44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 21, 2024 10:00AM
- Mar/21/24 11:22:20 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know if I would go as far as to say that it is a pleasure to talk about the carbon tax.
First, I would like to thank the Conservatives for having given us a break. Yesterday, we did not talk about the carbon tax. We talked about other things. Still, we had a day's respite. Since they had a day to talk about something else, we can see that they are beginning to diversify their intellectual assets and issues to debate. I would like to thank them.
Obviously, today we are debating a motion that is unacceptable, because it is dishonest and misleads the House. I am even surprised that this motion complies with the rules of the House. Not only does it suggest that the carbon tax will apply in Quebec, which is not the case, but it tells us that the increase will take place on April 1, whereas it is spread out over a number of years. The motion is simply dishonest and, above all, it is a motion that rejects Quebec. I will call on my past experience as an educator and do some teaching. I will ask the Conservatives to repeat the following after me. The carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. Even when I say it slowly, they do not understand. We could not go any slower than that, but they still do not understand.
We voted many times to say that we had lost confidence in the government. We did so every time it was in Quebec’s interest. Since 2015, we have not voted in favour of any budget bill. We voted against the emergency measures when we thought they were contrary to Quebec’s interests. If the Conservatives wanted to move non-confidence, they could have found a whole host of unacceptable things that Quebeckers do not like. There is nothing in the motion about the absence of $6 billion in health transfers. There is nothing to protect Quebec when it comes to immigration powers. A government could be brought down over these issues.
There is nothing about returning Quebec's share of the federal cultural budgets. They want to shrink government, but they do not want to transfer power to Quebec. When it comes to infrastructure, municipalities could be allowed to make their own decisions without having to follow federal orders. The Conservatives have no interest at all in that. We could allow Quebec to implement its own environmental laws. The Conservatives want to shrink the federal government, but they want to maintain control. Someone needs to explain to me what kind of economic conservatism that is. What about Quebec’s right to withdraw from federal programs with full compensation? They want more government, but they are Conservative. There is the lifting of conditions on housing. There are tons of things the Conservatives could have put in their motion to satisfy Quebec, so that we could vote to show our lack of confidence in the government, but they decided to reject Quebec.
I have said this many times, but nothing has changed. The Conservatives are trying to make Quebeckers believe that the carbon tax applies to Quebec. It does not apply directly to Quebec. We have our own cap and trade system. It does not apply indirectly by regulation, because our clean fuel regulations are more restrictive. I explained it again to a Conservative from western Canada yesterday in the lobby. His eyes almost popped out of his head. He did not even know that. The carbon tax does not apply indirectly to Quebec because, according to the calculations of the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Bank of Canada, the impact of the federal carbon tax on the price of goods in Quebec is in the thousandths of a percentage point. Now the Conservatives are telling us that, if there are variations in the price of emissions allowances in Quebec’s system, it is the federal government’s fault. The member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis helped implement Quebec’s system when she was a Liberal cabinet minister in Quebec.
The Conservatives did not make these statements in just any committee. The member for Lethbridge made a statement Tuesday in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage. In the newspapers in her riding, this member said that francophone artists from Quebec were a bunch of losers who could not achieve commercial success. The Conservative member for Lethbridge who said this was suddenly interested in the impact of the carbon tax on Quebec culture. She cares about the impact of the carbon tax on losers in Quebec. She said it was very serious.
Of course, there is a knight in shining armour on the committee, the member for Lévis—Lotbinière, who came to his colleague's rescue when he said that he would join the member for Lethbridge in explaining the collateral damage of the carbon tax on the arts community. I would like to tell the member for Drummond that he understands very well that Quebec chose the carbon exchange system adopted almost ten years ago, but because of pressure from a Liberal government.
Yet, it was the Harper government in Ottawa that was regulating clean fuels. It was the Harper government.
As we know, under Quebec's system, that is to say the system implemented by the Liberal member for Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, which I like to repeat because she was a Liberal in the Charest government, the number of permits traded is set in advance. It was determined by an order in council before the current government came to power. We know the number of permits that will be traded, even if there is a change of government. In addition, their price is increasing.
The Conservatives are trying to make Quebeckers believe that the federal carbon tax applies to Quebec. They must be at their 18th carbon tax. To hear them talk, that is all there is in the economy: carbon taxes. That is what they are trying to make us believe.
It is true, however, that the price of carbon has gone up in Quebec. The Conservatives blame this on “justinflation” yet, in Europe, the price of permits has increased from 20 euros to 100 euros since 2005, and they are planning to reduce the number of permits by 62% by 2030. “Justinflation” has an impact as far away as Europe? Everything is in everything—
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- Mar/21/24 11:28:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, for the Conservatives, everything is in everything. When it comes time to mislead Quebeckers and lie to them, everything is in everything. Is it the federal government's fault if the price of carbon went up in New Zealand and Switzerland?
That is what the Conservatives are trying to make Quebecers believe. Why? Because, according to the member for Lévis—Lotbinière, everything is in everything. One of Voltaire's characters, who is a favourite of my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot with whom I will be sharing my time, Pangloss, was always trying to come up with causal connections. The Conservatives are making connections indiscriminately.
For these Conservative members from Quebec, everything is in everything. It is because of ice cream sales that more people drown in the summer. It is because Scarlett Johansson is in so many movies that the planet is heating up. It is because of the Internet that there are no more fish in the St. Lawrence estuary. That is their logic. The carbon tax and the price of carbon in Quebec went up at the same rate as Internet rates. Is there a connection? No, absolutely not. The Conservatives' attitude just shows that they will do anything for oil and that they will do anything to abandon Quebec and not do anything about Quebec's economy. That is why we want an independent Quebec.
Since 2017, the federal government has injected $1.75 billion into major industrial clusters to develop Canada's and Quebec's economy. Montreal got the artificial intelligence cluster. The federal government invested $1.75 billion across Canada, one-fifth of that going to Quebec, but is giving the oil companies $83 billion in aid over the next 10 years. We are giving up 237 potential Canadian Silicon Valleys to invest in oil. That is 237 industrial clusters.
At the same time, there is no national forestry policy for Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean and eastern and northern Quebec, and no aerospace policy for Mirabel, Longueuil and Dorval. We are still waiting for that. There is no policy on generic or patented drugs. We lost all that to Manitoba, because western Canada had to have its share of the clusters. There is no industrial cluster for automation in Drummondville, despite the fact that Quebec is a world leader. They are taking $83 billion of Quebec taxpayer money, one-fifth of which is paid by people who get a paycheque every two weeks from Quebec. We are paying for the oil. Do members know what they tell us then? They tell us that Quebeckers are getting equalization payments.
The reality today is that the Conservatives, by misleading Parliament, are telling us that they want to trigger an election about an issue that has nothing to do with Quebec. Parliament, being sovereign, will make its own decision. The day an election is called and we stand before our constituents, Bloc Québécois members will be proud to have been the adults in the House. We will be proud to be in the party that, every day we sat here, even if it was not easy, even if we were faced with disinformation, even if, on the ground, we were faced with the Conservatives’ institutionalized lying, had the courage to stand up to the Conservative Party and the other parties and to stick to the issues that will ensure Quebeckers a prosperous future. We will always be proud of that.
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- Mar/21/24 11:33:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Mirabel thinks that the member for Lévis—Lotbinière does not understand anything.
Quebec opted for a system that regulates the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted. We have a number of emission permits that decreases every year and ensures that, in 2035, regardless of the price of permits on the market, we will achieve our goal. That is why, whether the member believes it or not, the federal government did not ask Quebec to raise its price. Quebec does not control prices.
What the member for Lévis—Lotbinière is saying implies that the Government of Canda could tell California how to run its carbon market. I hope he realizes how ridiculous what he just said in the House is.
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- Mar/21/24 11:35:21 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think that the Conservatives are exploiting people's distress in the face of a situation that has been difficult, inflation and a tough economic situation. I also think that the Conservatives from Quebec are kowtowing to their leader to get ministerial positions, and that involves compromising their values and principles.
Now, Quebeckers are benefiting from the cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emission allowances. Since Quebec has clean energy, we have fewer corporate polluters. We therefore have fewer requests for such allowances, which means that we are able to meet the targets that we set at a lower cost.
That is why the impact of the cap-and-trade system on Quebeckers' pockets is much smaller than what we would see in the western provinces, where there is a lot of pollution. Quebeckers decided to use their environmental sovereignty to set up an effective, functional program that benefits Quebec consumers, and we intend to keep that system.
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- Mar/21/24 11:36:59 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I always get a kick out of listening to the Conservatives say that they are for the free market and capitalism. When it comes time to help our media, suddenly we have to allow market forces to decide and let our media disappear. When it comes time to promote our culture and help us defend our artists, then we have to allow the free U.S. market decide and let our artists disappear. However, when it comes time to take billions and tens of billions of dollars of Quebeckers' money to pay for a pipeline, suddenly we need government intervention.
As we have heard here, there are Conservatives who, in Mulroney's day, participated in privatizing crown corporations within the Mulroney government. They are seated today and have never publicly come out against the fact that we give tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money toward pipelines. That is Conservative inconsistency.
If anyone wants me to start with the inconsistencies of the member for Lethbridge, or other members of that caucus, I am game. We could have a take-note debate about it one of these nights.
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