Madam Speaker, what an ironic situation to be standing in the House talking about concurrence in a committee report dealing with strengthening food processing capacity after we just spent an hour of private members' business talking about a Liberal private member's bill that is going to shut down an entire portion of Canada's agricultural economy.
It is bizarre to stand here today and talk about food security in the context of the greatest food insecurity time that we have ever had. Since food banks started recording information in 1989, there has never been more demand at our food banks than right now. We have had eight years of the Liberals, now propped up by the NDP, making bad policy, bad law and bad budget after bad policy, bad law and bad budget. We find ourselves in a scenario where inflation, caused by the doubling of our national debt, all previous prime ministers combined, came to a little over $600 billion. For the current Prime Minister, it was $600 billion in just eight years, making the cost of everything go up.
The Liberals' proudest moment was when the Prime Minister stood in this House and announced he was going to implement a carbon tax, a tax that we as Conservatives said would be a tax on everything. Here we are. Canadians are choosing between heating their homes and eating. Seniors are moving back in with their children. Children are not even able to move out of their parents' house. Parents are wondering if they are going to have their kids and parents living in their house. There are a lot of people asking themselves those questions right now.
The agriculture committee studies food processing. That is part of the entire supply chain, so let us take a look at how we get food here.
Liberals would have us believe that Canada cannot produce its own food, that we somehow need to support other countries around the world in order to have food here. That is not true. We are one of, I believe, only five nations in the world that are net food exporters. That means that Canada can make more than enough food for ourselves and can export food around the world. That is what we do with beef, grain, oilseeds, pork and hopefully still horses if there is any sensibility in the room. Imagine the arrogance of a government knowing what people should be able to choose on the shelf. Imagine it being so knowledgeable that it can do people's shopping for them right here in the House of Commons and tell them what they can and cannot have. We see that all the time with the government. It is not just with respect to the food we eat, but the energy we can use for our vehicles and homes, the modes of transportation we can use and the firearms we get to use when we decide to go hunting. A lot more people are hunting these days. Madam Speaker is from a riding with a lot of hunters in it. That is not necessarily because they want to, but out of necessity because of the cost of food. There is a lot of uptake in hunting, which is a good thing. I am a hunter. I like that.
This is all premised on the notion that the Liberal government has no trouble berating its own industries that it does not like. It berates our oil and gas sector, even though we have one of the cleanest oil and gas sectors on the planet. It berates our agricultural sector, even though we are one of the most advanced societies relying on technology. We have to be innovative. We only have four or five months of a growing season in the year to grow crops. If we were not innovative, we could not compete with countries that can grow grass 12 months of the year. We would not keep up with them.
We need to be innovative with greenhouses. In my riding of Red Deer—Lacombe, we have great greenhouses. Guess what we do to increase the efficiency of food production in a greenhouse. Does anyone have any idea what we might pump into a greenhouse to make plants grow faster and help the crop be more productive? It is carbon dioxide. That is what we put into a greenhouse.
What goes into fertilizer? It is natural gas to create urea. We need this so we can use our innovative farming techniques for single pass. When I was a kid growing up on a farm in central Alberta, we used to have things like rod weeders and all kinds of other equipment we would use. We would even contemplate summer fallow, which is leaving the ground empty for an entire growing season just to deal with the weed problem. We do not have to deal with that anymore because we have so much innovation making our land more productive and reducing our input costs.
How do we reduce our input costs? It is by using the innovative technologies I just talked about, which all depend on things like natural gas for the creation of fertilizer. However, now that is taxed.
We are talking about Bill S-234 right now. It was in the Senate. It was passed by this place so that farmers could have a bit of an easier go when it comes to drying their grain. Some years they can take it off dry; some years they cannot. They do not get to pick and choose.
Farmers in my riding are showing me their carbon tax bills: $18,000 a year to dry 90,000 bushels of grain and oilseed. Where are they going to recoup that cost? Are they just going to pass it along to the consumer or the next purchaser? They are already paying more for their fertilizer because there is a carbon tax on that as well, before the inputs even get there.
With the shipping of new farm equipment to their farm, like a new truck, tractor, cultivator or harvester, now there is a carbon tax. It is not only on the creation of the machinery but on the shipping of the machinery. Before they even get a kernel of grain or raise a cow, they are already paying the carbon tax on the items that were brought to the farm.
Now they go through their growing season and are harvesting, and everything they do is taxed. They get a few little exemptions on farm fuel but it is taxed. Then what happens? They put grain in the truck and take it to wherever the market is. They are marketing it to the grain terminal or taking their livestock to the auction market, wherever that happens to be. There is a carbon tax on that fuel and a carbon tax on that vehicle.
Then it gets purchased by a buyer and gets shipped someplace else in the world. There is a carbon tax anytime the stuff moves or changes hands. Hopefully it ends up at a processor, which is what this report is all about. By that time, it has already had a carbon tax applied two or three times directly or indirectly just to get enough grain over to a terminal, where it is sent to a processor. Now that processor is paying a carbon tax on the electricity being used in the building and for the shipment of all the boxes and everything other type of thing they might have. Their entire production line is going to consume energy, which means a carbon tax.
Is it any wonder that we have seen the price of food go up? We have not even gotten to the grocery store yet. How do Canadian farmers, shippers, processors and grocers have a chance when they are taxed to bring us the food that the consumer ends up having to pay the bill for? They cannot do it.
It is time to axe the tax. We want to help innovation for processors. Let us get out of their way, axe the tax and make it affordable.
