- Member of Parliament
- Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Leader of the Opposition
- Conservative
- Carleton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $61,288.13
- Government Page
- May/23/24 2:17:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in equal parts sadness and gratitude to honour the incredible life of a great Canadian, Rex Murphy. Rex was born a proud Newfoundlander. He became known as a pugnacious critic of those in power, even Joey Smallwood, and that was not easy in those days. He would go on to be a political assistant, for both major political parties in that province, and then a national voice.
Rex would give fantastic, spectacular rants on the CBC. Yes, even I watched the CBC to listen to Rex. He would then go on to host Cross Country Checkup, where he would listen with compassion and respect to the voices of the common people. He would write many pieces of good works in poetry, storytelling and polemics. His voice will now be missed by all.
I join all Canadians in giving our thanks to Rex for all he did. May he rest in the peace of God.
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- Apr/17/24 3:01:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is not the opposition from the Conservatives that he needs to worry about. It is the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. He said, “On the carbon tax in particular, the prime minister has tried to bait me at times with certain ad hominems and name-calling, almost. But look, we have a very different opinion on the carbon tax” and “I wish the prime minister would understand that. He's being very sclerotic in his approach on this ideologic marriage that he has to this [carbon tax]”.
Will the Prime Minister end his ideological marriage with the carbon tax so that Canadians can eat, heat and house themselves?
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- Apr/9/24 2:32:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the incoming leader of the Liberal Party has just given a speech and given advice to his soon-to-be predecessor. Mark Carney said that he agrees there should be a carbon tax conference, where the premiers can come together and share their concerns about the Prime Minister raising the cost of living and breaking the backs of Canadians. If the Prime Minister will not listen to me and will not listen to the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, will he at least listen to his successor and meet with the premiers on the carbon tax?
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- Mar/20/24 2:49:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, here are the facts directly from the Parliamentary Budget Officer: The cost to the average Newfoundland family is $1,874, and the rebate is $1,497, for a net loss of $377 and growing. These are the facts. Could the Prime Minister stop denying the facts?
If the Prime Minister really wants to contest and argue that he should be able to raise the tax, why does he not have the courage to call an election and let Canadians decide?
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- Mar/20/24 2:47:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, now the legislature in Newfoundland and Labrador has acknowledged that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost after eight years. It passed a motion, supported by the Liberal premier and personal friend of the Prime Minister, to oppose the April 1 tax hike.
It must have heard from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the cost to Newfoundlanders of the carbon tax this year will be $1,874 for the average Newfoundland and Labrador family. What will their rebate be?
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- Jan/29/24 2:27:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this one is just too easy. He walked into it. He had to muzzle a member from Newfoundland who called for an end to his leadership, joining another senator who did the same. They understand that their constituents are literally starving and unable to heat their homes because the Prime Minister is quadrupling the carbon tax, doubling housing costs and giving the worst inflation in 40 years.
Why will he not listen to, instead of intimidating, his member from Newfoundland and put his leadership of the Liberal Party up for a review?
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- Oct/4/23 3:14:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, hiding out and going surfing in Tofino does not count as spending time with rural Canadians.
Obviously the Prime Minister is not listening to what they have to say because, after eight years, his carbon tax is not worth the cost. He now wants to quadruple the tax to 61¢ a litre. Even the Liberal Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is calling on him to axe the tax. It agrees with me.
Will the Prime Minister listen to the Liberal Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and his own Liberal caucus from Atlantic Canada, and axe the tax?
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- Jun/21/23 2:50:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is not only Quebeckers who will have to pay more. On July 1, the Prime Minister plans to hit Atlantic Canadians with a massive new tax hike at the pump. Happy Canada Day, everyone. The Prime Minister wants us to pay more.
Now, the Newfoundland Liberal premier has said that this will do nothing for the environment, but it will make his people go cold in the winter and hungry all year long. Why will the Prime Minister not axe the carbon tax and finally come up with a real environmental plan?
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- Jun/19/23 2:34:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it shows how out of touch the Liberals are. They think that what rural Canadians want is another big government bureaucracy in Ottawa. What they actually want is more money in their own pockets.
However, the plan of that member is to raise taxes on Newfoundland customers, to bring in a 61¢-a-litre carbon tax on Newfoundlanders, Labradorians and all Canadians that will drive up the cost of heat, gas and groceries. Even the Liberal premier of Newfoundland says that it will not help the environment, that it will cause inflation.
Why will the Liberals not axe the tax?
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- Jun/1/23 2:23:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, whenever the government henpecks to death a natural resource project, it forces the company to claim it has something to do with market conditions. It does that by threatening them to do more damage on other projects. We know the government did that with TransCanada's national pipeline, claiming that it was the daily price of oil that had caused the company to cancel a project that would have been place for more than half a century. We know that the price of oil has been stable now. We know that the energy demand is going to be continuing for at least half a century. We also know the government kills projects like this.
Why will it not get out of the way and let Newfoundlanders and Labradorians bring home paycheques for its people?
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- Jun/1/23 2:21:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are in shock today that the Bay du Nord project is now being delayed by three years, and maybe forever.
The federal government killed two pipelines, bungled and massively overspent on a third, killed the Teck frontier mine and blocked 14 or 15 massive natural gas liquefaction projects that are necessary to fight global climate change.
Will the government remove its gatekeepers so Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can bring home energy production to their province and our country?
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- Jun/1/23 12:29:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the chance to follow the great member from Newfoundland and Labrador, a man who has a stronger and more honest and powerful voice for Newfoundland and Labrador than all other MPs from that province combined. He understands that his job is to be the voice of Newfoundland in Ottawa, not the voice of Ottawa in Newfoundland. Indeed, that is all of our roles.
Here we are today in a country where nine in 10 young people believe they will never be able to afford a home, something that would have been unimaginable eight years ago. There are 1.5 million Canadians eating at food banks, and one in five are skipping breakfast, lunch or dinner because they cannot afford the cost of food. What do the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc think is the remedy for all of that? It is a 61¢-a-litre carbon tax.
Let us go back, though, and examine the history of this tax. First, the Prime Minister said that it would give people more money than they pay, a tax that makes them better off. He said he would send out cheques to give people back the money they paid. It turns out that the Parliamentary Budget Officer he named proved that people will end up paying approximately $1,500 more in taxes than they get back in rebates. Then the Prime Minister said the tax would never go above $50 a tonne, but what he realized was that his tax was so ineffective at tackling emissions that he would have to raise it more than triple that $50. Of course, that news came out after the election rather than before.
Another falsehood is that he said this tax would help us meet our emissions reduction targets. He has missed every single target he has set. He did not even meet them in the year 2020, when Canadians were locked down and banned from using their automobiles. Even then, his tax was so ineffective that it did not reach the targets he set. Those are three falsehoods on which he built the tax in the first place.
When the first tax failed, what was his solution? It was to bring in another one. If it failed once, do the same thing all over again. The definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again expecting to get a different result.
The Liberals now have a second carbon tax. The first one will take the price of a litre up 41¢ and the second will bring it up another 17¢, to a total of 58¢ a litre. However, they are not done yet. They want to charge HST on the tax and the tax, to get it up to a full 61¢ a litre in taxes. We can imagine, then, that a cost of a litre of gas will be two dollars, three dollars or maybe four dollars if the Prime Minister has his way.
We should keep in mind that higher gas prices are not a bug; they are a feature of Liberal Party policy. The goal is to raise gas prices. That is not a secondary consequence. It is the policy, and it is a policy supported by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois. The NDP, which pioneered the carbon tax, brought it to B.C. and has raised it in that province higher than anywhere else, is voting with its Liberal bosses in Ottawa to more than triple the carbon tax on British Columbians.
What are the consequences of a tax on energy? When one taxes energy, one taxes everything, because everything has to be dug, built, moved, cooled and heated using energy. Let us start with food. If we tax the farmer who grows the food and the trucker who ships the food, we ultimately tax the food itself. This is at a time when food price inflation is at a 40-year high.
We just got more evidence. The Prime Minister told us inflation is on the decline. Worry not; it is all over. The nightmare has ended and inflation is going away. What happened in the month of April? Inflation shot up again. Why did it shoot up in April? What happened in the last part of March? There were two things. One was that the finance minister introduced $60 billion of new inflationary spending, or, as she called it, gas on the inflationary fire, two days before the start of April. Then the carbon tax hit on April 1, April Fool's Day. The joke is on Canadians. The tax hits, the deficits hit and inflation is back on the rise. It is cause and effect.
However, they are just getting started. The tax right now is only 14¢ a litre. We used to say “triple, triple, triple”, but it is not triple anymore. The Liberals want to quadruple it and more, from 14¢—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Hon. Pierre Poilievre: Madam Speaker, it is quadruple, quadruple, quadruple, quadruple. There is a tongue twister, but it is going to be even more painful to pay than to say.
We have families already living in poverty, and we know that the rich guys will be fine. They have no problem. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, this latest carbon tax will hit the poorest people the worst. Those with the least will pay the most, because energy constitutes a bigger part of their family budget. Rich people spend a smaller amount of their family budget on energy.
We know that it will affect the single mom, the truck driver, the barber and the student who is trying to scrape together an extra $4,000 or $5,000 a year as part of his 25-year plan to save for a down payment. Those are the people who will end up paying this tax, and for what? Canada places 58th out of 63 nations in the climate change implementation index. We are behind the rest of the world. According to this index, China has a better record than the Liberal government. It is worse than the dictatorship the Prime Minister so admires when it comes to climate matters.
We get all the pain and none of the gain. If the Liberals want a real plan for climate change, why not technology and not taxes. Let us speed up and lower the cost of carbon-free energy.
Let us cut through the red tape and allow Quebec to build hydroelectric dams. This would allow Quebeckers to double the amount of electricity available for electrification. Under my leadership, the government will allow Quebec to speed up construction of this green energy network.
We could approve the wave power that Nova Scotia was attempting to permit with a private sector company, using tidal forces to bring electricity to the great shores of Nova Scotia and power its grid with lower emissions. I would have approved that in a millisecond. The bureaucratic gatekeepers blocked it for years, and the company got up and left. I will green-light green projects like that. I will green-light nuclear energy, allowing for small modular nuclear reactors to electrify places like Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. They have already signed memoranda of understanding to move forward with nuclear power, but not if it takes 25 years to get it permitted.
What kind of safety and environmental knowledge would we gain in the last 17 years of that process that we could not gain in the first three years? Why not compress the work? Yes, let us protect safety. Yes, let us protect the environment. However, let us do it quickly, because our environment and our energy grid cannot wait.
Finally, for carbon capture and storage, we would incentivize our mighty energy sector, which is the most advanced, sophisticated and ethical in the world, to reinvest some of its growth in cleaning its operations so we can have the lowest-emitting energy sector anywhere in the world and can put that carbon right back in the geological structures from whence it came.
All of these things are possible if we have a government in Ottawa that gets out of the way, green-lights green projects and incentivizes reinvestment of market revenues back into clean, green technology. The Liberals' philosophy is very different. If it moves, they tax it. If it keeps moving, they regulate it. When it stops moving, they subsidize it. That is a nonsensical approach.
What we have here is common sense. The common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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- May/29/23 7:19:28 p.m.
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Madam Chair, that is interesting. Now the minister is finally talking numbers. It turns out that Newfoundland and Labradorians will be paying $2,166 more in carbon taxes and taxes on the tax than they get back in any of these phony rebates. If these numbers are not right, what are the correct numbers?
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- May/29/23 7:18:35 p.m.
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Madam Chair, if the minister does not believe me, maybe she will believe the Liberal premier of Newfoundland and Labrador who said:
As the July 1 implementation date of the federal...Regulations approaches, Atlantic Premiers remain concerned about the detrimental and disproportionate impact they will have on Atlantic Canadians. Together with the carbon tax increase also scheduled for July 1, an increase in the cost of gasoline and diesel is anticipated. These increases will further add to inflationary pressures that will increase the costs of other goods imported to the region.
That is not me. That is the Liberal premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. Is he wrong?
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- May/29/23 7:15:32 p.m.
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Madam Chair, no.
The answer is that the second carbon tax will cost another $1,000 in Alberta, another $611 in Manitoba and another $850 in Newfoundland and Labrador. Where does the minister expect the people of those provinces to get that money?
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- Mar/30/23 2:34:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, notice he is not even contesting the facts now.
After falsely stating for half a decade that Canadians will be better off with the carbon tax, the government is now admitting what its Parliamentary Budget Officer reported. This is that, on average, Newfoundlanders and Nova Scotians will pay approximately $1,500 in net additional costs above and beyond any phony rebate they get back. Worst of all, it has not even worked. It has missed every single emissions target.
Why will the Liberals not ditch this tax plan and come up with a real climate plan?
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- Mar/30/23 2:26:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we do for now. I want to assure the member that as long as we have free speech, I will keep beating that party in debate after debate.
Let us turn to another falsehood the government spread. It claims that its carbon tax would make everybody better off, but now the government's own Parliamentary Budget Officer has revealed that Nova Scotians and Newfoundlanders, just like people right across the country, pay about $1,500 more in carbon taxes than they get back in rebates. This directly contradicts the government.
Why has the government misled the people of Atlantic Canada with this sneaky tax?
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- Nov/17/22 2:23:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, these are our allies and these are our customers, and all of them have better climate change performance than the government has in Canada.
What it has done in Canada is raise taxes on people's energy use, energy that they must use. People do need to heat their homes if they live in rural Newfoundland, and they need to use oil to do it because that is all there is. The cost is already up 77% year over year and likely to go up further. Some families will pay as much as $6,000 to heat their homes.
Is the government really going to tell them that they have to pay more for the government's failures on the environment?
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- Nov/16/22 2:25:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, she tells Canadians that they have never had it so good. She is out of touch, and Canadians are out of money. One of the reasons is the rising cost of fuel. Home heating bills are up 77% in Newfoundland and Labrador. There are similar increases across the Atlantic, and northern Ontario will get hit hard because of oil heating, yet the government wants to triple the carbon tax to punish people further. This is after the tax has failed to reduce emissions or hit targets to fight climate change.
Instead of hitting Canadians with more punishing taxes, why do the Liberals not give Canadians relief so they can keep the heat on?
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- Oct/20/22 10:25:26 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course the question is based on a totally false premise, but worse than that, it is based on the worst of Liberal elitist snobbery.
For them to look down on the little old lady in rural Newfoundland or rural Nova Scotia because she is heating her home in February and call her a polluter, while the Prime Minister has forced that same little old lady to pay, through her taxes, for him to get on a gas-guzzling private jet, fly around the country for photo ops, burn more fuel in a single month than 20 Canadians burn all year, and go to Costa Rica on that same jet, is the worst high-carbon hypocrisy. It is an insult to Canadians.
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