SoVote

Mr. Corey Tochor (Saskatoon—University, CPC)

Dec/7/23 12:35:23 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to take part in this very important and timely debate. I am very concerned about our country, and I hope all 338 of us take some time to talk to Canadians over Christmas. Let us knock on 100 doors, go and find out, straight from the people we work for, what life has now become after eight long years of Liberal government, the policies it has enacted and the living hell that Canadians are living through because of the Liberal policies. Today, we are going to talk about the carbon tax. There are many terrible policies the Liberals have put forward, but this is just about the carbon tax and what it has done to Canada. It is with a heavy heart that I am reading the statistics of what Canadians are facing: 30-year high inflation challenges just to live. What does that mean? It means that Canadians are not keeping up with inflation. At the end of the month, there are more days left than there is money in the bank account. That means Canadians are skipping meals. We are the breadbasket of the world. I come from a province that grows things that we sell to and that feed the world. We are put into this task by God; we are given this land by God, to feed the world and to feed Canadians. We grow so much that, as Canadians, we cannot eat all that we grow, so we trade. We are a trading nation, and that is a good thing. It is what actually sustains families on the other side of the world. The policies of the current government mean that there are families starving, not just in far-flung places around the world but also right here in Canada. Eleven million Canadians needed food stamps or their equivalent from the government last year. They could not provide enough for their family to eat. The government had to help one in four Canadians. This is not right. These are very, very tough times for Canadians, and things are going to get tougher. That has more to do with the interest rate hikes and what they are going to cause with respect to mortgage renewals. They are going to skyrocket. Right now, families are holding on by their fingertips. The tipping point is going to come in a number of months and years as mortgages are renewed. The problem also occurs on rental properties, so we know that rents are going to go up. We know that the price of rent in Canada has doubled already. What happens when the owners of rental buildings have to renew their mortgages? Rents are going to continue to go up. What we are debating today is a terrible tax. It is a tax on movement. It is a tax on things we used to do very well in this country. We do things. We are known as a country that grows more canola and more wheat than anywhere else in the world. We build things. We rip it out of the ground. We refine. We value-add different God-given gifts to our country, and we sell because we cannot utilize as much as we can produce in this country. That is a good thing. That is how, for over 150 years, we have been so prosperous as a nation. What we have, from eight long years of the current Liberal government, is an attack on that, with the carbon tax on anything that moves. If it continues to move, the government taxes it harder. We know that the Liberals are going to quadruple the tax. What is that going to mean? Academia's theory of the carbon tax is that if the Liberals keep increasing the price, people will stop using that item. The theory is faulty. All we have to do is look at the price per litre of gasoline in other parts of the world that are not as gifted with natural resources as we are. In Europe, it is roughly equivalent to around $5 to $6 Canadian per litre. Europeans are still driving; they have to drive. In Canada, we have to drive in order to get to work to provide for our family. We need to utilize oil and gas to produce the crops that feed the world. The one disincentive that the government has decided on is to attack anything that moves. That is what the carbon tax does. It is a tax on being productive. Just look at what it has done in Atlantic Canada, where the government has carved out a special deal that exempts the region from tax on home heating oil. It has destroyed the argument of why we need the carbon tax. The government, supported by the NDP, has proposed that if home heating oil is to be exempt in Atlantic Canada, it is due to the cost of living. Wait a minute. Did it not just say that Canadians receive more money back than they pay? The rationale for Atlantic Canada is that people there are in a cost of living crisis, which they are. To make things better just in that region of the country, not all over Canada, the government removed the tax. The government's argument that people receive more back has just been blown to pieces, because if that were true, then the government has actually made the cost of living crisis worse in Atlantic Canada. Therefore, it is not believed to be true. The government has also argued in favour of making more expensive the dirtiest forms of energy with respect to emissions. The worst for emissions is home heating oil. It actually made that cheaper, the one source of energy that, if the government believed in its logic, should have been costing more. The government's arguments are blown out of the water. I will get back to my conclusion of why this all wraps up into the motion. If we look at the troubles we are facing in Canada, we know that it is tough out there. Anything the Canadian government can do to make life more affordable is something we should act on today. We have a long list of things the government should have been doing for the last eight years, but it has decided to ignore those suggestions. Just with this motion today, we could remove the carbon tax on home heating for farmers, first nations and families, three groups that are hurting and that we could affect today. Take off the tax, and, instantaneously, food prices would drop, because the tax is baked into all of the actions of a farmer. If we remove the tax, instantaneously, food would become cheaper for first nations. There is a lot of neglect from the government on reserves, but I cannot think of a worse example than this: A lot of first nations and reserves use electricity to heat their homes. Right now, the government is jacking up the rate of carbon tax on those homes, homes of individuals who are barely holding on with the cost of living crisis that is taking place, and now, it is going to quadruple the carbon tax. The third group is families. We know that they are going to have to pay $700 more next year alone just on groceries because of the carbon tax. That is $700 in sports fees they will not have. Layered on top of the troubles with interest rates increasing, we know this is a recipe for disaster. There are Canadian families that are just struggling now but will be starving. I am not putting blame on anyone, but this is a Liberal policy. It is not the families of the Liberal members of Parliament that are going to be suffering. It is going to be the other families throughout Canada that have a severe challenge with the cost of living. We can make that all better today. Increasing costs are not all going to be reduced because of the policies of the government, but this is one area in which, if we act as Parliament, we could act before Christmas to make food cheaper, to make life more affordable and to make Canada that much better. If I am true to the people I represent and the stories I hear, I cannot think of another group that has been so challenged under the Liberal policies and that we need to provide relief for. That is what the motion would do.

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Inflation

Context: House Hansard - 264 - Dec/7/23

Mr. Corey Tochor

Dec/7/23 12:46:31 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, this tax is bad. It makes everything more expensive, does nothing for the environment, because Canada has missed every emissions target since it was brought in. It is a terrible tax that does nothing for the environment and hurts Canadians, and the proof is in the last eight years. On food equality, I cannot think of a more hypocritical position as the NDP's. The New Democrats claim to be the party of the workers and the poor. The people this tax hurts the most are their supporters. People who have the least ability to pay increased costs on food and heat for their homes are the ones suffering the most. The most dire emails and phone calls I get at my office are not from people who are well off. They are from people who have the least ability to pay for these increased costs.

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Context: House Hansard - 264 - Dec/7/23

Mr. Corey Tochor

Dec/7/23 12:48:31 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, if we want to talk about what will actually do something, it is scrapping the tax. It will make food and heat more affordable across Canada. That is an actual solution. If we want to talk about actual solutions for the environment, this tax, which is supposedly an environmental policy, has not hit a single emissions reduction target. The only year there was a reduction was the first year of the pandemic due to everything being locked down. If the position of the Liberals, supported by the NDP, is that we have to again lock down societies, where nothing moves, nothing grows and nothing flourishes, if this is the policy of the Liberal-NDP government, then I welcome the next election. We know there are technological solutions. We have faced difficult environmental problems in the past. When I was growing up, the ozone hole was going to cause everybody to get skin cancer. I was paranoid and scared about it. However, it was not a tax that solved that problem; it was technology. With acid rain, it was the same thing. It was going to melt our buildings. Technology solved that problem.

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Context: House Hansard - 264 - Dec/7/23

Mr. Corey Tochor

Dec/7/23 12:50:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is all about fairness. Quebec does not directly pay the cost of carbon tax 1, but it pays carbon tax 2. I will give an example from my province. We are going to grow some mustard. For that mustard, all the inputs that go into putting seed in the ground, harvesting and shipping that grain to a processing plant is all taxed with the carbon tax. Then it gets to the plant and it is processed into mustard. Before we put that mustard on a hotdog, we pay a carbon tax for the production of the seed, the production of the mustard and the transportation into Quebec. Yes, people are going to be paying more carbon tax if they elect the Liberals.

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