Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
The residents of my Red Deer—Mountain View riding are strong, independent, common-sense people. They, like so many other Canadians, are being severely tested by this global pandemic and are equally concerned about the long-lasting effects it will have on their physical, mental and economic health. What they want and deserve are straight answers from this government. They see billions of dollars allocated for the promotion of pet global ventures, but only a tiny fraction of what farmers need to weather the crisis at home. Farmers hear of fellow Canadians being arrested and fined for merely walking in the park, and they try to square this with foreign-backed protesters being treated with kid gloves as they blockade railways carrying Canadian farm products to market.
Another critical issue that particularly frustrates our farmers is the way in which the Prime Minister and his cabinet use campaign-slogan rhetoric to talk about the carbon tax. Farmers bear a disproportionate burden. Farmers are in a carbon-tax trap. Our global competitors are not burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of carbon-tax debt. Our farmers do not have the ability to add the carbon-tax levy to the prices of their products, but they are subject to paying this tax as it is levied by their input suppliers. This is what farmers mean when they talk about the damage being done to their livelihoods by this government's questionable policies.
My question to the Prime Minister is this: Will he, in the future, leave the campaign slogans out of his answers, directly acknowledge the detrimental effect that his carbon tax is having on this critical industry, and also respect the jurisdiction of provinces opposing the carbon tax?