44th Parl. 1st Sess.

March 28, 2022 11:00AM

Mr. Dane Lloyd (Sturgeon River—Parkland, CPC)

Mar/28/22 4:20:34 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, the cost of everything under the NDP-Liberal government is getting too damn high. Today we are debating Bill C-8: the government's fiscal update from this past December. December feels like a lifetime ago for me, and I know it feels like a lifetime ago for millions of Canadians. A lot has changed since then, and the tack taken by the government in this legislation shows just how poorly prepared it is for the new reality that we live in, which has changed from just a few months ago. The reality is that inflation is at record highs not seen in over 30 years, and not in my lifetime. The reality is that commodity prices, such as oil, natural gas, copper and steel, just to name a few, are hitting record new highs when adjusted for inflation. These highs in many ways are somewhat beneficial for parts of our economy, but also threaten other parts of our economy and the world economy. The reality is that Canada's real estate sector is probably the most overvalued asset class anywhere in the world. Canadians, especially members of my millennial generation, are either priced out of the housing market altogether or have become so over-leveraged in the effort to get that first home that they are putting themselves in serious financial danger, particularly with rising interest rates. If we see a correction in our real estate sector, it is going to be tremendously bad for members of my generation who are just getting into the housing market for the first time. Given the challenges that I have outlined, I would like to think that the government would want to make an approach and an effort to help Canadian families through this difficult time, but the fact is that as of April 1, only a few days away, the NDP-Liberal government is pledging a further increase to the carbon tax, from $40 a tonne to $50 a tonne. That is a whopping 25% increase, and this price increase will result in more taxes on Canadian families and small businesses at a time when they simply cannot afford them. The government has told us many times to wait a minute: the carbon tax is revenue-neutral, and all funds that have been collected are returned to the provinces and the people they are collected from. However, we heard testimony recently from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that has indicated the carbon tax's effect on the total economy means that six out of 10, or about 60%, of Canadian families are worse off because of the carbon tax. We are seeing that, out of the funds that are collected, only about 90% of the total is being returned directly to families, and over the past number of years several provinces have been significantly shortchanged in what they were supposed to get. The government has been bragging about its new plan for the climate action incentive rebates, saying that it is moving from a one-time annual payment to quarterly payments. I am going to list just why that is not something that one would really want to be bragging about. Folks in Alberta and other provinces who used to get their full climate action rebate after they filed their tax returns are now having to wait several more months just to get that one quarterly payment. I understand that there might be a benefit in stretching the payments out into four quarterly payments throughout the course of the year, but what we know in this highly inflationary environment is that the value of a dollar today is very rapidly diminishing. By spreading this payment out into quarterly payments, the government is actually nickel-and-diming Canadians. It is helping the government's bottom line because it is able to print those dollars at full value and then, over the course of the year with these quarterly payments, it is paying Canadians less money in real value than if it had just issued them a one-time payment. With inflation roiling, this whole shell game about moving from a single climate action incentive payment to quarterly payments is really diminishing value for Canadian families. It is time for the NDP-Liberal government to stop shortchanging these families and show us the money. I will move on to what is happening around the world and how the government is not preparing Canada now, and has not prepared Canada for the past six years. Our European allies and our allies around the world are struggling with their dependence on Russian oil and gas. The Minister of Natural Resources said the government can only offer a measly 300,000 barrels a day of additional production. That is to offset nearly 10 million barrels of lost Russian production. We need to revise the meaning of a drop in the bucket and put Canada's name right in there, because it is simply not enough. Meanwhile, for the past six years under the Liberal government, Canada has failed to complete a major pipeline. We have failed to construct a single liquefied natural gas export facility on our coast, and permits for new oil and gas projects have been stalled indefinitely. I think of the Teck Frontier mine, for example. Another example that is more current is the critical Bay du Nord project that is absolutely vital for the economic health of Newfoundland and Labrador. This is oil that, in the words of the previous minister of natural resources, who is from Newfoundland and Labrador, is the cleanest in the world. It is also oil that would not require the construction of new pipelines, because it is literally on the water. It is a no-brainer, yet the government continues to dither on approving this critical project. We have inflation. We have more taxes. We have projects that are not being approved. They are not moving forward or not being approved at all. Now, we have this unscientific Liberal-NDP vaccine mandate that is really starting to bite our economy. Farmers across Canada, including in my riding, are starting to enter the very busy shipping season, with a lot of our exports heading south to the United States. From before the pandemic until now, the rate to move these goods by truck has nearly doubled. Those farm families who can actually get people to move their products are lucky because it is very difficult to even find a trucker. There was a shortage of about 18,000 truckers before the pandemic and that number has exploded. There are about 16,000 additional truckers we have lost because of vaccine mandates. A lot of unvaccinated truck drivers are solo truckers from the United States who Canadian farmers have come to depend upon to move our goods during this busy time of year because of our integrated supply chains. Instead, because of our border mandates, these truckers are choosing to stay home. It is costing our economy hundreds of millions of dollars. I come from a farm family, and this is a very real reality that families are facing. These truckers are not coming up from the United States. We are not getting our products moved south of the border. It is a real fact on the ground. The food security of our North American supply chain has been put at serious risk. The cost to produce fertilizer is skyrocketing. The government has even announced plans, as I said earlier, to make it more expensive to produce fertilizer. With nearly a quarter of the world's wheat and other cereal crop production at risk due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, what the Government of Canada is doing is simply reckless and irresponsible. The world not only needs Canada's energy; it needs Canada's food. We have the ability to be an agricultural superpower, but instead the NDP-Liberal government wants to manage the decline of some of our most important traditional industries. I understand that members of the government have said they do not want to take lessons from Conservatives, but they do not need to take lessons from Conservatives to look at what people are doing in the provinces and in countries around the world that are even more left-wing than the government. Spain, for example, just announced today that it was cutting the fuel tax on gasoline by 20 cents, meaning 20 cents to the euro. We have the NDP provincial government in British Columbia that announced a rebate for families to help them out at the pumps. It is temporarily cutting fuel taxes because it recognizes that, during this inflationary period, families are hurting. It is offering families further rebates on home heating. We are seeing that in Alberta. It is especially suspending further tax increases such as we will see on April 1 with the Liberal carbon tax. Families cannot afford these tax increases on food, home heating and transportation fuels. That is why Conservatives are calling on the government to use the windfall that it is receiving from these high commodity prices and from its inflationary spending to lower taxes on families. We know that the cost to service this increasing debt, and to pay down this debt in the future, is only going to be a further burden on Canadian families. lt is time to use whatever resources we can to help Canadian families with broad-based tax relief: not boutique tax credits like we see in this bill, but broad-based relief that we know will disproportionately help low- and middle-income earners. We know that cuts to fuel taxes and cuts to consumption taxes have a bigger impact on family budgets for those who make under $50,000 or $100,000. Conservatives are focused on delivering tangible benefits for these working-class Canadians who are increasingly struggling and living paycheque to paycheque. In closing, Bill C-8 has failed to provide the targeted tax relief that families need at this time. It has failed to speed up these resource projects. It has failed to deal with high inflation. That is why the Conservatives cannot support it.

1699 words

All Topics

Hear!
Rabble!
add
star_border
share

SoVote

House Hansard - 47