Bill C-38

Canadian Fuel Affordability Act

An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (extension of the federal fuel excise tax relief)

This enactment amends the Excise Tax Act to extend the temporary suspension of the federal fuel excise tax until January 31, 2027 and to temporarily set the excise tax rates on fuels to 50% of the regular rates for the period beginning on February 1, 2027 and ending on March 31, 2027.

Canadian Fuel Affordability Act

[Ned Kuruc, Conservative, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the stories I hear from my riding are these: “Keep fighting for me. Keep trying to lower taxes. Keep the Liberal government accountable. We trust in you, and we know that you are going to go to Parliament to fight for us”, just as I am fighting today to cut all the fuel tax for Canadians to put money back in their pocket.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek cited some relatively small amounts of money that have been sent overseas to the poorest of the poor. I do not know if he is aware that the Liberals broke their election platform promise to not cut foreign assistance, and they took another page out of the Conservatives' platform by cutting $2.7 billion from overseas development assistance.

Does my colleague agree that we should make sure that the Canadian pension plan, the over $714 billion that we have contributed over our working lives, is invested in Canada? The majority of it is not invested in Canada. A great deal is invested in the U.S. Should we not repatriate that with a change to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act?

[Ned Kuruc, Conservative, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises some very good points. The Liberals did break their election promise, but they have also broken a lot of other promises. We were supposed to get a deal in July.

Going back to her question, I agree with her. I agree that Canadian money should stay in Canada, but what can I say? The Prime Minister holds about 93% of his stock assets in U.S. companies, so why do we think he would do anything different?

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek for his speech this evening. He is fighter for his community and it is better for having him as its representative.

What we are debating tonight is in no short order a half measure. It goes a bit of the way, and we will take any relief we can get for Canadians. What does the member think we should be doing next to bring more relief for Canadians in this country?

[Ned Kuruc, Conservative, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his question. He also fights very hard for his community.

What should we be doing? There is a lot, but we need to start with getting rid of the fuel tax. It is the one thing that Canadians can feel right away.

I would propose, although this is not the forum for it, our Conservative economic plan. We have identified $150 billion in savings that Canadians can benefit from. We are starting here, but we have proposed a plan that I hope my colleagues on the other side will at least take a look at.

We are in a trade war; make no mistake about that. The President has put unjustified tariffs on us, and we have to fight against that. In order to do that, we have to look at Canadians first. We need to keep money in Canada. We need to look at wasteful spending, of which we have identified 150 billion dollars' worth, come together and work on that for the sake of Canadians and for the sake of moving forward.

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to talk about an issue close to many Canadians' hearts, including many residents in my riding: affordability. Despite the Prime Minister's words that he thinks affordability is the best it has been for a decade, Conservatives know that is just simply not the case.

I want to start tonight by reading some stories from constituents who have written to me over the past several months while Parliament has been absent to tell me about the troubles and difficulties they are facing in paying their bills and having money at the end of the month.

I will start with Barbara from Beaverton in my riding. She wrote to me, “I'm a single person. I own a home and do home care. I work a lot. I try to balance at the end of the month, but I'm still short.” Barbara works hard and tries to budget, but she is still short at the end of the month. She is short at the end of the month because of rising costs in Canada, inflation caused by inflationary spending by 10 years of Liberal government and higher costs, including fuel costs, which we are talking about tonight.

Next is Sheila, who is from Sutton in my riding, in my community. She wrote to me and said, “We are seniors and now have to be on a strict budget to be able to afford simple meals.” That is not dignity in retirement. Seniors should be able, in a rich country like Canada, to put more than simple meals on the table after a lifetime of hard work.

Cindy from Beaverton, wrote to me and said, “We are farmers, and everything costs more, from diesel to fertilizer, to parts, steel, repairs and maintenance.” It is tough for farmers. I come from a community that has a strong history of agriculture, as do many of my colleagues in the Conservative Party. It is tough being a farmer, working hard, paying bills and trying to put food on not only their table, but the tables of thousands of Canadians across the country.

However, everything costs more, as Cindy said. Unfortunately, we have a government that does not recognize that, does not acknowledge that and does not understand agriculture in any way, shape or form. In fact, the Prime Minister says that Canadians do not use steel. We know that Cindy and her family operate farm machinery made of steel to put food on our tables.

That is an example of one thing that is not included in this temporary measure: the indirect effects of the industrial carbon tax on farmers, which farmers have been talking about for months now, but there has been no response from the government.

Carol, also from Beaverton, wrote to me and said, “We are blessed to have a tax-free pension and have no mortgage, and we are in our eighties and have few needs, but our younger generation, they need help through this crazy time.”

Similarly, Char from Stouffville, who is also concerned about young people and her children, wrote, “We are retired and managing since we own our home and don't drive much these days, but our children are affected by gas, mortgage, grocery prices, so cut the red tape, let the economy build and thrive, reduce tax.”

These families are concerned about the next generation, and so am I, and so are many of my younger colleagues in the Conservative caucus, because it is the next generation that has to pay the debts of the government. We are facing the largest budget deficits in this country outside of the pandemic, and every dollar spent by the government that is borrowed is a future tax dollar that must be paid by the next generation.

Nowhere is affordability more acute for the next generation than when it comes to housing, an issue I have raised many times in the House and will continue to raise, because the next generation is getting short-changed. They were promised the Canadian dream: Work hard, play by the rules, save money, plan and then buy a home and start a family. However, that is not happening. That is not happening at all for the next generation, who are continually locked out of housing. Despite lots of talk from the other side, we have no action. There is very little action.

In fact, we know exactly how much action we have received from the government because the Minister of Housing told us last week and again today in the House. For all of the government's effort over the last 18 months, including a new bureaucracy, billions of dollars allocated to it and more staff, what have the Liberals done?

The government has committed to, not built but committed to build, 19,000 new housing units. Its target was 500,000. After 18 months, it has 19,000 units to show for it, and they are not even built, just committed to. That is a drop in the bucket. It is de minimis. It is irrelevant. The Liberals have not even started to address the problem, despite their promises that we would build at speeds never seen before, that never since the Second World War would the government move at such haste. The result of its haste is 19,000 units out of a 500,000-unit target.

In fact, the government's own housing agency, the CMHC, says that this year alone, the government will be hundreds of thousands of units of housing below their target. They estimate a gap of anywhere between about 180,000 to 230,000 homes just this year, not even going into the future. We are going in the wrong direction.

Despite the government and the Prime Minister saying that affordability has never been better and that rents have never been lower, we are not building any homes. It gets worse than that because, this year, CMHC has reported that we will build fewer homes in 2026 than we built in 2025. Not only is the gap getting bigger, but we are going in the wrong direction.

I sympathize with Carol and Char, who are concerned about the next generation and their ability to afford to live in the country, buy a home and start a family. Lastly, Christine from Stouffville wrote to me that, for the costs arising for basic living expenses, such as food, utility and transportation, there seems to be no break in sight.

I agree. There seems to be no break for Canadians when it comes to the government. It has been 11 years with no break and higher costs on all things, whether it is fuel, housing and even one's taxes going up every year. I sympathize with my constituents, and I am here to tell them tonight that we will continue to fight for an affordable Canada for them. We will continue to drag the government kicking and screaming to do the right thing, because it seems that we always have to drag it to the right place.

As for the proposal we are speaking to tonight, the suspension of some taxes on some fuels, but not all taxes on all fuels, of course, it is a good start, but it is just a start. We do not want a pat on the back for this. I do not care about a pat on the back for this. We want relief for Canadians, and that is good enough, but the Liberals opposed this measure. They might have collective amnesia but, just a few months ago in May, we proposed this measure during an opposition day motion. Liberal member after Liberal member got up and told us that this was a bad idea and they voted against it.

We knew it was a good idea in May and, thankfully, the government has changed its mind, or at least half of the way there, to get us to where we are today. It does not go far enough. It does not extend the cut long enough and it does not include other hidden taxes on fuel. I will just raise one example that it does not include. The clean fuel regulation is a big one. It is a big one on the cost of gasoline and diesel, as it is 17¢ a litre on gasoline and 16¢ a litre on diesel.

One does not have to take my word for it. That is the analysis from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Moreover, the clean fuel regulation, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says, is a regressive tax. That means it hurts households that can least afford it. He said, at the time, that “lower income households generally spend a larger share of their income on transportation and other energy-intensive goods and services compared to higher income households”.

I seem to remember the member for Kingston and the Islands getting up and opposing our opposition day motion, saying that, actually, it would be wealthy Canadians who would benefit the most from this tax. When we have economic advice like what we are getting from the member for Kingston and the Islands, it is no wonder we have the deficits we have.

Let me conclude by saying a message to my residents. I will continue to get up in the House and tell their stories and drag the government to do the right thing every day, because we are fighting for a more affordable Canada for all Canadians.

[Corey Hogan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated my colleague's comments, but I disagree with a great deal of them. Fundamentally, they are rooted in a story of Canada that is not remotely accurate. Our deficits and debts are among the best in the G7. There is so much work to do, but so much work has already occurred. Rents are down, housing prices are down and we are pushing forward on the affordability agenda with the decision we will hopefully be making at the end of this debate.

I would like to talk about farmers. The member mentioned farmers, and I think it is very important that we do so.

So much of what we talk about did not impact farmers, at least not the way that it did citizens in cities. They had purple gas. They were not paying the excise taxes at 13¢ provincially. It was four cents in my home province. It was four cents federally. Farming activity is not subject to the industrial carbon tax. Of course, as a business, a farm is not really paying GST in that sense. That is an input credit.

Diesel is an expensive input right now, and I want to hear the member's thoughts on what we can do to support farmers in that sense.

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we can support farmers by extending any support we can for input costs. The member says that farmers do not pay the industrial carbon tax. They do, actually, indirectly, because fertilizer and other industrial goods that are inputs into the manufacture of food and the growing of food bear those costs. When the fertilizer manufacturer pays the industrial carbon tax, who does the member think he charges that to? Who does he think that is passed on to? It is the farmer who buys the fertilizer. Obviously farmers are bearing that burden, and that comes through the supply chain into the cost of groceries, which we have seen explode in this country.

[Ned Kuruc, Conservative, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's community knows that he is fighting for them and trying to save them money along the way. We are here to save Canadians money. We are proposing to cut all of the fuel tax, but what other ideas does he have to save his community money and all Canadians money in these turbulent economic times?

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the one thing we have proposed, at least with respect to this debate tonight, is to broaden the scope of this relief for Canadians, for example by including the clean fuel regulations, which add 16¢ per litre on diesel and 17¢ per litre on gasoline. That is more than the entire relief being offered by the government. Why will the Liberals not include that?

[Jake Sawatzky, Liberal, New Westminster—Burnaby—Maillardville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has mentioned that this is an important time to cut costs for Canadians, and I have a simple question: Will he be supporting this bill to do so?

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, any bill that the government brings forward that cuts tax for average Canadians, I will support.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, this evening, I want to recognize that we are working together to pass this bill. This is a good example of what we can accomplish when we work together, something that we are not used to seeing from the Conservative opposition. I would therefore like to know whether this is a sign of things to come in this fall parliamentary session.

Will the Conservatives finally understand that Canadians expect us to work together to help them deal with the cost of living? Will the Conservatives now support the various measures that we are putting in place? Is what we are seeing today a shift in the Conservatives' stance?

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, obviously, if the government brings forward good ideas that help Canadians, it will find support in the opposition. If it brings forward bad proposals that hurt Canadians or hurt our economy, it will find opposition. It would make it a lot easier to work with the government if every time we proposed an idea, members did not get up and say that they will not take lessons from the Conservatives or that it is a bad idea, just as they did with this. We proposed this in May of this year. Every one of them stood up and voted against it, and now they are bringing it forward. When they talk about collaboration, it goes both ways.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of my hard-driving constituents in the expansive riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke to speak to Bill C-38, an act to amend the Excise Tax.

Yesterday, the finance minister told the House that the Liberals would take no lessons from the Conservatives. Today, class is in session, and the lesson plan is lower taxes. Conservatives have been calling for gas tax relief for months, while Liberals enjoyed vacations in Tuscany. They left the decision to extend the gas tax holiday until the last minute in an effort to maximize uncertainty.

The Liberal decision to end this tax break in the middle of winter is perplexing. The Prime Minister has claimed he speaks to the United States President regularly. Does the Prime Minister have secret knowledge about when the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz will end? Based on the legislation before us, it appears the Liberals think the oil shipments through the strait will be at 50% of pre-war levels by January 31, and the entire strait will be open by the end of March. Of course, the Liberals have no idea when the conflict will end. The government wants to provide as little relief as it can get away with. Hiking the tax by 50% on February 1 is its way of boiling the frog slowly.

It takes a certain level of Liberal arrogance to call a bill that schedules tax hikes the Canadian fuel affordability act. This is all part of a plan with the Liberals. They call the bill, which would hike taxes, affordability. They call inflationary spending affordability. They call doubling the deficit fiscally responsible.

Despite their elbows up rhetoric, the Prime Minister is adopting the exact same form of state-led capitalism we see coming from the White House. The fact that the Prime Minister copied the U.S. President's plan to launch a sovereign debt fund is very telling about how both view the economy. The U.S. President has often compared himself to a mall manager, while the Prime Minister acts like a bank manager. Neither of them should be so intimately involved in the operations of any particular business.

This is exactly why Norway's actual sovereign wealth fund does not invest in Norway. It is the exact opposite of the sovereign debt funds in Canada and the United States. These debt funds are specifically designed to pick domestic companies. The temptation to politically interfere in the operations of companies or on behalf of the companies is too great.

We have too many examples of this already happening in Canada, even without the sovereign debt fund. The company formerly known as SNC-Lavalin is a perfect example. The last prime minister tried to bully his justice minister into letting SNC off the hook for bribery and corruption. When that did not work, he fired her. Then he replaced her with a man whom the current Prime Minister made our UN ambassador. Now SNC has a new name and new business partners who together have formed the consortium Cadence.

When the Liberals released a request for proposals to build Via's high-frequency rail system, Cadence submitted a proposal that called on the Liberals to scrap this popular plan and replace it with a much more expensive high-speed rail line. One of the partners in the consortium is the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, whose former president just so happened to be the Clerk of the Privy Council. Together they cooked up a secret plan to privatize the most profitable parts of Via while taxpayers pay for the rest of Via.

If the Liberals are going to hike taxes, the least they could do is not actively make every alternative form of transportation more expensive, yet that is the plan they cooked up with their billionaire buddies last week, to privatize our airports and to privatize Via Rail. Now, their first bill back proposes to hike the gas tax in the middle of winter.

To defend these choices, the Liberals have already started to point to examples of Europe. The Liberals want Europe's private airports without its robust airline competition. They want a French company to build their high-speed rail, without France's transparency laws. They want European levels of gas taxation to force us all into Chinese cars running on an electric grid powered by Brookfield.

What the Prime Minister really wants is to partner with Europe to impose carbon tariffs. The legacy media may have memory-holed the fact that the very first policy the Prime Minister ever proposed when he was just a Liberal leadership candidate 20 months ago was to impose carbon tariffs on Canadians who dared to purchase products from countries without a carbon tax. Is it any surprise the carbon tariff Prime Minister appointed the only Liberal MP to acknowledge carbon tariffs are coming as his parliamentary secretary?

This is all part of the Liberals' war on affordability. From their ban on plastic food packaging to their inflammatory deficit spending, everything they touch becomes more expensive. When the U.S. President endorsed our Prime Minister, he said it was because they agreed on many things. When President Trump attacked our Conservative leader, it was because we did not support the President's agenda.

What the Liberal Prime Minister and the Republican President agree on is that they should be at the centre of every consequential economic decision in the country. They both agree that the government should serve the interests of the investor class. Now the Liberals even have one big, beautiful omnibus bill to make Bay Street great again. Even Liberal-funded reporters are calling this latest move Trumpian. We would think they would have caught on to the similarities when the Prime Minister literally borrowed an oversized novelty page from the U.S. President's playbook on his first day in office.

Fortunately for Canadians and Americans, there is still one political party on this continent that actually believes in freedom. As our leader ably demonstrated last week, there is a clear path to long-term sustainable economic growth, and that is to empower the free people in a free market. The Prime Minister and the U.S. President have a faith-based approach to running a country's economy. They have the faith that their business acumen is more than enough to pick winners and losers.

Conservatives put our faith in the Canadian people. We trust Canadian entrepreneurs to out-innovate and out-compete the world. We trust Canadian consumers to buy the products and services that work best for them. We reject the tired idea that a president, a prime minister or even a king can decide who we can trade our property with. We believe in cutting red tape for all businesses, not just the ones that hire the best Liberal lobbyists. We believe in cutting taxes for all businesses, not just for the ones that invest in projects that Liberals find politically acceptable to support. Conservatives trust and believe in Canadians because we have confidence born of true patriotic love.

The Liberals and Republicans have succumbed to the siren song of economic nationalism and protectionism. That is rooted in insecurity. It saps confidence. It breeds corruption. It makes life less affordable. Is it really any coincidence that the sectors of our economy protected from foreign competition are the most expensive, such as domestic air travel, cellphone bills, insurance rates and broadband Internet? Canadians can reasonably blame the U.S. President's actions for the high price of gas, but Canadians have only the Liberal Party to blame for the high cost of everything else.

While the finance minister can pretend not to copy our policies, he cannot ignore reality for long. Canadians are being squeezed, and the Liberal plan to hike the gas tax in the middle of winter is not the solution. The Liberals are already raking in GST windfall from higher gas prices. They do not need to compound the pain with a frosty tax hike on February 1.

Instead of teasing Canadians with temporary tax relief, the Liberals could do the hard work of committing to substantial tax reform. Of course, this would actually force the Prime Minister to spend time in Canada rather than hitting the globalist gala circuit. It is clearly more enjoyable for the Prime Minister to spend all his time in Europe re-reannouncing our partnership strategy for a new future alliance for a strategic future.

Instead of introducing a bill to raise gas taxes and calling it a fuel affordability act, maybe the Prime Minister could use some of his international rizz to negotiate an end to the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz. With any luck, that would earn him a Nobel Peace Prize, which we could trade off for tariff relief, or instead, he could spend his time helping his former colleagues at Brookfield partner with a Crown corporation he controls to launch a new maple-flavoured investment fund.

Barring any attempt to subvert the fixed elections act, Canadians will get to render a verdict in October 2029 on how they think the Prime Minister has spent his time in office.