- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Lac-Saint-Louis
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,581.21
- Government Page
- Apr/18/24 1:22:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the facts seem to contradict what the hon. member is saying. Canada is one of the top countries for attracting direct foreign investment. In fact, it is the top country per capita in attracting direct foreign investment. However, I will admit that there are pressures on capital in Canada to go to the United States specifically in green industries, and that pressure was caused by a $400-billion Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.
Does the hon. member think that we need to spend much more on green technology in this country to counterbalance that attraction that is coming from the United States?
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- Mar/21/24 1:55:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is true that inflation poses a challenge to Canadians. Food inflation poses a challenge to Canadians. However, study after study, rigorous analysis after rigorous analysis, by competent economists has shown that the contribution of the price of carbon pollution to food inflation is negligible. One figure that I read was that it contributes 0.15% to food inflation; that is to the increase in the price of food.
In fact, an interesting point was brought up at the environment committee the other day by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment, the member for Milton. He said that many food bank operators were quite worried about what would happen if the price on carbon were repealed, because the impact would be such that those who would go to the food banks would lose the Canada carbon rebate. They are quite worried. I have not heard of any food bank operator, quite frankly, calling for the repeal of the price on carbon.
What is impacting food inflation? It is something called the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine caused the international energy crisis to spike. It caused grain prices to spike. What is Ukraine called? It is called the bread basket of Europe. The war has constrained its supply of grain, putting upward pressure on food prices.
Why do the Conservatives never talk about that? I will tell members why. They are very sheepish when it comes to Ukraine because they are ashamed. They are ashamed that they did not support the Canada-Ukraine free trade act, an act that would permit Ukraine to enter into the European Union, the economic union. What the Conservatives also—
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- Feb/1/24 11:20:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my condolences to the hon. member on the loss of his constituent. I am glad that he took the opportunity to mention that. I am sure the constituent's family will appreciate that deeply.
The member was just not listening. We do not deny that the price of food is high. We are just reminding the member and his party that it is not because of the price on carbon. There is a war in Ukraine. There are wildfires and floods that are destroying farmland in Canada. These are the factors that are driving the price of food. Fortunately, food inflation is coming down to match general inflation. That is a good sign, but let us hope that continues.
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- Nov/28/23 4:50:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Bank of Canada has said that the price on carbon is not contributing in any significant way to food inflation. Now, I do not know, maybe the hon. member does not accept studies and analyses by the Bank of Canada as legitimate academic studies. I know his leader does not think much of the Bank of Canada and puts the blame of everything on the shoulders of the Bank of Canada.
There is a price on carbon. It is being added to the cost of things. The point is that it is not responsible for the biggest chunk of the rise in food prices.
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- Jun/21/23 9:39:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we often hear from the other side that the price on carbon is fuelling inflation. However, I look at reports of the Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem's appearance before the finance committee in February.
I will quote a newspaper article. In terms of the impact of the price on carbon on inflation, he said that, “prescribed annual increases to the price on carbon add about 0.1 percentage points to headline inflation.” That is not very much. Also, “He added later that scrapping the carbon tax completely would reduce inflation by half a percentage point in the year that it was done, but would not have any impact on inflation in future years.”
The idea of always coming back to the price on carbon as the culprit contributing to inflation is a bit misleading, really. It does not reflect the thoughts of the Bank of Canada's governor.
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- Jun/1/23 10:59:38 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, since we are talking about fuel, gasoline and the like, today, I would like to ask you a question. It is a rhetorical question; I am not expecting an answer. Do you have a car? I am sure you do. I am sure you drive on two-lane highways and three-lane highways. If you are like me, you see, every now and then, a car that moves from one lane to the next and then back again, sometimes without even signalling. That is frustrating and it is dangerous. I will come back to that car later.
The official opposition has a gift for holding two contradictory positions at the same time. It is a clever balancing act, and, in some ways, I am impressed. I find it disturbing in a way, but it is clever in its own way. The official opposition can argue both sides at once. It is as though it wants to have its cake and eat it too. I will give an example. We hear, every day, that inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. In other words, it is caused by a record expansion of the money supply during the pandemic. The next day, the official opposition says inflation is cost-driven, principally by the price on carbon, not by any other factor impacting costs, like supply chain bottlenecks and so forth. I will give a second example. The official opposition gets up and says that the horrible drug problem we have in this country is because of the low price of street drugs, which has created high demand. However, when we talk about the high price of gasoline, somehow that does not curtail demand. In other words, it seems like, according to the opposition, only those with addictions respond to the price mechanism. There are contradictions everywhere.
I will give a third example. The official opposition has been for the price on carbon, and then it has been against the price on carbon. I would suggest that every Conservative MP in the House owes their constituents an explanation as to why they ran on a platform to impose a price on carbon yet abandoned that platform commitment very shortly afterward. They call the price on carbon a tax, but we are in an alternate reality here. The price on carbon is simply a transfer. They then call the clean fuel standard a second tax, but when it comes to the clean fuel standard, the government is not imposing any kind of charge. The clean fuel standard is not a tax; it is a regulation. This brings me to the fourth example of Conservative contradiction. For years, the Conservatives have been saying no to a price on carbon. That was before the 2021 election platform. Before that, they traditionally favoured regulation, as if regulations do not have a cost. They would say that they are not for a price on carbon, and that they prefer regulation, because, they say, there is no cost to regulation. It is very simple. It is like a magic wand. They will combat climate change through the magic wand of regulation, which, according to the Conservatives, costs nothing.
The clean fuel standard is a regulation. No money goes to the government. It will result in the transfer of credits between companies, but only if a company does not meet its intensity target. It is not even clear how many credits a company or an enterprise would have to purchase, and since we do not know how many credits a company would have to purchase in 2030, we do not know what the cost impact of the purchase of those credits will be.
The clean fuel standard is something Conservatives should approve of and support, because it will drive innovation. We know that Conservatives like that, because, as the solution to climate change, they always invoke the magic word “technology”, which again they imply is something free. Technological advancement and innovation are often the result of government regulation and involve costs for research and development in order to arrive at new, more efficient technologies.
The next thing they will be telling us, and this will be another contradiction in their discourse, is that the methane regulations the government brought into force, which are meant to stop fugitive and controlled methane emissions, are a tax, which they are not. We are in Alice in Wonderland; it is all sleight of hand.
Then there is the Conservatives' fake math. They are pulling numbers out of thin air and omitting to tie them to specific dates. Do members remember “Triple, Triple, Triple” on the Conservatives' hit parade? That ditty seems to have fallen from the number one spot recently. It made it seem like the price was going up in multiples overnight, but the price on carbon goes up only $15 per tonne annually, or 30% from 2022 to 2023, not 300%. I think the Conservatives got the decimal point wrong. It will go up in a declining percentage every year: 23% from 2023 to 2024, then 19% from 2024 to 2025. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which is no friend of the Liberal government, estimates that, after the 2023 increase on the price on carbon, the total impact of carbon pricing will amount to an extra 14¢ per litre, not “triple, triple, triple".
There is another thing the opposition omits, and that is the rebate, which is what makes the price on carbon a transfer. Milton Friedman, who agreed with the price on carbon, did in fact include a rebate in his formula. We know that the leader of the official opposition is a disciple of Milton Friedman. I think Milton Friedman would be very upset, if he were alive today, to know that the leader of the official opposition here in Canada is against a market mechanism like the price on carbon.
Once the clean fuel standard regulations take full effect, according to figures the PBO obtained from Environment and Climate Change Canada, they will increase the price of gas and diesel by as much as 17¢ per litre, but that is in 2030. Conservatives never mention the date when they get up and say, “triple, triple, triple". They forget there is a calendar date that is far off into the future.
There is another point I would like to make about the PBO study, which would be apparent to anyone who has studied economics. I do not know how many people on that side have studied economics, but I am sure many other people in the House have. The PBO's analysis is based on what is called “static” economics. It does an analysis based on the idea that everything else stays the same, so it does not take into account innovation, or the fact that companies innovate to meet the intensity target and will not have to buy credits, and so on. It is not real-time economics, and I would say the official opposition needs to get with real time.
I will come back to the big, blue car on the highway. Conservatives are for a price on carbon, then are against it. Conservatives are for regulations that drive innovation, then are against them. That big, blue gas guzzler that zigzags incessantly across the highway needs to pick a lane.
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- Feb/7/23 4:06:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will say at the outset that I will be splitting my time with the member for St. Catharines.
Canadians are hurting. That is obvious. We see it every day on the news, and we hear about it in the House. While employment is strong, and this is not an insignificant positive, inflation is at its worst in 40 years. We have always had inflation. Every year there is inflation. Two per cent is inflation, but this inflation is obviously the worst we have seen in 40 years. That is a fact that is indisputable. We also have the first war in Europe in 78 years, and we have the most volatile climate ever.
I will start my speech with a quote, if I may. It is a quote from a Canadian farmer by the name of David Coburn, who is helping put food on the tables of families across this great country. This is from a CBC article from November, just a couple of months ago. Mr. Coburn said, “This is going to drive inflation.... All of our food goes on our truck at some point in time so this is not gonna help the inflationary figures.”
What was Mr. Coburn talking about? He was talking about the price of diesel, the fuel that keeps the global economy moving. Here again, I quote from the article from the CBC website, which says:
Drivers may wince when the price of gasoline goes up, or decide not to drive if they can. But the trains, trucks, boats, and barges that keep the economy moving run on diesel — and they don't have that option.
The article, from back in November, goes on to say:
The average retail price of diesel in Canada has topped $2.40 a litre at various points this month, a previously unimaginable level that has many businesses scrambling to keep up.
There are many reasons why it is happening, but the impact boils down to one basic thing: it's driving up the price of everything, and making inflation worse.
What has been driving up the price of diesel? We know that shutdowns of refineries for maintenance have an impact on supply and the price of diesel in a market that is driven by demand and supply. For example, the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John saw a shutdown for maintenance recently in the fall, taking 300,000 barrels a day of supply off the market. Refinery shutdowns for maintenance happen all the time, but when they happen in a very tight market, then we can see very wide swings in the price of diesel and the price of gasoline because barrels that might otherwise be available to meet local needs are just not there. In this case, in November, in New Brunswick, and therefore in Canada, barrels that might otherwise be available to meet local needs were being diverted to the other side of the ocean.
Again, I quote from the article, which is quoting a gentleman by the name of Patrick De Haan, a Chicago-based analyst with a website called GasBuddy.com. He says:
Europe is trying to move away from Russian oil products like diesel fuel, and as a result of that, much of the product that could be imported into the Northeast or eastern coast of Canada, as well as the Northeastern U.S. is being pulled over there.
Europe was essentially building stockpiles for the winter ahead, and that meant that, when the Irving Refinery shut down for maintenance, the market was very tight, and the price went up drastically.
Another factor that has increased demand for oil and gas is the rebound in airplane travel. I will quote another analyst, Paul Pasco, who is with a firm called Kalibrate. He says in the article, “air travel getting back to pre-COVID levels isn't helping either.” He then said, “Diesel, kerosene or jet fuel, they're basically all the exact same part of the barrel, they're all what's known as the distillate barrels”. Therefore, we have lots of factors that are contributing, or have been contributing, to the very high price of diesel.
The opposition will have us believe that all of these huge forces at play internationally are not really what is causing prices to go up. They contend that it is the price on carbon, but all experts will say, and I will quote a professor of economics at the University of Calgary, that the overwhelming dominant reason why prices are higher now compared to a couple of months ago is there are factors other than the price on carbon.
Professor Trevor Tombe said that the federal carbon price adds 11¢ to the cost of each litre of gasoline, and added that the notion that the carbon tax is what is behind high gas prices is a misconception. He said, “While, you know, 11 cents a litre is a meaningful level overall, they don't drive the recent increases that we're seeing.... It's really about global oil prices, and that's really driven by things far beyond the government of Canada's control.”
I do not know what they are talking about on the other side. I do not know what their researchers are telling them or why they are telling them what they are telling them, but they are invoking all the wrong factors to explain what is going on in the economy, and that is quite concerning for a party that claims it wants to govern the country. If Conservatives do not understand basic economics, how could they make big decisions?
We know that the Leader of the Opposition holds Milton Friedman in very high esteem. One could say that he worships at the altar of Milton Friedman, and we know that he carries around under his arm a copy of Milton Friedman's A Monetary History of the United States. Let us see what Milton Friedman would say about this whole issue.
The University of Chicago school of economics, where Milton Friedman was the top economist for many years, held a forum a few years ago called, “What Would Milton Friedman Do About Climate Change?” Former U.S. representative Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina, opened the discussion by playing a 1979 clip of Milton Friedman appearing on The Phil Donahue Show. Phil Donahue asked Milton Friedman, “Is there a case for the government to do something about pollution?” Friedman replied, “Yes, there's a case for the government to do something. There's always a case for the government to do something about it.”
He was basically saying that the market had broken down and was not operating efficiently, so something had to be done. What did he mean by saying the market was not operating efficiently? He said, referring to the cost of pollution:
those costs are real, and they're not being reflected in the costs of that electricity or the tank of gas. Emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere does allow you to produce electricity more cheaply, but there's a whole other set of people who are being punished or penalized. It's a poor idea of economics.
I do not know if the Leader of the Opposition read that quote by Mr. Friedman. He went on to say:
What we need is an adjustment mechanism that will enable us to adapt to what happens as it develops. Everybody in this room knows there is such a system, namely the price mechanism. If we have a problem today, in the air, with pollution, it is solely in my opinion because that system has not been allowed to work.
Then someone else—
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives tend to focus on correlation rather than causation, so they will say there is a Liberal government in Ottawa and there is global inflation, including bad inflation in England, and therefore it is the Liberal government's fault. However, that is not how economics works. We have to look at causation.
I would like to understand a bit more the member's logic about food inflation. Is it demand-caused inflation? People can only consume so much food, and food demand goes up with population growth. It is not a function of how much the government spent on infrastructure last month. Therefore, is it demand driven or is it supply-cost driven? The price on carbon did not triple; it went up by 2.2¢ per litre last April. I am just wondering how that 2.2¢ per-litre increase can be contributing to so much food inflation, which is running above 10%.
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Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the Conservatives are loath to support this bill because they feel that all government spending is inflationary, even though economists have said that the amount of government spending in this bill would not cause inflationary pressure.
Does the member believe that providing dental care to children 12 and under would cause the price of dental care to go up?
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Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member's speech and he created some very loose associations, starting with the fake Harper surplus of October 2015.
I will read what Bill Curry of the Globe and Mail, a reputable newspaper in Canada, said at the time. It states, “The Conservative government's long-promised return to surplus relies on a series of accounting moves that includes slashing the contingency reserve, assuming oil prices will climb and collecting billions more in Employment Insurance premiums than necessary.”
Putting that aside, the fake surplus was preceded by nine years of deficit, yet as the member himself just said, inflation was only 1% after those nine years of deficit. How does he square that?
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- Apr/26/22 3:48:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I recall, the framework for the Bank of Canada in terms of its inflation target has not really changed much over the past few years. It is still aiming for a 2% inflation rate, so I do not see that there has been a radical change at that level. It is very important to recognize that the Bank of Canada is independent.
I am quite fearful that private member's bills such as the one introduced by the former leader of the Conservative Party somehow try to shift the blame to an independent institution, impugn it and attack its credibility in the eyes of Canadians. I think that would be a great threat to the economic policy in this country.
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