Do you know what? That might be my election sign in the next campaign.
Heckles are coming from the NDP, but it's no surprise after eight years of an NDP-Liberal government that there is frustration brewing.
It was good for the chair to point out the last time I had the floor with respect to this motion that we should stay directly on topic, so I just want to start here so I can get ahead of any objections to the discussion I'm going to have.
My colleague, Mr. Morantz, actually pointed this out to me. In the first line of the motion it says, “Celebrates the Canada Pension Plan as the foundation of a secure and dignified retirement for tens of millions of Canadians and a pillar of Canada's economy”. Of course, Conservatives agree and we would encourage Albertans to stay in the CPP, but what I really want to point out there is “a pillar of Canada's economy”. Right in the motion there is talk about Canada's economy.
That's what I'm going to talk about. I'm going to talk about the motion and specifically Canada's economy, as it is in the very text of the motion, in fact, in the first line of the motion. We couldn't get much more germane than talking about something deliberately put into the motion, I would suspect.
I'm going to start by talking a little bit about carbon tax math. Of course, originally I had the great privilege of asking the Governor of the Bank of Canada what the inflationary impact of the carbon tax was. I've repeated this multiple times. It just doesn't seem like those on the left can do math, because they don't understand what the Governor of the Bank of Canada said. He said it clearly over the last two years, and they still don't understand it.
This is what Governor Macklem, who, by the way, is a Liberal appointee working for the Bank of Canada, hardly a right-wing partisan hack, said. He said that 0.6% of inflation—that's 60 basis points; that's a huge massive amount of inflation—can be directly attributed to the carbon tax on fuel. It's not even comprehensive. It doesn't include all the economic impacts of the carbon tax. He said the direct impact is 0.6%.
Right now, inflation is at 3.8%. If Prime Minister Trudeau were to rise in the House of Commons today and say, “We are introducing legislation to eliminate the carbon tax,” I'm pretty sure that our party would give unanimous consent to get it done. We could remove it literally in one day. We would remove that 0.6%, which equates to 16% of total inflation. It should be pointed out that there's a part, a small amount of inflation, that is “healthy inflation”, and you certainly don't want to go into disinflation, so 2% is the target of the Bank of Canada. That's healthy inflation. Everything above that is excessive and unhealthy, and that's what's contributing to your mortgage going up, your rent going up and your food costs going up. If you look at that 0.6%, that's actually 33% of unhealthy inflation. This is massive.
We hear lots of demagoguing and frustration, but this is just math. Reasonable minds can disagree on things, and I understand that, given all the economic theories and other discussions as to how an economy should work, but on math there should be no disagreement.
Despite this—and we can pull the Hansard—I heard numerous members of the NDP-Liberal coalition, the costly coalition, note that it was actually 0.15%. Governor Macklem never said that. What he said was that the increase in inflation was 0.15%. What's more is that, if you want to include the increase, we're actually going to be quadrupling—if this government stays in power, God forbid—the carbon tax. That means it will have an inflationary impact of over 2%, of over 200 basis points.
Markets don't just price in the things that happen right now. They're pricing in things in the future. The impact of that is absolutely dramatic.
In addition to the inflationary impact, I was really looking forward today to hearing from the CFIB, because it's done great work on the impact of the carbon tax. Actually, right here, in its submission, it's actually quoting the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Once again, this is the budgetary watchdog appointed by whom? Oh, it's the Liberals.
Herein I read:
For instance, a 2022 report from the the Parliamentary Budget Officer showed that a $170/tonne...on carbon will reduce real [GDP] in Canada by 1.3% by 2030 as well as result in a 2.3% reduction in labour income—
That's 2% of labour income across the board, which is hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars.
—and a 3.6% decline in investment income. Other reports estimate a 1.8% reduction in GDP and...almost 200,000 jobs [lost] nationally....
That's because of the carbon tax.
They say that we're facing climate change. I've said it numerous times. Just so my Liberal members can hear me clearly: Climate change is real. I've said that consistently since I was elected. However, the other part that's real is that the carbon tax isn't impacting climate change. How many emissions reduction targets have we, as a country, hit in the last eight years? How many? You are right. It's zero, not one.
Actually, the environment commissioner was out just the other day and said that we're not on target to hit the 2030 targets, that we're not going to hit our Paris accord targets. The only time that there's ever been, in the last eight years, any meaningful reduction in emissions was because of COVID. Other than that, this government's track record on emissions reductions is bleak at best.
The carbon tax is all pain and no gain. It is hurting our economy. When we look at this, it's particularly.... If our economy were going gangbusters—
