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.

Carbon Pricing

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak again on a very important topic: carbon tax and the policies that affect agriculture.

The carbon tax is a huge one. The capital gains tax was supposedly for some kind of elite businesses, but it really does affect businesses such as family farms. The capital gains tax is another one that is a very significant challenge. It goes along with the GST tax break, which the Liberals found is not getting them any bump because it is not one that works either.

However, there is some information on the carbon tax. The average 5,000-acre farm in Canada is paying about $150,000 every single year in carbon taxes. For an irrigation company, that multiplies at least to another $100,000. I know that my colleague will suggest other forms of energy, but natural gas and propane, and natural gas in particular, create power, and this is what is used in our part of the world.

For greenhouses, and I have significant ones in my riding for tomatoes, green peppers, lettuce and strawberries, they are facing huge costs, at $22 million a year in carbon taxes. By 2030, it will be $82 million to $100 million, which is a huge cost on greenhouse produce in our country. We have 44% of fresh fruit and vegetable growers already telling us that they are selling at a loss, and their statements show it. We have 77% who cannot cover their production costs, and we have 77% of produce growers in Canada close to going under.

Alberta farmers paid $17 million in carbon tax last year just on natural gas and propane to dry their grain and to heat and cool their barns. Bill C-234 would have eliminated the carbon tax on natural gas and propane, saving farmers that billion a year, but the senators gutted that bill.

However, we have ways that we can work on this. Some people do not get that we have institutions. This is from the president of the University of Alberta. He said:

...we understand energy, and we understand innovation. After more than a century of energy breakthroughs, we have learned the key to success: when you bring together the right people, you push the boundaries of innovation.

...This Alberta-based project brings together academia, industry, and government to advance the solutions that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions and diversify the economy.

We have ways that we can work with the energy sector and work with emissions. We have great academic institutions, like the University of Alberta, who can bring people together to work on this.

However, there are some other costs that are really interesting. At the ag committee recently, CN Rail representatives were there and they were asked about the carbon tax. For Saskatchewan, CN said that the carbon tax bill was $36 million just for transporting produce out of Saskatchewan, and then we can multiply that by Alberta and Manitoba. They were asked whether CN pays the carbon tax, and they said, of course not; we just download it to the farmers. This is the problem, which is that the carbon tax will be downloaded.

These are not rebate operations. There is no rebate for these large farm operations. They are the ones who do a great job of producing great food, food security produced in Canada, but they are being taxed severely. This is the challenge with the carbon tax, and it needs to be stopped.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Let me state the facts. The Bloc supports an amended Bill C-234, which has been neutered. The Bloc supported the bill as it was when it went to the Senate. The Senate neutered it, taking away literally 90% of the benefit of that bill. The Bloc does not support an unamended Bill C-234, which is what our Canadian farmers want. There is no sense passing Bill C-234 as it is amended because it does not benefit Canadian farmers.

What the member is saying is that the Bloc supports basically a nothing bill. That is not what Conservatives are fighting for. We are fighting for our farmers and ranchers right across this country, who want a break in the carbon tax on natural gas and propane.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to correct the record. In his speech, my colleague said that the Bloc Québécois is against farmers because we oppose Bill C‑234.

Let us review the facts. The bill was studied in the Senate, which proposed an amendment. To speed up the process, we are prepared to accept the amendment and vote on the bill as is. That was what our agriculture critic said last January. However, every time Bill C‑234 has come before the House, the Conservatives have filibustered it, with speakers prattling on endlessly to prevent it from ever going to a vote. They are the ones holding up the bill.

Why are they doing this to farmers?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, with the holiday season upon us, I just want to take a moment to wish my constituents in Foothills a very merry Christmas. Certainly, all of us in the House understand that our communities are bustling with Christmas shopping, Christmas carols, holiday lights and the celebration of friends and family.

At this time of year, I understand the hard work that our volunteers and our community organizers are doing with random acts of kindness that are knitting our communities together. I just want to take a moment to thank each and every one of them for all the work they are doing during this holiday season, making the communities what we know they are. They are showing us what Christmas is all about.

As proud as I am of my constituency of Foothills, unfortunately, the members on the other side of the House are going to be on Santa's naughty list, with the number of Liberal scandals, schemes, breaches of ethics and conflicts of interest that they have had over their past nine years in government.

It seems as though, while many Canadian parents are struggling to put food on the table or put gifts under the Christmas tree for their kids, the Liberal members, insiders and bagmen are the ones who are making off with the Christmas spirit this holiday season. Hard-working Canadians are seeing their paycheques eroded by out-of-control spending, higher taxes, higher inflation and scandal after scam, with the arrive scam, the WE scandal and SNC-Lavalin. Even among their members, the former minister, the member for Edmonton Centre, is getting caught in his own scandals, one after another. He tried to take advantage of his position as a cabinet minister to enrich his own company.

It seems that, with one hand, the Liberals are taking every scrap and every penny from the Canadian taxpayer, while with the other, they are enriching their friends and doling out taxpayer money to their friends, contractors and insiders.

Today, we are speaking about one specific scandal. I wish I could say it was just the latest scandal, but there have been more since this first came to light at the committee stage. This scandal in particular is egregious, not only because of the price tag, that this is a misuse of perhaps more than 400 million taxpayer dollars, but also because of the scale, in that it has more than 180 documented conflicts of interest. That is one every second day of the year.

Members of the board of directors, who were appointed by the member for Papineau, the Prime Minister, were taking SDTC money that was meant to go to innovation and projects as part of a climate change initiative. The green slush fund was being funnelled to members of the board of directors, who were themselves voting to have money go to their own companies or companies they represented.

I think that the scale of this kind of insider trading, for lack of a better description, is what frustrates so many Canadians and, certainly, members of the official opposition. This is not just government money. The Prime Minister loves to say that the Liberals are investing in Canadians, that they are investing in these projects. He is investing with Canadian taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. Actually, he used to do that. He is now just having to borrow because he has blown through whatever the taxpayer has to provide.

Those hard-earned dollars that the taxpayers are giving to the government have been directly funnelled into the hands of Liberal-appointed board members and the companies they represent. Aside from the fact that this money was going to Liberal insiders and Liberal friends, the majority of projects that were approved did not even qualify for the funding from this program. They were illegitimate, yet the Liberal-appointed board members found ways to bend the rules, circumnavigate procedure and ensure that they were enriching their own companies and lining their own pockets. It is no wonder that the level of trust from Canadians in the political structure and the Liberal-NDP government is at an all-time low. The polls certainly show that the most recent two-month tax trick and $250 cheques are not what Canadians are buying.

The list of promises that the Prime Minister has broken would probably make Santa's naughty list blush. It seems to happen over and over again. I would just like to go over a couple. He promised that there would only be a few teeny-weeny deficits in his first three years as Prime Minister. After three years, he would balance the budget. He promised electoral reform. He promised to reduce taxes on the middle class. He promised to build more affordable housing. He broke every single one of those promises.

In retrospect, one of the promises the Prime Minister made in the 2015 election, and what he continued to say after he was elected Prime Minister, is one I would find almost hilarious if it was not so painful. In the 2015 election, he promised Canadians he would have the most open and transparent government in Canadian history. That statement now, in retrospect, is laughable. He is anything but transparent and open.

In fact, this is the second time the Prime Minister has ignored the will of the House and a ruling by the Speaker of the House to table documents in the House of Commons. The first time, he actually took the Speaker to court. He prorogued Parliament and then called a pandemic election that no Canadian wanted just to hide the level of his scandal. He was trying to hide documents from the Winnipeg lab scandal from being tabled in the House of Commons. If at first one succeeds, I guess try and try again. Those documents were never tabled in the House of Commons because an election was called.

The Prime Minister is trying to do the same thing here with the green slush fund documents that the Speaker of the House has ruled must be tabled in the House of Commons because Canadians have a right to know how their money is being spent. I would say Canadians want their money back. They want that $400 million to go back to the government and spent on things that will benefit Canadians.

Not long ago, the Prime Minister also promised, with the finance minister, in the most recent budget, that the deficit would not go over $40 billion. In question period, almost every day for the last two weeks, members of the official opposition have been asking the Prime Minister and the finance minister if they will stick to that $40-billion guardrail.

I would argue that a $40-billion deficit is still outrageous, but we are asking, if the government is not going to stick to that guardrail, what the size of the deficit will be. Is the government going to stick to that self-imposed guardrail, or is it driving Canadians off a fiscal cliff? I think Canadians deserve to know that. I think it is pretty clear, by the government members' unwillingness to answer that question, that this is going to be yet another promise broken.

The Liberals have blasted through that $40-billion debt promise. We do not know what will be announced on Monday. The Liberals will try to spin this as a win. They will fudge numbers and come up with great phrases like debt-to-GDP ratio, or that they are sticking within this window, but Canadians feel it. They feel it every single day when they buy groceries, put gas in their cars, or are looking to renew their mortgages or heat their homes. They understand that life is not as good as the Liberals will profess.

In fact, we are seeing these levels of scandal and mismanagement, when it comes to Canadian taxpayer money, continue to pop up almost on a daily basis. We have learned from the Auditor General that the Liberals' CEBA program is yet another billion-dollar boondoggle. In fact, $3.5 billion of taxpayers' money was paid to more than 77,000 recipients who did not meet the eligibility requirements. That means about 10% of the total 900,000 loan recipients were ineligible for the money they received. We are asking the government if it has a plan to get the taxpayers' money back. Thus far, we have not heard a single plan to accomplish that.

On top of that, the Liberals gave a non-competitive contract to Accenture. Accenture was allowed to lead the procurement process, which led to Accenture receiving $313 million, or 92% of the total value of the contracts awarded to Accenture to deliver the CEBA program. Even worse, it was administering this program from Brazil, despite telling the government it was going to be using Canadian experts and Canadian labour. That did not happen.

It is frustrating how the Liberal government is trying so hard to block the tabling of these documents that they are willing to seize their own Parliament. For all intents and purposes, they have a majority government. The NDP has made that very clear every day. They should be able to control the calendar of the House of Commons. While the government says that the Conservatives are holding everything up, the government has a majority. It can make sure that the House of Commons works as it should, but it is refusing to table these documents.

In the meantime, Canadians are lined up at food banks in record numbers. While the NDP-Liberal government is lining the pockets of Liberal friends and insiders, a record-shattering number of Canadians are now being forced to access food banks. We have said this ad nauseam: When they increase taxes for the trucker who moves the food, they increase taxes for processors who manufacture the food, they increase taxes for retailers who sell the food and they increase taxes for farmers who grow the food, do members know what happens? They increase the cost of food every single day at the grocery store, making it that much more difficult for Canadians to afford it.

One aspect of that is the fact that, once again, the Liberal-NDP government has voted to quadruple the carbon tax, which will cost Canadian farmers more than a billion dollars a year. An average 5,000-acre farm will be paying $150,000 every single year just in carbon taxes. How is that going to ensure that family farms are economically viable, let alone environmentally sustainable?

I am going to go off some numbers of the impact that the carbon tax is having on Canadian food production. I think it is very important that we talk about that term. This impacts not only farm families but also Canadian food production and food security. For greenhouse operators alone, this is costing $22 million a year. By 2030, it will cost between $82 and $100 million.

Nearly one in five farms in Quebec are unable to manage their debt because of rising transportation costs and high interest rates caused by the carbon tax and inflationary spending. This is leaving them unable to compete on the domestic and international markets. We have 44% of fresh fruit and vegetable growers already selling at a loss, and 77% of those cannot cover their production costs. We have 77% of produce growers in Canada on the brink of bankruptcy.

Alberta farmers paid $17 million in carbon taxes last year just on natural gas and propane to dry their grain, and to heat and cool their barns. On April 1, when the carbon tax increases by 23%, that number will go to $20 million a year. By 2030, that will be $210 million just for Alberta farmers.

Last year, Saskatchewan farmers paid more than $36 million in carbon taxes just to ship their grain by rail. That is not every other cost. That is not the cost of natural gas and propane to dry their grain, heat and cool their barns or manage their greenhouses. This is just the carbon tax bill that is passed on to them by CN and CPKC rail. Next year, when that carbon tax goes up 23%, that number will be $57 million.

The Liberal member for Kings—Hants, the chair of the agriculture committee, was stunned when he asked the representatives of the rail lines at committee last week if they were passing on the entire cost of the carbon tax to grain elevators and farmers. Their answer was that, yes, of course they were. Is that member serious? Did he think the rail lines were going to absorb the cost of the carbon tax, that they were not going to pass that on to the farmers and the grain elevators? Why would they pay that?

Every day, the Liberals cannot believe that the carbon tax is costing farmers money. They do not qualify for the rebates. They do not qualify for the Canadian entrepreneurs' rebate because the vast majority of them are incorporated. This is exactly the consequence of creating bad policy without actually talking to producers. The government could have done so much for Canadian farmers when we pointed out the mistakes in its policy, such as the original legislation on the price on pollution.

We brought forward Bill C-234, which would have eliminated the carbon tax on natural gas and propane, saving farmers that $1 billion a year. However, Liberal-appointed senators and now, unfortunately, the Bloc, who at one time used to stand for rural Canada, rural Quebeckers and Quebec farmers, have now withdrawn their support of Bill C-234, which Liberal-appointed senators gutted in the Senate, eliminating 90% of the benefits of Bill C-234. Every single agriculture stakeholder supports Bill C-234. Whether cattle, grain or supply management sectors, all of them support Bill C-234, except the Liberal government and now, unfortunately, the Bloc, who have turned their back on rural Quebec farmers. All of this was just to save the Prime Minister's carbon tax and perhaps to continue to prop up the Liberal government.

It is frustrating. Certainly, we hear from farmers every single day regarding how difficult it is for them to manage the increase in input costs, especially when the Liberal government puts on a carbon tax, and a tariff on fertilizer which has increased fertilizer prices more than 150%. I know, that is incredible, right? When we add a tariff to fertilizer, it impacts global prices, despite what our Liberal members might want us to believe. The Liberals put in front-of-pack labelling, changed Canada's Food Guide and are pushing for a P2 plastics ban. All of these things have impacts not only on farmers, but also on the Canadian consumer.

The new numbers are quite staggering. The Daily Bread Food Bank recently released its updated report on food bank use. Just in Toronto, there were 3.49 million client visits to Toronto-area food banks, nearly one million more than in the previous year; and a 273% increase since the pandemic. That means that one in 10 people in Toronto are being forced to rely on a food bank just to feed their families. Food bank use in Ontario has risen for eight consecutive years. In the last two years, the number of Ontarians accessing food banks has increased 73%. That is nearly triple the jump of the 2008 recession.

I know that the Prime Minister said earlier today that this is a global recession that has impacted these prices. That is simply not true. This is a Liberal-NDP-made problem that the Liberals refuse to fix. In fact, they are doubling down by voting to increase the carbon tax yet again on April 1 and quadrupling that carbon tax to 61¢ a litre.

The facts are clear. Food inflation in Canada is 36% higher than it is in the United States. That clearly shows that this is not a global recession; this is an NDP-Liberal recession that is caused by increasing taxes and increasing spending and is having a trickle-down effect on every aspect of Canada's economy. Rather than learn from those mistakes, the Liberals are ploughing ahead, as I said, by increasing that carbon tax yet again. The Liberals like to say, “Well, Canadians just do not understand what we are trying to do; they are just not listening.” The finance minister liked to say, “We are in the midst of a vibecession. Canadians have really never had it so good.” The finance minister just is not communicating it well enough.

Well, I guess the truth is that the Liberals are clearly out of touch because the people they are talking to truly have never had it so good. They are the Liberal insiders, Liberal members and their friends in corporate Canada who are benefiting from these slush funds and these scandals. Again, while Canadians are lined up at food banks, the Liberal-NDP government is lining the pockets of its insiders and its friends to the detriment of Canadian taxpayers, who are the ones who are truly paying the bills.

It shows just how out of touch the government is when the finance minister said that she knows people cannot afford to put food on the table, but the solution to that is just to cancel their Disney+, park their car and ride their bike. I would love for the finance minister to come to my rural Alberta riding, where we had two feet of snow a week ago, to say, “I just need you guys to park your truck and ride your bike.” It seems like a joke, but this is not a joke.

I will finish with this. This is about the level of this scandal. This is $400 million of taxpayer money and the Liberals need to explain to Canadians why they blew it.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

It is ridiculous.

I will let you comment on Bill C-234, because you were not given the opportunity to comment on a great piece of legislation that will help farmers despite the Liberals' opposition.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to start by correcting the record on a few fronts, because there's been a lot of misinformation again at this meeting.

When it comes to Bill C-234, first of all, the assertion was made in testimony that farmers are paying tax on everything. We know that over 90% of the fuels farmers use are already exempt from the carbon levy. The ones that were being discussed in Bill C-234 were two that were left for heating barns and drying grain. The bill had come to a point where it was going to exempt the grain drying because there weren't alternatives, and it's already—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I'm just going to respond to one of my colleague's comments.

I don't want to misquote you, Ms. Taylor Roy, but I believe you called farmers coming to protest changes to Bill C-234 a “tinpot dictatorship”. I'm wondering if you want to comment about some of the previous name-calling, particularly towards Canadian farmers.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

This is for both of you again.

Earlier, the discussion went off track and onto the carbon tax. Bill C‑234 is now dormant in Parliament; it proposes to provide an exemption for grain drying.

If we were to hold a vote on that bill in the House of Commons tomorrow morning, what message would you have for the MPs from the various parties who are present here, and more specifically for the ones from the parties that are preventing the work from moving forward? We could vote on Bill C‑234 and give you that exemption now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Okay. Thanks so much.

I have just another 30 seconds here.

Mr. Barlow talked about on-farm costs and carbon pricing. I do hope that his party will allow Bill C-234 to actually come to a vote. I know we've talked about that before, Allan.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome back. It's good to see all of you again. Thanks for coming here to outline your priorities.

Mr. Carey, I'd like to turn to you. In your opening statement, I did hear you mention Bill C-234. I've certainly committed on behalf of my party to honour our third reading vote in the House of Commons, so if the bill ever comes back for a vote, we would vote to reject the Senate amendments. However, did I hear you correctly that you're prepared to accept...that even a part of the bill would be better than nothing at all at this moment?

[Dave Carey, Vice-President, Government and Industry Relations, Canadian Canola Growers Association]

Thank you for the invitation to appear today. I'll be sharing my time with my colleague, Gayle.

CCGA represents Canada's 40,000 canola farmers on any issues that impact their on-farm profitability. With offices in Winnipeg and Ottawa, CCGA is also the largest administrator of the advance payments program.

The canola sector contributes $43.7 billion a year to the Canadian economy and provides for 206,000 jobs. Exports were valued at $15.8 billion in 2023. Canola was also one of the top-earning commodities for farmers in 2023, with $13.7 billion in farm cash receipts.

Canola farmers face both opportunities and challenges. We've broken down our opening remarks into five recommendations.

One is about transportation and labour. Of canola grown in Canada, 90% is destined for export. Rail is the only practical means to move canola from areas of production to export position. In Canada, we have two class I railways, which operate effectively as geographic monopolies.

In the short term, we ask that the extended interswitching pilot, introduced in budget 2023, be expanded to a 500-kilometre radial distance and extended a further 30 months with a path to permanency. This is to account for the grain industry's seasonality and contracting timelines, giving more businesses a chance to participate in providing an accurate dataset for the pilot's evaluation. Taking this action will cost the federal government no money.

In the longer term, we do need to address the frequent and now perennial labour disruptions we see at Canada's ports and with our railways. According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, 2023 saw the most days lost due to labour disruptions since 1986.

Our second ask would be to pass Bill C-234.

As co-chair of the Agriculture Carbon Alliance, a coalition of 16 national farm groups, I was disappointed to see the Senate amend Bill C-234. That being said, the amended bill does provide relief to farmers and ranchers through exemptions for grain drying, irrigation and feed preparation, for which there are no viable alternatives. CCGA would like to see Bill C-234 passed at the next opportunity.

It's over to you, Gayle.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chair, I only have the interests of people with brain injuries in mind.

We can't mislead them either. Even if we set a 12-month deadline today, that wouldn't necessarily guarantee the implementation of a national strategy in 12 months.

I want it to be understood that the real issue is for this bill to receive Royal Assent as soon as possible before an election is called. Right now, the Conservatives are calling for an election every day. If there's another motion of censure and we decide to call an election because the timetable is coming to an end, we'll have to tell these people that there won't be a national strategy after all. That's what it also means. That's the real deadline. It's not just a theoretical deadline.

I have nothing against a theoretical deadline. I can agree to a 12-month deadline. When the time comes, Mr. Ellis may be Minister of Health. Then I can stand up in the House and remind him that the national strategy has not yet been established. But thinking like that doesn't show that you have people's interests at heart. At the Bloc Québécois, we don't play politics that way.

We know very well that co-operation between the federal government and Quebec on health care is problematic on several levels. I don't want to go on too long, but when we toured the province as part of the opioid crisis, we had planned to visit certain facilities. However, the Quebec government, through some deputy minister, decided that we wouldn't be going into such and such a place. You know all about that. That's because the Quebec government didn't want us in its affairs. That's the current state of relations between Quebec and Ottawa, no matter what the Minister of Health says.

The goal here is to have a national strategy in place within 12 months. This implies that we will continue to sit until the end of the current government's mandate. The truth is, if we continue to sit, we could find ourselves in an election overnight. If everyone is in an election, we won't be in the process of ensuring that the strategy is being developed.

Concretely speaking, this is a theoretical discussion we're having here. If it makes people happy, so much the better, but they need to be aware that this is not the real deadline. The real deadline is a possible election call, because if that were the case, the bill would die on the Order Paper. We have to tell people, because a lot of them don't know.

The supply management bill is important to me, personally. The Conservatives have the opportunity to ask 125 questions a week during oral question period in the House. Yet I've never heard them ask a single question in order to pressure the Liberals to speed up the process in the Senate, whereas they did so in the case of Bill C‑234. Will the supply management bill finally make it out of the Senate? I don't know, but it may not before an election is called. If it does, we'll be sacrificing supply management and a lot of farmers who currently need people to back them up and help them psychologically.

That said, I want people to understand very clearly that we're working in their interests. Setting a deadline of 18 months is not a delaying tactic. It's because it would be difficult to get there any faster, in my opinion.

If I were a bit opportunistic and playing petty politics, I'd position myself in favour of a 12-month deadline, then stand up in the House and tell the Conservatives they haven't kept their word. I'd pull out the minutes of our deliberations and ask our Conservative colleagues what they're waiting for to implement the strategy.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to comments about Bill C‑234. We have always supported this bill. When it came back from the Senate, we did the rational thing, not because we obey the Senate, but because we felt it might not come back to the House if it were sent back to the Senate again. We wanted to lock in the new grain drying provision.

The truth is that the Conservative Party is not letting us pass Bill C‑234, which would give producers in the rest of Canada an exemption for grain drying. I talked about that in my first speech on this bill back in January. It does not even apply to Quebec. We did the honourable thing with respect to the agricultural exemption, but the member is refusing to acknowledge that. I find that offensive.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the member is still on the agriculture committee. Regarding my private member's bill, the Bloc members voted for it at second reading, at committee and at third reading. Then it came back from the Senate amended. Can members believe the Bloc is now taking its orders from the Senate? Now it will not support Bill C-234, which deals with on-farm carbon tax on natural gas and propane. All of a sudden, the Bloc members are listening to the orders from their senators, which is puzzling.

The problem with the member's question, though, is that the Prime Minister dangled it last week. He said, “Hey, I have the list, and there are people from this party and that party on it.” He has opened Pandora's box. That is why the Conservative leader is saying, “Release it. Do the right thing.”

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member brought up taking advantage. The only people taking advantage of anyone are the members of the Liberal-NDP government, who are taking advantage of Canadians. When the government slammed them with a carbon tax scam, it took advantage of them. Now, under the guise of climate change, it is once again trying to take advantage of Canadians and their hard-earned money by awarding $400 million in a slush fund to Liberal-connected insiders. Canadians are tired of being taken advantage of.

The member also talked about farmers. Common-sense Conservatives are always on the side of farmers. That is why we brought Bill C-234 forward to lower the cost of food and once again reward the hard work of our patriotic farmers. What did the corrupt Liberal-NDP government do under its woke, radical environment policies? It made it impossible for anyone to be able to support the bill when the radical environment minister—