- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Joliette
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $132,165.46
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, in Bill C‑59, there is a $17.8-billion tax credit that will help oil companies reduce their use of natural gas by financing the installation of small nuclear power plants to extract bitumen from the tar sands. The gas would then be exported to Asia, including from the LNG terminal in British Columbia.
Does the member believe that this is an environmental plan to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?
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- Oct/27/23 12:51:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, according to the government regulation that the Bloc Québécois never voted for and will never get to vote for because it is a regulation, the industry must to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Government officials calculated that this will cost the industry up to 17¢. If this regulation were not in place, the situation would still apply in Quebec since Quebec has a similar, if not slightly stricter, regulation. To justify this requirement, the government gave the oil industry tens of millions of dollars in subsidies, saying that it was to help the industry reduce its emissions. That means that most of the cost will be covered by subsidies.
Take, for example, oil extraction in western Canada. I would like to remind the House that the price is negotiated on the New York Stock Exchange. What portion of the price at the pump covers oil extraction? The New York Stock Exchange is the one that decides. Is the government's regulation sufficient to drive up the price of oil in New York? I do not think so.
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- Oct/27/23 12:47:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is heckling and preventing me from answering the question properly.
The clean fuel regulations are not a tax because they call on the fuel industry to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, not to collect money for the government.
My time is nearly up. In closing, as far as the increase of 17¢ and 20¢ per litre of gas is concerned, that is absolutely false as well. I will have time to respond to that another time.
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Madam Speaker, currently, when big emitters pay the carbon tax, the money is put aside and is used to finance green projects in the province where the tax was collected. If oil companies do not propose any green projects, they lose that money at the end of the year. This approach encourages them to move quickly.
With Bill C-47, the money would not be lost at the end of the year. Oil companies would keep the money for future projects, which would give them no incentive to hurry to implement green projects that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
What does my colleague think about that?
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- Sep/29/22 4:57:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
I have a few things to say to him in response.
First, I would love to analyze and study the impact of the Liberal government's carbon tax. This tax will increase gradually, and it is set to triple by 2030, not right now when we are in the middle of an inflationary crisis. What will be the actual, concrete impact on the price of food and the cost of living? We have to study that in order to put a figure on the results. I think the impact will be much lower than indicated.
Now I would like to ask my colleague if he acknowledges that human activity contributes to climate change. If so, does he agree that Canada should honour the Paris Agreement, which requires us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions? If the answer is yes, what would his plan be? My concern is that this government's plan will not even enable us to honour the agreement.
My colleague spoke of the national policy. In closing, I would like to remind him that the English Canadian nation is not my nation. Quebec's national policy is the carbon market, which, by the way, was created by a Liberal premier, one Jean Charest. Therefore, Quebec is not subject to this government's carbon tax. Since we have a different system and a different model, we are not affected by these changes.
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- Apr/8/22 12:24:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Kitchener South-Hespeler. I completely agree with him.
On the very week the IPCC released a report stating that there should not be any new oil projects, the former environmentalist who climbed the CN Tower announced that Canada is going to launch a new one-billion-barrel project.
The next day, the government presented its budget. We were hoping that the Liberals would counterbalance this historically unacceptable compromise. We know that environment ministers around the world have resigned over much less that that. This dishonest compromise makes no sense.
However, what do we see in the budget? Fossil fuel subsidies. We are cutting our emissions, so now we can produce more.
There is an urgent need for action, but it seems as though the government is not there at all. For the government, the industry is the most important thing. The government is extremely short-sighted when it comes to fighting climate change.
The Bloc Québécois will continue to put pressure on the government because this is unacceptable. I am very disappointed that the Minister of Environment and Climate Change compromised on this. It is historically unacceptable.
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