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Cheryl Gallant

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 63%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $105,420.55

  • Government Page
  • Oct/25/22 6:49:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as the member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I begin my comments by recognizing those constituents struggling with grocery bills, fuel bills and tax bills from an out-of-touch federal government that has declared war on the average Canadian. When I asked my question on taxation, Canadians took note it was the natural resources minister responding, not the Minister of Finance. He did so by confirming raising taxes to make life unaffordable was Liberal carbon tax policy. We can now refer to the natural resources minister as the acting minister of finance. This confirms what Conservatives have been saying all along: the carbon policy is a tax policy. Carbon taxes are no substitute for environmental policy. This also raises the question: Is the hidden agenda behind the carbon taxes to abolish capitalism? Capitalism is undeniably the most successful form of wealth creation and distribution that has ever been devised. The key to that system's huge success is individual and corporate freedom with government getting out of the way to unleash human potential. Capitalism has done more to raise the standard of living, lifting more people out of poverty than all socialist government handouts combined. As a free market Conservative, I know my Conservative Party believes in freedom and free enterprise. We need an environmental policy that focuses on science-based and human ingenuity solutions to pollution. The Liberals are forcing seniors and other Canadians on fixed incomes to have to choose between heating and eating. Emerging economies will not sacrifice poverty eradication and economic development to follow Canada's crushing carbon tax approach that brings so much pain for so little results. In Canada today, the Liberals' carbon tax policy designed to make fossil fuels expensive is now doing exactly what it was intended to do: making everything more expensive. This means a very bleak winter is ahead. We should be taking the pathway of innovation. As fossil fuel prices climb, the Prime Minister and his acting finance minister believe people will shift painlessly to renewable energy sources. The Liberal Party ignores the science. Renewables are far from ready to power the world. Solar and wind can only work with massive amounts of backup power, mostly fossil fuels, to keep the world running when the wind dies down, it is cloudy or at night. Renewables mostly generate electricity, which is just one-fifth of our total energy use. The vast majority is non-electric, like transport, industrial processes and heat. That is why the world still gets 80% of its energy from fossil fuels. Even though private investment in clean-energy technology is increasing, the Prime Minister and his handlers see the weather as an opportunity to remake society, the so-called “great reset”. Decarbonizing the Canadian economy with crushing carbon taxes means replacing in a few years fossil fuel infrastructure that was built up over decades. This will require hundreds of thousands of square miles of wind and solar farms, enough battery storage to keep the power flowing and at least doubling Canada's transmission line capability. The same laws that Liberal-sponsored environmental groups have used to block fossil fuel projects are being exploited to slow down the transition to clean energy like hydro and nuclear. The only credible environmental plans include nuclear and hydro power generation. The carbon tax policy goal of achieving net-zero CO2 emissions brings crippling economic pain. Fossil fuel costs have shot up and will keep rising every time the acting minister of finance increases the carbon tax burden on Canadians. While it may be convenient for the Prime Minister and his acting finance minister to blame Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Prime Minister added $100 billion to our national debt before COVID and $500 billion to it before Russia even opened fire. All that borrowed money is driving up the cost of goods that we buy and the interest charged to service that debt.
662 words
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