44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 23, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, my colleague talks the big talk. He wants to help Canadians with affordability, yet the bill would not do that. The government is quadrupling the carbon tax on farmers. The Senate is stalling Bill C-234, which could give $1 billion of relief to farmers to help bring down our food prices, and the government is also trying to take away the ability of free enterprises to make their own business decisions. The reality is that the bill would not do anything to bring down grocery prices for Canadians. The government is living in a fantasyland if it thinks that retailers are not going to pass along to consumers any new taxes or protocols that the government puts in place.
Why will the government not do something concrete, like axe the carbon tax and push its senators to get Bill C-234 passed in order to give farmers immediately relief from the carbon tax?
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- Nov/23/23 12:33:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have made a number of recommendations. As I mentioned in my intervention, the government does nothing to address the causes of why inflation is high and why interest rates are high. We have made recommendations to cancel the carbon tax. We have also made recommendations to be reasonable and accommodating and to look at removing the carbon tax for farmers. That is sitting in the Senate right now and is being stalled. We have made suggestions to take the carbon tax off all forms of home heating across the country, because the government, due to its panic over Liberal members who might lose their seats, decided to only make the carbon tax unavailable to one type of home heating. We have made that suggestion. The carbon tax alone we know has been analyzed, and removing it would bring down inflation. That is just one thing we would do.
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- Nov/23/23 12:45:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am always surprised to hear the Conservatives harp on the carbon tax day after day when they talk about inflation. When serious studies—
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- Nov/23/23 12:45:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to do so.
I was saying that I am always surprised to hear the Conservatives harp on the carbon tax day after day, when we know that it does not have a major impact on inflation. Serious economic studies tell us that the carbon tax causes inflation to rise by 0.1%.
The Conservatives keep harping on this. Not only that, but their leader recently said that the carbon tax would be the issue at the ballot box. We know very well that this tax does not apply to Quebec, which means that the Conservative leader does not care one iota about what is happening in Quebec.
I wonder what is really driving the Conservatives to talk about the carbon tax. Are they perhaps doing this to give their friends in the big oil and gas companies some overt, explicit support? Are they not ultimately oil and gas lobbyists?
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- Nov/23/23 12:46:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have just a couple of things.
The clean fuel standard, which applies in Quebec, is actually a carbon tax. While there may not be a carbon tax as such, there is a clean fuel standard. That is a carbon tax.
When I talk to my constituents, they want me, as their representative in the House, to ensure they have the ability to move forward and to make a living. I see farmers who have hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of carbon tax on irrigation operations, on grain drying, on heat for their barns and those sorts of things. It affects their bottom lines, and their prices are fixed.
It is about Canadians' well-being. If the carbon tax actually had a positive impact on the environment, then it would be worth looking at, but it does not. It has not, and it will not because it is a tax. It is only a tax, and it has no impact on improving the environment whatsoever.
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- Nov/23/23 1:44:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canadians are certainly suffering from high prices. At the root cause of almost everything is the carbon tax.
The carbon tax adds costs, first of all, to the growers who grow and produce food. Then the tax is added to the companies that truck the food to the places that process the food. Then there is the grocers who pay carbon tax on their facilities and everything else. There is carbon tax throughout the system. We are not talking a little, we are talking tens of thousands, and, in some cases, hundreds of thousands, of dollars for a farmer, for example.
Those costs have to go somewhere and they do not get those costs back. Those costs end up in the price of food Canadians need to buy every day, and it is one of the big drivers in why things are getting more expensive, whether we are talking about bread, meat or whatever it might be.
For that reason, two million people a month are going to food banks. People I have talked to tell me they cannot afford to buy meat anymore and are feeding their children cereal. This has to stop. We have to get rid of this terrible, destructive carbon tax.
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- Nov/23/23 2:53:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Conservative members are trying to blame their vote against the agreement on language about carbon pricing, which is a red herring, because Ukraine has had carbon pricing since 2011 and it needs it to get into the EU.
Could the Minister of International Trade share with Canadians why this agreement is so important to Canada—
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- Nov/23/23 3:40:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad the hon. parliamentary secretary referred to changes that are being made to the Competition Act, because the amendments put forward in the bill pertaining to the Competition Act are copied and pasted from the private member's bill introduced by the member for Bay of Quinte. Very simply, it would remove the efficiencies defence with respect to mergers. That could, in the long term, have an impact, an increase in competition in the groceries sector, and therefore have some long-term impact upon prices, but Canadians cannot wait for five years or seven years down the road. They need relief today, and all the government has offered them is the quadrupling of the carbon tax.
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- Nov/23/23 3:43:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, with respect, the member should get his facts straight. A good place to start would be to review the report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. It established that more than 60% of Canadians lose out with the carbon tax. In other words, they pay more than they get back from the rebate.
What needs to happen, and what Canadians are asking for, is that we axe the tax, and that is something Conservatives are going to do to keep—
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- Nov/23/23 4:10:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the one thing I did not hear the member talk about was a carbon tax. I know he is a really big fan of the carbon tax, because when he was in the provincial legislature in B.C., he not only voted in favour of it, but he also spoke very highly of it. He said:
It means that every dollar collected from B.C. carbon tax is given back to the taxpayers in the form of tax credits or tax cuts. Our carbon tax appears to be working.
He said:
We view this tax as a tool to change behaviour and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
If a Liberal had said that, he would have been heckling.
An hon. member: Maybe he was a Liberal back then.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, maybe he was a Liberal back then. I do not know. Maybe he could inform me why he is against the carbon tax. Why is he hypocritical?
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- Nov/23/23 4:39:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, just so the member is aware, we are talking about Motion No. 30. Therefore, there is no reason why anybody should be chastised for not talking about some of the other issues. Of course, they are important and have been described before.
One thing I would like to mention, because the Liberals seem to feel they have found something special to speak about, is that, yes, Ukraine is part of carbon pricing in the European Union, but that is so it can participate. In 2019, and this comes from McKinsey and Company's Ukraine carbon pricing policy, in Poland it was $1.00, in Sweden it was $139, in Ukraine it was 36¢, and in Canada at that time, to be fair, was $20, which is 55 times more. That is what we are talking about. Therefore, I think it is somewhat rich that the Liberals are taking that position.
The point I wish to make is that I have gone to OECD meetings in Europe where they were discussing the concept of the carbon tax. The major push from this country was that those countries must make sure to put their stamp on Canada's carbon tax. That happened both in Berlin when I was there and in Birmingham two summers ago. These are the types of things the government is pushing, and it continues to do it now.
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- Nov/23/23 4:41:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's comment about talking about whatever we want. Maybe he should talk to the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands about that, as he is the one who called me out on it.
This does not matter because nowhere in this deal does it commit Ukraine to Canada's system. It is a red herring to suggest otherwise.
The member will have to explain to me why Conservatives never raised the issue. First, they started talking about how it was a woke free trade deal. They started out talking about everything but a carbon tax. They only started talking about a carbon tax being in this about a week ago. They just discovered it then. They should not act like they have been on this all along because they have not. They know it is a red herring.
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