- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Regina—Lewvan
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,656.05
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my colleague, with whom I sit on the agriculture committee. Obviously, in this report, there was an examination of some of the input costs that have caused food prices to rise.
My question for my hon. colleague is this. On our opposition day motion to report Bill C-234 back to the Senate unamended, will he be voting with us as Conservatives to make sure that farmers get help in decreasing the inputs when it comes to Bill C-234?
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Madam Speaker, I know that there is someone watching who has been with me for 12 years. We work together in my office. It is Heather Kuntz' birthday today. I am not sure which one, but I want to say “happy birthday” to her in Regina.
I will ask my colleague from across the way a question. He said one thing that I think is very true, which is that our farmers do not get enough credit for how well and how much they have innovated in their farming techniques. Does he not think they would be able to innovate even further and bring forward new technologies? For example, in Saskatchewan, we have zero-till, rotational grazing and crop rotations that keep our soil healthy and strong. They make it very, very rich so we can grow bumper crops with less water and less fertilizer. Saskatchewan uses 75% less fertilizer than any other jurisdiction in Canada.
Does the member not think that if farmers had more money in their pockets and we moved forward with the carbon tax exemption bill, Bill C-234, that the money could go toward even more innovation? Like he said, our farmers are the ones who bring forward innovation. Why will the Liberals not get out of the way and make sure farmers can do that?
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Mr. Speaker, as a member of the NDP-Liberal coalition, I am sure we would not want to cast the sins of the father onto the son. The NDP leader would not want that to happen.
I was not around when this supposedly took place, but I appreciate the member's support for this motion. The member is an hon. member of the agriculture committee and I appreciate him being consistent in the application of his vote on third reading of Bill C-234 and this motion. I thank him for that.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join the debate today on Bill C-234, the carbon tax exemption for heating buildings, grain drying and irrigation on farms. We are also talking about the role of the Senate in the parliamentary democracy of a two-house system.
My civics is a little rusty, but I do remember that the Senate does not have any ability for taxation because they are unelected. I cannot remember when the Senate has held up a taxation bill. My colleague from B.C. brought up a few bills, but I do not believe they were taxation bills.
First and foremost, we have to realize that what the Senate is doing right now is not within its purview. The Senate has no power of taxation because, as appointed senators, they are not accountable to their constituents. They are not elected every four years. One of the main points of democracy is taxation with representation. The Senate does not have the authority to hold up a taxation bill.
I wanted to get that on the record because the crux of the argument today is whether the Senate is doing what it is allowed to do. The other discussion is on how important Bill C-234 is and how quickly should we pass it.
My colleague, the member for Huron—Bruce, has put on the record that he is the Conservative member who brought forward the private member's bill. I am very proud I was on the agriculture committee that talked about this bill, and we had the support of the committee to pass it on to the House for third reading.
The opposition came together and voted in favour. A majority of members from across the country, along with three Liberals, and I will not forget that, voted to move this bill forward to third reading because they knew it was important to Canadian farmers. That is what this comes down to.
Our leader put it very succinctly. One of his constituents is paying $10,000 a month in carbon tax. How can anyone be expected to run a business when the carbon tax is $10,000 a month? This has to be paid to the federal government on a taxation policy that does not do what it is supposed to do.
I am also very happy to say that I will be sharing my time with the brilliant member for Lethbridge.
Getting back to the $10,000 a month on carbon tax, no business can eat that kind of a bill. When the farmer who produces the food is taxed, and the trucker who ships the food is taxed, every Canadian who goes to the grocery store will be taxed. The fallacy the Liberals and NDP bring forward is that this is a rural and remote issue, hence the carve-out, for political reasons, in the Maritimes.
This is not a rural issue. It is not an urban issue. If people go to the grocery store to buy food for their family, it affects them each and every time. What we are trying to do in the House today is make the upper chamber realize, again, because we have already passed this bill, that this is an important bill to fight the ever-increasing cost of groceries across our country.
I am not sure that has sunk in for some of the members across the aisle. Maybe their chef has not told them that they have to pay extra for the food. Maybe they live in downtown areas and do not go to the grocery store often. I can say that my wife and I have to go grocery shopping, every now and then when I am home in time, and our grocery bills have continued to climb. We have talked to neighbours and friends, and people at the hockey rink, and they are feeling the pinch every day when trying to feed their families. We see mothers adding water to milk to make it go a little farther.
We see two million people in our country using a food bank every month. That is a staggering fact, and they are not just numbers. They are parents, grandparents and children. The majority of them are children. That is not the Canada I grew up in. It is not. It is not the Canada we want to leave for our children. It is something we need to have a very open discussion about.
Our leader, the member for Carleton, made it very clear that in two years we are going to have a carbon tax election. Canadians will be asking whether or not they want our common-sense Conservative approach, which would include axing the tax so people could afford groceries and getting spending under control to lower interest rates so people could afford to buy a home or pay rent.
Rents have doubled over the last long eight years of the NDP-Liberal government. Rents have doubled. Mortgages have doubled. It used to take 25 years to pay off a home in Canada, but now it takes 25 years to afford a down payment on a home in Canada. That has happened all in the last eight years under the Prime Minister and the Liberals' reckless spending.
This is where it comes back to the argument around Bill C-234. It is something that can be done immediately to lower the price of food for Canadians. It is something that can be done to ensure that our producers can continue to produce the world-class foods we have.
When $10,000 is taken out of the pockets of producers, they cannot invest in new farm technologies. They cannot invest in new fertilizer options or new machinery that would lower emissions. What we are doing right now is kneecapping our farmers so they cannot be innovative. It is not a slogan. Technologies over taxes is a way to lower our environmental emissions.
I am so proud to be from Saskatchewan. We have innovative policies in the agriculture sector, but we do not get credit for them. We have crop rotation. We have zero till. We have straight cut combines. We have precision agriculture. For example, when someone is adding fertilizer, it lowers and raises the rates depending on the field moisture. These are innovative technologies that have lowered emissions over the last 20 years. However, for some reason, the government has given no credit to those producers who have adopted this technology. I do not understand why.
The Liberals put a benchmark of 2018 as the year when people get credit for innovative farming practices. Why are we not praising all the Canadian agriculture producers who have being doing it right for the last 15 or 20 years? We can talk about some of the things we have done. The National Cattle Feeders' Association said it very well. It said:
Canada’s feedlot sector embraces innovative practices that support competitiveness and sustainability. To compete in an integrated North American market, cattle feeders carefully manage input costs including feed and fuel.
Feedlots rely on propane and natural gas for essential practices, including on-farm drying, steam flaking and barn heating. These are necessities on a feedlot to make sure they are producing the best opportunities for cattle to grow and have those gains for when they go to plants.
Why are we not promoting what we are doing on an international stage? The Liberals will always say the carbon tax is an environmental policy, not an economic policy. If the Liberals are so concerned about the environment, though they have not reached one target in the last eight years, why are we not taking Canadian agriculture to the world? Why do we go on the world stage, pretend it is a poor cousin and we are embarrassed about our agriculture sector?
Our ag minister should be going around the world saying how good our farming practices are here on Canadian soil, and promote that across the country and across the world. That is what we should be doing on the international stage, but we are not.
I asked the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge about the Liberal-appointed senators, because they are appointed by the Liberal Prime Minister. Why would they not vote in favour of this bill that would see all food prices in Canada lowered? It defies common sense.
When I talk to people in my riding and in my community in Regina, they talk about the cost of living. They talk about choosing between paying the heating bill, because it does get cold in Regina, and paying their mortgage. It is choosing between paying the heating bill or buying groceries they need for their kids to go to school with packed lunches. These are decisions in our country in 2023 that parents should not have to be making.
It is time we put this bill into practice, lower the price of food across our country, and use common-sense principles to bring home lower prices for my home and everyone's home. Let us bring it home for Canadians and pass this bill. Let us call on the senators to make sure it does happen.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened to my hon. colleague's whole speech. He did not mention Bill C-234 or the Senate at all.
Very simply, over the last week, how many Liberal-appointed senators did the environment minister call to try to bully them and convince them to vote against this bill?
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Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to get to my feet and second this bill from my friend from Huron—Bruce, Bill C-234, an act to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act or, what we more commonly call it, the farming exemption for the carbon tax.
I was able to join the Standing Committee on Agriculture when this bill was working its way through the agriculture committee. I want to thank my colleagues on the agriculture committee, the NDP member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, the member for Beauce, our shadow minister and member for Foothills, the member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex as well, and it feels like I am applying to be the next Speaker but I assure you that this is not the case, and a wonderful Bloc member as well.
I agree with my NDP colleague that the agriculture committee does work very well together. There were some amendments that were agreed to by all members. I would like to thank them for their contribution to make sure that this got passed. It is a bill that is very important to the agriculture committee across the country and very important to our people in Saskatchewan, Alberta and western Canada.
We have talked about what is involved when one is adding natural gas and propane as an exemption to this bill, and grain dryers, irrigation pumps and heating of barns for livestock.
The numbers actually have not been gone through as well as I would like. I would like to put some of the numbers on the record as to how much money we are actually putting back into the pockets of farmers, so that they can reinvest in their farm and invest in new technology, so that they can become more environmentally sustainable, because that is a goal for them. The better their land is looked after, the more land they can put into production, the more we can help with the global food crisis.
We have some numbers from APAS, the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan. It calculated the carbon tax, at $50 a tonne, will cost farmers between $13,000 to $17,000. That is an equivalent of a 12% decrease in net income.
One of the reasons why we want to get this bill passed as fast as we can is because, I do not know if we remember, in the recent election the Liberals promised that the carbon tax would never go over $50 a tonne. Well, they blew through that promise. By 2030, the carbon tax is going to be $170 a tonne. APAS said that at $170 a tonne, they estimate that the carbon tax will cost a grain farmer $12.52 per acre by 2030. Of that, $4.44 will be specifically for grain drying. That is a lot of money back into the pockets of our producers.
I think that this is something that we can all agree is a very good thing when it comes to innovation in the agricultural sector.
Some more numbers have come through. The Canola Growers Association calculated that the carbon tax actually cost the industry $52.1 million in 2022, at $50 a tonne, which they said they would never raise or pass, which we all know is not true now, and the end goal will be $277.9 million in 2030 at $170 a tonne.
I think that this is something that we hear a lot from agricultural producers. My colleague from the NDP is very correct in saying that a lot of producers and a lot of groups that represent producers across our country came to the agriculture committee and said that this is something that is very important for their industry.
I am happy that the NDP and the Bloc and the Conservatives voted in favour of moving this bill forward but the Liberals did not. However, they have another chance to actually stand up for agriculture producers in this country on the vote at third reading.
My hope is that there are a few who show the courage of the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert in breaking ranks and will actually join us in supporting our agriculture producers, because it is what the industry wants.
In January 2022, the PBO updated a report on what the cost would be for Bill C-206, and by cost, I mean the savings that will go back into the farmers' pockets. It is a cumulative total of $1.1 billion over a 10-year period.
Can members imagine the innovation and the inputs that money could be in farmers' pockets and back into innovation in the agriculture sector? I come from Saskatchewan, and we are big believers that a dollar in the pocket of someone who has earned that dollar is worth a lot more than a dollar in the pocket of the government.
We have seen all this innovation when it comes to soil health from our province. We have seen precision drilling. We have seen zero tillage, direct seeding and crop rotation. These are all things that were brought forward in our agriculture industry without a dime from government. It was private innovation, such as Seed Hawk, Bourgault, private companies that brought forward these innovations in the agriculture sector, that allowed us to maintain our soil health and to produce more, and that is something the world needs more of.
We say this in the chamber often, but time and time again we see the Liberal government try to hamstring our farmers in producing more of what the world needs. We talk about being a global supplier of food, but we are now talking about adding another carbon tax for farmers who are already struggling under the inputs they have.
My friend from Huron—Bruce was dead-on when he said that farms are like a carrying account where farmers put money into inputs and wait until the end of the year to see what they are going to get back from the AgriStability suite of programs. However, farmers cannot continue to carry those exorbitant input costs, such as fertilizer. The tariffs on fertilizer hit farmers a lot harder than they hit Russia, which got its money. The farmers had to pay more, because the supply was shortened.
When we talk about how we want to support, stand up and be there for our farmers, this is definitely a case where I would urge my Liberal colleagues to support this bill, because that would definitely be a demonstration of supporting our farmers and putting Canadian agriculture first. We do agriculture better than anyone else in the world, and we are proud of our farmers. We are proud of the hard work they put in.
I talked with the Minister of Agriculture at committee a couple of weeks ago, and she did not realize that 95% of Canadian farms are still family-owned and operated. Everyone has a picture of this big corporate farm in Canada now, because it is painted by the left, but it is not true. It is still Canadian families that run Canadian farms. Those are the people we are supporting with Bill C-234 today, and it is something that is very important for us to continue to do.
On the topic of the environment, I think the carbon tax has nothing to do with the environment; it is just a tax scheme. However, when we talk about agriculture and the environment, when we were able to present to the minister, we disagreed on the numbers. I told her that agriculture represents 8% of all the carbon emissions in Canada, but the minister said that figure was wrong and that it was 10%, which is as close as I have been to a Liberal on numbers in a long time, so I said, “All right, we'll meet in the middle and say it is 9%.”
If it is 9% of our emissions, the average in the world when it comes to agriculture emissions in other countries and other jurisdictions is 25%. That is how much better our agriculture producers are doing when it comes to lowering their emissions than their competition. In trumpeting that and being proud of how well our agriculture producers are doing and will continue to do, we are now asking the Liberals to vote in favour of Bill C-234, because it is the right thing to do. It would allow our farmers and producers to have more money in their pockets to invest in more innovation on their farms to ensure that we have even better environmental standards than we already do, and they will do it better than government.
Do members know what the government might do with $1.1 billion? I can guess that probably more of it would go to McKinsey & Company, their buddies and high-paid lobbyists. So why do we not put that money back into the farmers' pockets? They are going to spend it a lot better than the Liberal government.
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