- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
House leader of the official opposition
- Conservative
- Regina—Qu'Appelle
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $172,932.98
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, we will cut the waste and mismanagement driving up inflation in the first place by cutting the Infrastructure Bank, high-priced consultants and money sent to the Asian infrastructure bank to build projects overseas instead of here at home.
However, the question was about the carbon tax and why the Prime Minister is so pathologically obsessed with it. He does not care that Canadians are going to food banks, that mothers are watering down milk or that seniors are skipping meals. He even sent one of his ministers to go bully Liberal senators into gutting the bill.
Once again, will they reject the Senate amendments so the tax can come off farming and food prices can come down?
120 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister must still have sand in his ears from his Jamaican vacation. That must be why he cannot hear the outcry from Canadians suffering from his carbon tax. While he was lining up at the all-inclusive, Canadians were lining up at food banks, and grocery prices jumped again, 38% higher than baseline inflation.
Now, a common-sense Conservative bill, Bill C-234, would help bring prices down by taking the tax off farm production. The only problem is this: Liberal senators gutted the bill.
Will the government reject the Senate amendments so the tax can come off and food prices can come down?
108 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/9/23 2:39:44 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, his own government has admitted that it is not going to hit those targets. The Liberals are getting there? Does somebody have a participation trophy we could send across the way? Maybe they would get there faster if they stopped saying no to clean energy projects, like when they killed a tidal electricity project in Atlantic Canada that would have created zero-emissions power for Canadians, when they say no to nuclear or when they say no to carbon capture. There were 18 LNG terminals on the books when the Prime Minister took office. Zero have been completed.
Instead of cancelling clean energy projects, why do the Liberals not cancel their carbon tax?
115 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/9/23 2:37:46 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, they can huff and they can puff, but their carbon tax house is falling down because it was built on two pillars that have completely collapsed. The first is that it is revenue-neutral, but the Prime Minister's own budget watchdog has said that Canadians pay far more in the tax than anything they hope to receive. The second is that it would allow the government to hit its own emissions targets, but the Liberal-appointed Environment Commissioner confirmed this week that the government has no hope of hitting its targets, even with the carbon tax.
After eight years of failure, will the Prime Minister put his ego aside and admit he has a tax plan, not an environment plan?
123 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/6/23 2:33:58 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, they are in complete carbon tax chaos over there. Their pause on the pain does not apply to 97% of Canadians, and it punishes those who use cleaner Canadian natural gas or propane to heat their homes. What did the Liberal rural affairs minister have to say? She said that, if people in other areas want the pause too, they should elect Liberals. The people in North Bay did elect a Liberal MP.
Again, I ask this of the Prime Minister: Will he allow a free vote so the member for North Bay can vote on our motion to take the tax off and keep the heat on?
110 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/6/23 2:32:28 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost. Now he wants to quadruple the tax on home heating, gas and groceries. He has now decided to pause the pain for the 3% of families in the areas he is plummeting in the polls and his MPs are revolting.
The Liberal rural economic development minister said that, if people in the Prairies wanted a break from the carbon tax exemption, they should have elected more Liberal MPs. The people in Sudbury did elect a Liberal. I visited there last week and people there want to know why their MP has been unable to get them a pause on the pain.
I have a simple question for the Prime Minister: Will he allow a free vote for the member for Sudbury on our motion to take the tax off and keep the heat on?
148 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/31/23 2:37:51 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the carbon tax is a complete failure. It drives costs up and has not allowed the government to hit its own emissions targets. Now the Bank of Canada confirms that the carbon tax alone is responsible for 16% of the extra inflation plaguing Canadians. With this announcement, families that heat their homes with clean Canadian natural gas will be punished just for living in areas where the Prime Minister is massively unpopular.
He once said, “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”, so will he stop his divisive tactics and take the carbon tax off home heating for all Canadians?
105 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/31/23 2:36:31 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost. He is desperate and in total free fall, so he announced a gimmicky plan to give a temporary pause to just some families in mostly Liberal-held ridings. The senior Liberal minister from Newfoundland is proud that this exemption only applies in her region. She even called out Liberals from other parts of the country for not protecting their communities.
The minister for Prairie development is a Liberal member of Parliament from Manitoba. It gets cold in Manitoba, so why was he so useless in protecting Canadian families in his area?
105 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/10/23 11:32:17 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the worst part about the Liberals' carbon tax is that they try to dress it up as an environment plan, but it is not working. They have not hit a single target. The Liberal plan was to drive up the cost of everything and hope that greenhouse gas emissions fell as a result. I can report to the minister that the first part of that plan, making everything more expensive, they nailed that, but the second part, not so much. Canada's Food Price Report is now saying that food prices are going to go up again in 2023 as a typical farm can see its taxes, with the tripling of the carbon tax, hit $150,000 a year. Again, all of that get passed on to consumers.
Why is the government making Canadians—
137 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/10/23 11:30:44 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, eight years of Liberal deficits, waste and corruption have driven inflation to record highs, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the grocery aisle. The Prime Minister likes to try to blame everyone else, but even the Liberals are now admitting that inflation is caused by domestic factors. One of those factors is the carbon tax. It makes everything farmers use to grow their crops more expensive, and those costs get passed onto consumers. The government is now going to triple that carbon tax.
Why should Canadians believe anything the Liberals say about addressing the cost of living crisis, when they are deliberately making Canadians pay more for food?
112 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/22/22 2:25:57 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, their entire premise is based on falsehoods.
The Liberals said the carbon tax would reduce emissions. They have gone up. The Liberals said it would be revenue neutral. Canadians pay more in carbon tax than they get back. The Liberals said the carbon tax would never go up. They plan to triple it.
Now, just in time for Canada Day, on a day when Canadians are supposed to come together and celebrate all that we have in common, the Liberals are going to make the carbon tax apply in three new Atlantic Canadian provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador, P.E.I. and Nova Scotia. Is that a part of some bizarre national unity strategy, to bring Canadians together by making sure Canadians in every region hate the carbon tax?
130 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/22/22 2:24:49 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the real question is when the Liberals will have an environment plan, because they have not hit a single target they have set for themselves. That is not our opinion; that is the finding of their own departmental reports, and it was the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom the Prime Minister appointed, who came to the conclusion that the vast majority of Canadians pay more in the carbon tax than they hope to receive in any rebate. Now, a report shows that Canada has come in 58th out of 63 when it comes to climate action, falling behind China and Indonesia.
When will the Liberals finally accept the science and admit they have a tax plan, not an environment plan?
121 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise today to represent the constituents of Regina—Qu'Appelle in opposition to the bill that would add more inflationary fuel to the fire.
I caught the last few minutes of my hon. colleague's speech, the Liberal member for Winnipeg North, and I am astounded at how much he can get wrong in just a short 20-minute period of time. However, I give him full marks for efficiency. He crammed a lot of errors and misinformation into one 20-minute speech. I probably do not have enough time to address all of them in my speech because of the sheer volume of inaccuracies in his speech.
I will start by helping the hon. member understand what caused inflation, because that is what this bill is supposed to be about. It is supposed to help address the suffering of families who are experiencing the sticker shock every time they go into a grocery store, a hardware store or any other store they might have to buy goods or obtain services from. Prices they have been used to over the past few years are now much higher. We know the Prime Minister does not think about monetary policy. I am not sure if anybody else in the caucus does that the member leads, but I will help him understand what causes inflation.
The inflation that Canadians are suffering from is directly linked to the massive Liberal deficits that the government chose to run before the pandemic even started. Why do I say that? That is what the Bank of Canada admitted. The Bank of Canada, which is in charge of Canada's money supply, has acknowledged that it was the money creation that it embarked upon in March of 2020, just as the current government was racking up record-high deficits, the biggest deficits Canadians have ever seen. It was on its way to adding more to the national debt than every single other prime minister combined. The government added $500 billion to the national debt.
When the government spends more than it takes in, it has to borrow. It has to find someone who has money to lend to it. That is normally carried out during normal economic times by the bond market. Large investors buy government treasury bonds that are basically IOUs that the government writes after borrowing money from someone who has it and spending it with the promise to pay it back. It is that promise to pay it back with interest that is costing the Bank of Canada money now. As a little aside, the Bank of Canada is now actually losing money for the first time in Canadian history. This has never happened before. However, I will get back to that in a moment.
The government turned to the Bank of Canada and started floating these IOUs, these government bonds, and the Bank of Canada said it would buy the bonds the government was issuing with these massive deficits. The problem is that the Bank of Canada did not have anybody else's money. The Bank of Canada did not have lots of deposits from Canadians or deposits on account from financial institutions that it could use. When I say it did not have deposits, I mean it did not have any of its own money on deposit. It did not have some vaults of cash that it could buy those government bonds with.
What did it do? It had to create the money. It created that money right out of thin air. It exchanged the bonds that other institutions had bought, large profitable banks like the big five banks in Canada and other types of large financial institutions that have accounts with Canada's central bank. They bought the bonds from the federal government and sold them to the Bank of Canada in exchange for brand new money that had never existed before. With little ones and zeros and keyboard strokes, the Bank of Canada just dumped cash into those big banks and large financial institutions and then took those bonds in exchange. That is how the Canadian economy was flooded with over $400 billion of brand new money.
We have seen the effects of that, the Liberal government's trickle-down economics, where it pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the most wealthy and most profitable corporations in Canada: the big banks. It pushed that money through that system. The big winners, when it comes to this type of arrangement, is whoever gets the money first as there is a bit of a lag between rising prices and money creation, because the market has not yet learned that there is a whole bunch of new money chasing the same number of goods. The prices in the grocery store have not yet, at this point, started to go up, and the prices for commodities have not yet, at this point, started to go up.
Those large financial institutions, those massively profitable banks, got to buy up all these assets. They got to push that money through on everything from commodities to real estate to anything else we can imagine, while the prices were still low. They got the new money first, bought as much as they could, and that is when the prices started to rise.
By the time that new money hits Canadians' pockets, it is already too late. The prices at the grocery store have already skyrocketed. We have seen food inflation go over 8% for a couple of months now. The average inflation index, the CPI, has been hovering around 7% for several months now. By the time Canadians start to get the new money the government has created, the prices have already gone up, and that is when those big banks and financial institutions can sell. They make those massive profits on what they can buy low with newly created money and sell high after the inflationary effects are taken into account. That is why we saw record profits during and after the pandemic by Canada's largest banks.
This is the result of the Prime Minister's economic policy, allowing the richest and most profitable corporations in Canada to make even more money, while Canadians subsidize that profit through higher prices in the grocery store aisles. That is why these inflationary deficits are so devastating, and that is why Conservatives are opposed to new measures that force the government to borrow more money to pay for new spending. It is a little like a superficial treatment to a problem.
We can all think of examples of what might look like a course of action that would help with a problem but that actually makes the problem worse. We might have experienced in our lives and have seen public service videos about fire safety where they say to never pour water on a grease fire. However, we can imagine a young child perhaps or someone who was never educated along the lines of fire safety seeing a fire, and we are all taught from a very young age that water beats fire. We put out fires with water, and we always keep a bucket of water if we are having a campfire and things like that. We all understand that. We see pictures of firefighters putting out fires with big hoses of water.
We can imagine someone about to dump water on a grease fire, thinking that they are helping, but we all know what will actually happen. We have to resist the temptation to apply a superficial antidote to a problem. We all know on this side of the House that instead of pouring water on that fire, we have to treat it in other ways. We have to put a lid on that fire and remove it from the heating element. There are others ways to tackle that fire rather than making it worse.
A thirsty person might look at an ocean shore and think, “Boy, I'm so thirsty, I'm going to go down and take a nice long drink of water.” As Homer Simpson taught us, “Water, water everywhere, so let's all have a drink,” but that is not actually how the poem goes. It is “Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink,” because ocean water makes thirst worse. However, that is what we are seeing with this Liberal government bill.
The member for Winnipeg North gave a speech pretending and trying to convince Canadians that this would help, that while prices are going up in many aspects of their lives, the government is coming along with a way to reduce some costs for them. Where are they going to get the money for that? They are going to have to borrow more money to pay for that, so any benefit that any Canadian might hope to receive under the government's plan that we are debating today will evaporate because of the effects of this new government plan.
In other words, the government is trying to convince us that a government program will help alleviate the problems caused by government programs, and that is where Conservatives come along because we take a more comprehensive look at issues.
The Liberals and their allies in the costly coalition, the NDP who are pushing all this new spending and working hand-in-hand with the government to drive up the costs of living with higher spending and more borrowing to pay for it, is where this is coming from. That costly coalition's approach is always very superficial. We can make the comparison to candy before supper. There is a problem, so here is a simplistic solution: We are just going to have a new government program to dole out more money.
Conservatives understand that we have to treat the fundamental issues that caused it first. We would be doing Canadians a far greater service, including low-income Canadians who are being hit hardest by inflation, if we came to this place every day trying to reduce the cost of government, looking for ways to reduce spending and cutting out inefficiencies, like the half a billion dollars the government tried to give to its friends at the WE organization or the $54 million for the arrive scam app that did not work, was not needed and could have been designed and programmed in a weekend for a fraction of the $54 million taxpayers had to pay for it. The Prime Minister might have looked at ways to visit London where he did not have to charge $6,000 a night for a single room. Those would be the types of things.
We could all come together and every member of Parliament could go back to their offices tonight and scroll through the public accounts, which were just tabled this morning. We could all put our collective heads together to look for ways we could eliminate wasteful spending and bring down that cost of government, so that the government could pay back those IOUs, retire those bonds and take that brand new created money that is floating in the system out of the system to return it back to normal, where that money is backed up by real economic activity and not just ones and zeroes on the computer terminals at the Bank of Canada.
If we did that, we would put a lot more purchasing power back in the hands of Canadians who have worked so hard to earn it. That is why they call inflation the hidden tax, the most insidious tax of all. When the government raises a tax rate, it has to do it in the House for all to see. It has to bring forward a motion or a bill to raise those taxes, opposition parties hold it to account and every Canadian has an elected representative who can vote yes or no, based on that proposal.
However, when the government causes inflation through the Bank of Canada by forcing the bank to purchase those government bonds, there is no vote in the House, there is no debate and there is no accountability. Not any one of us got to read the proposal, make a decision and vote based on our constituents, and our constituents cannot hold us to account because none of that ever took place. It just happens. It happens because those powerful unaccountable officials just made a decision one day, and that is why Conservatives are opposed to this legislation, knowing it would make the problem worse.
There are other ways the government could tackle the cost of living crisis. This opposition has proposed a very concrete proposal, which we should be debating today instead of a bill that would add more borrowing costs on the government and, therefore, lead to even worse inflation.
We are about to head into the winter months, and many Canadians are already getting a taste of what those home heating costs are going to look like over the next few months. I want to take a few moments right now to inform members that the higher costs that Canadians are about to get hit with, and some have already started to experience, are not some accidental outcomes from government policies. These are not unintended consequences. It is not like the government was trying to do something and accidentally caused home energy costs to rise.
This is a feature of the NDP and Liberal coalition's plan to make home heating costs more expensive. They want Canadians to pay more for filling up their tanks and for heating their homes. Members do not have to take my word for it. They have admitted it. They have built a fake environmental policy around the idea of making Canadians pay more for fuelling their cars, for purchasing goods that have to be transported to Canada and for the crime of heating their homes in the winter.
That is what they want. They want Canadians to feel pain when it comes to those types of goods. They admit it. It is in the rationale for the carbon tax. Here is the thing: The carbon tax is not working. Canadians are getting all of the pain and none of the environmental gain. The government has not hit a single target it has set for itself. The people who are concerned about climate change the most should be opposed to the carbon tax the most, because the government has gone all in on a failed policy that, for seven years now, has been proven not to work.
That is why the official opposition and Conservative members of Parliament have been working so hard, since this fall sitting began, to convince the government to do no further harm when it comes to borrowing and spending and driving up inflation, to control some of the things it can control and to cancel the planned tax hikes.
The government's plan is to triple the carbon tax. The member for Winnipeg North might like to make jokes about the Tim Hortons double double, but there is a reason we are highlighting it and a reason we want Canadians to understand. It is because it is already hard enough to make ends meet for the vast majority of Canadians. We are hearing really shocking stats. Canada is a G7 developed country, and 1.5 million people visited a food bank last month. That is unbelievable.
It is a record high. It has gone up 15%. There have been 15% more visits to food banks last month than the month before. It is Canadians who are working, who have two jobs in some cases, and those in double-income households. Because they have to pay more for their mortgage as interest rates go up and costs are higher at the grocery store, they now have to turn to charity at food banks just to be able to feed their children.
What else is very alarming is that food banks are running out too, because Canadians have fewer goods to donate to the food banks. That is the thing about Liberal-NDP coalition economic policies. They lead to scarcity.
When Conservatives are in government, we lower the cost of government. We leave more money in the economy and more money in the pockets of hard-working Canadians, and that does more good for low-income Canadians, because there are more jobs to fill and there is more opportunity. When Canadians have more at the end of the month, they can make decisions to be charitable. They can fill up those shelves at the food banks so that the less fortunate have more choice, more options and more support when they need it.
NDP and Liberal policies that drive up the cost of fuel, home heating and other essentials and chase away jobs and investment mean there is less at the end of the month for Canadian families to donate to charities, so those families who do need it have less.
That is the constant and unblemished record of failure of the government and its failed policies. That is why Conservatives are fighting this instead of voting in favour of a bill that would just add to the cost of government, leaving Canadians with a situation in which the government has to go out and borrow more, paying higher interest rates.
I mentioned at the beginning of my speech how the Bank of Canada is losing money for the first time in Canadian history. This is the perverse outcome of the bond purchase program the Bank of Canada initiated to help pay for the government deficits. When it bought the bonds, the Bank of Canada bought them at very low rates. The Bank of Canada had lowered its overnight rates as low as 50 basis points; it was down to 0.5%. The interest the government had to pay on the bonds the Bank of Canada holds was at 0.5%.
Let us remember that the way it bought those bonds was by putting large deposits into the bank accounts of the large financial institutions. For example, TD Bank and CIBC have accounts at the Bank of Canada, and there are deposits in those accounts for the bonds the bank sold to the Bank of Canada. As interest rates rise, the Bank of Canada has to pay more interest to those large financial institutions than the government pays the Bank of Canada in interest. That is unbelievable.
This is a direct transfer of wealth: Hard-working taxpayers pay money to the government; the government then turns around and pays the Bank of Canada interest, and the Bank of Canada does not have enough, so it is going to lose money. I believe it has indicated that it expects to lose about $4 billion this year. That is from the bank's website. If the member for Winnipeg North thinks I should not believe everything I read on the bank's website, he should maybe call his friend, Tiff Macklem, and ask him to be a little more accurate.
The question for the government is, is it going to have to bail out the Bank of Canada with taxpayers' money? After taking taxpayers' money to pay interest on the bonds it sold, it will now have to underwrite the difference that the Bank is paying out to other large banks. If we follow the logic here, basically the government is going to have to underwrite the deficits that the Bank of Canada is racking up due to its own deficit spending. It is a triple insult to Canadians, when we look at all the interest that is being paid.
I will close by urging my colleagues on all sides of the House to stop digging when they are in a hole and to not pour water on that grease fire. Let us have no more inflationary spending that will make the problem even worse.
3347 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/24/22 2:33:40 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, Liberals like to pretend that inflation is kind of like the weather, as though one could bundle up as the inflation front rolls in and mothers will line their children's pockets with extra twenties in case prices go up.
We all know it is caused when governments spend more money than it has and then run the printing presses to pay for it. The carbon tax is not working. The people who are concerned the most about climate change should be opposed to the carbon tax the most, because they have not hit a single target they have set for themselves. The Prime Minister's own watchdog has said that most Canadians pay more than they get back.
Will they abandon their plans to hike the carbon tax on Canadian families this winter?
136 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/24/22 2:32:20 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, Liberals like to try to blame everyone else for the inflation they have caused, but Canadians know it was the Prime Minister's massive deficits and money printing that has driven inflation to record highs.
It is too late to undo the inflation that the government has already caused, but it is not too late to do something about soaring energy costs going forward. Analysts are predicting that home heating costs will skyrocket this winter, where many families will be paying twice as much this winter than they did last winter just to stay warm.
Will this costly coalition abandon its plan to triple the carbon tax and give Canadians a break on their home heating costs?
119 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/7/22 11:23:48 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, it is because Conservatives care about the environment that we fight the carbon tax, because it does not work. The Liberals have missed every single one of their emissions targets, but they are succeeding in making prices go even higher.
Gas prices in markets across Ontario have risen 16¢ in just two days. That is making it even more difficult to attend Thanksgiving dinners as Canadians have to pay more to drive home or to fly. How much more will Canadians have to pay after they triple the carbon tax?
93 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/7/22 11:22:14 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the Liberals have their hands in Canadians' back pockets taking more and more out of the paycheques that Canadians work so hard to earn, and prices are continuing to rise because of this government. Any relief that Canadians may hope to experience will evaporate in a very short period of time as inflation continues to hurt Canadian families.
Once again, we know that inflation is caused by Liberal deficits and we know that prices are going to go up even more when they triple the carbon tax. An easy way to help Canadians with the cost of living crisis that the costly coalition has caused is to cancel their plans to triple the carbon tax. Will they do that?
121 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/7/22 11:20:54 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the Liberal economic policy can be summed up in four words: “smaller paycheques; higher prices”. Smaller paycheques come into effect in the new year when this government takes a bigger bite out of the paycheques that Canadians work so hard to earn, but higher prices are here today. Because of Liberal deficits forcing the Bank of Canada to flood our economy with money, prices are at record highs.
Hard-working moms and dads picking up groceries this weekend for the Thanksgiving meal are in for a sticker shock. Turkey is up 15%, and potatoes are up 22%. Those prices are going to rise even further after the government triples its carbon tax.
Why will this government not give Canadians a break and cancel its plans to triple the carbon tax?
134 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/7/22 10:52:17 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, the hon. member is completely mistaken about that. Members of the Conservative Party have always opposed the carbon tax; that has not changed.
I have pointed out to this member in this past that Liberals like to play around with language. They are fond of saying “a price” on pollution. A price is something that the market sets. A price is something that is determined by input costs and supply and demand. The most important thing is that a price is something that we have a choice to pay. If I do not like the price of an apple at one store, I can try to get a better price at a different store, or I can eat pears instead of apples, or I can look for alternatives. I do not have to spend the money.
When the government sets a price, enforces its collection, and there is no choice, that is called a tax. It will always be a tax, and Liberal games with wordplay will not fool Canadians.
174 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/7/22 10:34:31 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, it is my distinct honour to be able to speak to Bill S-5 today. I thought I would start off my remarks by pointing out the major differences between the Conservative record on the environment and the Liberal record on the environment.
Conservatives, of course, have a much stronger record when it comes to tackling environmental issues than Liberals. Looking back at the previous Conservative governments and our major achievements, including the clean air act, which was a landmark piece of legislation to tackle various forms of pollution and to develop a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there were massive investments in conservation.
The root word of Conservative is to conserve. That ties in with conservation. The previous Conservative government had many instances where we indicated much of Canada's natural beauty in our landscape for conservation projects to make sure that future generations would be able to enjoy the wonderful environment that has been passed on to us, protecting wetlands and vulnerable ecosystems for both plant and wildlife. That was a hallmark aspect of the previous Conservative government's achievements when it came to environmental action.
Major investments in innovation funds to help tackle some of the challenging aspects of having a robust, industrialized country, while at the same time, minimizing our environmental footprint, ensuring that there are resources available for companies and for not-for-profits to access some of that research funding to come up with better ways of doing things, better ways of making things and producing things here to lower all of the different kinds of impacts on the environment, that was a hallmark piece of the previous government's record on the environment as well.
I should mention as well that under the previous Conservative government, because of our strong action on things like emissions and tackling climate change, CO2 emissions actually went down. We actually reduced the amount of CO2 that Canada emitted into the atmosphere under the previous Conservative government. What has it done under the current Liberal government? It has gone up. That is the major difference between Conservatives and Liberals. The Liberals are very good at talking about things. I have to give them credit. They have an actor for a leader and he is very good at getting into the parts and delivering the lines, but when it comes to action, they are not so good. He is very good acting, but not so much at action.
Think about the very first thing the Liberal government did, one of the very initial things, while the ink was still wet on all those cabinet appointments and they were all just learning where their new offices would be and who was going to drive their cars. The very first thing that they did was to grant a permit to the City of Montreal to dump billions of litres of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence. It is unbelievable. After all the talk they did during the election pretending to care about the environment, the first thing they did was grant that permit. How gross is that? We are talking about toxic substances here in this bill. What about the toxic substances that were unleashed into the St. Lawrence and ultimately into the oceans all around the world by the Liberal government? It was the first thing it did.
The government's hallmark piece is a carbon tax that we now know does not work. It has had the carbon tax in place since its first term in office. It has gone up every year, and so too have emissions. It is not an environmental plan at all; it is a tax plan. Remember too that the Liberal government has been completely dishonest with Canadians about that piece. Yes, they were dishonest. I will remind the hon. member for Winnipeg North about the dishonesty of one of his former colleagues.
Just before the 2019 election, the former minister of environment, Catherine McKenna, promised Canadians that the carbon tax would not go up. In fact, we Conservatives warned Canadians that we had information from the Department of the Environment that the government was planning to increase the carbon tax. Catherine McKenna, the former environment minister, was deployed to accuse Conservatives of spreading misinformation, saying it is never going to happen.
Of course, their friends in the government-subsidized media were only too happy to carry that message for them. They asked how the Conservatives could make up such a wild accusation that the Liberals might raise a tax, and we said it is because that is what their information and their own documents show and if we look at their modelling, in order to even try to hit the targets they have set for themselves, they are going to have to increase the carbon tax. The response from their friends in the government-subsidized media was that it is not true because the Liberals say so. After seven years of Liberal rule, members will pardon those of us in the official opposition if we do not take Liberals at their word.
In the last Parliament, we were talking about toxic substances. I had a private member's bill to ban that practice of dumping raw sewage into our vulnerable ecosystems, our rivers, lakes and oceans.
Putting an end to the practice of municipalities dumping sewage into our rivers, lakes and oceans is a central element of the environmental plan the Conservatives have been promising since 2019. It is now 2022, and it is time to put an end to this practice.
It is 2022. We have the technology and resources to make sure that municipalities are not doing that with untreated waste water, but the Liberals, the NDP, members of the Bloc Québécois, all voted against that common-sense measure. Members will pardon those of us in the Conservative Party when we receive a piece of legislation that claims to address environmental issues and we have major concerns about everything the Liberals do on this.
Bill S-5 is not before this House in its original form. Bill S-5 went through the Senate first, so the piece of legislation that we are dealing with today has been amended by the Senate. There are many concerning things about these amendments and there are some concerning things about the bill in general.
First is the amendment on the right to a healthy environment. Of course, the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands has pointed out the lack of clarity about that, the lack of provisions that would make any of that enforceable or anything that would give Canadians comfort to know that the government would follow up a platitude with a piece of action. It is undefined and very ambiguous, and when legislation is ambiguous, it really sets us up for litigation.
Often there are competing interests when it comes to environmental issues between industry and conservation groups or municipalities that might be affected by one thing or another, and it is essential that we have clarity on these types of things. Otherwise, we get long-drawn-out court battles to decide what word means what and where lines get drawn. If the government was going to bring in this piece of legislation, the least it could have done was clear up that ambiguity and not leave it for the courts and lawyers, but of course Liberals often do things that make lots of money for lawyers to settle things in court.
I also want to touch on another major flaw with the thinking behind the government as it relates to toxic substances. Henry Hazlitt wrote an excellent book about economics primarily, but it is a lesson that we should apply in every aspect of life. The book is called Economics in One Lesson and the main theme of this book is to convince people to think about both the things that are seen and the things that are unseen. In other words, it is to not just look at the superficial aspects of what is being proposed, but to really take a step back and consider all the aspects of what a decision or a course of action might result in. That is not something that the government has done with many of its environmental policies, specifically when it comes to the listing of plastics in one of the schedules of this bill.
Obviously, we want less plastic in our oceans and we want less plastic in our waterways, but we have just come out of a pandemic where plastic was essential in protecting Canadians. Plastic was essential in packaging to keep germs out of everything from utensils to pieces of equipment. Lots of aspects of PPE have plastics in them.
Imagine where we might be in the future if many of the pieces of this legislation are enforced and make it harder to access those types of what we now know to be life-saving materials. We urge the government to take a closer look at that aspect of it.
When we look at plastics around the world and in our oceans, it is Canada that has been leading the way for years to reduce our output of those pieces of material. In fact, 93% of the plastic that ultimately ends up in our oceans comes from just 10 rivers. Ten rivers around the world are responsible for 93% of the plastic in our oceans. How many of those rivers do my colleagues think are in Canada? The answer is zero. The hon. member for Essex got it right. None of those rivers is in Canada. Seven of them are in Asia, including the Yangtze in China, and two are in Africa.
Why is that important? When we take a step back and look at the government's entire environmental policy, we see policies designed to drive production out of Canada, where we have high environmental standards and rules about what can be put in landfills and dumped into rivers. Those policies drive production to other jurisdictions around the world that do not have those measures in place.
The carbon tax is the biggest culprit in that. The carbon tax raises the cost of making things here in Canada, and our competitors around the world, specifically China, which does not have a carbon tax or anywhere near the environmental protection Canada has, go out and bid on contracts to make things. When they do, when those plastics are manufactured in China, in Asia, in developing countries that do not yet have our robust regime around environmental protection, then more things get produced there and more things end up in our oceans.
Liberals might go around and feel like they are doing something for the planet because they brought in a carbon tax and they are banning plastics here in Canada, and the net result of that is more plastic in the ocean. Their policies are actually doing more harm than good. They also do not look at the entire life cycle of alternatives to plastics.
A landmark study was done in 2018 by the Independent Institute, based out of Oakland, and it found that plastic bans can actually have a negative impact on the environment as people substitute other products that have more emissions involved in their life cycle. For example, the difference in manufacturing between a plastic straw and a paper straw is very significant when we look at the amount of energy needed and the amount of CO2 emissions produced.
It takes 39 kilojoules of energy to make one plastic straw. In the entire life cycle of that straw, production, usage and all that, it emits 1.5 grams of CO2. For a paper straw, it takes 96 kilojoules to make it. That is more than double the amount of energy. Because the methods involved in all the aspects of producing that paper straw are more energy intensive, it actually produces 4.1 grams of CO2. A plastic straw produces 1.5 grams and a paper straw 4.1 grams of CO2.
Again, on the one hand the Liberals say they are trying to take action on reducing emissions, and on the other hand they are bringing in policies that actually increase emissions. That is the hallmark of Liberal governments in general. They offer simplistic, sloganistic solutions, and the effects of their policies do more harm than good.
Conservatives are going to be studying this piece of legislation very carefully. We are going to be working very hard at committee to make improvements to the bill on many of the problematic amendments that came from the Senate.
I hope my colleagues across the way will remember one thing. If they truly care about things like reducing emissions, then now is the time for them to abandon their carbon tax. It has been so ineffective. So many Canadians want to see real action on climate change, and the carbon tax is not just making things more expensive; it is actually driving production out from here in Canada. That production then moves overseas and emissions go up.
A molecule of CO2 does not need a passport to travel around the planet. A unit of CO2 that moves away from Canada and doubles because of the lack of protection in countries like China actually results in more CO2 in the atmosphere.
Because the Liberals are so locked in on this failed policy of imposing this new tax on Canadians, they are not taking the meaningful action that they could take. It is called an opportunity cost. They have all the people at the Department of the Environment enforcing this tax and imposing it on provinces that have not adopted it, and because they are using all those human resources and all the government's time and energy on a failed policy that is only resulting in higher emissions, they are not taking other measures that could actually lower emissions.
If they truly care about the environment, now is the time to scrap the carbon tax, especially when we link it to the affordability crisis, because it is not just the carbon tax of today. It is not just that Catherine McKenna was lying when she said that they were not going to increase the carbon tax in 2019. It is that the Liberals are going to triple the carbon tax in the coming months and years. It means that the affordability crisis that is hurting Canadians so much is only to get worse, and the environmental crisis that the Liberals claim they are trying to address will only get worse as well.
2448 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
