44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 7, 2023 10:00AM
- Nov/7/23 11:33:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, all businesses should pay their fair share of taxes, but I will say again that it is hypocritical and contradictory of the Bloc Québécois members to talk about taxes. The irony of the Bloc Québécois, a separatist party in the House of Commons, is that it voted multiple times on a second carbon tax that goes not to Quebec but to Ottawa, 100% of which is being added to the original carbon tax as a second carbon tax. The Bloc Québécois needs to have a caucus meeting and figure out exactly where it stands on tax issues, because folks back home in the province of Quebec are not impressed with the second carbon tax and the Bloc's all-over-the-map approach.
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- Nov/7/23 11:41:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we agree that it is absolutely unparliamentary for someone to give the finger on the floor of the House of Commons. That is why we have called on the entire Liberal caucus to apologize for the conduct of one of its MPs. By the way, the Speaker did not say we were not allowed to address the incident. He did say he would come back, but we are free to speak, and we will not be censured.
We know that the Prime Minister now has a carbon tax coalition with the separatist Bloc Québécois. We know that he did this because he could not maintain his existing coalition. The pressure the Conservatives mounted on the NDP forced the NDP to collapse and admit that it had been wrong all along.
I remind the House that there has been only one party that has been consistent throughout and will be consistent forever. We are the only common-sense party that would axe the tax for everything, for everybody and everywhere, forever.
I note that the NDP today has now performed yet another flip-flop. Originally, the New Democrats wanted to quadruple the tax. Yesterday, they said they wanted to pause the tax. Today, they will not take a position, because they have omitted mention of the Prime Minister's quadrupling of the carbon tax in the motion. They do not want to stick by their position. They think they will quietly sneak back into the carbon tax coalition and have nobody notice. Well, their constituents are noticing, and that is why working-class people across the country are abandoning the NDP in droves.
Even the NDP Premier of Manitoba has now said that the carbon tax represents an attack on working-class people and therefore cannot work as climate change policy. I will note that we are getting all pain and no gain from the Prime Minister on the carbon tax, because his own environment commissioner came out just today and confirmed that under the current policies, including the carbon tax, he will miss his 2030 climate targets. He has missed his Paris accord climate targets again and again. Emissions continue to rise under his leadership, which proves that the carbon tax was never an environmental policy. It was a tax policy designed to pick the pockets of people and put more money in the hands of politicians to spend. This is political and governmental greed at its worst. It is no wonder Canadians have never been worse off than they are after eight years of the Prime Minister.
What I find interesting is that the Bloc Québécois has announced a costly coalition with the Prime Minister. This was confirmed in an article in La Presse, where the Liberal ministers said they had an agreement with the Bloc Québécois to keep this Prime Minister in power for another two years. Yesterday, the leader of the Bloc Québécois saved the Prime Minister. We were going to adopt a motion to reduce the cost of heating for everyone, but the Bloc Québécois was there to prevent the motion from being adopted, to vote against working-class people who want to heat their homes, to vote against seniors, to vote against people who cannot pay their bills, and to prop up the Prime Minister.
The funny thing is that the Bloc Québécois is going against Quebec's position. The Quebec government joined the other provinces in opposing a federal carbon tax as part of the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Bill C-69 and as part of the lawsuit against the carbon tax. The Quebec government wanted to curb federal taxation powers, but the Bloc Québécois is on the federal government's side. This is a centralizing Bloc Québécois. Each time the federal government decides to impose a tax on Quebeckers, we can expect the Bloc Québécois to say yes. It said yes to bigger government in Ottawa, and no to Quebeckers. That is the Bloc Québécois's real record.
The leader of the Bloc Québécois is afraid of an election. He wants to hang onto his position as leader so he can go on big trips to Europe. He wants to fly there on a plane that burns fuel so he can talk about the sovereignty of various overseas groups that are far removed from with the concerns of Quebeckers. I doubt the people of Beloeil—Chambly who are struggling to pay the bills are all that interested in the European separatist causes that the Bloc Québécois is obsessed with. The Bloc Québécois has no common sense. It is not working for Quebeckers.
Only the Conservative Party has the common sense to take the second carbon tax off the backs of Quebeckers. Quebeckers do not want to pay the taxes that the Bloc and Liberals are imposing on their gas and food anymore. Quebeckers want lower taxes so that work pays again. Quebeckers want the federal government to encourage municipalities to cut the red tape so more affordable housing can be built. Only the Conservative Party can get those things done.
In the next election, Quebeckers will have two choices. The first is a costly Liberal-Bloc coalition that raises taxes, takes their money, sets criminals free and doubles the cost of housing. The second is the common-sense Conservative Party, which will bring home lower taxes and bigger paycheques that buy affordable food, gas and housing in safe communities.
The choice is between either the costly coalition that takes one's money, taxes one's food, doubles one's housing cost, punishes one's work and frees criminals into the street or the common-sense Conservatives who free one to bring home powerful paycheques that buy affordable food, gas and groceries in affordable communities.
That is why I move the following amendment to the motion, which would add section (d): “Extend the temporary three-year pause to the federal carbon tax on home heating oil to all forms of home heating.”
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- Nov/7/23 2:21:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the panicking Prime Minister is desperate to save his carbon tax, especially on heat. He started by giving a temporary pause to some people in a region where he was plummeting in the polls and his caucus was revolting. Then he found that the entire country was in revolt and he needed a new coalition partner to save him from my common-sense confidence vote to take the tax off the heat. He got that support from the Bloc Québécois.
We now learn that he has been in discussions with the Bloc to help him stay in power for two years. What did he promise the separatists for them to enter into this costly carbon tax coalition?
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- Nov/7/23 3:16:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the leader of the NDP said that his caucus would be voting against the divisive decision by the Prime Minister to pause the pain of the carbon tax for just 3% of Canadians, while doing nothing for the rest. However, in yesterday's vote, the member for Hamilton Centre did not even bother to vote. If the NDP member for Hamilton Centre will not do his job, Conservatives will.
Will the Prime Minister quit forcing Ontarians to pay a quadrupled carbon tax on their home heating?
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- Nov/7/23 7:07:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member continues to yell that it is a big conspiracy and it is censorship to tell her to take those videos down. I did not tell her to take those videos down. The Conservative Party told her to take her videos down because they were full of nonsense, misinformation and conspiracy theories about climate lockdowns and about governments that were going to put into place certain restrictions, like those imposed by COVID-19.
It is like the member gets all of her news from the National Enquirer and brings it into this House to spread misinformation and disinformation throughout her riding. It is extremely disappointing. However, this is not the first time we have heard blatant climate denial from the member. I hope for the sake of her caucus that they ask her, as they did in 2021, when they all ran on a plan to price carbon, to maybe tone the rhetoric, conspiracy theories and climate denial a bit, because as the member for Wellington—Halton Hills has stated, no party without a viable climate plan to reduce emissions is ever going to get elected. I could not agree more.
Like the member opposite, a lot of my community members use home heating oil in order to heat their homes. It is akin to using coal. These products were used in the 1800s to heat homes, and we can do a lot better in 2023. Rural Ontarians will hopefully get a deal from Premier Ford whereby we can help subsidize their home heating through a heat pump, which is an efficient way to heat a home. It is an effective way to heat a home. It also drastically reduces emissions.
The members opposite continue to yell at me that I do not work in the cold, but it is not true. It gets cold where I live, and I use a heat pump that works just fine. There are also cold-adjusted ones that use a mix of various technologies, which I would say is the only word the Conservatives have used to describe their climate policy. They say they are just going to use technology to drive down all emissions, and they are going to meet some fictitious target with the kind of technology we have invested in, like carbon capture, use and storage.
The Conservatives do not have a plan to fight climate change. They have absolutely no leadership in their party. They have stopped talking about climate change altogether, and it is really disappointing.
As to affordability, the vast majority of those living in provinces like Ontario, where the member and I are both from, who go about their lives and pay the price on pollution receive a rebate. I would encourage anybody who is curious about that rebate to check their bank statement from October 13. They will see one of their four quarterly amounts, with up to $244 for a family of four, which is $946, if my math is correct. That is part of the rebate program.
The Conservatives will never talk about it, because they do not want to accept that our program, which is a consumer-based revenue-neutral program, is better than theirs. If members recall, in their 2021 election platform, they had some sort of Zellers-style catalogue, and people could choose something from it, like a bike or another green product. That would not work and that is why they did not win that election. As the member for—
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- Nov/7/23 7:11:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this denial is beyond just climate change denial. The member was indeed instructed to take videos off of her YouTube feed, and she did take those videos down. There was one, a particularly disgusting video the member put up, that included an image of the Prime Minister with a noose around his neck.
The member opposite can continue to yell and bring into the House news that is not even fit for the National Enquirer. It is a challenge that we all have to face in this place, that some people are elected on the basis of their misinformation, disinformation and tabloid-style campaigns.
I was heartened to see that Erin O'Toole, in the last election campaign, told his Conservative caucus that, if they do not get on board with fighting climate change, they are not welcome in their caucus. I guess they showed him because, as soon as they did not get elected, they showed somebody who is willing to talk about climate change the door.
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