44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 6, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we have seen rent prices continue to increase. In Nanaimo alone last year, we saw rental prices increase by 30%, and those prices have continued to increase from there. This, as we all know, is disproportionately impacting seniors on fixed incomes, families and people living with disabilities.
When will we see the Liberals put an end to renovictions and put into place a national acquisition fund so that non-profits, for example, will have a chance to keep rents low and people can afford a place to call home?
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Madam Speaker, for a long time, we have been listening to a very disingenuous argument from the Conservatives about the cause of inflation in Canada.
Big oil racked up $38.3 billion in profits straight from the after-tax money in the pockets of Canadians right across Canada. Big grocery has been racking up hundreds of billions of dollars in profits. Again, that is after-tax money coming out of the pockets of Canadians right across the country.
Why are the Conservatives not talking about them? They are doing far more damage to the affordability of things for people in Canada than the government or anybody else.
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Mr. Speaker, I would note that New Democrats are quite firm in our belief that as we look at the record profits that oil and gas companies have been enjoying, we do not think that oil and gas companies should be able to walk away with that money and pay it out in dividends to their shareholders or squirrel it away in international tax havens, but that instead there should be an appropriate tax applied to oil and gas companies.
We, of course, have also been open to the idea of having some kind of a public utility board that would regulate the price of oil and gas. We recognize that long before the carbon tax, a long weekend was enough reason for oil and gas companies to jack up the price of oil and gas. We think that Canadians ought to be just as concerned about the advantage that those companies are taking of Canadians in their basic pricing structure; never mind what is added in tax.
There is a larger conversation to be had about how we get fair pricing for oil and gas. I think that the Conservatives' kind of monolithic focus on the carbon tax obscures a lot of ways that Canadians are getting screwed at the pump by oil and gas companies themselves in order to outsize their profits.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to repeat a question that I posed a little bit earlier, which was artfully dodged by the respondent.
Yes, there is a price on pollution, and it has added to the price of gasoline at the pump. However, in spite of all that, the oil companies have racked up an impressive $38.3 billion in profits, all coming straight out of the pockets of Canadians, straight off their after-tax income.
Would the member not agree that if he is talking about inflation, and if we know that food and big oil are the largest contributors to inflation, their profits are really the issue here, not anything that the government has done?
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague could not be more wrong. That is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard in the House, or one of them.
Particularly, he is saying that farmers are the cause of food going up. The government has put the carbon tax on all the inputs for all the industries in Canada.
The profits that he is talking about are coming right out of the pockets of the individuals that he is trying to say are saving the country. They are building the food, trying to keep crime down and providing industries with jobs. These are the companies that are providing jobs in Canada. They are also the ones that have to bear the government's taxation, and they are the ones that provide the government with billions and billions of tax dollars.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to push back on the hon. member's earlier interaction with the member for Fleetwood—Port Kells. Conservatives like to be oblivious to the fact that, since 2019, oil and gas companies have seen their net profits go up by over 1000%. To suggest that this has absolutely no role in driving inflation for consumers, when everything that families depend on is driven by trains or trucks, which rely on diesel fuel, is being completely oblivious to the elephant in the room.
Surely, my colleague could offer some commentary on the gross profiteering that is happening on the backs of constituents like his and like mine, right across Canada. Why do Conservatives continue to ignore this, to the detriment of all Canadians?
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Mr. Speaker, there are several things one could say about my colleague's great question. One is that he knows in British Columbia there were something like 15 LNG projects that could have been built when the Prime Minister came into power, and not one of them has ever been completed. Those dollars could have been used for what natural resources have been used for in this country, and that is to build the coffers of the federal government to make those transfers in education and health care back to the provinces so that we can all have the same level of health care across the whole country.
The other thing is that the profits from those companies are being used to make those transfers, but the member knows full well that the government has stymied the development of those industries with Bill C-69. If we want to talk about percentages of profit increases, we are talking about $40 barrels of oil a number of years ago that are now $80 a barrel. There is a doubling right there. It is very hard to compare percentages when we have a product that has doubled in price over the last five years.
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