44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 1, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/1/23 10:24:28 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, once again the Conservatives are masters of misinformation. The hon. member will know that the federal carbon price does not apply in Quebec.
To take a little trip down memory lane, in 2007, the Harper government proposed a $15-a-tonne carbon tax. In 2008, the Conservatives promised a cap and trade system, and in 2011, they abandoned this idea, and, for that matter, any other climate measure. During the 2021 election campaign, every person on that side of the aisle campaigned on a carbon price. What the heck is going on?
The Leader of the Opposition has been leader now for 263 days. Where is his climate plan, and when are the Conservatives going to stop flip-flopping?
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- Jun/1/23 10:25:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, in 2029-30, the carbon tax will be $170 per tonne. That is the Liberal plan. Here is what the carbon tax has achieved so far: Absolutely no greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets have been met. According to the UN report that my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent will be talking about, Canada ranks 58th out of 63 countries.
I would like to remind my colleague that I said Quebec has a provincial cap-and-trade system. I made that absolutely clear. Quebec has a different carbon pricing system, but Quebeckers are still paying a carbon tax under another system, and the government wants to impose a new tax that will cost families an extra $436 per year.
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- Jun/1/23 10:27:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, right now as we speak, Canada is experiencing major climatic shifts. The Atlantic provinces have seen flooding and forest fires. Quebec is seeing more and more forest fires. What impact has the carbon tax had in preventing these events? None.
The Department of Finance estimates that between the years 2019-20 and 2022-23, the federal government accumulated $21.2 billion in revenues from carbon pricing. Of this money, SMEs received only $35 million in assistance, or compensation, as my colleague put it.
That is preposterous. This is not a plan to fight climate change; it is a plan to tax Canadians.
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- Jun/1/23 10:54:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate it every time my colleague gets up to speak in the House of Commons. However, in 2018, an economist from Yale named William Nordhaus came out with his concept of a carbon tax. At that point in time, his concept was for $44 per tonne, far from the $170 per tonne that Canada is moving towards here very quickly. He also said that it had to be efficient, because it is the only mechanism to apply across the economy to make things balanced. With the current government, it has a carbon tax. Now it has a clean fuel standard and clean electricity regulations. There are all kinds of other taxes it is putting on top of this, and the oil industry in Canada is the only industry that pays royalties to the federal government and the provincial governments, mostly. This is a problem.
There are significant regulations and additional taxes being layered on that are far in excess of what any academic, economist or financial person has ever seen. Can my colleague square this with me in terms of how he sees a carbon tax actually working?
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- Jun/1/23 10:55:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy working with the hon. member on the environment committee. We have a good spirit of collaboration there.
I would just start by saying that the party opposite campaigned on a clean fuel regulation and a price on pollution. We used to agree.
The carbon price is not the only thing we are doing, as the hon. member mentioned. There are things on the incentive side of the question. We are working with the oil and gas sector. We are putting forward investment tax credits to support carbon capture, to support hydrogen and, importantly, to support the province of Alberta, where that important sector is located.
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- Jun/1/23 10:56:26 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. He said that, in the last budget, the government invested a lot of money in carbon capture, which is an extremely controversial technology. It is of absolutely no use in the fight against climate change. That carbon does not go away; it just gets buried in the ground.
In the latest budget, the government is giving billions of dollars in tax credits to oil companies, which, I would remind the House, netted over $200 billion in 2022.
Two weeks ago, I asked the Minister of Housing a question in committee of the whole. I am going to ask him that question again. Could that money—those tax credits and the billions of dollars the government is still giving oil companies—have been used to help with housing, seniors and health care?
There are huge mental health issues across the country. Does my colleague think that money could have been used for better things than a technology that actually does absolutely nothing?
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- Jun/1/23 10:57:20 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we need to do both. The energy transition includes carbon capture, an important technology that is going to allow us to take advantage of our energy resources without the pollution. We need to help with the energy transition, and we need to invest in housing.
We have a $170 billion national housing strategy. I was very fortunate to be involved in the early stages. On the housing front, it is a collective effort by the federal government, provinces and territories. We are on it. The hon. member raises a very good point.
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- Jun/1/23 11:09:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, that was quite a show we just had from the member.
In my province, we have regulated gas pricing, so we understand locally just how much the taxes and regulations cost consumers. Right now before the province, we see a request to raise the carbon tax by 3.25¢. What is more interesting is that the clean fuel standard is going to add 7.5¢ a litre on July 1. This is the headline of the CBC back home right now: “New Brunswick consumers may face double carbon charges on July 1”. The total is 12.4¢ with the HST, because, of course, with the Liberals it is a tax and another tax, a tax on a tax.
My last point is this. The CTF, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, has said that the tax will be 14¢, and by 2030 will be three times that, at 41¢. That is where we get the “triple, triple, triple”.
With the Liberals, it is all taxes, more taxes and taxes on top of them all the time. What does the member have to say about that?
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- Jun/1/23 11:10:27 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I go back to the point that, unlike Milton Friedman's price on carbon model, ours includes a dividend to individual taxpayers, and that is what makes the price on carbon essentially a transfer. That is what I would say in response to the member's question.
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- Jun/1/23 11:14:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, any kind of an analysis around environmental measures, including the price on carbon, must take into account the effects of doing nothing.
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- Jun/1/23 11:26:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my Bloc colleague said that the Conservative Party is the party of populism. Could he define the word “populism”? A large number of Canadians elected the Conservative Party to represent them in the House of Commons.
Now, a second carbon tax is about to be forced on Canadians. Another tax on clean electricity regulation is going to be imposed in July, and yet another tax on electricity is coming later.
Among the Government of Canada's many proposals, is there a tax on logging? We now know that trees store carbon and release it into the environment. Would my colleague agree with me on that point?
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- Jun/1/23 11:40:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. He sits with me on the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
Trees capture CO2 up to about the age of 70. There is some carbon capture going on there, but the problem is that, when it was announced in 2019 that two billion trees would be planted, the Trans Mountain pipeline was under construction. Trans Mountain far exceeds the carbon that two billion trees could ever capture.
Of course, we should plant trees. That said, I do not believe anyone is foolish enough to believe that two billion trees will make up for greenhouse gas emissions.
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- Jun/1/23 11:43:58 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have talked at length about what the Conservatives brought to the table for their opposition day, but the government is essentially no different.
To return to the topic of carbon capture and storage, it is like a magic pill for them too. They think it will solve everything. I think that both the Conservatives and the government in power are behaving more like pawns of the oil and gas oligarchs.
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- Jun/1/23 11:58:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his question.
This is a complex issue because we have different systems. Quebec has had a carbon exchange in place for a number of years now. The funny thing is that the carbon exchange was implemented by Jean Charest when he was premier of Quebec, and he recently ran for Conservative Party leader, so that idea came from someone within their own ranks.
We do need to think about it. The important thing is that we take action. The systems may be different, but what I want and what the NDP wants is for all of the provinces to make an extra effort because, right now, we are not doing enough. The federal government has this small measure, but unfortunately, it should be doing a lot more and putting an end to oil and gas projects.
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- Jun/1/23 12:09:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was interesting to hear my NDP colleague across the way. This is from a party that just had a motion this week to talk about foreign interference, that it was going to tackle it, and then, within hours, it had backed down and said that that it was not going to pull the government down, it is not that serious and it is still going to support the government.
The question is about the carbon tax. He gets convoluted and caught up in whether it is a regulation or a tax, but in the end, what happens is that it costs his citizens in Skeena—Bulkley Valley a lot more. What I am hearing from Skeena—Bulkley Valley residents is that he does not get it. They have plans that do not actually reduce emissions but still keep charging Canadians more and, with the new tax, even more.
When is the NDP actually going to listen to its constituents and deal with the real issue of affordability in Canada?
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- Jun/1/23 12:13:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. Earlier we heard the Conservatives touting carbon capture technologies, and we often see the Liberals doing the same. However, just about every scientist in the world criticizes those technologies. The Conservatives praise this technology a lot, saying that it is a cure-all, a miracle, and that, in the end, it will mean oil sands development is not so bad for the environment.
This morning, I heard a Conservative MP push the envelope even further, incredibly enough. He talked about the forestry industry. We know that trees capture carbon. This MP asked whether we should also tax the forestry industry because trees capture carbon.
When misinformation like that is sent out to the public, does it not make things even more confusing for citizens? Does it not make the job even harder for those who want to provide correct information?
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- Jun/1/23 12:26:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am the member for Thérèse-De Blainville, not for Newfoundland and Labrador. As we know, whether we are in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec or anywhere else in Canada, the main reason that should motivate us to be here is to help significantly reduce the impact of our carbon footprint on citizens.
What does my colleague think and what does he have to say to his fellow citizens about the costs generated by the failure to act on climate change, which is affecting their living conditions and their health?
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- Jun/1/23 12:40:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have stood for exactly the same thing the entire time. When Prime Minister Harper was in office, he did not implement a carbon tax. He thoroughly and forcefully rejected the carbon tax the Liberal Party has proposed. Instead what he did was incentivize technology. That is why we reduced greenhouse gas emissions while growing the economy in this country. For example, we worked with the Province of Alberta and its tier system, which encourages large industrial energy companies to reinvest in reducing the intensity of their emissions. They succeeded, reducing emissions per barrel by approximately 30%.
This approach works. By using market forces and competitive technology, our free enterprise system can reduce emissions and build a cleaner, greener future that brings powerful paycheques home to Canadians.
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- Jun/1/23 12:42:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, are the members of the Bloc Québécois capable of being reasonable? Perhaps they are, but they certainly are not acting like it. We do not know why they are hardly ever reasonable. The members of the Bloc Québécois agree with the Liberals and the New Democrats on almost every political issue, except the location of the nation's capital. That is the only issue they disagree on.
The member mentioned that I said that nine out of 10 young people cannot buy a home. He says that has nothing to do with the carbon tax. I am sorry, but houses need to be heated, and heating requires energy. The carbon tax increases the cost of home heating, which means that many young people cannot afford a home. That is one of the reasons we want to eliminate this carbon tax.
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- Jun/1/23 12:44:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are still against the carbon tax. The member will never be able to quote any statement made by me at any point in my political career that supports a tax on carbon. I have always been against it and I still am. The New Democrats want to raise taxes and income tax on the backs of the working class. The New Democrats are for the ultra rich, whom the government makes richer. We stand for ordinary folk, the people who work.
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