- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Dufferin—Caledon
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,309.03
- Government Page
- Feb/7/23 3:35:32 p.m.
- Watch
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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- Feb/7/23 3:30:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member and all members of the government waxed poetically about how wonderful the carbon tax is and how it is saving the planet. If it is so effective and so fantastic, why has the government never met a single emissions-reduction target despite bringing in the carbon tax? Why have carbon emissions gone up under the Liberals every single year they have been in government except in the year of the pandemic, when everything was shut down?
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- May/17/22 5:25:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am really happy to participate in this debate. It is hard to know where to start with this motion because, to be kind, it makes very little sense.
The first thing we talk about is record profits or profits. The New Democrats talk about this as if it is something terrible or dirty. How dare a company make a profit? The thing they always have difficulty with, as I do not think there are very many business people in that caucus, is that companies sometimes make profits, yes, and in other years they do not. Profit is what enables companies to invest in things like technology and CCUS. The problem is that right now we have a global search for investment, so we have to compete here in Canada with the investment opportunities being offered all around the world, in particular with CCUS.
What is the alternative? This is where the New Democrats and the Liberals are together on everything. They want to shut down all kinds of development in this country so that they can say they balanced and lowered our carbon emissions. However, guess what? The demand for oil is not going anywhere. The demand for other products in the energy industry is not going anywhere either. Guess what happens. These companies go to other parts of the world to supply that demand. How do they do that? They do it in countries where the environmental standards are lower and where they do not have to worry about their carbon emissions, so we end up with greenhouse gases increasing. Why has so much industry moved to China? It is because it uses coal-fired energy, which is terrible for greenhouse gas emissions.
Rather than trying to stop all of these projects here in this country, why do we not look at making Canada an energy superpower with low-carbon emissions? That is what investments in things like CCUS are going to do. Otherwise, oil and gas production, mineral exploration and anything else will go into higher-intensity production per barrel and per kilogram around the world. The last time I checked, we do not have a carbon dome over Canada. We are not protected by exporting carbon emissions to China or other countries around the world.
This ideological approach actually harms the country. We lose investments in businesses and industry, investments that create good-paying jobs and that allow companies to make profits. Here is what the NDP often forgets: Profits lead to taxes and taxes fund the social services we have in this country. Taxes fund everything. Corporations have to be profitable in order for us as a country to have tax revenue to provide the services we have in this country.
Why the New Democrats are so unhappy that there are profits in the oil and gas sector I do not know. The profits and taxes from the oil and gas sector have funded so much across this country, and somehow they pretend they do not. It is terrible. The New Democrats talk about the record oil profits of those terrible companies, but they are paying loads of taxes that provide the social safety net in this country.
It is completely irresponsible to say there should be no CCUS in this country for oil and gas. What would that do? As I have said before, it would dramatically reduce oil and gas in this country. The New Democrats would say that is great; that is what we want to do, except the demand does not go anywhere. Rather, it just shifts to other countries that will not worry about their carbon emissions and may not worry about other environmental standards.
Canada cannot go to the dark ages of investment that this NDP motion is trying to take us to. The motion has to be opposed. The cognitive dissonance the NDP has that somehow stopping all oil and gas production in Canada will solve the problem does not make any sense and does not work. Let us vote against this motion.
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- Apr/7/22 2:29:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, well, let us talk about investments. We have all heard of the Midas touch. It turns things to gold. We have the Liberal touch, and it is not gold.
Liberals have invested billions of dollars to increase housing affordability. What has happened? Housing prices have doubled. They spent $60 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and emissions went up. Helping the middle class? Sixty per cent of Canadians are having trouble making ends meet.
How is it when the Liberal government spends money, Canadians just end up further behind?
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- Apr/7/22 2:28:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday I asked the Prime Minister to acknowledge the economic pain that Canadians are suffering. Rather than answering, he chose insults.
Let us try again. Former Liberal MP Dan McTeague said food prices are going to go up 30% to 35% as a result of increases in diesel prices. Gas and diesel are up, food prices are up and Canadians are scrambling to make ends meet. All the while, greenhouse gases go up as well.
Will the Prime Minister just admit, as confession is good for the soul, that his environmental and economic policies are a failure and apologize to Canadians?
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- Mar/29/22 2:25:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is not when the cost to the Canadian economy is factored in though, right? They cannot even do that simple math. Eight minus four is all they can do.
Let us talk about some other Liberal math. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change said at committee that they have spent $60 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 2016. Guess what. Emissions have gone up. If the Liberals are going to spend $60 billion to increase carbon emissions, how many trillions are they going to spend to ruin the financial security of Canadians with this plan?
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- Mar/29/22 2:23:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today the Liberals released their 2030 emissions reduction plan, which is their attempt to reduce emissions across the Canadian economy, but last week the PBO showed that the Liberals did not actually account for the cost of something simple, such as the carbon tax, across the Canadian economy.
If they were that lazy and sloppy in their examination of the carbon tax, how can Canadians have any faith that a multi-sector approach will not be a disaster for Canadian jobs and pocketbooks?
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