Evidence of meeting #113 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was saskatchewan.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
On a point of order, again, it's repetition, repetition, repetition.
Mr. Chair, I said this before: You have an opportunity to rebuild your trust and your relationship with this committee. The longer you allow this circus and this farce to continue, the more damage you'll do to the relationship between you and the members of this committee. I want you to consider that.
I ask you, again, to please put an end to this circus and this farce. Let's get this committee back on track.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thanks.
I hear what you're saying, Mr. Kusmierczyk. I disagree with your choice of wording, but I hear you loud and clear.
We'll return to our colleague Mr. Lawrence with that in mind, but we will suspend for about three or four minutes so that all the support staff and others can have a quick refresh.
We'll suspend for four minutes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you, everyone, for indulging us while we suspended.
Mr. Lawrence, go ahead, please.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our interpreters and the clerk and the team here and the analysts. We appreciate your work. At the finance committee, we have a rule that the analysts have to put their name tags out there. I don't believe, ladies and gentlemen, that you get the recognition you deserve here.
I was talking about the fiscal and economic net impact to Canadians in 2030 and 2031. At the risk of being point-of-ordered again, and because we did take a suspension, I would like to briefly reiterate why we think it's important that we have this hearing tomorrow, and the urgency of it.
The carbon tax is set to go up on April 1. We have the Easter break coming into place shortly. We're coming up on Easter weekend. To all my Christian friends out there, happy Easter.
This is really the last opportunity we have to hear the premiers before the April 1 increase of 23% on the carbon tax. It's really now or never to hear from the premiers. If they are willing to take time out of their extremely busy schedules, I believe we should be able to organize a committee to hear them. I believe the notice of meeting has already gone out. I'm quite sure that out of the 150-odd Liberals we have in the House, it could be arranged for four or five to appear tomorrow to hear this very important testimony.
When we're in these rooms, we see only the parliamentarians, our great analysts, our interpreters, our clerk, our chair and maybe a few folks from the media, and I think what sometimes gets lost is that we're all here to represent hundreds of thousands—millions—of Canadians. More than the questioning of any particular right to the privilege of an MP to ask various individuals questions, I think it's clear that this is a subject that Canadians want to talk about. Over 70% of Canadians are against the carbon tax, and if we have multiple premiers lined up who want to listen to us, I think we can organize just one meeting to listen to them, and get 10 or so members of Parliament to listen to them, because of the potential impact of the carbon tax.
Let me give some context with respect to why this is so important.
I see the carbon tax as a tipping point, in many ways, for the Canadian economy. If all other lights were “go” for the economy, it might be a different matter, but we have warnings from across the political spectrum, from economists of all stripes, telling us that this economy is in very severe peril. The OECD predicts that we'll be near the bottom—I think at the very bottom, actually—over the next 40 years with respect to capital investment.
Capital investment, innovation and our workers underpin the foundation of productivity. Productivity is, of course, measured as GDP per hour. Canada has been a laggard in this category and has really sort of drifted downwards in the last 10 years. I heard an economist on one of the political shows yesterday saying that in order to increase GDP per capita, there are two things we need to get done to increase that productivity. One is that we need a reduction in taxation. That's squarely on the carbon tax. The second thing is that we need to attract foreign investment by making it easier for our products to happen, providing ease for both big and small businesses to perform their wonderful work.
The carbon tax is both these things, because the carbon tax creates additional costs and uncertainty in the Canadian economy, while at the same time it's an additional level of taxation.
The reality is that the driver of any nation's economy in any capitalist country is the private sector. As the great Brian Mulroney showed, when you privatize 22 separate institutions, it's a great driver of economic growth going forward.
What the government has done increasingly has taken the oxygen out of the room for the private sector. As you divert more assets when spending is way up since before the pandemic—we're spending well over 20% more as a government—it means that there are resources being diverted from the private sector, the sector that's really responsible for moving our economy forward, the engine that drives our economy, and you begin to suffocate. You've seen that impact with respect to our productivity numbers. Once again, they haven't increased since 2014, and I really see the carbon tax as sand in the gears of the Canadian economy. It's slowing everything down.
Folks will talk about how we need the carbon tax to reduce emissions, and that just ain't so, I would say, because currently we're near the bottom. I think we're at 62 out of 67 with respect to emissions reductions. We're not on track to meet any of our emissions targets. We've blown by the targets. The only time we were—quote, unquote—on track, our economy was shut down during the pandemic. Of course, the environment minister will cite that without any context, but besides that, we've never been on track to hit those targets. We're number 62 out of 67.
The bigger story of why that happened is that the goal should not be to reduce just Canadian emissions but to reduce global emissions, because CO2 or carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases don't know any borders. They don't know any boundaries. If Beijing pumps out an additional amount of carbon, it doesn't just stay over the PRC.
What we're doing when we impose the carbon tax is pushing Canadian industry out of Canada. There is clean, sustainable Canadian energy in my great province of Ontario, which means a lot of nuclear, hydro and carbon-free power, and we're pushing this relatively clean Canadian energy industry out towards other jurisdictions that don't have carbon pricing but do have energy sources that are far less clean.
The reality is that by putting these punitive costs on our Canadian farmers and our Canadian business owners, what we're doing is funding other authoritarian regimes around the world, while at the same time costing ourselves.... Actually, in many cases, it has a net negative impact, not just for the Canadian consumer but also for emissions.
You can just picture it. If you are a factory operating in Northumberland—Peterborough South, you're going to have a lot of your power created by Darlington, a great nuclear facility. If in fact you can't make it there, and you say that it's less expensive to go to West Virginia or Guangdong province or someplace where there is no carbon tax, or even Mexico—Mexico has a carbon tax, but a very small one—what happens is that instead of having nuclear energy powering this manufacturing and powering the economy, what—
Liberal
Jenica Atwin Liberal Fredericton, NB
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, I'm really trying to give my colleague the latitude that he seeks in this moment, but I'm hearing the same tables being shared, I'm hearing the same sentences being shared and now we're talking about other nations. This is not relevant at all.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you, Ms. Atwin.
Mr. Lawrence, we always allow wide latitude. I'd ask if you could bring it home.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
The challenge is that in the same point of order, I heard that I was repetitious and that I was also adding too much new material.
The reality is that the Prime Minister continues to lie about the effectiveness and the treatment of the carbon tax, right? So—
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
On a point of order, once again, the member has accused the Prime Minister of lying. It is completely unparliamentary and I would ask him to apologize.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
I have another unsolicited point of order asking for a resignation as well, but....
Go ahead, Mr. Lawrence.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
The truth is the truth. The reality is that the Prime Minister is lying.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
On a point of order, that is completely unparliamentary and totally against the rules—
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Conservative
Conservative
Shelby Kramp-Neuman Conservative Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
The point of order is that he's suggesting it's unparliamentary, but with all due respect, the Prime Minister is continuing to say that Canadians are better off because of the carbon tax. It's an outright lie—period.
Conservative
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Once again, I believe it's a violation of the Standing Orders and the general practice of the House to accuse a member of lying. I would ask both members to now apologize.
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
I would cite the following letter as evidence of a lie, so—
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
I'm sorry.
Hold on, Mr. Drouin.
Before I go back to you, was that Mr. Drouin or Mr. Kusmierczyk?
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Chair, you can't point of order a point of order.
