44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 1, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/1/23 12:22:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is not nearly enough time to express the disgust that the people in Newfoundland and Labrador have for the way the people who are here representing them have been voting.
We have come with motions to get rid of the carbon tax, to reduce these inflationary taxes, and now we have another one coming: the standard. Will these members from Newfoundland and Labrador, my six colleagues across the way, vote with their people? This is the $64 question. Are they going to vote to diminish the tax burden that is hauling them down and making them suffer?
The six Liberal MPs who sit over there were not sent here to inflict suffering on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. They were sent here to represent them, to bring them up and to make their standard of living better.
An. hon. member: And they are.
Mr. Clifford Small: Madam Speaker, I just received a little heckling. Yes, the Liberals have done a great job over there. They delayed the Bay du Nord project by four years. They put well over 100 conditions on the Bay du Nord project. We are now going to lose three years of royalties on nearly 800 million barrels of oil a year because of the great work they have done.
I implore the six members from Newfoundland and Labrador to vote with the goodness in their hearts that I am sure they have. They need to stand up for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and vote yes to our Conservative motion.
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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 12:29:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the chance to follow the great member from Newfoundland and Labrador, a man who has a stronger and more honest and powerful voice for Newfoundland and Labrador than all other MPs from that province combined. He understands that his job is to be the voice of Newfoundland in Ottawa, not the voice of Ottawa in Newfoundland. Indeed, that is all of our roles.
Here we are today in a country where nine in 10 young people believe they will never be able to afford a home, something that would have been unimaginable eight years ago. There are 1.5 million Canadians eating at food banks, and one in five are skipping breakfast, lunch or dinner because they cannot afford the cost of food. What do the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc think is the remedy for all of that? It is a 61¢-a-litre carbon tax.
Let us go back, though, and examine the history of this tax. First, the Prime Minister said that it would give people more money than they pay, a tax that makes them better off. He said he would send out cheques to give people back the money they paid. It turns out that the Parliamentary Budget Officer he named proved that people will end up paying approximately $1,500 more in taxes than they get back in rebates. Then the Prime Minister said the tax would never go above $50 a tonne, but what he realized was that his tax was so ineffective at tackling emissions that he would have to raise it more than triple that $50. Of course, that news came out after the election rather than before.
Another falsehood is that he said this tax would help us meet our emissions reduction targets. He has missed every single target he has set. He did not even meet them in the year 2020, when Canadians were locked down and banned from using their automobiles. Even then, his tax was so ineffective that it did not reach the targets he set. Those are three falsehoods on which he built the tax in the first place.
When the first tax failed, what was his solution? It was to bring in another one. If it failed once, do the same thing all over again. The definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again expecting to get a different result.
The Liberals now have a second carbon tax. The first one will take the price of a litre up 41¢ and the second will bring it up another 17¢, to a total of 58¢ a litre. However, they are not done yet. They want to charge HST on the tax and the tax, to get it up to a full 61¢ a litre in taxes. We can imagine, then, that a cost of a litre of gas will be two dollars, three dollars or maybe four dollars if the Prime Minister has his way.
We should keep in mind that higher gas prices are not a bug; they are a feature of Liberal Party policy. The goal is to raise gas prices. That is not a secondary consequence. It is the policy, and it is a policy supported by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois. The NDP, which pioneered the carbon tax, brought it to B.C. and has raised it in that province higher than anywhere else, is voting with its Liberal bosses in Ottawa to more than triple the carbon tax on British Columbians.
What are the consequences of a tax on energy? When one taxes energy, one taxes everything, because everything has to be dug, built, moved, cooled and heated using energy. Let us start with food. If we tax the farmer who grows the food and the trucker who ships the food, we ultimately tax the food itself. This is at a time when food price inflation is at a 40-year high.
We just got more evidence. The Prime Minister told us inflation is on the decline. Worry not; it is all over. The nightmare has ended and inflation is going away. What happened in the month of April? Inflation shot up again. Why did it shoot up in April? What happened in the last part of March? There were two things. One was that the finance minister introduced $60 billion of new inflationary spending, or, as she called it, gas on the inflationary fire, two days before the start of April. Then the carbon tax hit on April 1, April Fool's Day. The joke is on Canadians. The tax hits, the deficits hit and inflation is back on the rise. It is cause and effect.
However, they are just getting started. The tax right now is only 14¢ a litre. We used to say “triple, triple, triple”, but it is not triple anymore. The Liberals want to quadruple it and more, from 14¢—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Hon. Pierre Poilievre: Madam Speaker, it is quadruple, quadruple, quadruple, quadruple. There is a tongue twister, but it is going to be even more painful to pay than to say.
We have families already living in poverty, and we know that the rich guys will be fine. They have no problem. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, this latest carbon tax will hit the poorest people the worst. Those with the least will pay the most, because energy constitutes a bigger part of their family budget. Rich people spend a smaller amount of their family budget on energy.
We know that it will affect the single mom, the truck driver, the barber and the student who is trying to scrape together an extra $4,000 or $5,000 a year as part of his 25-year plan to save for a down payment. Those are the people who will end up paying this tax, and for what? Canada places 58th out of 63 nations in the climate change implementation index. We are behind the rest of the world. According to this index, China has a better record than the Liberal government. It is worse than the dictatorship the Prime Minister so admires when it comes to climate matters.
We get all the pain and none of the gain. If the Liberals want a real plan for climate change, why not technology and not taxes. Let us speed up and lower the cost of carbon-free energy.
Let us cut through the red tape and allow Quebec to build hydroelectric dams. This would allow Quebeckers to double the amount of electricity available for electrification. Under my leadership, the government will allow Quebec to speed up construction of this green energy network.
We could approve the wave power that Nova Scotia was attempting to permit with a private sector company, using tidal forces to bring electricity to the great shores of Nova Scotia and power its grid with lower emissions. I would have approved that in a millisecond. The bureaucratic gatekeepers blocked it for years, and the company got up and left. I will green-light green projects like that. I will green-light nuclear energy, allowing for small modular nuclear reactors to electrify places like Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. They have already signed memoranda of understanding to move forward with nuclear power, but not if it takes 25 years to get it permitted.
What kind of safety and environmental knowledge would we gain in the last 17 years of that process that we could not gain in the first three years? Why not compress the work? Yes, let us protect safety. Yes, let us protect the environment. However, let us do it quickly, because our environment and our energy grid cannot wait.
Finally, for carbon capture and storage, we would incentivize our mighty energy sector, which is the most advanced, sophisticated and ethical in the world, to reinvest some of its growth in cleaning its operations so we can have the lowest-emitting energy sector anywhere in the world and can put that carbon right back in the geological structures from whence it came.
All of these things are possible if we have a government in Ottawa that gets out of the way, green-lights green projects and incentivizes reinvestment of market revenues back into clean, green technology. The Liberals' philosophy is very different. If it moves, they tax it. If it keeps moving, they regulate it. When it stops moving, they subsidize it. That is a nonsensical approach.
What we have here is common sense. The common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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- Jun/1/23 2:23:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, again, I would like to reiterate that this was an independent business decision made by Equinor; it was not a cancellation. The decision was largely due to market forces.
Let us also talk about the fact that, right now, we have introduced legislation to diversify Newfoundland and Labrador's economy. We have introduced Bill C-49, and it provides huge opportunities for offshore projects, resource projects. That is what we are doing; we are making sure we are diversifying and supporting the economy right across our country.
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- Jun/1/23 3:10:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am disgusted. The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are disgusted. After four years of Liberal delays, the Bay du Nord project was approved with 137 onerous conditions attached.
Because of these Liberal shenanigans, we now have the Bay du Nord project put on the shelf for three years. It is costing the Newfoundland and Labrador economy $3 billion in royalties and revenues.
My question to the minister is this: Will he revisit the 137 onerous conditions or will he let this project die and let the province of Newfoundland and Labrador—
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- Jun/1/23 3:11:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, again, I want to reiterate that this was an independent business decision that was based largely on market forces.
Let us talk about the fact that Newfoundland and Labrador's opportunities go well beyond one project and that is where we are with them, to support them. In fact, we have, just this past week, tabled a bill with the accord acts, to make sure they are able to take advantage of offshore opportunities, including with wind and hydrogen.
In fact, the member opposite would know that when the German chancellor came to Newfoundland and Labrador, what he asked for was hydrogen and we signed an accord for that.
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