- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Regina—Lewvan
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,656.05
- Government Page
- Feb/6/24 7:21:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to join in the debate today around the price of food inflation; the report that came from the agriculture committee, which I am proud to sit on; and some of the ideas we have heard over the last little while about how increases in the cost of food have affected Canadians in their day-to-day lives.
My friend from Battle River—Crowfoot just had a great point that he asked my colleague from Kenora about, and I asked this of Tyler McCann in committee today. I asked whether the point of a carbon tax, which the Liberals and NDP opine is the great resource they are going to use to lower emissions, was to change consumers' behaviour. Mr. McCann said yes, it is. We can go on Environment and Climate Change Canada's website, and see that the point of a carbon tax is to change people's behaviour based on an increasing price of a product.
It just so happens to be a product we are talking about today, which is food. I said in committee that it is amazing that a government is now fighting its own policy. Liberals and New Democrats are scrambling over each other to say that the carbon tax has not worked, because it did not increase the price of food. It was really one of the first times in my life in public service that I have seen a government arguing that a policy did not work when it did.
I see this in other areas of people's lives too. We see it in transportation, where mothers are having a harder time filling up a tank of gas to take their kids to hockey games, to ballet classes or to music lessons. In rural Canada, we have to drive. There is not public transportation service like there is in downtown Toronto, so people are making a choice about how many extra shifts they have to pick up to cover the next tank of gas. We see it with seniors, who are still in their homes, asking how many sweaters they are going to have to put on because they cannot afford to keep the heat up.
We see it time and time again. The Liberal-NDP carbon tax is making people change their behaviours in Canada, because it has made everything so much more expensive across our country.
We know it is working, because there was a little caucus revolt in the Liberal Party recently; Atlantic Canadian members, along with the Conservatives, who have called for a long time to axe the tax as part of our plan, said they had to exempt home heating. The proof is in the pudding. Why would the Liberal members in the Maritimes fight tooth and nail? It is because they are having political issues to get a carve-out from the carbon tax, since home heating is costing too much. It is almost like it is working, but the people within the Liberal Party and the NDP did not realize how much pain they were going to inflict on Canadians.
There is no other solution to heat a 100,000-square-foot barn. Today, in Ottawa, I met with a dairy farmer from just outside Regina. He said his heating bill for the barn has increased and increased. I have a SaskEnergy bill from another farmer, a chicken farmer. For one month, their gas supply cost is $1,092. Their carbon tax, with the GST on top of it, is $1,071. They are almost paying more in taxes on a monthly bill, $20 less, than they are for the gas they are supplying to heat their building. Maybe I am giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I do not think the Liberals and the New Democrats realized how much this was going to hurt.
From APAS, in Saskatchewan, Mr. Boxall was at our committee when we were talking about food prices. He said that, on the average farm in Saskatchewan, the carbon tax cost will be between $14,000 and $25,000. However, when it goes to $170 a tonne by 2030, Canada's Food Price Report for 2023 stated that a farm could pay $150,000 in carbon tax per year.
We asked Mr. Boxall in committee how that was going to affect farms. He said that:
It will have a huge impact—$150,000 on a 5,000-acre farm. It's unfathomable that we will get there on a carbon tax alone. It makes my skin crawl to think that's where we'll be, and then to be turned around and not recognized for the work that is done, ensuring that we have proper grasslands and that we have proper management of our farm soil. Farmers are the biggest stewards of the land in this country, and we care more about the environment than we ever get credit for. It really is going to be detrimental to Saskatchewan farmers.
That says it all. This Liberal government continues to punish our farmers, the people who put food on our plate, without a second thought of what the effect is going to be.
We talked to some witnesses today in the agriculture committee and one witness laid out three things that this government has done and wants to do that will affect food prices. Number one, he said, was the carbon tax. Number two was P2 packaging where the government wants to make sure that, in Canada, we cannot use plastics to ship fruit and vegetables, which the U.S.A. has already said it is not going to do, and so it is going to cut the supply of fruit and vegetables in our country. Number three is the fertilizer reduction targets. Those three things are what this witness said is going to inflate the cost of food exponentially year after year. This is from people who are on the ground from the fruit and vegetable growers in Ontario.
So, are we not going to believe a carbon tax bill that we saw from Saskatchewan where they were paying almost as much in taxes as in gas supply? Are we not going to believe members from the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, APAS, who are on the ground tilling the soil and planting the seeds who have said that $150,000 for a 5,000-acre farm will destroy farms in Saskatchewan, because it will make them unsustainable, which will lower supplies again? Are we not going to believe a dairy farmer who says that it is going to cost more and more each year to heat their barn with this carbon tax?
The PBO said that, by 2030, farmers will be paying $1 billion a year in carbon tax. My friend for Huron—Bruce, who has put this through on a private member's bill, talked about the GST and HST that we pay on the carbon tax, which is about $490 million a year. So, combined, the carbon tax and then the tax on the tax is going to be $1.5 billion automatically out of farmers' pockets, and people do not think that is going to have an effect on food prices. That is irrational. It is taking $1.5 billion out of farmers' pockets.
How are we going to make that up? Two things will happen: one, consumers will see that on the till at the grocery store, and prices will increase because farmers have to make that up; or two, farmers go out of business, and no farms, no food. If we lower the food supply in Canada, that will also increase the food cost. Members can see, and I agree with my friend from Winnipeg, that either way, consumers in rural or urban Saskatchewan are going to have to pay more for food.
At this point in time I would like to move an amendment, which will be seconded by the member for Battle River—Crowfoot. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, presented on Tuesday, June 13, 2023, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food with instruction that it amend the same so as to: (a) take into consideration that Bill C-234, An Act to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, has been amended by the Senate in a way that will prevent farmers from getting a carbon tax carve-out for grain drying, barn heating and other farm operations, and that since the Parliamentary Budget Officer has made clear that this bill, in its original form, would save Canadian farmers $1 billion by 2030, reducing the cost of food for Canadian families currently struggling to afford groceries; and (b) recommend that the House adopt the motion rejecting the Senate amendments as soon as possible.
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- Jun/16/22 8:33:25 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, this is a very important and timely debate that we are joining here this evening on the floor of the House of Commons. It is really talking about food supply and how Canada can be one of the sources to get food to people around the world.
There are five major points I am going to make in my presentation today about what I see as the issues agriculture producers are facing in Canada that are hindering their ability to supply the world with more of the world-class beef, chicken, wheat and commodities and to get things moved from market to market.
The first thing I see as an issue facing our producers coming down the pipe is front-of-package labelling. It is a big concern. We were reached out to by the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association. They interviewed yesterday, and it is something people are getting more concerned about, that the government is going to put warning labels on our beef and pork.
We should have a really serious debate about whether that is something we need to do going forward because our producers have world-class beef and pork, and we do not need to put warning labels on them. It is a conversation that we need to have in the House of Commons to make sure we are supporting our producers. I believe they are doing phenomenal work from an environmental standpoint and from a food quality standpoint, and the government should not be putting a warning label on the front of packages. We would be the only country in the world to put this burdensome policy on our beef and pork producers.
A second issue we talk a lot about in this chamber that is really hurting the food we can produce is the carbon tax. It is ever-increasing for our Canadian producers. In western Canada, when we have these conversations about the carbon tax, we hear these are serious dollars. Now the PBO has come forward and said Canadians are not receiving as much money as they are paying in the carbon tax.
The fuel bill of a friend of mine has gone up $15,000 a week, just in the carbon tax, when he is seeding and harvesting. Obviously that is in the high point, during seeding, but that is how much more money this producer is paying to fuel his equipment, and that is just the tractors. It is not counting other pieces of machinery. That is the second thing that is hindering our producers from being able to feed the world.
The third thing, as the member for Foothills talked about, is the fertilizer tariff. We are asking for the producers to get that money back from before March 2. We are penalizing our producers with the government's policies, which are something it has control of. It can make it better for our producers and easier for them to grow what the world needs.
The fourth thing is the 30% reduction of fertilizer. I have talked to stakeholders across the country, and before this emission reduction was put on fertilizer, Fertilizer Canada, Nutrien and BHP were never reached out to. They were surprised by this 30% reduction target. There were never appropriate conversations with the stakeholders to ensure that they knew this was coming down the pipe. It was a surprise for them. It was a subjective target that came out of nowhere and really shook the people who produce the fertilizer that helps to grow the crops we need to feed the world.
The fifth thing has been touched on by colleagues on all sides. It is not a partisan thing. It is the war in Ukraine. Ukraine is the third-largest producer of wheat in the world, and they are in war zone. Those crops are not going to be planted this year. We are burdening our producers in this country with more red tape and more regulations, which will hinder our yields and our crops.
We are not going to be able to use much fertilizer, and that is something that is going to happen in this country. We are going to grow less produce and have smaller yields because producers are going to use less fertilizer because they simply cannot afford it. They will not be able to afford the increase in the cost of fertilizer, and they cannot support an increase in the carbon tax. When we talk about the global food supply, where we should be a major player in the world, the government is hindering the ability for our producers to step up and do what is needed.
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