I’d love for you to keep talking.

Remembrance Week of 2023 in Windsor–Tecumseh was truly one for the books, and I am privileged to have joined incredible ceremonies across my riding. When Windsor-Essex honours its veterans, it does it right. Each of the three Royal Canadian Legions in my riding—Branch 255 in Riverside, Colonel Paul Poisson Branch 261 in Tecumseh and Metropolitan Branch 594 in Oldcastle—hosted neighbourhood commemorations of a truly unique character.

All of the Legions, our veterans and the public come together on Remembrance Day at the Essex County War Memorial in downtown Windsor, at a beautiful ceremony organized by the Windsor Veterans Memorial Services Committee. Since 1926—so, 97 years now—the committee has set out to support our local veterans and their families. Under the leadership of Paul Lauzon, the committee works hard all year, presenting 11 memorial events across Windsor. These recognize our fallen veterans and the battles in which our local veterans have fought: World War I, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, our peacekeeping and NATO missions, Dieppe, the Merchant Navy, Afghanistan and the Battle of Britain.

To the Windsor Veterans Memorial Services Committee and our local groups like the North Wall Riders Association, the military motorcyclists of Canada and the Southern Ontario Military Muster supporting every single time, thank you for your service to Windsor-Essex veterans and for keeping their legacy alive and strong.

This has been, actually, a fascinating debate, with the amendments and the amendments to amendments. I think it’s my first go-round to see so many intricacies with this particular motion.

I want to thank, certainly, the member from Lanark for this motion, because my riding back home, Windsor–Tecumseh, is built on automobile use, not just because we produce the vehicles—and the discouragement of the production of those vehicles would have an economic impact on our community—but also, I have an extensive riding that includes far more geography of an agricultural nature than of an urbanized one, so travelling is incredibly important. Just the way history has gone, the density is not there to sustain alternatives to driving. We may get there some day, but we are definitely not there yet.

So the carbon tax assumes that there is an alternative for the necessities of life. Now, we’ve had previous debate on purpose-built rentals. Having a roof over your head, to me, is a necessity of life; also, getting to work, getting to be able to provide for yourself. Heating your home is also a necessity of life, especially in the wintertime. You do not have options today that are viable, that exist.

I just had to replace my vehicle a few months ago. You know what? I’m in a privileged position because I have been a civil service member for nearly 20 years. I get compensated well for the tasks I do within the government. And now, being here as the MPP, I would say the same. It put me in a position where I could actually change my habits by doing something many could not afford to do: I bought a used electric car when I had to replace my black Equinox from 2011.

With that, I had that option because I had the means to do it. Not everyone in our community has the means to do that. I could not afford a new electric vehicle, even today. I could not; there is no question about it. I could afford a used one. While this means that I could—it’s a fantastic vehicle for urban driving. For me to be able to get to say, London, Ontario, is not in the cards. I’m going to run out of battery life by the time I get to the ONroute over in West Lorne. As a consequence, it really limits my opportunity to add to that impact, including my ability to actually get here in the most environmentally sensible way.

That’s why I rely on VIA Rail exclusively. I’ve never flown. I have driven a couple of times, but mostly I take the train, as my predecessor, Percy Hatfield, always did. In fact, I was often on that route between Toronto and Windsor—well, not often, but it seems like every time I was on that train, MPP Hatfield was there, and I always had a great opportunity to engage with him on those trips.

So in preparing for today and the decision as to whether to exempt the consumption tax or not—and the carbon tax is a consumption tax, as is the HST. All these mechanisms are intended to discourage behaviour, discourage consumption, so the more that you consume, the more you pay. On a theoretical basis, I think a lot of economists say this is actually the right way to go, and I think that point has been raised. But it’s on a presumption that there are alternatives available to you, and we certainly don’t have that across Ontario. Maybe there are communities that do have a variety of options. But I would say, my community of Windsor and Tecumseh, we’re not there when it comes to providing alternatives for some of these costs. How do we get out of it? There is work that can be done when you have the means to do so.

Earlier today, we had the debate over the HST versus the carbon tax. I came across an article from CBC Ottawa which lamented the double-dipping of the HST charge on the amount of carbon tax charged. This was from CBC Ottawa back in 2019. This is something that I would say grinds a lot of people’s gears, that government taxes tax. It truly does contribute to the affordability crisis that we’ve got. Actually, the motion that the House leader put forward today probably was the best of all worlds when it came to that, particularly for home heating.

In my riding, we have a development called Little River Acres. I remember visiting there multiple times. Actually, in last year’s election, it was probably one of my favourite places to go to because the people of that community are just strong-willed, practical and very community-oriented. The housing, though, was built probably about 40-something years ago. There is no natural gas service; it’s all electric heat. It means that there’s a great deal of turnover in those properties, because the cost to heat their homes is well in excess of what the neighbourhood surrounding it has to pay on their natural gas charges. Now, a carbon tax will maybe even the odds for those homes when it gets to its ultimate price, but at this point in time, the electric heating of a house is a pretty daunting task. So people, even though they love the neighbourhood, sometimes they just truly can’t afford to live there.

Getting back to the CBC article from 2019, they actually had a receipt from this home in Ottawa, and they were charged $14.44 of HST on their bill, and $42.40 of HST—sorry, the first one, the $14.44, was carbon tax and the HST was $42.40. Now, that was back when the price on carbon was a lot less. It was $20 per tonne; it is currently at $65 per tonne. So the equivalent—now, the math is not going to work perfectly, because of the tax charged on the tax, but if you take it on a strict proportional basis, the carbon was $14.44 in 2019 and is now $46.80—-on a strictly proportional basis, when you take the price per tonne on carbon from 2019 to 2023. At the ultimate cost, when the federal program is fully implemented at $170 per tonne, the carbon tax would be $122.74, and that’s not even counting the impact of the HST. So, from $14.44 in 2019, to that day in the future when it becomes $122.74, that’s over $100 more per month on heating your home.

Now, fortunately, in southwestern Ontario, we have a great climate; in Windsor-Essex, I have a great climate. I used to do winter control at the city of Windsor, and I was called in probably three times a year, because we just don’t get a lot of snow these days. I don’t know if there was ever a time when we got snow. I do vaguely remember snowmobiles back in the day; I don’t know if they remain viable today. But still, I mean, that may accent the reason why we need to be aggressive with our carbon emissions. Because at a certain point, people down our way had snowmobiles, and now it’s not cold enough to do so.

There’s impact to the environment. That’s why it’s important to make investments like the ones with Stelco and Algoma. That’s the equivalent of taking millions of vehicles off the road. There are heavy, heavy emitters out in the province of Ontario that really can make an impactful difference on our carbon emissions. And, you know, the federal government partnered with the province on changing those processes to be electric, which I applaud them for. Actually, I think it’s one of a number of great examples of collaboration between the province and the federal government.

But getting back to CBC article, though, from 2019, I thought it was very interesting to see what the federal government had told the public at that point. It says, “The federal government does not expect to see any increase in HST revenue, as consumers learn to change their purchase habits.

“‘Most consumers would have spent the related funds on other GST/HST taxable goods and services.’” That’s from the federal department of finance.

They also note, “Business won’t suffer either, because they’ll generally be able to recover the money with tax credits.”

I’m not sure that our experience, four years later, is something that is what was described by the federal government in 2019, because I look at my own habits—and, yes, I purchased an electric vehicle. That changed my habits. I probably would not have bought my 2019 Nissan Leaf in 2019, but I did in 2023. And really, it wasn’t so much of a cost-based decision, because it cost me more. There’s no amortization that improves my situation with an EV. The install costs for the charger plus the purchase cost was probably about $1,500, but it’s something that I can do because I have the capacity to do. But so many Ontarians do not have that, and affordability is the number one issue that I have in my riding. When I go knock on doors in Fontainebleau or just east of downtown, people are just crying for help about our situation.

This is part of being a balanced government: You can’t be ideological in every single circumstance; you need to listen when people are saying you’ve got it wrong. I think this government has actually done that a few times. When it’s gotten it wrong, it has course-corrected. And I think this is an opportunity for the federal government to also realize that it’s coming too fast given the lack of development of alternatives to the current needs for consumption for home heating.

I do have Enbridge, formerly Union Gas, and Union Gas is a strong part of the community of Chatham-Kent, employs a lot of people in Chatham-Kent. So when the last government announced—did not announce, but it was leaked—that they were considering phasing out natural gas, my heart sunk for the people of Chatham-Kent, because that is such a major, major employer. If we’re getting away from the use of natural gas, if that’s the intention, then it is going to have a dramatic impact on rural communities like Chatham-Kent. It’s certainly having an impact on mine.

Just about this time last year, I started to get the calls to my office about, “Why does my gas bill keep on going up?” They’re calling on the province to intervene, force the OEB to cap the charge on natural gas. The honest truth is that it’s going up because of the carbon tax. This is something that not within our ability to address; although it was mentioned that if we had our own cap-and-trade program that would equally affect natural gas, we would be rid of it.

At the end of the day, if we do believe that making sure someone has got a roof over their head and is not going to have to live in a spot where there’s no access to heat because they can’t pay their bill, that’s not a public good; the public good is finding things in a pragmatic and balanced way. And that means considering the impacts of your decisions on the people affected by them.

Now, getting back to the motion at hand, the motion is: “That, in the opinion of this House, the government of Canada should take immediate steps to eliminate the carbon tax on fuels and inputs for home heating.”

We’ve heard—I don’t need to rehash what the federal Minister Hutchings had said, that it was direct result of political will by the Atlantic caucus in the federal government. In my seat in Windsor–Tecumseh, I’ve got a Liberal member as well, and do you know what? I really should pick up the phone with him and ask him why, if we have so many more caucus members in the federal government than Atlantic, did the numbers not work where having a less-polluting form of home heating, why is that not a consideration for some relief? Because the federal government made a few statements, and I’m going to bring them up in just a moment, but they really spoke to the importance of putting money back in people’s pockets.

Minister Hutchings said, “I can tell you the ... Atlantic caucus was vocal with what they’ve heard from their constituents. And perhaps they need to elect more Liberals on the Prairies so that we can have that conversation as well.

“Trust me, Atlantic Canada, the Atlantic caucus, came with these options.

“They presented them to the Prime Minister, they presented them to cabinet. They said this is what we think will work in rural Canada.”

The Prime Minister did give an answer to that: “If you live in a rural community, you don’t have the same options that people who live in cities do. We get that. So this is more money in your pocket to recognize those realities, even as we continue to fight climate change....”

Actually, the Prime Minister is not wrong on this. I started in mentioning the geography of my riding of Windsor–Tecumseh. We have a significant rural footprint, and we don’t have the density. We don’t have the alternatives in place in our community that you may enjoy in a larger one. To get down that road of having those alternatives, we do need a couple of further changes of federal policy beyond this one, which I support, because we do not have the alternatives today.

But, interest rates: This is stopping multi-residential units from being built in my community—many multi-residential units. These are more affordable housing options, the ones that are coming online, because the costs to develop are not attainable for the people looking for homes. And so, we need to really get our head around this, that we cannot achieve that societal change unless those alternatives are there, and making things more expensive that are life essentials is not getting us there. It’s just leading to discouragement and loss of hope. That’s why this motion is a great motion, because it’s reflective of the reality of today. But this is the contributor to people not being able to pay their bills and having a real worry about, what does the future hold for me?

Now, getting back to the consumption taxes: Look, we should use the tax system to encourage the behaviours that we wish to see—to me, that’s actually a very Conservative philosophy—and use the tax system to discourage those behaviours that we do not want to see. Taxing things that are good—ways that someone develops themselves, someone takes care of their families, that’s not the stuff we want to discourage. We do want to discourage environmental contamination and pollution. We do want to discourage needless environmental damage, and there are ways to do that. The government has demonstrated some. They may not be recognized as such, but they are legitimate and they are real.

Large emitters still have a great role to play. One of our recent red tape reduction bills brought forward the opportunity for carbon storage and opportunities to incorporate some ideas from industry. In fact, I was in Sarnia a couple months ago, and one of the people at Imperial Oil mentioned that we’re on the cusp of technology that is actually going to make everything recyclable. It gave me so much hope for the future, that we are on our way to a better planet for all.

But it’s still going to take some time to get there. Until that day happens, we cannot continue to tax the heck out of life essentials like home heating, like driving. We need to make sure that we can afford to take care of our families.