which say the government is saying one thing and has a complete lack of ability to do the other.
We have talked about a different approach to environmental issues. We believe, and our new leader has said this several times, which is resonating with more and more parts of this country, that technology and the evolution and development of it here at home are much better than the carbon tax plan that is being supported by the Liberals, the NDP and members of the Green Party.
The reality is that everything that the government touches these days makes the situation worse and it makes it more expensive. What we need to do is not increase taxes during these challenging times.
The other side has had the opportunity, through their environmental priorities, to raise taxes in the name of a carbon tax, saying that their solution would solve this problem. They said to just trust them and they will deliver on it. The cost of living and inflation has been driven up. Emissions are going up. Still, despite setting new targets and new plans and using all of the platitudes and all the buzzwords over and over again, they are not achieving. They are failing.
We are proposing a different path. It is time not to triple the carbon tax in the coming years. It is time to actually get rid of it—
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Madam Speaker, one of the big issues we talk about in the budget, as I am hearing, is gas prices. The member's riding is just on the other side of the provincial border, across from mine in eastern Ontario, and I know that commuters are having a very difficult time with rising gas prices.
Can the member confirm that the budget reaffirms the commitment to a carbon tax that adds to the cost of fuel every single year for the foreseeable future? Would he not agree with me that perhaps a gas tax relief holiday on the GST and the carbon tax would keep more money in people's pockets? As the cost of living, groceries and everything goes up, would that not be the better way to help the constituents in his riding?
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- Apr/4/22 12:08:51 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saskatchewan for her speech. In her riding, like mine, the carbon tax is an issue that many Canadians are talking about in terms of affordability and the cost of living.
One of the things I would like the member to comment on when we talk about the government's economic record and its fiscal plan, albeit from this fall looking ahead perhaps to the budget even this Thursday, is the Parliamentary Budget Officer saying that this tax disproportionately impacts rural residents more. It has cost them out of pocket and it is costing families and businesses, and that ripple effect is adding to an already difficult cost-of-living issue here. Could the member take this opportunity to perhaps share the context in her part of the country? Whether in my riding in eastern Ontario in the city of Cornwall or in some of the more rural parts, what I think I am going to hear is that we have very similar challenges and similar frustration on the part of many Canadians.
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