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Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Warren Steinley

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Regina—Lewvan
  • Saskatchewan
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $123,656.05

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 204 - Jun/1/23
Mr. Warren Steinley (Regina—Lewvan, CPC)
  • Jun/1/23 3:57:36 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to join in the debate on our opposition motion today, calling for the scrapping of the first carbon tax and scrapping the second carbon tax as well to put more money back into the pockets of hard-working Canadians. I want to talk about the current state of affairs in our country. I got a disturbing text from someone I have known for a long time about how he sees what is happening in our country right now. He said, “This country is basically parts of the Titanic sliding into the abyss of the Atlantic. Five years ago, we would not recognize the country we have today. I shudder to think what we will think of the country that we will become in 2028.” This is from a hard-working gentleman who has worked his whole life, and created a good life for his friends and family. He sees this country as continuously going in the wrong direction. He wonders when people in this chamber are actually going to stand up for Canadians and talk from a passionate point of view of what hard-working, everyday Canadians see, which is our country going in the direction it is going. I am going to try and do that a bit today in the vein of our motion, and talk about taxes and what the tax is really trying to accomplish. The first carbon tax that was implemented after the 2015 campaign was supposed to reduce emissions across our country. It was supposed to be an environmental policy. The problem with that is it has had no environmental effects on our country. Over the last eight years, the government has never hit an environmental target with its carbon tax or any of its other environmental policies. When the Liberals flew around on a junket to COP and they were all eating caviar, it actually came out that Canada is the 58th country out of 63 countries for environmental targets. The Liberals never talk about that. Let us talk about someone who is a hard-working Saskatchewanian. They are looking at their government that keeps asking them to pay more and more because it is going to be good for the environment eventually. This person sees there are no results. They then start to question whether this actually is an environmental policy at all or if it just a tax-and-grab, and the government just wanted to fill its coffers with more hard-earned dollars. A government has never actually earned a dollar. The only way the government gets money is by taking it from someone who earned it in the first place, like through work or investment. The government gets it through taxing the hard-working people. The government does not earn anything itself. It takes and then it gives back with the other hand. That is the other argument on the carbon tax that our Liberal friends and NDP socialist friends put forward, which is saying it is revenue neutral. They have been saying this for years. The Liberals and the NDP have been saying it is revenue neutral. I have never in my life seen a government program run on a revenue-neutral basis. Canadians never get back what they put in when they give to the government. It goes to the government, it goes to the department, it goes through many different hands and then out the other end comes much less than what Canadians gave to the government in the first place. The Parliamentary Budget Officer came out and said it has been saying this since 2015. Before that, I remember that Premier Wall said there is no such thing as a revenue-neutral government program, and he was right. The Parliamentary Budget Officer came out and said there is no way eight of 10 Canadians are getting back more from the carbon tax than they are paying. It is not revenue neutral. It has had none of the desired environmental effects that it was supposed to have by making Canadians pay more for everything. Then the Liberals say it is a market mechanism. The NDP members are okay. They just want to take more money from people who have earned it. Socialists always believe the government can spend money better than the person who earned it anyway. We will never feel that way. Some Liberals are saying it is a market mechanism and they will put in policies that will make people act differently. In my province, where I come from, it is very hard to act differently when planting in fields or harvesting. There are limited options for harvesters, and many of them will continue to run on fossil fuels. We cannot implement a government policy that would make that process of planting, seeding and harvesting run differently, because we have to use fuel in the machines. Maybe a generation from now, there might be the capacity for electric combines and tractors. I would like to see that technology, if it ever happens, but it is very far away. So for a government to implement a policy, which it knows would adversely affect the agriculture sector, adversely affect the oil and gas sector, because there are no other technological options right now, is, quite frankly, dishonest. The government cannot say that this is going to be a fair tax, because it does hit provinces in our country differently. For example, the carbon tax 2 that we have talked about in the last couple of days is going to cost Saskatchewan people $1,117 net for a family. If we add carbon tax 1 and carbon tax 2 on what a Saskatchewan family is going to have to pay, it will be $2,840 more this year alone. A lot of people may say, “What's $2,800?”, but to some families that is grocery bills and new shoes for their kids. A lot of families could use that extra $2,800. These are not families who are not trying to be environmentally friendly. In Saskatchewan and Regina—Lewvan, people have to heat their homes when it comes to wintertime as it is pretty cold and in July, it gets pretty hot and so people have to cool off their homes. There are no options. When a government comes forward and says that it is going to change the behaviour of Canadians with this policy, there are just some behaviours that we are going to have to continue to hold onto, such as driving the kids to hockey or school. Rural Saskatchewan is a big place, and there are not many options other than to drive. We cannot get an Uber in rural Saskatchewan. There is no bus service. We need a vehicle and we need to drive. This is why we stand and talk about the carbon tax and lay out some of the arguments, which my fellow Liberals and NDP members will throw back at me. This is why some of the people I represent feel a little jaded when it comes to this government's policies. They feel, over the last eight years, that they have really been left behind in western Canada. It is getting tougher and tougher for people to see anything left from a paycheque at the end of the month; heck, even halfway through the month some people run out of their paycheque. A lot of people have probably been to the lobby day on the Hill when the food banks across Canada were here. I had an opportunity to talk to the food bank CEO from Regina, and some of the numbers are staggering. They call them “points of service” when people come in to get food. In Regina, last year, there were 120,375 points of service, which is a lot of people coming to get food in a city the size of Regina. This year, there were 171,451, which is a number, but these are people and these are families. That is a 42% increase. When we hear about the budget being so good, that we have never had it so good and that Canada is at the top of the G7 in numbers for debt-to-GDP ratio, it does not really sink home. A lot of people are asking: If the country is in such good shape and if the country has so much money, why is there not more money in the pockets of Canadians? Why do they not have more money to make it to the end of the month if the government is doing so well? I think that is a question that my Liberal colleagues and their junior partners in the NDP cannot answer. They stand up day in and day out, such as the finance minister, talking about how good it is in Canada and how everyone should be happy. Except that one in five Canadians are skipping meals. There are 1.5 million people using the food bank every month. Food bank usage in Regina has gone up 42%. There are students who are literally sleeping on couches because they cannot afford rent. That does not sound like a country that is doing very well. So, when we say that we should scrap the carbon tax 1 and the carbon tax 2, it is on behalf of our constituents that we rise up and talk about these issues and why we think they deserve to keep more of their hard-earned money. At the end of the day, if the policy is not working, it is literally the definition of insanity to keep on increasing it, doing the same thing and getting the same result.
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