Mr. Speaker, I got up this morning and called home, as I do each day I am here in Ottawa away from my family, as I am sure many do. I asked, “What's the price of gasoline this morning? What's the price of diesel?” In my part of Ontario, just north of the GTA, it is ranging anywhere from about 165.9 to 175.9 for regular to around two dollars for diesel fuel. That is in Uxbridge, Port Perry, Cannington, Beaverton in Brock township and, of course, Sutton and Keswick in Georgina, which are all in my riding.
Here we are. The reality is that we have diesel that is about two dollars and $1.75 gasoline in a country that sits on the fourth-largest reserve of conventional and unconventional oil and gas. It should be a time when Canada is benefiting from instability in the world; instead, we are suffering because of it.
The war in Iran has certainly caused a spike in oil prices. It is one cause of what we are seeing at the pumps, but the other cause is, of course, self-inflicted. It is 10 years of policies from the government, whether it is old or new. Regardless of what they call it, the Liberals have been consistent, at least, in wanting to keep our resources in the ground. They would rather see Canadians starve, freeze and lose their jobs for some figment of an environmental ideology. The result is that we have two-dollar diesel and $1.75 gasoline.
Of course, we also do not have enough infrastructure. We do not have refineries. We do not have enough pipelines. We do not have a pipeline from east to west, so we cannot even get our resources to our own people. That is why places in my part of the country and further east, instead of utilizing Canadian energy, are importing energy from places around the world that none of us would want to vacation in. For example, there is Saudi Arabia, where, of course, women have no rights, but we are funding its regime to the tune of billions of dollars by importing its oil rather than consuming our own, from Canadians who have hard-working jobs and high pay and from where our industries have high environmental standards.
On top of these policy choices, what is worse in this whole situation, is that we clobber Canadians with taxes. We keep resources in the ground. We buy higher at world prices than it would cost to consume our own, and to add insult to injury, we clobber Canadians with taxes on top of that.
Depending on where people live in this country, taxes on fuel will range from 40¢ to around 60¢ per litre. That is combined federal and provincial taxes. Colleagues need to bear with me as I am going to go through them. It might take a while, but here we go. There is a provincial excise tax; local consumer carbon taxes if people are in certain parts of British Columbia; transit taxes, again, if people are in certain parts of British Columbia; provincial sales taxes; the federal excise tax; the federal sales tax; the clean fuel regulations tax; and the industrial carbon tax.
If colleagues were keeping track, that was quite a list, but one of the ironies of all these taxes is that the Liberals have, for months, called them imaginary. Every time I have asked a question on the clean fuel regulations or the industrial carbon tax, the government House leader, who just spoke, will get up to say that these are imaginary taxes.
Well, today, let us take two that the Liberals have said are imaginary. The industrial carbon tax was and remains a flagship Liberal policy. In fact, if we go back to read the Liberals budget from the fall, it mentions the industrial carbon tax at least nine times and, in fact, has a promise to increase that industrial carbon tax in the future. Indeed, how imaginary is that?
Next are the clean fuel regulations or the clean fuel standards tax. That is a real law. It is not imaginary. We can go on the justice laws website and look up the clean fuel regulations. In fact, the government has a dedicated web page for those regulations, so those are anything but imaginary.
It is because of that uncertainty and because of the cost for families that we are today proposing, as the Conservative Party, as the official opposition, to remove all of the federal taxes on fuel. We have estimated that that would save Canadians about $20 every time they fill up at the pump and about $1,200 from now until the end of the year.
We would pay for that by using some of the profits that the government will be reaping in with its higher revenue from higher oil prices, because of course we know that, as oil prices go up, provincial and federal governments take in more tax revenue. We have estimated that we could pay for our proposal with about $5 billion of the approximately $9 billion that will be taken in through higher oil revenues in this country. We would be using existing resources and not adding to the debt or deficit.
We have suggested removing four federal taxes, proposing to suspend the federal excise tax until the end of the year, suspend the GST on gas and diesel until the end of the year and eliminate both of the clean fuel regulations, the clean fuel standards tax and the industrial carbon tax. In my view, all of these are necessary. Each one by itself is simply insufficient to provide any real relief to families. I know the Prime Minister, just a few moments ago, announced not even a half-measure, maybe a one-eighth measure, to remove only the federal excise tax and only until September.
Let me put that into context. The plan we have proposed would save about 20¢ to 25¢ a litre. What the Prime Minister proposed today is just the federal excise tax, which is 10¢ per litre on regular gasoline and four cents per litre on diesel. That is less than half of what we have proposed and for about half of the time that we have proposed it for. I will comment just on the diesel as an example. Many companies, as we have seen reported in the media, are announcing fuel surcharges to deal with higher fuel prices. Taking four cents off a litre is not going to change corporate decision-making on that. Our proposal is 25¢ or about $1,200 a year. The Liberal proposal is 10¢ cents or four cents, just a few dollars, and not even until the end of the year.
The irony now is that, after this week's events, the Liberals will have all the power in the world to take all the most ambitious measures they want. After the events of this week, last week and prior weeks, the Liberals will have a majority in the House of Commons, so they could implement more ambitious measures with ease.
I think the media has been very disingenuous over the last evening and the last week. It was not the elections last night that gave the Liberals a majority. It was a handful of members of Parliament, including four previous Conservative members of Parliament, who made the decision to leave their party and join another. Despite my best efforts, I have been unable to locate any real issue of substance that would justify the member for Acadie—Annapolis's crossing or the crossing of any of the other three prior Conservative members.
Leaving a caucus might be understandable if there were an issue of principle for which the floor crosser stood, but there is none. There is no issue of conscience, no fundamental break of faith, just raw opportunism. Even statements by each of the members who made that decision reveal nothing really of substance. In the case of the member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, she simply made a reference to people telling her in the grocery store that they liked the Prime Minister.
I certainly like you, Mr. Speaker, and other members in the House, but I would not cross the floor for you.
In the case of the member for Markham—Unionville, he just made a vague reference to unity and decisive action. What decisive action? We have been here a year since the Prime Minister was elected. In the case of the member for Acadie—Annapolis, he simply said it was for a better path forward. I would invite him to explain what that path forward is, but I do not think he has the political courage to do so. In the case of the member for Edmonton Riverbend, he was simply and clearly smitten with the Prime Minister's speech in Davos.
None of those statements reflect any real issues of substance, and that is the problem. That is what Canadians smell. Canadians are not dupes. They smell the rank hypocrisy of the members of our caucus who left, the former members of the Conservative Party. The reason people take an action matters. The reason people do something, the justification they have or, in the case of these members, when they do not have justification, matters. That is why Canadians are so upset with these floor crossings, because there is no substance behind them.
