- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Dufferin—Caledon
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,309.03
- Government Page
- Feb/7/23 3:49:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is right. Those are exactly the same charges that farmers in my riding pay for drying grain. Maybe the Liberal members do not understand that they have to dry grain. They pay enormous carbon taxes as a result of doing that. What happens then? The price of grain goes up. On whatever crop was being used, the price is going to go up.
The carbon tax makes everything more expensive, and farmers do not get more money back than they pay in. The result is higher prices at the grocery store, families going to food banks and families being within $200 of not being able to make ends meet. The Liberals should really give Canadians a break and cut the carbon tax.
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- Feb/7/23 3:35:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if we want to talk about some numbers, I will start with this number: 415%. The Orangeville Food Bank, which is in my riding of Dufferin—Caledon, has just put out information saying that the number of seniors accessing the food bank in Orangeville has gone up 415%. That is the result of eight years of the Liberal government.
The Liberals will say that we should stop talking about how expensive things are and stop talking about how difficult things are for Canadians; everything is great. Well, everything is not great after eight years of the Liberal government. Forty-five per cent of Canadians are within $200 of not being able to make ends meet. That is another inconvenient number for the government, but it is also the result of eight years of the current Liberal government.
Then we get to the question of why we are here. Why do so many seniors have to go to the food bank? Why are so many households within $200 of not being able to make ends meet? It is because life has gotten so much more expensive under the Liberal government. Why has that happened? I will today look at one thing. I will talk about the carbon tax.
The carbon tax is the mother of taxes because it is put on everything. We have heard today many Conservative members talk about the effect the carbon tax has on agriculture. My riding is a proud agricultural producer. It is the number one driver of economic activity, and guess what. The carbon tax is punishing farmers.
The government will say erroneously that eight out of 10 Canadians will get more money back from the carbon tax than they pay in. I will deal with that a little later in this speech, because it is quite frankly not true. In the context of farming and agriculture, there are farmers who get carbon tax bills for drying grain and doing other things on the farm that add up to somewhere in the neighbourhood of $30,000 to $40,000 per year. What is their rebate? It is $800.
They are not getting more money back than they pay into the carbon tax. Farmers from coast to coast to coast are being absolutely crushed by the Liberal carbon tax. We could say that it is their problem, but let us think about what that actually means. When a carbon tax of $40,000 is put on an agricultural producer, they have to pass on the cost of it. They cannot just absorb it and go bankrupt. What does that mean? It means that when families go to the grocery store, everything is more expensive, and it is a lot more expensive.
Maybe when there is a 415% increase in the number of seniors going to the food bank, there might be a connection. Food is getting much more expensive because of the carbon tax, and seniors are going to a food bank. Forty-five per cent of Canadians are within $200 of not being to make ends meet. Why is that? It is because everything is more expensive. Their food is more expensive because producers are paying this gigantic carbon tax.
It does not end there. Yes, producers are paying the carbon tax, but the carbon tax is also put on the vehicles that get driven.
I neglected to say that I am splitting my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
When we are taking a crop by truck from a farm to where it will ultimately be consumed, it is going to be subject to a carbon tax. At the grocery store where that food is, someone will have to heat the grocery store. The heating is subject to the carbon tax, so the store increases prices. All along the line and all along the food chain, everyone is charging more. What does that mean? It means the farmer charges more, the transport company charges more and the grocery store charges more. It also means everyone is paying much more for the basic necessity of eating.
When one talks about heating one's home, it is the same thing. Many constituents come to me and say, “Look at this bill. Look at the carbon tax on my bill. I cannot afford it.”
The government tells them to stop. It says that it is giving them some money, so they are going to be better off. Of course, I will get back to that.
They are not better off. If they were better off, 45% of Canadians would not be within $200 of failing to make ends meet. If the carbon tax is so wonderful, as the government says, and if it pours so much money back into the pockets of Canadians, why do we have statistics like this?
The rhetoric does not actually meet with reality.
Let us talk about the effect of the carbon tax on trade. I will go back to agricultural products. Canada is a proud exporting nation. Over 60% of our GDP is from exports. Agriculture is a huge part of that.
When we make our farmers incur $30,000 or $40,000 in carbon tax, guess what? Their agricultural products are more expensive. It is harder for them to access foreign markets.
What does that mean? Less profit comes back to Canadian farmers. Then, they cannot invest in new machinery, new equipment and everything else.
The carbon tax is a tax on life. It is making life unaffordable for Canadians across the entire economic spectrum.
Only a Liberal government would say that it is going to take dollars through the carbon tax and give back dimes and that we should be grateful, that we are better off. That is the message to Canadians every single day, that they should be so lucky.
If the carbon tax were actually doing something, one might be able to justify the senior going to the food bank or the family with the thermostat down to 17°C in the winter. One could say that it was actually doing something, but guess what? It is actually not.
Under the Liberal government, carbon emissions have gone up every year. It will say, no, they went down in 2020. Yes they did go down during the pandemic, when the economy was shut down. If that is the plan, the government should be honest with Canadians. If it wants emissions to go down by 9% and it is therefore going to have the economy contract by 5%, just stand up and let Canadians know so that they can decide how they want to vote in the next election.
It is causing enormous pain in this country. It is causing inflation.
Even the Bank of Canada has admitted that the carbon tax is inflationary. We have an inflation problem in the country, but they will keep saying that we are against the carbon tax, that we do not care about the environment and that we do not care about climate change.
Actually, they are the ones who do not seem to care, because the carbon tax is doing nothing to reduce Canadian carbon emissions. On that very simple formula of whether it reduces emissions, the unequivocal answer is no, it does not. It is an absolute failure.
Let us turn to the final piece of the puzzle. They will say that eight out of 10 Canadians are better off. They get more money as a result of the carbon tax than they pay into it.
There was a report that said that. However, then the PBO did another report called “A Distributional Analysis of Federal Carbon Pricing under A Healthy Environment and A Healthy Economy”. It showed that when we factor in the effects of the carbon tax across the economy, which I was just talking about, it makes everything more expensive and leads to unemployment. Most Canadian families lose.
It is like saying that I have an A in science because I got an A on the mid-term and an F on the final. That is effectively what they are saying.
The first report is irrelevant because the PBO dug deeper. I know it is hard. I mean, it is 20 pages, so they might not have the intestinal fortitude to read it. Pages 18 to 20 make it abundantly clear that the carbon tax is hurting Canadians.
Why will they not scrap it?
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- Mar/3/22 3:34:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am splitting my time with the member for Red Deer—Mountain View.
I do not think any member of the House or any Canadian can not think of the devastation that is going on right now in Ukraine. The images that we see through social media and on the news are absolutely devastating. They are heartbreaking, and our hearts go out to the people in Ukraine and to Ukrainian Canadians across the country.
Part of this motion is to stand with the people of Ukraine, and we should think about what that means. It does not mean standing with a sign or a hashtag; it means actually doing things, doing deliverable, measurable things that are going to make things a little better for the people of Ukraine in this incredibly dark hour.
One of the things that we are asking for to show how we stand with the people of Ukraine is visa-free travel. The government has so far said it is not doing it. It has steadfastly, adamantly refused, and it has come up with a reason. I heard the minister's remarks today that there may be some pro-Russian people who would therefore be able to come to Canada, so the government is proposing some alternative immigration streams.
The fact of the matter is that leaders deliver. They find ways to deliver things in tough times, and these are the toughest times for the people of Ukraine. To hear excuses as to why we cannot have visa-free travel is absolutely unacceptable for me as a parliamentarian, for Ukrainian Canadians and of course for the people of Ukraine.
What we are offering is different immigration streams. As a former member of the immigration committee, I can say that there are enormous backlogs in every single immigration stream. These backlogs are in the hundreds of thousands, so how will setting up a new immigration stream in a system that is already bogged down, backlogged and not working actually going to stand with the people of Ukraine and deliver? I ask that in all earnestness to my colleagues across the way.
We saw a bureaucratic system try to evacuate Afghan interpreters and Afghan people during the fall of Kabul. The last thing we need is another bureaucratic mess like that. I am begging my colleagues across the floor to please have visa-free travel for Ukrainians. It is absolutely critical.
What we know as well is that the second part of our motion is dealing with energy security. Forty per cent of the natural gas in the European Union is being provided by Russia. We also know that since December, President Biden has been lobbying nations that produce natural gas to try to take off the pressure from natural gas coming from the Russian Federation.
Canada is the fifth-largest producer of natural gas, but unfortunately we actually cannot help. Why can we not help? It is because we have a no-pipelines government, a government that refuses to take the steps necessary to get this resource to tidewater.
Up until now, that has just caused absolutely devastating economic losses across this country. In 2019, Canada spent $18.9 billion importing foreign oil, and of course this included oil from the Russian Federation. Imagine if that were Canadian oil that we did not have to import. In fact, we export far more oil than we import, but all of the imports are coming to the east coast of Canada. Again, why? It is because we have no way to get oil and oil products to the east coast.
Why can we not do that? It is because we have a government that has made a determined choice to make that impossible. There are consequences to these actions. Can members imagine what would be happening right now if Europe was getting its natural gas from Canada as opposed to Russia? The decisions we make here can actually have implications far beyond our borders.
I know there are conversations and discussions about renewables, and those being the way to go. Of course, everyone wants to move more toward a greener world and economy, but the facts are the facts. It is estimated that natural gas consumption will increase by over 20%. In fact, it is going to increase by close to 22% by 2040, so the need for Canadian natural gas is only going to increase. Yes, there are cleaner ways to deliver energy, such as solar and other things. We know this, but right now natural gas is replacing things such as coal-fired electricity plants. Natural gas is way greener than coal. Why the government continues to fight about this, I cannot understand. How can it not see the importance of energy security not just for Canada, but for stability around the world? Canada can play a critical role in that. Think of where we would be if the energy east pipeline had been built. We would be exporting liquefied natural gas to Europe. It would be a great source of stability and security.
When we talk about needing security, I want to briefly talk about our own security. Canada's CF-18s were scheduled to be out of service in 2020. That was the end. However, the government decided to reinvent a process that had already been done and now we may not get replacements for the CF-18s until 2025 at the earliest. That is five years well beyond their natural life expectancy.
When we look at a crisis such as what is going on in Ukraine, we need bold action. I want to thank the government for the actions it has taken, because it has, but we need it to do more, to do it faster and more urgently, especially when we are looking at having refugees come without visas. I have to go back to that and how critically important this is, because I can bet that if this is a special stream immigration program it will take forever. It is already going to be coming in a couple of weeks. The government could lift visa requirements now. That would help people now. It would not be a program that was going to be designed in a few weeks, then take who knows how long to implement, and then deal with the backlogs already at CIC.
I request that the members of the government vote with us on this motion. I know they condemn the invasion and are trying to stand with Ukraine, but they can do so much more. Let us vote for this motion. Let us get Canadian energy to be a safe and secure source of energy, not just in Canada but around the world. It will bring stability all across the globe.
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