- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 60%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
- Feb/5/24 5:51:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I saw that tweet from Elon Musk, and I would disagree with him in saying that it is not the only thing we need, but it is the first thing we need. It is the easiest, cheapest way to bring down our emissions and help solve the climate crisis. We will need to do everything else, but that is the first thing we need to do.
We have had it in British Columbia for over a decade and it has worked, despite what Conservatives say, and despite Conservatives telling my constituents that we should get rid of the federal carbon tax to help my constituents; we do not pay a federal carbon tax in British Columbia. However, it is an essential part of any country's fight and any jurisdiction's fight against climate change.
I am boggled by the fact that the Conservatives do not get that. I am happy that Elon Musk gets it, because I do not agree with everything Elon Musk says. It is certainly the easiest and cheapest way to fight climate change, and we need to do it and everything else.
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- Dec/12/23 1:37:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I cannot speak for the Conservatives, and I really cannot understand their position here. We have mentioned in this agreement carbon pricing in a way that would not hold either Canada or Ukraine to having a carbon price, or increasing it or promoting it. It simply talks about this in a broad list of environmental objectives.
As I mentioned, Ukraine already has a carbon price. It has had one for 12 years, which is much longer than Canada. We heard in debate here today the Conservatives think that this is some kind of poison pill. I cannot imagine Volodymyr Zelenskyy would sign an agreement that had a poison pill in it. It is the height of illogical thinking that Canada would put a poison pill in a free trade agreement so the Conservatives would vote against it. It simply does not make any sense at all, and so I am baffled. The member should ask the Conservatives that question.
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- Oct/17/23 4:35:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague talked about the carbon tax, as Conservatives are wont to do. Of course, in British Columbia, the federal carbon tax does not apply at all. We have had a provincial carbon tax there since 2008, brought in by a small c conservative government.
Over the past three years, in her riding and my riding, the gas prices that people complain all the time have gone up about a dollar. The carbon tax has gone up five cents, so 95¢ of that increase is something else. What is it? It is corporate greed.
The price of oil has gone up and the oil companies that are producing that gas have had a windfall profit of billions and billions of dollars. The CEO of Shell Canada said that, if they were taxed more, they would be turning money back into the Canadian economy to help people who are suffering. The government is afraid to do that, and the Conservatives do not want to talk about it. The Conservatives in the U.K. have done just that.
I am just wondering if my colleague could comment on the fact that Conservatives and Liberals do not like to talk about the revenue side of the fiscal situation. We should have a windfall tax to bring money to Canadians, to help all Canadians in this time when people are suffering. A windfall fax on groceries and on gasoline would do just that.
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- Jun/5/23 10:15:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I could talk about this for a long time, but I have 30 seconds. I want to thank the member for Kitchener Centre for that.
Peatlands are extraordinarily important in storing carbon. Also, when they start burning, it is very difficult to put those fires out. They can release huge amounts of carbon dioxide over months as they burn. It is essential that we get at those fires, especially in the boreal forest, very quickly.
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Madam Speaker, my neighbour in the Kootenays spent a lot of time talking about the carbon tax. The Conservatives, and certainly a British Columbian conservative such as he, never mention the fact that the carbon tax in British Columbia is a conservative tax. It was brought in by Gordon Campbell in 2008, 15 years ago. I am sure the member voted for Gordon Campbell several times. Yes, it went up 3¢ a litre on April 1. The price of gas in his riding and my riding has gone up probably a dollar over the last year.
Instead of this fight against the carbon tax, when most people get all of that back, would he join the NDP in the fight for an excessive profits tax on the big oil and gas companies and big grocery retailers that are driving up the price of gas and groceries?
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Mr. Speaker, for weeks we have been hearing the Conservatives talking about “triple, triple, triple” when it comes to the carbon tax.
In my province of British Columbia, the price of gas has gone up about a dollar a litre this year. The whole carbon tax, even if we got rid of the carbon tax, is just 10¢ or 11¢ of that. It is 1% of the greedflation we have seen from the oil and gas companies.
The increase that is going to happen this year is 2¢ a litre. Again, that is 1% of the price we are paying for fuel across much of the country. Today the price of gas was supposed to go up 10¢. If we got rid of the carbon tax, we would be back to where we were yesterday. This would not solve the problem of inflation for Canadians.
Could the member comment on that? All this talk about the carbon tax will do absolutely nothing for most Canadians. They need real help, and that is what the NDP is delivering tonight with Bill C-31.
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- Sep/27/22 3:57:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Peterborough—Kawartha is also the Conservative critic for tourism. I am the NDP critic for tourism and here we are on World Tourism Day. I thought I would point that out.
This whole debate around the carbon tax, as if it is what is driving up the price of gas, Canadians are rightfully concerned about it. I was just in Vancouver and the price of gas was $2.33 a litre, and 11¢ of that is carbon tax. The big increase over the last year of a dollar came a bit from the world price on oil and mostly from greed. It is mostly from big oil and gas companies seeing an opportunity when world oil prices went up and inflating that price many times over.
The NDP is the only party here that I see proposing a real solution to that, and that is taxing that greed and putting a windfall tax on big oil and gas companies so that we can create funding for all the good things that the member mentioned.
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Madam Speaker, I am not so much concerned about carbon capture and storage because the private sector is involved. What I am concerned about is that the oil and gas sector is involved and is using that carbon capture and storage technique to basically pump more oil and gas out of the ground. It is enhanced oil recovery.
It has been going on for years in the United States. There is a lot of data to show that it does not work in terms of reducing the amount of emissions into the atmosphere overall. It is really designed to get more oil and gas out of the ground, which will be burned and create more emissions. That is why we are concerned about this kind of carbon capture and storage.
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