44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 28, 2022 11:00AM
- Mar/28/22 1:06:57 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Windsor West for his question and for his advocacy, and that of others, with respect to not only high-frequency rail but high-speed rail.
We have had studies in southwestern Ontario that showed both the business case and the massive opportunity when it comes to reducing emissions from transportation, which is the largest emission source in Ontario. I think the most recent study was in 2016. If we are going to make progress, we need to make sure that rail is faster, more convenient, more readily available and a more attractive option than building Highway 413, for example.
I am looking forward to continuing that advocacy with the member and others. We also need to make sure that we hold the government to account with respect to not privatizing VIA Rail as concerns about that continue to be heard in this place.
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- Mar/28/22 2:26:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we thank the Parliamentary Budget Officer for his work, which confirms that the price on pollution has a progressive impact and gives eight out of 10 families more back through the climate action rebate than they pay. Putting a price on carbon pollution is recognized as one of the most efficient ways to drive down emissions and fight climate change.
Again, let me point out that the Conservative member for New Brunswick Southwest is on the record as saying that his province should go back to using the federal carbon price. We agree with him.
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- Mar/28/22 2:37:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we all know that climate change is real and that we should protect Canadians from the associated dangers and real costs. We introduced a price on carbon pollution across Canada because it is a market mechanism and the most effective way to ensure that we continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Here are the real numbers for Canadian families. An average family of four in Ontario gets back $745. It is $832 in Manitoba, $1,100 in Saskatchewan and $1,079 in my home province of Alberta. That is real action on climate change and real action on affordability.
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- Mar/28/22 2:45:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what helps them afford new technologies and innovations is not crippling them with the carbon tax.
Let us be clear. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that not only does the carbon tax not reduce emissions—surprise, surprise—it is not revenue-neutral either. What is happening is the Liberal rebate will give farmers pennies on the dollar compared to what they pay. This is devastating to Canadian farmers. The Liberal-NDP carbon tax coalition is going to take millions of dollars out of the pockets of farmers and agri-food businesses. Will the agriculture minister listen to farmers and oppose any increase in the carbon tax on April 1?
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- Mar/28/22 2:45:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our government put a price on carbon pollution, which is ensuring cleaner air, fewer emissions and more money in the pockets of people. As the carbon price increases, these payments also increase, leaving most Canadians with more money in their pocket. This year, as I mentioned before, a family of four will receive up to $745 in rebates in Ontario, $830 in Manitoba and $1,100 in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The quarterly cheques that people will receive are real. Climate change is real.
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- Mar/28/22 2:47:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am not sure my hon. colleague heard me the first time, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirms that the price on pollution is a progressive price on pollution and gives eight out of 10 families more back through the climate action rebate than they pay. Putting a price on carbon pollution is recognized as one of the most efficient ways to drive down emissions and fight climate change. By maintaining a fair price on pollution across the country, we are ensuring that carbon pricing remains affordable for Canadians no matter where they live.
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- Mar/28/22 2:48:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians want bold climate action, but the Liberals' rhetoric just does not match their actions. Despite their promises, the government has the worst climate record of any G7 country. The minister claims they are taking bold action, but since signing the Paris Agreement, Canada is the only country whose emissions have increased every single year, and the Liberals are still handing out billions to big oil and gas. We are running out of time.
We need a bold emissions reduction plan, but how can Canadians trust the government when it does the opposite of what it promises?
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- Mar/28/22 2:58:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada, as the hon. member knows, is committed to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in the coming two years, and we have already phased out eight tax breaks for the fossil fuel sector. We have put in place an escalating pollution pricing system nationally for heavy-emitting industries through 2030 that provides the biggest emitters with the biggest incentives to reduce carbon pollution. We are working on a plan to cap oil and gas sector emissions and ensure the sector makes an achievable contribution to our climate goals.
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- Mar/28/22 2:59:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, again I would emphasize that we are taking bold action on climate change, from putting a price on pollution to investing in clean energy to retrofitting homes to decarbonizing industry.
We see carbon capture and underground storage as part of the solution. It is part of the $100 billion that we are investing in measures to date. We will be doing more. I look forward to the emissions reduction plan that the minister will table shortly.
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- Mar/28/22 3:11:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we are expecting the government to release its plan for emissions reductions. Without seeing it, unfortunately we know that it will fail to meet the urgency of the climate emergency. It is clear on the science that net-zero by 2050 is the wrong target. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made it clear that the only way to hold to the 1.5°C we agreed to in the Paris agreement, and which is what we hope will be a livable level of climate disruption, is to make rapid, deep cuts by 2030, which Canada currently does not have.
Will the government tell us when it will update the target to meet the demands that we agreed to at COP26 in Glasgow?
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- Mar/28/22 3:12:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would say to the House that, through the efforts of millions of Canadians from coast to coast to coast, Canada has successfully flattened its emissions curve. However, as we are seeing from the immediate devastating impacts of a changing climate, I would agree with the hon. member that we need to do more on a faster timeline. That is why our government committed to table the 2030 emissions reduction plan at the end of March 2022, informed by consultations on key emissions reduction numbers. The hon. member will know that the end of March is coming soon.
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- Mar/28/22 4:00:32 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, the member is my neighbour down the road on the 401.
I have to agree, there are technologies, but I actually disagree because we have technologies in oil and gas. We have carbon capture elements in the oil sands right now and are doing an incredible job. Ontario is launching small modular nuclear reactors, which are emission-free. We are looking at many different things.
If we could do what the Ontario Liberals did 20 years ago with LNG in China, we could reduce the world's emissions by up to 50%. We have great Canadian energy and renewables, and we also need to look at the oil and gas sector. It is really important.
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- Mar/28/22 4:03:52 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I might say that the member's family is a very attractive and nice group.
We have heard a lot from this side about climate change, but given the fact that emissions have increased every year the last seven years, is it not just a bunch of hot air?
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- Mar/28/22 6:07:53 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is an honour always to rise in the House to speak on behalf of my constituents in Foothills and, in my role as shadow minister for agriculture and agri-food, to speak on behalf of farmers and farm families across Canada.
We are talking about Bill C-8. There is one key element of Bill C-8 that I want to address today and discuss. That is the sharp contrast between what the Liberal government is proposing in its carbon tax rebate for farmers and what Conservatives are proposing in the private member's bill, Bill C-234, brought forward by my colleague from Huron—Bruce. We have seen a very sharp response from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that certainly counters the claims that have been made by the Liberal government.
From the very beginning, when the Liberals have talked about their carbon tax, they have always said it is going to be revenue-neutral and that whatever anyone pays into the carbon tax they are going to be getting it back in a rebate. We know, from the report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer that came out last week, that this is completely untrue. In fact, Canadian farmers only get about $1.70 for every $1,000 of eligible expenses that they pay on the farm. That is definitely not revenue-neutral. In fact, that is only a fraction of what a farmer or a farm-family producer or agri-food business would spend in a carbon tax.
All of us in this room who have farmers in their constituencies have received carbon tax bills from our constituents. I have had bills that have gone from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars in one month, depending on the size of the operation. Therefore, to say that this carbon tax rebate is going to be revenue-neutral is misleading Canadians and certainly misleading farm families. We know now that the carbon tax is disproportionately more punitive on rural communities and especially on farmers.
If that were not bad enough, we have seen already that the carbon tax has been quite punitive on farmers. We saw the numbers that have been put forward by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. The average farmer paid about $14,000 in the first year of the carbon tax. That went up to $45,000 last year, and this is going to go up again on April 1.
What is that going to mean, moving forward? MNP has stated that, in the canola industry alone, the carbon tax of 2022 cost about $71 million. By 2030, that carbon tax as it continues to increase is going to cost the canola industry alone $1.7 billion. Those are funds that are not going back into investments in technology and innovation. They are not funds that are going into the local rural economies. That money is going directly into Liberal government coffers and is not going to be redistributed, as the Liberals have claimed that it would be, to the farm families who are having to pay that.
This is unsustainable, especially with the precarious situation that Canadian agriculture already faces with skyrocketing input costs on things like fertilizer, herbicides, diesel, propane and natural gas. Farmers are also facing very critical supply-chain problems and a crisis in labour supply. All of these things are having a compound negative impact on Canadian agriculture. It is almost nonsensical at this very tenuous time, when there is a global food shortage looming as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, that the government would continue to add to that burden by increasing the carbon tax on Canadian farmers.
One of the other issues with it that was highlighted by stakeholders is that there are no viable alternatives presented in Bill C-8. I would invite some of my colleagues to come to rural Canada and see exactly how things work. A Canadian farmer cannot haul cattle with an electric car. It is physically impossible. A Canadian grain farmer cannot move his grain from the farm to the terminal on the subway. My riding is 25,000 square kilometres. Public transit does not exist. It certainly does not exist for the average citizen, but it definitely does not exist for a farm operation that needs to move product and drive very long distances to deliver its product to market and that needs to drive a tractor to spray and plant and drive a combine to harvest. There are no alternatives for these things. They have no choice.
However, we have seen that they have managed and worked hard to improve efficiencies: their carbon footprint has gone down substantially as a result of modern technology and innovations such as zero tillage, precision farming and 4R nutrient stewardship. They have gone to great lengths to ensure that Canadian farmers are doing all they can to protect their environment and their soil, but government policy needs to be based on reality and the realities that Canadian farmers and farm families are having to face every single day.
It is even more frustrating for those farmers who are investing money each and every year to improve their operations, because they are the frontline stewards of our environment. I would say that is known around the world, as Canadian farmers are world leaders when it comes to environmental sustainability. Looking at the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on the carbon tax, it clearly states that the carbon tax does not even reduce emissions. It does not force people to reduce emissions because there are no viable alternatives when it comes to our ability to reduce emissions on farms.
In fact, I would argue that it is quite the opposite. There was a study done by the Keystone Agricultural Producers two years ago. The report noted that agriculture has about 100 megatonnes of emissions a year, which has remained quite stable despite a massive increase in yield, so we are doing much better with much less because of our commitment to efficiency and sustainability. However, reading further on, what is very important in that study is that not only do farms emit about 60 megatonnes of C02 a year, but they also capture 100 megatonnes of C02 a year in carbon sequestration by taking care of the land. When that product leaves the farm gate and goes into the market, not only is agriculture already net-zero, but it is actually a 30-megatonne carbon sink.
If that is the case, as agriculture stakeholder groups have said in their data, why are they not being celebrated or encouraged to continue on with the work that they are doing? Instead, we are doing exactly the opposite by punishing them with the carbon tax. They now clearly know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report that they will not be made whole: This is going to cost them money. That is money that they should be able to keep in their pockets and reinvest into their operations, reinvest into new energy-efficient equipment, and reinvest into more efficiencies in terms of agronomy, drones, precision agriculture and those types of things. When we take tens of millions of dollars out of farmers' pockets, it makes it very difficult for them to do that.
In contrast to what is being offered by the Liberals in Bill C-8, the Conservatives have put forward a private member's bill, Bill C-234, that would exempt farm fuel from the carbon tax, specifically natural gas and propane used for heating and cooling barns and buildings, as well as for drying grain. That would allow those farmers to hold that money in their accounts and reinvest those dollars into their operations, again to make them more efficient and more sustainable.
Unlike the Liberals' carbon tax in Bill C-8, Bill C-234 has almost unanimous support among agriculture stakeholders, including the Agriculture Carbon Alliance, which is a coalition of 14 different national farm organizations that represent 190,000 farm businesses and more than $70 billion in cash receipts. I think that is pretty critical, when all of those groups are supporting our approach to reducing emissions compared with the Liberals' obviously failing option. I will give some examples. Mary Robinson, the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, is in support. The Agriculture Carbon Alliance is supporting it. Jan VanderHout, president of Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada, has given notes of support.
In conclusion, to have these stakeholders and our farm families across Canada supporting one direction in addressing emissions that is in complete contrast to and opposite from what the Liberals are proposing in Bill C-8 is, I think, something we need to listen to. Getting money back into producers' hands as quickly as possible is more beneficial, and it is more effective in reducing emissions, becoming more efficient and continuing to ensure that we can not only feed Canadians but carry that burden of feeding the world as well.
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- Mar/28/22 6:18:56 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, let us talk realities, as my colleague likes to say. The Parliamentary Budget Officer was very clear. The carbon tax is not revenue-neutral, as the Liberals claimed it was going to be. This is going to cost farmers. Most importantly, let us talk reality. The Parliamentary Budget Officer also said the carbon tax put forward by the Liberals does not reduce emissions. If we are going to base these policy decisions on science and data, the data clearly says it does not reduce emissions. All it does is cost farmers money and increase inflation.
We know what we have put forward will reduce emissions because farmers are already doing it. We have seen a 60-million megatonne reduction in carbon emissions from farmers. Why have they done that? They have done that because it is the right thing to do. They have done that by reinvesting in their farmers with innovation and technology, not by being forced to do so by bad Liberal policy.
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