- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Huron—Bruce
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,348.62
- Government Page
moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it has been nice to see you up in the chair today, so congratulations on the good job you are doing up there.
I look forward to hearing the member for Regina—Lewvan in his speech later today. It will be interesting to hear his perspective from Saskatchewan, after me or later in the hour.
This private member's bill would amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act. What does it mean? Basically, there is an issue on farm today in the four backstop provinces. Really the issue is around natural gas and propane. Therefore, for farmers who have livestock in their barn, whether it be hogs, small chicks in a chicken operation, layer hens or turkeys, or whatever it is, wherever there needs to be heat to make the animals safe and healthy, we are asking for an amendment, through the bill, so that the carbon tax would be taken off. That is a pretty reasonable ask.
In addition to that, on farm at harvest time when farmers are taking their crops off, they need to be dried in a reasonable period of time and they need to be dried to a reasonable percentage of moisture. If they are using natural gas or propane to do that, which almost everybody is, we are asking that the carbon tax be taken off those bills. That is basically what we are asking for. In addition, for people growing food in a building, like on a mushroom farm or something like that, we are asking for the tax to be taken off as well. This is a basic principle, in my opinion. While I am thinking about it, if people are flaking corn to feed to their feedlot or such on farm, that would be another application.
For some of these bills, somebody watching at home might think it is a couple of dollars here or a couple of dollars there. In actual fact, in some cases, the bills actually are quite substantial.
Before I get into this too far, I would also like to thank the member for Northumberland—Peterborough South. He presented a similar bill in the previous Parliament: Bill C-206. He did a nice job on that and so I am kind of taking over the reins in this Parliament on the bill. As well, I would like to thank our agriculture critic, the member of Parliament for Foothills; the agriculture committee; and parliamentarians across many different parties who have indicated their support for this bill.
Most people here, in light of events of the last year and even longer, recognize the importance of having food security in Canada be the number one priority or in the top five priorities. To me, it is unethical for a government to do anything that would put the food security of the country at a potential risk. Food security should be of the utmost importance. Fortunately, in Canada, we rarely see our store shelves other than full. However, during COVID time, we saw that store shelves were not always full and some of the fear that set in among our population when that happens. Therefore, anything that we can do to help farmers and reduce their costs; provide certainty in their industry, as much as it can be in farming; and enable them to deliver healthy, wholesome products to consumers should be on our minds at all times here in Parliament.
In addition to that, let us think about what takes place on a farm besides farming. Farmers are nature's stewards. Whether they have 100 acres or 5,000 acres, they are nature's stewards. They maintain the woodlots on their farms. They cherish those. They spend a lot of time in those to make sure the biodiversity is there and everything else is taken care of. In the fields and hills, whatever is the layout of their farm, they may do no-till drilling and they may do cover crops in the fall. They do ethical crop rotations throughout a normal cycle, meaning they could plant corn in one period of time and at a later period of time another crop in the basic rotation.
In Ontario, we have corn, beans, wheat and maybe a pasture for a while. This is what farmers do because they love farming. It is a multi-generational profession. It is a calling. If the farm is not healthy, if the soil is not healthy, the bottom line is not healthy. Farmers always realize this.
In addition to this, a number of years ago in a previous government, we also implemented changes to the regulations on diesel engines, for NOx and SOx. Even the combustion engines on farms today are a much cleaner version than their predecessors.
These are some important points I feel, in the debate that we are having today and we had in the previous Parliament, add some context to what we are doing.
I have heard this from some members of Parliament when talking about the rebate that was introduced in the fall statement a while ago, on the per $1,000 rebate. It was $1.47 and I believe in the next calendar year, it was $1.73 per $1,000. This is an important point to highlight the ineffectiveness of this rebate.
I will just give a brief overview. A friend of mine is a pork farmer and he sent me a bill over a year ago. I will just read it out to members. He has a sizable hog farm in the region. He sent me his heating bill for the period of November 30 to December 31, 2021. He is fortunate enough that his farm uses natural gas; it is an Enbridge bill. This is for the month of December.
The customer was charged delivery, admin fee, transportation by Enbridge, and gas supply charge for one month on one of his pig barns was just under $8,500 before the carbon tax. The carbon tax on that bill was $2,918. If we factor that into an $8,400 bill for one month, that gives us an indication of the carbon tax that they were paying. We know that rate is increasing in 2023.
In addition to that, they also pay HST on that bill. They can get a rebate for that on their input tax credit, but depending on their filing, that rebate could be some time away.
Let us look at that bill of $8,473 and the $2,918 on the carbon tax. Remember earlier I said the rebate is $1.47 per $1,000 and moving up to $1.73 per $1,000. The rebate this farmer will receive on his allowable expenses is under $15. If we think about it, it is per $1,000. He has paid over $2,900 on the carbon tax and he gets $15 back.
He is not producing widgets. He is producing food that will go on the plates of Ontarians and Canadians from one coast to the other. That gives members an idea, because that will likely come up today, about the rebate. The rebate falls very short.
The other point I would like to mention, and I will give credit to my colleagues from the Bloc and NDP, because they made a comment, which is pretty straightforward, that there is no other option. We also understand this. There is no other viable option out there today.
To dry corn in the fall in a reasonable period of time, farmers need a fossil fuel. They need propane or natural gas. Solar is not going to do it. It would not do it and it certainly is not going to do it in the month of October. That is the reality. When the Bloc and NDP see it that way, that is a logical step for them to make and a logical point to make.
There are no viable options today to heat one's barn other than propane or natural gas. Maybe down the road there will be. There was a Liberal member of Parliament who talked about heat pumps. Well, it will not be today or tomorrow, but maybe some day way out in the future, that will be viable option.
The other comment from the same member of Parliament was that maybe, if farmers insulated their barns better, it might help fix the problem. However, we are not talking about Old MacDonald's barn. These are, in most cases, modern-built barns, which obviously fit within the Canadian building code. In my province we have Ontario's building code, so obviously, snow load, insulation, etc. are all taken care of.
Thinking about some other way to heat one's barn is certainly a noble venture for the future. I think we could all support that. We can always look for ways to improve insulation, but let us be real. It is not like these barns are not insulated. Yes, if one goes to their grandpa's bank barn that was built in 1881, it may not have as much insulation, but that is not the case for the majority of barns, and certainly when we get into poultry and pork today, that is obviously not the case.
Another issue I take issue with, and most members of Parliament who represent rural ridings would see this as well, is that farmers are always asked to be the government's line of credit. What I mean is that, when we look at our business risk management programs, which include AgriStability and others, farmers pay their money to qualify to be in the program. They see how the year goes, make a submission with their accountant and then find out if they will get any money back with the agricultural stabilization program. However, that whole time, they are the government's line of credit.
In addition to that, with the HST that I mentioned before, if a farmer makes a large purchase, it could be holding tens of thousands of dollars of HST that farmer is owed. In some cases, it is for months, and in some cases that we have had in our office, it is close to a year. Therefore, there are issues that are kind of ongoing.
In the case of the Liberal's rebate program, we are once again asking farmers to be a line of credit, and I do not think that is fair. Agriculture is not an industry that has 70% gross margins. These are modest margins, so this is a way to help out.
Agriculture is the top economic driver in the province of Ontario, where I represent, and other members of Parliament who are here for their province, and it may be one, two or three, know that farmers are price-takers, not price-makers. There are world events that take place. There is the Midwest harvest, the harvest in Brazil, Chicago, ports, rails, conflicts in Ukraine and other places, and they all affect what happens down the country gravel roads in my riding and many others. These are the ways we can help them out.
Input prices are rising. It is incredible. I was at both cattle producers' AGMs in my riding, and it was amazing to hear what their input costs are, as well as interest rates. For anybody who carries an operating line of credit, it is staggering how much, in 12 to 15 months, this has changed their position.
If we think about it, people go to the grocery store every day and wonder how it could cost so much. Just something like this is a good indication of where inflation begins. Anything we can do to help consumers out and help farmers out, I think we should get behind in the House of Commons. In addition, as I said, there are no other options out there today. Any support we can have, I appreciate.
2009 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
moved that Bill C-234, An Act to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today on this bill. Through the years I have had the honour and privilege of presenting private member's bills and motions. I had one pass many years ago, and I had one or two that did not pass.
First of all, I would like to thank the member of Parliament for Foothills and the member of Parliament for Northumberland—Peterborough South who presented Bill C-206 in the last Parliament. I would also thank the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound and all of the other members of Parliament in my party and caucus who have a deep love and admiration for agriculture and the farm families that do the work each and every day.
The issue that I am trying to fix with this private member's bill is the application of the carbon tax on natural gas and propane. It is for on-farm agriculture uses to dry grain and heat livestock barns where there may be a variety of livestock, but mainly poultry and pork in these cases. The problem is with the current carbon tax on these areas. I will give one example of a pork farmer in my riding who sent me his December usage of natural gas. The natural gas bill for his hog barn was $11,391 in total. The carbon tax was $2,918, which is 25% of the base bill. When we throw the HST on, which is almost $1,500, 34% of the bill is in carbon tax and HST. That is really the problem.
There are tight margins in agriculture and, when we get into the drying of grains in the fall, these are foods that we eat. Farmers are price-takers; they are not price-makers. They do not set the price; they take the price. Anybody in the House or those listening today well understand the issue with that. On the flip side, when it is time to pay for inputs, machinery, etc., we obviously know the price. There are a lot of improvements we could make.
One of my other issues with the carbon tax specifically on farmers, which I have said in the House of Commons before, is that farm producers and farmers do not get credit for any of the environmental good that they do on their farms up and down the country roads. If we look at what farmers are able to do on their farms, first of all, they get no credit for any of the carbon sequestration of their crops. They get no credit for their grasslands or woodlots. There is no credit for that.
We are trying to right an environmental wrong and a taxation wrong to make it fair for farmers. It is very difficult to recognize all of the different ways in which farmers do good. Putting a carbon tax on their efforts does not really recognize the environmental benefit they have. Many members of Parliament in the House today have had the opportunity to tour many farms, conservation areas and livestock barns, and they see the good work that they do.
Another issue that is recognized in this bill is that farmers are always asked to be the government's line of credit. People may ask what that means. What I mean by this is that, if we look at the business risk management programs available to farmers, AgriStability being one of them, if they were able to trigger a payment with AgriStability, their expenses are incurred so much earlier. Farmers carry the cost and at the end they receive. It is the same with HST. There have been issues through the years with certain producers where their HST was hung up, so that they are the line of credit in some cases. It was three months, four months, six months, maybe even a year before they would get their HST rebate.
Now we have another program that is going to create a level of bureaucracy. We have a program that is once again going to ask the farmer to be the line of credit. To give an example, farmers could pay a propane or natural gas bill on their poultry or hog barn in January and February of 2022 and that almost $3,000 in carbon tax they paid on their bill could be carried all the way through the year. They could dry their grains in September, October or November, depending on how the harvest went, and then carry all of those costs all through the entire year and file their taxes, depending on when their fiscal year end is, in June of 2023. When do members think those farmers would receive their rebate?
That is a long time to be once again asking farm producers or farm families to carry these expenses. Then we also calculate the increasing costs of all the inputs, whether feed for livestock or fertilizer. We have seen the crazy prices. Their lines of credit are continually edging up and now they are faced with doing this.
According to Bill C-8, in the fall update on page 83, the rebate is $1.73. When I read that I thought it was per hundred dollars of eligible expenses, but it is actually per thousand dollars of eligible expenses. Therefore, if farmers have a million dollars in eligible expenses on their farms, they would not even receive a $1,800 rebate.
For the farm I spoke about a second ago, one bill was almost $3,000, so it is not neutral. It will not be neutral. If there are statistics to show otherwise, I would like to see them, but based on page 83 of this statement, it does not look like it. A month or two ago, the member for Foothills showed me a bill for a farmer in his province, and it might have been in his riding, I cannot remember, that was twice that amount. Can members imagine $5,500 being paid in carbon tax for one month? Therefore, $1,700 is not going to cut it.
We have talked about carbon sequestration through their crops, grasslands and woodlots. Farmers plant trees on their farms. They have windrows. In Ontario, and I am sure in many other provinces, we have nutrient management plans for how and when manure is spread across their fields. With technology we have precision spraying of herbicides and pesticides, and even precision fertilizing. This is not our great-grandfather's farms. These are very progressive farms across this country today with a high degree of professionalism and a love for agriculture and the environment.
If we take a woodlot in Huron County or Bruce County, we will see some of the best-managed woodlots in all the land. That is over the last 10 years when we have been dealing with the emerald ash borer on our ash trees. Most of those have been cleared out of woodlots and maple and other trees have come up in their place, but these are well-maintained woodlots that sequester carbon.
The other thing I would like to mention is crop rotation. I know the member for Foothills brought it up in question period today and the agriculture minister made a comment the other day in question period about it, as if it was some sort of new idea. I am sure she misspoke in question period, but we can go back to textbooks from probably the twenties and thirties talking about crop rotation and crop cover. Most of the farmers in my area plant late summer and early fall crops as well for cover crops. There is quite a bit that goes on.
The other thing I would like to recognize is all the conservation authorities and environmental groups in our communities. One that is not too far from where I live is the Pine River Watershed Initiative Network, which plants trees and manages water on farms. There are also crop and soil groups in Huron County, Bruce County and Grey County, all the way through the area, doing some amazing research on drainage and being able to hold some of those spring rains and thaws, hold some of that water, back in the drain itself. It is a very exciting technology.
Another thing I would like to talk about is our food sovereignty. We have seen a lot of this in the last number of years, maybe perhaps most recently in the past little while. In Ontario, we ship hogs, for example, to Burlington and other places like Conestoga. We also ship hogs to Quebec. We actually ship hogs to Manitoba as well, to Brandon. Although it is good for them to have those hogs in the production line, it makes no sense at all for farmers in southwestern Ontario to ship hogs in transport trucks across the provinces to their destination. We should be able to process them in our own regions. For that, I would say that I do think the government needs to take a real long look at food sovereignty in each province and, of course, in our country, as well as identifying strategic mines or opportunities.
Phosphates are a great example, with the latest embargo and tariffs from Russia, of where there are opportunities in our own country to speed up environmental assessments. Do it right but make sure they are streamlined so that we can mine our own goods and raw materials in our own country to support the entire cycle of agriculture in our country. Today we do not have that and I do think that should be a priority.
How much money does it take to make one dollar on a farm? It takes millions, and the margins are tight. People may drive up and down the road if they are going to their cottage or wherever else they are going on a weekend and the might look at how nice the farm looks from the truck they are driving. The reality is that it took multiple generations working seven days a week, 365 days a year, for margins that would put fear into most people. If they knew how much capital investment, debt and line of credit was at risk each and every day to earn a few dollars on $100, they would be so impressed.
The reason I am saying this is that the carbon tax is punitive even for the existence of a farm operation. I have numerous calls in a week from different farmers commenting on the cost of doing business in 2022. Yes, if one were to look at the spot prices or futures prices for soybeans, corn, wheat or any of those, it does look pretty amazing. Unfortunately, for farmers, costs have gone in lockstep. In some cases, they have actually increased at a higher rate.
Where can we help them? We can help them with the carbon tax. We can help them by cutting the carbon tax and eliminating the carbon tax on farms. It does not get recycled. The carbon tax that they collect on farmers does not all go back to farmers. It does not go back into some environmental farm plan. It does not. They may say that it goes in dollar for dollar, but it does not.
The quickest and most efficient way to help agriculture and to recognize the environmental benefit the industry provides the country, without creating a bureaucracy and without hiring consultants to walk the farm, go through the woodlot and come up with an idea of how much was actually sequestered, is to cut it off right at the source. Do not make the farmer be the line of credit for the government on one more program. Do not tell them it is going to be neutral when we know it is $1.73 per thousand dollars. Let us not do that.
There are certain industries, I am sure, in Canada that do not provide a whole lot of environmental benefit to the country. Farming is not one of them. It is an organization with the most grassroots, environmental preservation organizations someone will ever see. If one were to go to a Ducks Unlimited auction or a conservation authority fundraiser, who would be there? It is the townspeople, for sure, but it is also the farmers. The farmers come out. In some cases, it is the conservation authority that gives them a hard time, but they are still out there to support the cause because they understand the relationship between productive land and the environment.
I really enjoyed the debate today. It is an honour to do this. I look forward to having discussions, hearing what the other parties have to say and what their thoughts are, and hopefully, with their good will, seeing it in committee.
I am thankful for the opportunity today and I look forward to the questions.
2188 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
