- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Mirabel
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $114,073.56
- Government Page
- Jun/1/23 5:26:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois is often criticized for the topics we choose for our opposition days. I am not going to pass judgment on the topic. What I said was that I was not surprised that it is always the same topic, but the Conservatives have the right to choose whatever they want to talk about.
That being said, we are definitely feeling the effects of climate change. There are fires burning in Quebec today. I think we need to show leadership and stop saying we will tax carbon when all the other countries have implemented it. I think we can do better.
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- Jun/1/23 5:24:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will depart a bit from my colleague's question, but not to avoid it, because it was excellent. We always come back to international comparisons, to what is done elsewhere and the fact that our competitors have or sometimes do not have taxes. That is indeed important.
Let me come back to biofuels regulations. Many studies in many places have shown that it is a policy that does have a positive, but modest impact on the environment. In the case of Canada, it is important to make comparisons because if this policy is having a modest impact elsewhere, it is because biofuels are replacing traditional oil. The principle is that the dirtier the oil we use the more effective the biofuels standard will be. Given that Canada produces and consumes the dirtiest oil in the world, we may have the potential here of making this standard much more useful than anywhere else.
That is why we need to take the time to compare ourselves sometimes. In this case, our dirty oil may well mean the standard will be better.
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- Jun/1/23 5:22:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, whom I really like, for his question.
I think the Conservatives would probably have preferred a tax, because a tax has one benefit that this type of regulation does not have: It generates revenue that enables the government to make the policy more progressive. That is exactly what they did with the carbon tax, which is not perfect but does send money back to some households.
The Conservatives are always whining about the carbon tax, saying it does not work. That forces the government to use other types of measures that do not generate revenue and are even more regressive.
I have been teaching pretty much all my life, and, if my colleague does not appreciate my professional conditioning, I will forgive him. However, I think he might well benefit from an economics course.
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- Jun/1/23 5:12:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my regards to you and all our dedicated colleagues who are here in the House with us.
I very much like being surprised. Today, I was very excited because we knew there was going to be a Conservative opposition day. Yesterday, I scratched my head and wondered what they would talk about. I came up with three options: taxes, taxes and maybe taxes. In the end, I was wrong.
The Conservatives are still talking about the carbon tax. So I will make it easier for me by keeping seven or eight speeches on file. When they have an opposition day, I will take out one of the speeches and that should cover it.
This time, however, they invented a tax. They are talking about the carbon tax. This tax exists; that is right, it is not a conspiracy. They are saying that there are regulations on biofuels and that that, too, is a tax. Anyone who took first year economics knows the difference between a tax and a regulation because there is always a chapter called “taxation versus regulation”. We teach the very young that it is not the same thing. The Conservatives' speeches are so made up that they made up a tax.
I wanted to take the time to thank them for their imagination. They made me laugh. Obviously, when we look at the motion, we see that the goal is to feed misinformation to the public. I showed how absurd that is. The Conservatives oppose any suggestion, no matter what it may be, that could actually have a positive effect on the environment and the fight against climate change. The reason is simple. It goes against the interests of the oil industry, and the two are not often reconcilable.
The Conservatives do not want us to put corn oil in gas. Basically, that is what they are telling us. Before, they were saying that Canada was importing oil from dictatorships. They said that we needed ethical oil and that we should no longer import oil from Saudi Arabia and Algeria because that was bad. Now, in Canada, and particularly in Quebec, we almost exclusively use North American oil. However, the government wants to take it one step further. It wants to set a standard so that fuel contains fewer petroleum products and more material from renewable sources. However, the Conservatives are against that because they do not want anything mixed into their oil. The worst part is that they do not even realize that the people who will be asked to process the grains to make the ethanol that goes into the fuel are business owners in their own ridings and their provinces.
Having said that, there are complaints about these types of regulations. There is truth to that. It is true that the environmental impacts of biofuels on the whole are modest because we have to grow the grain, use the raw material, use agricultural land, process the grain to produce, for example, ethanol. There are other formulations. Some countries make biofuel with palm oil, and so forth. The fact is that biofuels include elements that are renewable but that still pollute. This reminds us of the importance of reducing our dependence on fuel, whether or not it contains hydrocarbons. The impact of these regulations will be modest.
The Conservatives are right about the Parliamentary Budget Officers' comments. They are right sometimes. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that this policy could be regressive. Why? It is because producing biofuels is expensive. At first, to comply with the standards, fuel distributors will have to produce these fuels, develop the infrastructure and purchase these biofuels. There will be an impact on the price at the pump. Several projections demonstrate that the cost will be passed on to consumers.
They are looking at me. We are talking about a tax that will be passed on to consumers. Quite surprising, is it not? I am going to play the role of teacher today. It is Thursday evening and we are among friends. An economics course always teaches methods for assessing the effect a tax, a production cost increase, will have on consumers. Sometimes increased production costs, as is the case with ethanol, are fully passed on, as in 100%. Sometimes it is 75%. It is also possible that producers do not pass it on to consumers at all. There are reasons for that. The tax or increased production cost attributable to these regulations is passed on to consumers when they have no choice but to buy the product, when there is no other option. For example, if I decide to tax carrots but not turnips, those who like both will buy more turnips.
In that case, producers will not be able to pass the tax on to consumers. However, in the case of oil, in some provinces, dependence is so high that consumers will have to pay the full tax.
I have the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report in front of me. It is odd, but the provinces where the tax is hurting the most are Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta and Saskatchewan. These are the places that have had successive Conservative governments, where few alternative sources have been developed, where the economy is dependent on the oil industry and where people are generally extremely dependent on the oil industry.
If we do not want these standards to drive up consumer prices, or if we want it to be harder to pass these taxes on to consumers, there are solutions. We can increase public transit, finance infrastructure, electrify transportation and make the power grid more environmentally friendly. Of course, if we power electric cars with energy made from coal or oil, it will not do much good. What we can do is change behaviours. There are plenty of ways to offer consumers alternative solutions.
The Conservatives told us today that people would no longer be able to live because of the cost. When we look at the report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we see that provinces where there is less of an impact on consumers and households are the provinces where more alternatives have been developed. They are also the provinces that are less dependent on oil. We are talking here about Quebec and, to a lesser extent, Ontario and so on.
This shows one thing. We have provinces where, because of Conservative way of thinking, they are chasing their tails, in the sense that they are not developing any alternative solutions, which makes people dependent on oil and gas. Since they are dependent on oil and gas, these people will be hit hard if the government ever imposed an economic policy against oil. Since these people will be hit hard, the Conservatives are saying that these policies should not be implemented. If these polices are not implemented, these people do not change their behaviours, and it goes on.
We end up with the well-known Conservative model where the Conservatives are always right. That hurts households because the Conservatives are not doing anything, and they are not doing anything because it hurts households. They are against policies that take aim at both the supply of and demand for oil, so the carbon tax, which takes aim at the demand for oil, does not work. Then, all of a sudden the regulations do not work.
To show how deeply ingrained this logic is in the culture of some provinces, we need only look at what happened during the election campaign in Alberta. The Conservatives won in Alberta, and a few NDP members took seats. Do my colleagues know how many days of the campaign were dedicated to the environment? The answer is none. How much time was spent talking about the environment during the leadership debates? Almost none. There was a left-wing Albertan who is pro-oil. I heard the NDP yelling “Calgary” and “Edmonton” at the Conservatives this week to irritate them, because the NDP won some seats. It is the pro-oil NDP. Those members are pro-oil. There are clans in the NDP too.
That is the big Conservative contradiction. Their motions sometimes seem sensible, but one bad motion leads to another bad motion, which in turn leads to another bad motion, and so forth. This makes the Conservatives believe that they are always right, but they just keep going round in circles, as I just demonstrated. They are number one in the world for contradictions. The Conservatives are masters of contradiction. They are first in their class, perhaps even world champions, or, as we sometimes say, they look like real winners.
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- Jun/1/23 5:09:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today, during a Conservative opposition day, I heard and carefully listened to many unreasonable arguments. I have to say that, like my colleague, I represent an agricultural riding, and even though I do not share his conclusions, there are several interesting elements in his speech.
However, he told us that the carbon tax was a bad thing for our farmers because our international competitors do not have a carbon tax. He gave the example of Europe, which has an emission permits trading system. His argument, therefore, does not really hold water.
Moreover, he is making up a second carbon tax based on the biofuels regulations. In that regard, in addition to the California standard, there is a U.S. federal standard, and both Great Britain and Europe have a standard. Everyone has standards.
Based on his arguments and his logic, I conclude that he approves of the biofuels standard.
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- Jun/1/23 4:53:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when the biofuel regulations came out, parliamentarians asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer to assess the cost of that measure. When the Conservatives read the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report, they decided that there were indeed costs involved and that they should oppose the measure.
Now I am trying to figure out whether they are spreading misinformation or whether they simply do not understand the role of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Have they ever known a situation where, when asked for a program costing analysis, the Parliamentary Budget Officer calculated something other than costs? Also, based on their logic, should we oppose all measures whenever the Parliamentary Budget Officer does his job?
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- Jun/1/23 4:39:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the House we often hear the Conservatives argue against carbon pollution pricing by saying that the continued rise in greenhouse gas emissions is proof it does not work. I have explained to my Conservative colleagues on several occasions, in the lobbies, that emissions could have risen even more if not for the carbon tax, but that does not seem to have worked.
I know that my colleague is a talented educator. He knows that I hold him in high regard because we have worked together in committee for a long time. I think that if he explained it in his own words, the message might get across.
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- Jun/1/23 4:22:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in looking at the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on the cost of the biofuels measure, it is clear that these costs are quite high for households, particularly in provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The provinces with the largest oil and gas industries, and where people rely heavily on oil, are basically paying for this measure.
Is it not time we helped these provinces and their governments develop solutions so that, when there are new standards in the future, costs are lower for households? Is that not the solution? Should they not be developing options for transportation, in particular, which uses oil?
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- Jun/1/23 3:55:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was not expecting to ask a question, but I have one all the same.
My colleague is complaining about the fact that there are regulations on clean fuels. Here, he seems to take offence at the fact that a producer who does not comply with the regulations will be taxed.
When I speed or fail to obey the law, I get a ticket. What should be done with producers who breach the standards? Do we give them a pat on the back and tell them to do better next time, or do we tax them?
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