Bill C-234

An Act to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act

This enactment amends the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act to expand the definition of eligible farming machinery and extend the exemption for qualifying farming fuel to marketable natural gas and propane.

Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

Order. I thank the hon. member, but I must remind the House that, unfortunately, singing is prohibited in the House.

I want to assure the member for Calgary Midnapore that no time will be taken away from her speaking time.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. I cannot resist noting it is not always prohibited to sing in the chamber. We can, of course, sing O Canada on Wednesdays.

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

Resuming debate.

I hope we can finally hear from the hon. member for Calgary Midnapore. The hon. member.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I cannot sing, but it was still nice to hear my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois, with whom we form the opposition in the House.

We are here today to talk about Bill C-8, of course. This is not long before we are actually going to be presented with the next budget, so I think it is very important that Canadians evaluate the past performance of the NDP-Liberal coalition before deciding to even consider approving the next budget.

I want to start by saying that my colleagues and I, here in the official opposition, have been very positive in our spirit of collaboration in the last couple of years as we have gone through the difficult time of the pandemic, but we also certainly have our limits, as individuals and groups must have their limits, in terms of what they are willing to accept.

I look at the beginning of the pandemic, when we passed, in November of 2021, Bill C-2, the first COVID relief package, worth $37 billion. There was certainly a lot of funding there. We went on to pass other legislation in the House with significant price tags, including Bill C-3, which went through the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. That was a $7-billion price tag.

In December 2021, we also had Bill C-8, which we are debating here today, with additional spending of $71.2 billion. These are not small amounts.

I will say that we certainly have done what was necessary throughout the pandemic. Everyone in the House, certainly on this side of the House, supports Canadians and wants to see Canadians get the help they need, but it has certainly become incredibly excessive and even growing, perhaps, with this new NDP coalition. We have to be wary about the items that we are seeing in the new NDP-Liberal coalition, which will cost billions upon billions of extra dollars, potentially.

At the same time that we saw the House helping Canadians, eventually leading to overspending even beyond what was necessary, we can go further back than that to something that I brought up today in question period: the destruction of the natural resources sector. This is something that did not start two years ago. This started seven years ago, when we saw the initial election of the NDP-Liberal coalition government, which continues to play out today.

To start, we saw it in November of 2016, when the northern gateway pipeline was rejected by this coalition. We look to October 2017, when TransCanada cancelled the energy east pipeline project as a result of pressure from this coalition.

This is something that this NDP-Liberal coalition likes to do. They create impossible environments for industry, whereby industry has no other choice but to abandon these projects. Then the NDP-Liberal coalition says that it is not their fault because it was abandoned by industry, when they have made conditions impossible to complete these projects.

We cannot forget January 2017, when the Prime Minister said he wanted to phase out the oil sands. He said, “You can't make a choice between what's good for the environment and what is good for the economy.... We can't shut down the oilsands tomorrow. We need to phase them out. We need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels.”

Right there, we see the Prime Minister had committed to his continued path of destroying the natural resource sector, with the help of the NDP-Liberal coalition. This, of course, led to April 2018, when Kinder Morgan halted the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion because of “continued actions in opposition to the project”, which was not surprising.

In May of 2018, we saw the NDP-Liberal coalition buy the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion, but it again created impossible conditions for the project to be completed, whereby Kinder Morgan eventually abandoned the project. Once again, the government created impossible conditions for this industry.

Of course, I cannot help but mention Bill C-48, the oil tanker moratorium, and of course Bill C-69, which were both passed in June 2019 and completely destroyed that sector. We often refer to C-69 as the “no more pipelines” bill.

Therefore, I find it very rich that I hold in my hand here a Canadian Press article from March 20, 2022, which indicates that Liberals may find extra spending room in the budget created by rising oil prices. It is reported that it is a position similar to the one the Liberals found themselves in last December when a rosier economic picture gave the government $38.5 billion in extra spending room. Guess what. The NDP-Liberal government quickly ate up $28.4 billion with new expenditures. This extra funding, as a result of the natural resources sector, could be up to $5 billion, but we know that the NDP-Liberal government will eat that up in a moment before spending even more than that.

In fact, the former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page said, “It would be a policy mistake for the government to assume that higher-than-anticipated inflation will create extra fiscal room which could be used to deficit finance longer-term programs,” many of which we are seeing in the NDP-Liberal coalition. That is very interesting.

We see that the government has a habit of spending any money we give it. It will not pay down the record debt or the record deficit. Instead, it will spend it, so why should we trust it and give it more money? Why should we not look at this upcoming budget with scrupulosity and hesitancy?

More insulting than the government's spending what it does not have, and spending it on the back of the industry that it has destroyed entirely, is that it announced yesterday that now it plans to boost oil exports 5% in an effort to ease the energy supply crisis. This was an announcement that the Minister of Natural Resources made yesterday, following the second day of meetings at the International Energy Agency's annual ministerial gathering in Paris.

He said that Canadian industry has the pipeline and production capacity to incrementally increase oil and gas exports this year by 300,000 barrels per day, comprising 200,000 barrels of oil and 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in natural gas. The Alberta natural resources minister had a response to that. She said:

We can increase production if we can get more infrastructure built and I think that's what was missing in the conversation.... It's really not ambitious to talk about a short term potential of 200,000 barrels when we sit on top of the third largest [oil] reserves in the world.

In addition to that, we have seen a labour shortage. The NDP-Liberal government fired hundreds of thousands of workers when it set out to destroy the natural resources sector, so this sector has been struggling with a lack of workers since last year, according to a Canadian Press story, when rebounding oil prices first spurred an uptake in drilling activity in the Canadian oil patch.

In conclusion, on this side of the House, we have tried to work with the NDP-Liberal coalition. It has shown it cannot handle funds responsibly, time and time again. Now it is turning to the industry it destroyed. Now it has decided it is time to step up given that Ukrainians and Europe are suffering, while Canadians have suffered for a long time under this coalition.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wish you a happy birthday.

I listened to the Conservatives speak on Bill C-8. I am wondering if they have in fact read the bill or have a sense of what it is about. What we do know is that the Conservatives are voting against the bill. It is not the first time they do not support legislation to support Canadians. For example, the bill ensures proper school ventilation. It ensures the acquisition of rapid tests. It puts in place the 1% annual tax on foreign ownership of properties, which hopefully will help drive down some of the speculation in the cost of housing in Canada.

Can the member explain why she opposes those three policy initiatives, given that this is what we are supposed to be debating today?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think we have demonstrated, as I indicated in my speech, that we have supported legislation in moments of crisis when it was absolutely necessary for Canadians. What we will not do is give the NDP-Liberal coalition a blank cheque. We will not do that. We are responsible to Canadians to watch the spending of the NDP-Liberal coalition.

If this member is so passionate about legislation that helps Canadians, then why did his government put forward Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, which hurt so many Canadians?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the speech by my colleague for Calgary Midnapore dealt with the issue of how we finance these expenditures. One of those ways, obviously, is the preferred way of the NDP-Liberal coalition, which is to borrow money and burden future taxpayers. The other, as the member pointed out fascinatingly in her speech, was the increased revenue that is coming in to the federal government as a result of higher oil and gas prices.

I live in a part of the world where we have to burn oil from Saudi Arabia because the coalition decided that it did not want a pipeline called energy east. We also have to burn electricity from Colombian coal in Nova Scotia. That is where we get our energy: from Saudi Arabian oil and Colombian coal, because of the policies of the government.

I would like the member for Calgary Midnapore to please comment on what she thinks about the preference for us to burn energy and oil from places, such as Saudi Arabia, with repressive regimes compared with clean, ethical Canadian oil.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, frankly, I think it shows how little the government thinks of Canadians that it would turn to nations with dictatorships, that it would turn to nations without regard for human rights, and that it would turn to nations without regard for the rule of law before turning to its own citizens and its own resources to fill these needs. It just shows what little respect it has for Canadians, our resources and, frankly, our livelihoods as well.

It is incredibly disappointing to see this historic action from the NDP-Liberal government. I think we are going to see a lot more of it, given the additional information about the NDP-Liberal coalition that was made public this week.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I guess my shortest question to the member for Calgary Midnapore is this. Is she familiar with the course of the Kinder Morgan pipeline before the National Energy Board? The National Energy Board refused to hear evidence that it would cost jobs and hurt the economy. The National Energy Board rejected the evidence of Unifor, and said that the NEB was not going to look at the economy or jobs. The proponent from Texas decided it could not make money with the project and eventually laughed all the way to the bank in Texas.

I will cut it short there and ask her this. Is she familiar with the actual history of the Kinder Morgan pipeline?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think it has a very interesting history. At the time, I was consul to Dallas, Texas. We actually had an inverse relationship, whereby Mr. Harper was ready to pass any energy project necessary, while President Obama, who was a known ally of the NDP-Liberal coalition, was there to stop every interest for Canada at every step of the way.

Those are my comments.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to speak on Bill C-8, which is another massive Liberal spending bill. It is legislation that seeks to spend $71 billion. This is $71 billion in new spending, and $71 billion that the government does not have. That is on top of some $600 billion that the government has spent over the past two years, one-third of which had nothing to do with COVID. This is at a time when the national debt has soared to a historic $1.2 trillion, nearly double what it was in the last two years alone, and here we are with another massive Liberal spending bill.

With billions here and trillions there, one begins to wonder and try to understand exactly what $71 billion is. How much is that? To put it in some context, it equals roughly the amount that the federal government collects in GST revenue annually, combined with the amount that the federal government spends in terms of health care. GST revenue collected and health care spending on an annual basis combined is what $71 billion means.

From the time that the government took office, there has not been a price tag that was too high. There has been no such thing as spending too much. The Prime Minister has spent more than any prime minister in Canadian history. The Prime Minister has added more to the national debt than any prime minister in Canadian history. Indeed, the Prime Minister has added so much debt that we can take all of the prime ministers who preceded him, from 1867 to 2015, and the total accumulated national debt over 150 years does not match the amount of debt that the current Prime Minister has added in six and a half short years.

The government has a spending problem. It has a deficit and a debt problem and, to pay for it all, the government has done something that no previous government has ever done in terms of monetary policy. That is quantitative easing: in other words, the printing of money. What that has led to is the largest increase in the supply of money in half a century. We have not seen such an increase since the early 1970s. What that has meant is more money chasing fewer goods. We know what that results in: It results in inflation. Inflation hit 5.7% in February. It was the highest level of inflation since April of 1991 or August of 1991, but who is counting? In more than 30 years, we have the highest level of inflation. All projections are that inflation is only going to get worse, and rising inflation means higher interest rates. On March 1, the Bank of Canada increased interest rates. By all accounts, there will be further interest rate increases.

What does 5.7% inflation mean? It is significantly above the Bank of Canada's target of 2%. That target was established during the recession of the early 1990s, and for basically 30 years the Bank of Canada held to that target. That target was held until the Liberal government showed up, and we now see inflation at nearly triple that upper target.

It is one thing to talk about inflation in an abstract way, but there is a very real cost for all of this inflation and it is being borne by our constituents: everyday Canadians who are struggling to get by. It is called an inflation tax. That inflation tax has famously become known as “Justinflation”.

Thanks to “Justinflation”, food costs have gone up by 7.4%. That means the average family is going to pay $1,000 more for groceries this year than it did last year. When one recognizes that some 40% of Canadians are $250 away from insolvency, $1,000 puts a real squeeze on millions of Canadians who are going to have to make difficult choices about what to do in order to simply put food on the table.

Gas has skyrocketed 33% in the past year alone. What is the government's solution to this cost of living crisis? It is to double down and pour gasoline on an inflationary fire with $71 billion in new spending. What is that going to mean? It is going to mean more debt, more money printing and even more inflation. Guess what that means for everyday Canadians? It means higher costs for essentials, for everything, and diminished earnings.

Canadians need relief and they need relief now. Instead, the government's approach, on top of taxing them with “Justinflation”, has been to increase payroll taxes. It has increased—

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

There is a point of order from the hon. parliamentary secretary to the leader.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, members cannot do indirectly what they cannot do directly. The member knows full well, when he is referencing inflation and using the Prime Minister's first name, that we are not allowed to use a minister's or any member's name in the chamber.

As much as it might be cute to say, it does go against our parliamentary rules. Members need to address ministers and members by their riding or by their portfolio.

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

I would remind members that they cannot refer to a colleague in the House by name, only by their government title or riding.

The hon. member for Brandon—Souris on a point of order.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it sounds to me like the member for Winnipeg North just wants the word “just” struck from the Canadian language.