- 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, the minister must have been a heck of a dodge ball player in his day, because he totally dodged that question about time allocation and his deep NDP roots.
I wonder if the member would advise former premier Romanow to actually do time allocation 35 times in one Parliament, if he was still the premier in Saskatchewan. However, that is beside the point.
When the member talks about “no plan for the environment”, I would invite him to come to the PTRC in Regina, where they have a number that says that Saskatchewan has lowered the emissions, per capita, more than any other province in the country, and has the highest GDP increase over the last year. That is combining the environment and economic growth. Why can the Liberals not do that?
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Madam Speaker, this is a debate about time allocation. Ironically, the minister used to be a senior aide for the NDP premier in Saskatchewan, so the tie that binds is pretty deep for him.
In 17 parliaments, from Tommy Douglas to Tom Mulcair, the NDP only supported time allocation 14 times. The current iteration of the NDP has supported time allocation 35 times in this Parliament. As a former senior aide to Premier Roy Romanow, would the minister advise the current NDP government partner to continue to support a government that is falling in the polls? With all his experience with the NDP, would the member counsel the current government to perhaps try to stand on its own two feet?
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Madam Speaker, the labour minister said something very interesting when I asked him a question about tidal energy. He said Liberals really enjoy working with proponents they know. He was not talking about bringing in other outside foreign investments. I firmly believe that Liberals like giving money to Liberals. They are pretty good at that. The one interesting thing is that, when we listen to his speech, every now and then we can hear the actual truth.
In this bill, there is an indefinite review process by ministers that would perhaps allow for some political manoeuvring. What does my colleague from Sarnia—Lambton think about that clause in this bill?
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Madam Speaker, it is great to be back in the House. I have just a simple question regarding the approval process. Will this help projects like tidal energy be approved faster so we can have more clean energy in the Maritimes and on the east coast? We see right now that it is a bit of a slow walk and it should be approved a bit faster. We are hoping this legislation would help that out.
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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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- Dec/8/22 5:04:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would just like to take a few moments to rebut some of the things my colleague from Kings—Hants said.
In terms of my question, which was pretty direct, from 2019 to 2021 Canada had the second-highest increase in its gross debt-to-GDP ratio out of 33 countries covered by the IMF, behind only Japan. Our gross debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 87.2% to 112.1% in 2021, an increase of 24.9 percentage points. Given that the Canadian government has accumulated more debt as a share of our economy than nearly every other country in our peer group, the expectation would be that Canada's economy fared better than others during this period. This is incorrect.
Despite leading our peers in debt accumulation, Canada did not outperform our peer group in economic growth during the pandemic. Canada had the 11th-lowest real GDP growth, 5.2%, in 2020 and the 12th-lowest real GDP growth, 4.6%, in 2021. Canada also did not outperform its peer group by achieving lower unemployment during the pandemic. Canada had the third-highest unemployment rate, 9.58%, out of 33 industrialized countries and the eighth-highest unemployment rate, 7.43%, in 2021.
I get that these numbers are a lot of numbers that just came out at everyone, but I put these numbers on the record to debunk the myth that the Liberals keep on trying to portray, that they somehow went into the pandemic later than everyone else and came out sooner. That is simply not the fact.
They spent more than every other country in the world but Japan, and our citizens are not better off. The proof is in the pudding, as 1.5 million Canadians in one month used a food bank to put food on the table for their families. That is a failure of leadership by the Liberals.
Students at universities across our country are staying in hostels or needing to use a food bank to eat or, like in my alma mater, the University of Regina, actually fundraising so students do not go to bed hungry, asking alumni for money to help feed students.
Another thing I am looking forward to is splitting my time with the member for Brandon—Souris and hearing what he has to say about a private member's bill he brought forward last Parliament, which still has not been implemented.
On the topic of not doing what Canadians need, I would like to talk a bit now about agriculture and the agriculture file.
My colleague from Kings—Hants left a bit of wiggle room on Bill C-234. I know he had some positive things to say about it, and I am very interested, because all the Liberal members voted against the bill in committee. As the chair, he did not have to vote, and I am really excited to see how he votes and if he is going to stand with the agriculture producers in Kings—Hants or with his party whip, whether he will be voting along the party line or voting for the people who sent him here.
I am very much looking forward to that vote, because I think that over the last couple of weeks a few members on the Liberal backbenches are starting to feel a bit of pressure when it comes to either supporting the carbon tax or supporting the amendments at the report stage of Bill C-21. I am looking forward to seeing if some of the rural members from the Maritimes or Newfoundland or some of the members from Alberta and Manitoba are going to support these gun amendments that criminalize law-abiding firearms owners, or if they are going to support their constituents and make sure their voices are heard in the chamber. There are a few votes on which I am really looking forward to seeing what some of the Liberal members in the back rows are going to do.
This motion is about making life easier and more affordable for Canadians. We hear in our offices across the country that one of the biggest strains now on families is going to the grocery store and trying to make sure they have enough food to put on the table.
Some of these increases are staggering. I get pictures sent into my office of what $100 buys now at a grocery store. It does not go a long way for a lot of these families. Some of the reasons are that fish is up 10.4% to purchase; butter is 16.9%; eggs, 10.9%; margarine, 37.5%; bread, rolls, buns, 17.6%; dry or fresh pasta, 32.4%; fresh fruit, 13.2%; oranges, 18.5%; and the list goes on: lettuce, 12.4%; potatoes, 10.9%.
These are a lot of staple foods for families. Our household is no different from anyone else's. We have three growing children. They are five, seven and nine, and they are starting to eat more and more. Like a lot of other families, we are seeing our grocery bills continue to climb, and these are the things that we need to have solutions for.
As members of the House of Commons or as public servants, we have to look for how we can ease this inflationary pain. One of the things we can do is get together and take some taxes off the prices of these fruits and vegetables and everyday essentials.
We also had a motion brought forward a couple of weeks ago to take the carbon tax off home heating, which is quite reasonable. Some of the members across the way voted in favour of that motion, and I thank them, including the member for Avalon, for voting in favour. I appreciate that very much, because he was listening to his constituents. It is incumbent on us to remember who brought us here. Former premier Wall always said that these are not our seats, that these are the seats of the constituents and we are just caretakers for a while, because someone else will come and take them. I think a few members are remembering that, and we appreciate that support very much.
When it comes down to erasing the carbon tax on the price of groceries, it is pretty much unanimous in the House of Commons that the price of groceries is too high. We are just trying to figure out how to deal with that situation. Also, the price of groceries is high because that carbon tax hits our producers; it hits the farmers and it hits the trucking industry. At each link of a supply chain, the carbon tax continues to increase the price of goods. That is something we are trying to get through to the members across the aisle and get through to our Liberal, NDP and Bloc colleagues. It is not just a one-time hit; it continually makes things more expensive.
We saw from a recent report that a 5,000-acre farm, by 2030, will pay $150,000 in carbon taxes per year. I grew up on a small family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. We had dairy and beef, and we made our own hay. We had 2,000 acres that we combined. They are not big farms. I do not know anyone who farms 5,000 acres who can take a $150,000 hit year after year. Unless common sense prevails, the only outcome for these family farms is bankruptcy.
The Minister of Agriculture was at the agriculture committee, and I am proud to be a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. The minister was there for ministerial estimates, and I asked her to give me a definition of what a family farm is. She could not. Some Liberal members have not been on a farm and do not know agriculture. They see it as big corporate agriculture and big business, but 95% of the farms in Canada are still family farms.
The minister was taking the family out of the family farm and said that families are still okay, but it is the farm that is getting taxed. That is not a thing. The family farm is one unit. It is a package deal. Those two cannot be separated. Some are incorporated and some are not. One thing we learned through CERB was that sometimes a family farm that is not incorporated missed out on some programming.
I will leave members with this, when it comes to the rising cost of inflation. Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, said himself that the increase in spending by the government has had an effect on inflation.
One more thing that is really going to hit us hard, now that the interest rate is 4.25%, is that people are going to start losing their homes. I have friends whose mortgages have gone up $750 to $800 per month. That is over a $10,000 increase in what they will have to pay for their mortgages over a year. Families, farm families and everyone in between are squeezed hard enough. They cannot absorb that $10,000 hit. They cannot absorb that $1,000 hit on their grocery bill. We in the House of Commons are going to have to come to the realization that one cannot get blood from a stone. We have to give tax breaks to Canadians.
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- Nov/30/21 3:03:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are exciting energy projects happening across the Prairies that are both sustainable and innovative, projects equipped with carbon sequestration units, new low-carbon hydrogen, helium facilities and a Regina company that is getting lithium from mature oil wells. Conservatives are committed to seeing beyond Liberal environmental rhetoric and providing results for Canadians.
My question is for a yes or no answer from the activist environment minister. Will he come with me and tour some of these facilities or will he keep his head buried in the sand and continue to wrongfully demonize western Canadian energy?
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