Debates of March 19th, 2024

Opposition Motion—Carbon Tax

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I think we could save that for questions and comments.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, they were moved, actually. They may not have been debated, but they were moved.

I am going to say something that will please the member from Calgary even more, since he likes this sort of thing. The Conservatives moved a motion on the carbon tax at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. I just want everyone to think about that for a moment. Let that sink in. The Conservatives moved a motion on the carbon tax at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

However, that is nothing. Yesterday, they debated motions on the carbon tax at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, and the member for South Shore—St. Margarets asked telecom CEOs what effect the carbon tax would have on cellphone bills. The CEOs of the biggest companies looked at him like he came from another galaxy. They told them that it had no effect on Quebeckers' cellphone bills. However, he kept going and kept asking the same question again, as though a committee worked the same way torture does, as though the more he laid into them, the more they would talk. He was told again that it had no impact.

However, the world record was set at the Standing Committee on Official Languages. The member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier debated two motions at the Standing Committee on Official Languages. The member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier is the only one of the 42 million people in Canada who speaks French to diesel. He is the only such person in Canada, because he is trying to get into cabinet. He is prepared to do anything, including grovelling, and he believes propane is bilingual. He is the only person like that in Canada. I could not make this stuff up. There are lists of things like that.

This is a party that has no respect for parliamentary institutions, no respect for the intelligence of Canadians and Quebeckers, and no respect for facts. This party has no respect for anything. Meanwhile, they are not attacking the oil subsidies. They say they want to shrink the size of government, provided that oil is not affected.

There are two kinds of Conservatives who foist this kind of debate on us. The first kind are the creationists, for whom human biology originates with Adam and Eve in fig leaves, the apple, the serpent and all that. They believe that the Earth is flat and that climate change does not exist. They are told to be quiet, but they exist and there are many of them. These people believe things that are not true, but I think that they are sincere in their beliefs.

Then there are the other members of this party, particularly the Conservatives from Quebec, the ones who are pro-Charest, former Liberals and former members of Action Démocratique du Québec. These people supported the Quebec system, and today they want to become ministers. What do they say? First they say that this is not an environmental plan, but rather a tax plan, even though anyone who has studied taxation beyond the fundamentals was taught that, in a modern tax system, taxation has an impact on the environment. These members are lying to Quebeckers.

They say that it is not working because greenhouse gas emissions have increased. They are incapable of understanding that, without appropriate pricing, emissions would have increased more rapidly. These people have driver's licences, yet they do not know the difference between braking and reversing. I would certainly never lend them my car. These people say that, because China has done nothing, we will do nothing. The Conservatives have decided to look to Communist China for policy inspiration. They are waiting for the Communists to act first. What next? Will they congratulate Putin on his re-election? It almost seems that way. These Conservatives are inconsistent. The reason they are acting this way is quite simple: They are exploiting people's distress.

That is why today's motion refers to a survey, not to facts. That tells us how they think and how they practise politics. It tells us what they think of people's intelligence and how they will govern when the time comes. It will be by survey.

Meanwhile, in Quebec, we made the transition. We were smart about it, because we realized that everybody else was transitioning and that western Canada could not separate itself from the rest of the world, any more than Quebec could. That said, we can and should separate from Canada.

What did we do? We banked on the environment and the transition. Today, it is working, and companies from all over the world are coming to set up shop in Quebec, where there is clean energy, because, in a few years' time, their customers will be asking for decarbonized goods. In fact, we now wonder if we will have enough megawatts of clean energy to have them come here, create jobs and generate economic growth. We have created five industrial clusters in Canada with superclusters and oil money. Within the next decade, we should be able to create 47 new ones.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives want to live in the Stone Age. They want to live in the past.

If anyone wants to know whether I support this motion, I will let my colleagues figure out the answer. I think that the smart people will be able to guess that the Bloc Québécois will vote against it.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my Bloc Québécois colleague's comments, which were very on point. I would like to make a correction: Four motions, not two, were debated yesterday at the Standing Committee on Official Languages concerning official languages and diesel.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks of the Conservative Party's old electoral platform from the last election. How does he think the Conservatives can reconcile that electoral platform with the fight against climate change and their discourse today, which is completely inconsistent with it?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, because I am in the House for this debate, I will not be able to attend Mr. Mulroney's funeral, so I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere condolences to the family and my deep respect for Mr. Mulroney, who was a Progressive Conservative and who believed in the market. He knew that incentives could change behaviour. That is why, when it came to acid rain, Mr. Mulroney was very proud of the Montreal Protocol, which introduced an emissions trading mechanism.

Earlier, a Conservative member yelled out that it was not a carbon tax. It is a pricing mechanism. These two mechanisms have their pros and cons, but they are market-based.

The Conservatives no longer believe in the market. They believe in using public money and giving that money to companies they are friends with. If that is what the Conservative Party is like, I think many people who voted for them in the past are going to have second thoughts.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the speech made by my colleague from Quebec. He was very interesting, and very passionate, but does he live in the real world? I am not certain.

He said that the Conservatives took advantage of people's troubles. That is interesting. Could people's troubles be caused by the carbon tax itself? The cost of living is rising. Inflation is on the rise, too. Could the relationship between the two be the cause of Canadians' troubles? Will he continue to downplay Canadians' troubles?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague did not ask that question when the price of gas went down at Thanksgiving last year. He was too preoccupied with the price of turkey.

Since he asked earlier, I will give my colleague the list of the committees at which the Conservatives moved motions about the carbon tax yesterday, bringing the meetings to a standstill: the Standing Committee on National Defence, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Standing Committee on Science and Research, the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, the Standing Committee on Natural Resources, the Standing Committee on Finance, the Standing Committee on Health, the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, the Standing Committee on Official Languages and the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs. They brought all that to a standstill yesterday.

It was a demonstration and a quantification of how little respect they have for our institutions.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. I really enjoyed his comments about propane and diesel and the French language. This is a prime example of the Conservatives' almost pathological obsession with attacking the price on pollution. It is an obsession that blinds them to the climate crisis, which is real and has an impact on forest fires, droughts and floods.

What does my Bloc Québécois colleague think about the Conservatives not having a climate and environmental plan?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is something missing from the Conservatives' platform, and that is the principle by which everyone must pull their weight.

The logic behind the Conservative Party of Canada not having a plan is that, since China is being regressive, they will be regressive too. Since others are not doing the right thing, they will not do the right thing either. The Conservatives' logic, especially under their new leader, is to compare themselves to whoever is the worst, since that is the only way they can look good. I think that that is not the type of excellence we are used to seeing from political parties.

Obviously, we all have our differences, but I think that, at one time, in Mr. Mulroney's time, for example, the Progressive Conservative Party had far more dignity and was far more consistent.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member who just spoke. I dream of having that kind of presence and the skill to deliver that kind of speech.

What I want to do is present the facts that were recently reported by Radio-Canada about the whole carbon tax issue. I think it is extremely relevant to today's debate.

As my colleague said, today's fairly concise Conservative Party motion is based on the results of a survey of Canadians. The motion reads as follows:

That, given that 70% of provinces and 70% of Canadians oppose the Prime Minister's 23% carbon tax hike on April 1, the House call on the NDP-Liberal coalition to immediately cancel this hike.

The Conservative Party claims that 70% of Canadians are against this carbon tax hike, so I took a look at the survey to see if that is actually true. I discovered that the poll was about the government's measure to exempt home heating oil from the carbon pricing act, not about the existence of the act itself.

The Conservative Party therefore chose to put their spin on the numbers, perhaps because “Axe the tax” makes a good slogan. However, it is not really true that 70% of Canadians are against the 23% increase that will take effect on April 1, because this increase will be gradual. It is true that, at some point, the carbon tax will reach a certain amount, but these amounts will be spread over several years, until 2030. What they are claiming here is a bit of a stretch. As my colleague who spoke before me was saying, this is one of the reasons why the Bloc Québécois is against the Conservatives’ motion.

I looked for other figures. It is funny, because I found the same numbers, that is, 70% and 23%, but they refer to something completely different. I found out that 70% of the global GDP has a carbon price. More than 48 countries around the globe have a carbon tax or a cap and trade system. It is now standard in most industrialized countries to put a price on pollution, and that is what Canada did a few years ago.

The 23% is simple enough. According to the same study, 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions are covered by a price on pollution. I thought it was funny to find these same numbers but then realizing they mean different things. Obviously, I did not pull these figures out of a hat; they were published by France’s ministry of energy transition. It is interesting to see what other countries are doing instead of complaining of what we have at home.

The Conservative motion asks that “the House call on the NDP-Liberal coalition to immediately cancel this hike.” That is interesting because it is the first time the coalition is being called “la coalition entre les libéraux et les néo-démocrates” in French. Normally, the Conservatives use different formulations when they talk about the coalition. In English, they say that it is the NDP-Liberal coalition, or a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP, but when they are talking to Quebeckers in French, they say that it is a coalition between the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals. Unfortunately for them, the motion does not include this nuance. It mentions only a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP.

Let us get back to the famous carbon tax hike. It will indeed reach $170 by 2030. For now, it is set at $65 per tonne. Unlike what the Conservative Party would have us believe, it is not the Bloc Québécois that says we must increase the price on carbon pollution to help Canada achieve its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. It is the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO. The Office of the PBO is a well-respected institution. I think that the Conservative Party should believe the figures published by the PBO. Not so very long ago, he said that, to achieve the Paris Agreement targets by 2030, we would have to increase the price on carbon to $239 per tonne. The carbon tax is a tool Canada uses to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and this tool should benefit people who are a bit more economically conservative. It is therefore a little hard to understand why the Conservatives are so against the price on pollution.

Radio-Canada’s Fannie Olivier published an analysis a few days ago entitled “À quoi ressemblerait un Canada sans prix sur le carbone?” or what would Canada be like without carbon pricing?

The Conservative Party is threatening to axe the tax as soon as it comes to power.

Let us go back to 2016 when the Prime Minister took advantage of a debate on the ratification of the Paris Agreement to announce a price on carbon. He told the provinces that they would have to comply. He gave them two years to do so. Then, he would start imposing a tax of $10 per tonne that would gradually increase. Obviously, a few provincial environment ministers did not take that very well. In Quebec, we were not concerned, because we already had a cap and trade system in place with California that has been working perfectly well since 2013. Therefore, this carbon pricing has no impact in Quebec. My colleague explained that. The carbon tax does not apply to Quebec, despite what some may think, because, unfortunately, people have been spreading misinformation. Some provinces even challenged the tax before the Supreme Court, but they were unsuccessful. There is a real power struggle with the provinces.

It must be said that the Liberal government, as I mentioned earlier, has not done a very good job of explaining this environmental measure. It recently created a loophole in its own legislation by introducing a three-year exemption for heating oil with the aim of quelling discontent in the Atlantic provinces. That did nothing to help its popularity ratings, unfortunately.

What would happen if we woke up tomorrow and there was no longer a carbon tax in Canada? Sébastien Jodoin, a professor in the faculty of law at McGill University, says that there would be significant consequences, starting with the hit on the pockets of many Canadians. That is interesting. Conservatives often tell us that people have no money, that they are poor, that the carbon tax is making those who are poor even poorer. However, we know that 80% of Canadians who pay the tax receive a refund from the federal government that exceeds what they pay. Should carbon pricing be abolished, they would have less money in their pockets. I find that interesting.

Pierre-Olivier Pineau, Chair in Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal, says that “the great irony is that the majority of Canadians in provinces that pay the federal tax, earn money from it. Abolishing it would impoverish Canadians.” That is interesting. Unfortunately that is not a speech we hear often from the Conservative Party. Obviously, removing it would also have an impact on greenhouse gases. The government is trying to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions with this measure. Getting rid of it would have consequences in the short, medium and long terms.

The carbon tax currently being used by the Government of Canada seeks to reduce one-third of the emissions in the country by 2030. It must be said that the way things are going, we are nowhere close to meeting our greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2030. I would even go so far as to say that we need other measures, starting with the money that is given to the oil and gas companies. These companies make billions of dollars in profits every year and the government keeps taking taxpayer money and giving it to those people. I think we could take that money and help people cope with the cost of living. We could invest in green energy, such as wind, solar and hydroelectricity in Quebec. We need investment in these economic sectors that are good for the planet. We need to find other ways. If the Conservative Party wants to abolish carbon pricing, then it needs to come up with other, meaningful ways to fight climate change.

I want to come back to the fact that 23% of global emissions are now covered by a carbon pricing or emissions trading system. That statistic is also from the World Bank. In her article, Fannie Olivier said that the number of countries that have such a tax has significantly increased in recent years. We are talking about nearly fifty countries or states that have made the leap. Take, for example, Vietnam, or even Turkey. Doing away with the tax on carbon would really go against what is being done internationally.

I still have a lot more I would like to say, but I see that my time is up, so I will stop there.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Pursuant to Standing Order 43(2)(a), I would like to inform the House that the remaining Conservative caucus speaking slots are hereby divided in two.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have an important question for my Bloc Québécois colleague.

According to her, the carbon tax should be $239 per tonne rather than $170. Did she take into account the implicit carbon tax created by the subsidies to battery plants? The Liberal government has given approximately $45 billion in subsidies to foreign companies so far.

Does she agree with the figure given by the Quebec government, which determined that the implicit carbon tax was $800 per tonne, money that comes out of Canadian taxpayers' pockets?

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would rather not be misquoted. What I was saying about the $239 per tonne is that that is what the Parliamentary Budget Officer is proposing. It is not the Bloc Québécois that is proposing it, it is the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

What he is saying is that, with the current tax, about eight in 10 Canadian households get more money back than they pay with the tax. That seems clear enough to me.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate many of the comments the member and the speaker before her have put on the record.

The question I have is with respect to the spreading of misinformation. If one takes a look at social media, there is a great deal of information out there that is just not true.

Can the member provide her thoughts on the impact this has on sound, good public policy, when we have the official opposition spreading misinformation to the detriment to the policy itself?

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, disinformation is becoming more and more of a problem. Now we are seeing it with respect to this government measure.

If I had one piece of advice to give the Liberal Party, the party currently in power, it would be to take back control of the narrative on its own environmental and economic measures. Why is the Conservative Party making axing the carbon tax the slogan for its next election campaign on the pretext that it is what is making Canadians poorer? We agree on the fact that the carbon tax does not contribute that much to inflation. It contributes only 0.1%.

The former minister of environment and climate change, Catherine McKenna, says that it is supposed to be a good environmental and economic measure. Why do the Liberals not say so? I urge them to speak up.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoy working with my colleague on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

However, there is something I am having a hard time understanding. Quebeckers have a good understanding of the impact of climate change. There is no doubt that climate change is having an impact, that climate change is costing Quebeckers a lot of money, and that something needs to be done.

However, there are Conservative members in Quebec who deny the existence of climate change. The Conservative Party systematically refuses to put the least policy in place to counter climate change. That is what I have trouble understanding.

I would like to know whether my colleague can explain to me how Quebec's Conservative members can deny the existence of climate change.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, no one can really explain this. No sane person in Quebec thinks that climate change is not real. We are living it. I am living it in my riding with coastal erosion. It is a scourge and we need to do more to fight it.

One of the first things we can do is put a price on pollution, but we also need to stop subsidizing oil companies, which pollute enormously.

In Bill C‑59, which we voted on yesterday, there are still billions of dollars in tax credits for these oil companies that make billions of dollars in profits. If we took all that money and helped Canadians cope with the rising cost of living, it seems to me we would be further ahead. It seems to me we would be further ahead if we invested in green economies and green energy.

I will stop here. I hope the NDP will support these measures.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.

The Conservatives seem to be oblivious to the fact that the climate crisis is happening; that it is costing Canadians billions of dollars; that it is costing farmers their crops; that it is costing indigenous communities, as they are evacuated from their homes each wildfire season; and that it is costing British Columbians their homes and their livelihoods during extreme flooding, as well as their lives and their loved ones when there are record-breaking heat domes.

The climate emergency is here. The Conservatives refuse to present a plan to tackle the crisis; instead, they are more interested in helping out CEOs in big oil and gas than truly helping Canadians who are struggling. Alberta declared the beginning of their wildfire season in February. Last summer, kids could not play outside because of the smoke-filled air. People could not go outside without choking on dust and smoke.

At the end of 2023, 18.5 million hectares of forest had burned, forcing thousands from their homes. Many people lost everything. For some context, the worst wildfire season up to then burned 7.6 million hectares; that was in 1989. Now it is at 18.5 million hectares, more than double the total land size of Portugal. These wildfires are getting worse because there are massive droughts impacting whole regions across the country. The soil is so dry that, when the fires start, they can keep burning and nothing gets in the way.

The impacts are not just on our forests. Farmers across Canada are having to face these awful drought conditions. In Canada right now, including in Alberta, there are states of emergency because of the drought conditions. There are negotiations about water allocations, discussions on who gets to use the water. Farmers cannot rely on natural rain, and there are massive threats of crop failure.

In my home province of British Columbia, the provincial government is already preparing for a catastrophically dry summer. Yesterday, an $80 million fund was announced to help farmers invest in water infrastructure.

Conservatives are blaming the high cost of groceries on the carbon tax, but what about crop failures? What about the devastating conditions farmers are facing because of the climate crisis? What are the Conservatives doing to address this water crisis that our farmers are forced to deal with? I will note that it was a New Democrat provincial government, not a Conservative one, that announced the water infrastructure fund.

The Conservatives have no plan to address the climate crisis. They have no plan to stop wildfires. They are going to let our kids continue to choke on smoke in the summer, when communities are forced to evacuate their homes. The Conservatives think it is okay to let the biggest polluters off the hook for literally burning our planet.

I want to talk about the carbon tax. Obviously, Conservatives want to get rid of it. They want to make it free for the biggest polluters, big oil and gas companies, to pollute. Meanwhile, they would cut and gut the rebates that put more money back in the pockets of Canadians. Getting rid of these rebates, which most Canadians receive, will hurt lower-income Canadians the most.

However, the Liberals' pricing scheme has allowed the biggest polluters, the biggest corporations, to pay less than everyone else does. The problem with the current construction of the carbon tax, and the PBO has put out a number of reports that confirm this, is that 80% of Canadians get more money back than they pay. This is a fact the Conservatives continue to choose to ignore.

Even if the Conservatives only care about pocketbook issues, if they deny the reality of climate change, if they ignore the fact that the climate crisis is a pocketbook issue, they should want to give Canadians a break on their home heating. They should want to make big oil and gas companies pay what they owe. However, when the NDP presented a motion to do just that, to take the GST off home heating, and to include those who use electricity to heat their homes, the Conservatives and the Liberals voted against it.

The motion also called for an excess profits tax on big oil and gas companies, a policy that recent polling shows the vast majority of Canadians support. To make life even more affordable, the NDP suggested making heat pumps free for middle and low-income Canadians. When it comes to addressing the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis, the NDP is the only party that is offering solutions.

Canadians want real solutions. They are struggling to make ends meet and they need support, but not by taking away hundreds of dollars in rebates for a tiny break on carbon pricing, leaving Canadians worse off than they were before. They want real solutions that will help them afford their groceries, rent, child care and their medication.

The Conservatives will never make the housing market more affordable. They will never fight for national pharmacare, medication for the people who need it. They will fight against pharmacare. They will never take on the grocery store chain CEOs, the big pharmaceutical companies, real estate developers or big oil and gas CEOs, because these are the people who make up their governing body. Half of the Conservatives' national body is made up of lobbyist from these sectors, and lobbyists are flocking to the Leader of the Opposition's cash for access events. However, these are the same companies and the same CEOs who are cozy with the Liberal government.

Canadians want a government that will look out for them, but the Liberals and Conservatives are looking out for the interests of CEOs and lobbyists. Canadians also want a government that will address the wildfires, floods, droughts, deadly heat domes and the climate-related emergencies they are facing. Canadians are scared about the future. Despite the Liberals' words saying that they believe in climate change, they invite oil and gas CEOs to help craft their climate plan. They water down key policies like an emissions cap on oil and gas and refuse to take the excess profits off big oil.

Canadians are frustrated with the carbon tax, because when it comes to the Liberal government, they are not seeing the climate action that is needed to address the climate crisis. When the Liberal government declared a climate emergency in 2019, the very next day it bought a pipeline.

More recently, even though it has been promised for years, when it comes to eliminating domestic fossil fuel subsidies, when it comes to handing out billions of dollars to big oil and gas companies, the Liberals presented a plan, after delay and delay, that was littered with loopholes, allowing these big oil and gas CEOs to keep lining their pockets, continuing making record profits and continuing to accept government subsidies.

When it came to capping oil and gas emissions just a few months ago, the Liberals watered down the cap so badly that it does not even line up with their own weak climate plan, with our Paris targets. It feels like the Liberals have truly stacked their emissions reduction plan on carbon pricing. It is not a silver bullet.

Then the Liberals botched their communications to Canadians so badly that of course Canadians are frustrated. They are paying more at the gas pumps, more to heat their homes, more on groceries and more for their medication. All they hear is the disinformation the Conservatives are feeding them, but the truth is that the Liberals are not making it easy for everyday Canadians to get off fossil fuels.

Our NDP team knows that the climate crisis is a pocketbook issue. We have proposed many ways to make life more affordable and to tackle the climate crisis. We need to take the GST off home heating, give Canadians heat pumps and invest in public transit. We need to fix the greener homes program and ensure that big oil and gas are paying what it owes.

Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have the courage to take on big oil and gas, but we do. Canadians want a government that looks out for them.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the member made reference to the greener homes program, which is a Liberal government program. When the member talks about heat pumps, again, it is a Liberal government program. There are many things such as the electrification of vehicles. The incentives that are provided by this government are extensive. However, that is not necessarily what my question is about.

The Conservatives will say that the residents of Winnipeg North will not benefit from the carbon rebate, when 80% of people will get more money back than they pay. They are saying that they are going to axe the tax in British Columbia, but there is no carbon tax. I am wondering if she could address the issue of misinformation.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to quickly start with heat pumps, because that is what the member also started with. The greener homes program was riddled with problems. So many middle-income Canadians could not navigate the system and could not afford to pay the money up front. Low-income Canadians were excluded altogether. That is why New Democrats forced the government, through our supply and confidence agreement, to include a commitment to provide energy efficiency to low-income Canadians. We are going to keep pushing the government. It is unfortunate that it cancelled that program and has not provided a plan to replace it, a meaningful plan to help low-income and middle-income Canadians heat their homes efficiently.

On disinformation, it has been beyond disheartening and atrocious to see Conservatives tour around Canada, not only making up facts or maybe generously telling fiction to Canadians about how carbon pricing works, but also going to my home province of British Columbia and pretending that there is a federal carbon tax there. We just heard similarly from my Bloc colleagues. I am sure the Leader of the Opposition is in Quebec saying that he will axe the tax. It is a disservice to our democracy and Canadians. Canadians deserve better.

[Clifford Small, Conservative, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if my hon. colleague realizes that coal consumption worldwide hit record usage last year. In 2024-25 we are going to hit another record.

I will quote Premier Furey, the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, who said, “The issue for this particular tax is there are limited options to change right now in Newfoundland and Labrador....In the absence of the ability to change, what does the tax really accomplish?” It accomplishes nothing.

What would accomplish something would be to cut the red tape and shorten the approval process for building mines to mine things like lithium, nickel, copper and whatnot, the rare earth metals needed for the green transition. The approval time to build a new mine to mine these precious metals required for the transition is 18 years. In the U.S. it is 40% less and in Australia it is 25% less.

I would like to know what the NDP-Liberal costly coalition's plan is to reduce approval times to mine green metals.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is a perfect example of a Conservative climate plan.

Yesterday, I heard Conservatives and Liberals arguing back and forth about who built more pipelines and who could get pipelines approved more quickly. This is not a future for Canada. Once again, we see the Conservatives denying that the climate crisis is real and failing to tackle and meet this moment, while Canadians are worried about not only their future but their present reality.

The member mentioned coal. Thermal coal exports tripled since the current government came into power. Imagine a government committing to phase out thermal coal and end thermal coal exports, but instead it triples them. It does not tell Canadians that it has done this. It waits for a New Democrat to find out that information and make it public. That is why I have tabled a motion in the House to ban thermal coal exports.

We need to tackle the climate crisis like we want to win.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party and its representatives in the House can be criticized for many things, and I point that out whenever I can, but I want to start by saying that one thing we cannot fault them for is their lack of determination. There is a definite consistency in their obsession with the price on pollution or the carbon tax. One thing is for sure: They are not giving up. They keep coming back to us with this fantasy of doing nothing to fight climate change, this climate crisis affecting the entire planet.

Every day, every week, we hear that the situation is worse than what the experts thought, worse than what the experts at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, have been telling us for years. Let us look at some very recent and quite harrowing examples.

Let us start with the price on pollution or the carbon tax, which has been in place in some provinces for a few years now. I would remind the House that this does not apply in Quebec, despite what my Conservative colleagues from Quebec are saying, which is that a trucker who fills up in Ontario could feel the effects. It is minimal. It is almost insignificant. Quebec has had a carbon exchange for years now, which is a slightly different tool from a price on pollution or a carbon tax.

What the Conservatives never say and what the Liberals have such a hard time explaining is that there is a financial compensation program for middle-class families as well as for the poorest workers in the provinces where this carbon tax applies.

According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is a leading authority on Parliament Hill, 80% of Canadian households in provinces where this applies get more back than they pay in carbon taxes, a legitimate price indicator tool to change behaviours.

It also seems really strange to me that the Conservatives have spent years refusing to apply a market rule that could change the behaviour of individuals and big corporations or maybe both.

The people in greatest need, those struggling to pay rent or buy groceries, will receive financial compensation. The Parliamentary Budget Officer tells us that 80% of Canadian households will receive more money back than they pay out. The Conservatives say nothing about that and the Liberals, for whatever reason, are incapable of explaining it. The political communication has been terrible.

According to Statistics Canada's models, 94% of households with an annual income below $50,000 will get back more in rebates or compensation than they pay out in carbon taxes applied to their daily or weekly purchases. Obviously, we will never hear that from a Conservative, and that is a real shame. Facts are facts, and I think our debates in the House should be grounded in facts.

The Conservative Party is moving its 29th motion on the carbon tax in a very specific context. We keep hearing in the news that the planet is headed for a dead end. We are being told that we are moving in the wrong direction. This has consequences. The Conservatives have no climate plan, and that is disturbing. Their inaction is troubling. They appear to be wilfully turning a blind eye.

I would now like to read some excerpts from an Agence France-Presse article published in La Presse this morning that reveals some very worrisome information. I will start with this:

Records broken for ocean heat, sea level rise and glacier retreat...2023 capped off the warmest 10-year period on record, with the UN warning on Tuesday that the planet is “on the brink”.

The Tuesday referred to in the article is today. The study came out this morning.

A new report from the World Meteorological Organization or WMO, a UN agency, shows that records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed, for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat.

That is pretty much the perfect storm for making things worse. Even with our targets for reducing greenhouse gases to prevent natural disasters, to prevent people from suffocating, to prevent people from dying from pollution, things are likely only going to get worse.

The article goes on to say the following, and I quote:

The planet is “on the brink” while “fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned.

“There is still time to throw out a lifeline to people and the planet” but, according to him, we need to act “now”.

The report confirms that 2023 was the hottest year on record, with an average surface temperature of 1.45°C above pre-industrial levels.

The objective of the Paris Agreement was to limit the global warming increase to 1.5°C compared with the temperature in 1830 or 1850. In 2023, the increase reached 1.45°C. There is no doubt about it, we are going to hit the 1.5°C limit. Perhaps we will manage to keep it to a maximum increase of 2°C, but at that rate, not only are we not making any gains, we are going backwards, and backwards faster than we thought.

“Every fraction of a degree of global heating impacts the future of life on Earth”, warned the head of the United Nations.

“The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis—as witnessed by growing food insecurity and population displacement, and biodiversity loss”, said the WMO secretary general....

As I said earlier, 2023 marks the end of the hottest decade on record since 1850. The situation is catastrophic.

On an average day in 2023, nearly one third of the global ocean was gripped by a marine heatwave.... Towards the end of 2023, over 90% of the ocean had experienced heatwave conditions at some point during the year.

In 2023, global mean sea level reached a record high...reflecting continued ocean warming (thermal expansion) as well as the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.

Sea levels are rising because the glaciers are melting. In particular, a big chunk of Antarctica is breaking off. If it melts, average sea levels will rise by several metres, so if we are being honest, for Bangladesh, this is going to pose a few problems. For the city of London, it is going to pose a few problems. For New York City, it is going to pose a few problems. What the Conservative Party is proposing is to carry on, to forge ahead. According to this party, everything is going to be fine, we are going to find a technological magic wand and we are going to capture all the carbon with a big vacuum cleaner that is going to go everywhere. That is not how it works. The technology is unproven.

I could talk about last year's wildfires. There was smoke everywhere, in Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, over Montreal. Things will be worse this summer. Not enough rain fell and we did not get enough snow this winter. We will experience more drought and have more wildfires this summer. It is happening around the world.

I am going to quote from an RTL info article posted a few days ago about the situation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It says:

Rio de Janeiro residents are looking for “open spaces” and shade in a park as a new heatwave descends upon Brazil, with record high temperatures.

That was the situation this past Sunday in Rio de Janeiro.

The heatwave that Latin America has been experiencing since the beginning of the year brought the perceived temperature up to a record 62.3°C in Brazil this weekend....

That is not livable. Obviously, people are at risk of getting sick. They are at risk of dying. All of the health care professionals who are concerned about the climate crisis and the environment are saying that this is a matter of human lives. It is also an economic matter. Some insurance companies are refusing to cover apartments and houses that are too close to the water. Drought, flooding and forest fires are happening and will only get worse. Quebeckers and Canadians are the ones who will pay the price given the impact on their lives and their bodies. Unfortunately, the Conservative Party is not presenting any solutions.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I salute my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie and thank him for his speech.

I will have the opportunity later to say more about what we have been proposing for years now on climate change, because, yes, we recognize that climate change is real and that we need to do something about it. After eight years of the Liberal government, however, the results are not there.

What does my colleague think about the action of his neighbour, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change? After eight years of the Liberal government, the UN ranked Canada 62nd out of 67 in terms of effectiveness against climate change.

Is he aware that the Liberal carbon tax has put Canada in 62nd place, that Canada has never managed to meet its targets in eight years and that we are a long way from the ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement, while this government and his Liberal neighbour, the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, have done absolutely nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

What does he think of his neighbour?

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, when I said that the Conservative Party is not very good at fighting climate change, I was not suggesting that the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie is doing a fantastic job on this front. I have to agree with my colleague: Over the past eight years, the Liberal government has failed in the fight against climate change. Even the former Liberal environment minister, Catherine McKenna, is very critical of the government.

I would like to remind the House, as my colleague from Victoria did earlier, that, in his mandate letter, the current Minister of the Environment was told to ban thermal coal exports. However, coal exports have tripled under this Liberal government, even though it presents itself as a climate action champion. The Liberals have been totally hypocritical.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I asked the member's colleague from British Columbia a question, and I will be more focused on the question itself in regard to how the leader of the Conservative Party is touring the country and literally spreading information that is questionable and that many would say is intentionally misleading. Examples of that include the province of British Columbia, where the carbon tax does not apply, and the member's home province, where the carbon tax does not apply. To people like my constituents in the province of Manitoba, he is saying there is no net benefit, in terms of dollar value, from the carbon rebate versus the carbon tax, when over 80% do receive more than they actually pay.

I am wondering whether the member could provide his thoughts in regard to the ongoing spreading of misinformation by the official opposition.