Chair, we know that the Liberal plan was to send billions of dollars out of Canada to try to buy our way out of this environmental mess that they've left us, and we've heard even as recently as a few weeks ago that they were praising a $100 billion tax scheme to apply to Canadians.
Now what's being proposed here is the introduction of one of the largest corporate tax increases in recent history with no expectation of achieving any reductions in greenhouse gases. The Liberals' proposal of an uncapped investment account is nothing more than a carbon tax. They would like to disguise that carbon tax within the hidden language, but in fact it is a tax. With no cap, companies can buy their way out of achieving real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. That's unacceptable. It renders their hard cap meaningless.
While the Liberal scheme for greenhouse gases is weak, their plan on air pollution is completely missing. Canadians witnessing increasing smog in their cities and struggling with respiratory illnesses such as asthma want a real plan. This is not in what's being proposed here. It's a tax. The leader, Mr. Dion, can talk all he wants about schemes, flip-flopping on the issues, but this is a tax that will not be good for Canada—billions of dollars of tax, a tax saying you can buy your way out and continue to pollute. That's not the solution. We need to have a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a reduction in pollution, and this will not take us there.