In 2015, when I was Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, we gave Canadians fair warning that this carbon tax was going to be the single biggest reason for increase in the cost of goods and services this country had ever seen. It has come to fruition—on a collision course with inflationary times.

Out in northwestern Ontario, I can’t help but say, with our friends from the district services board and school boards here today, that it costs more to fuel buses; it costs more to send kids from one school to another school some 215 kilometres away for a football game or a basketball game. When those ambulances go out much farther distances than other regions in this province, it costs more money. With gas at $1.70 a litre right now in Dryden and Kenora, and the deep freeze setting in of winter, I can’t help but think that we’re going to be bearing more and more costs as the carbon tax goes up and up.

Mr. Speaker, this ludicrous tax needs to go. Let’s scrap the tax.

The problem is, it has fallen on deaf ears. The federal government has no plans to eliminate the carbon tax on the cost of fuels to energize our communities up north or the cost of goods. It’s a ludicrous tax. It needs to go. Let’s scrap the tax.