I will speak to the motion, for sure. Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Arora, I do apologize, but this is such an important issue for Saskatchewan, for people in rural Canada, and for our manufacturing sector right across Canada. I think it's very important that we look at industry, science, and technology, that we deal with this motion, and that they take part in this motion to move it forward and see the impact.
Premier Wall asked the Prime Minister what the impact of a carbon tax would be in Saskatchewan or across Canada. He asked him that more than once. His reply was basically that there was no impact study done. There's really been no assessment done to analyze what this means for our manufacturers, our industries, and our farmers, and what it means for rural Canadians who are required to use fossil fuels to drive to and from work, to buy groceries, and to go about their day-to-day business.
Look at the agriculture sector. We compete in a global marketplace. We sell the products we produce, the products we grow, on the world market. When you have a carbon tax on inputs such as fuel and fertilizer, it puts us at such a disadvantage compared to jurisdictions such as the U.S., Australia, or Europe, which don't have these types of carbon taxes in place. When you ask our farmers to be even more efficient and to bear more costs to produce the grain and the foods that we require to survive, they feel threatened, because now you've taken the playing field and you've made it unlevel.
We've done a lot of things in the trade committee and in trade to level the playing field so that they have market access and a chance equal to the chance of anybody else around the world in markets that are very important to us. Then a carbon tax comes in, and what does it do? It basically disjoints it again.
All of a sudden they're saying, “You know what? It is really tough for us to figure out how it's going to work.” Everybody says that it's only going to be 10¢ a litre or 11¢ a litre, depending on what you price carbon at and how you go about implementing the policy, but you also see studies out there saying that $50 a tonne won't curb the actions and reduce the carbon output. What you're going to do at $50 a tonne, though, is move businesses out of Canada into jurisdictions that don't have a carbon tax.
When you look at that scenario, you can look at a situation like the one in Sarnia, for example, where there was a $1.5-billion fertilizer plant proposed. All of a sudden they have the huge power costs that have happened here in Ontario, and a carbon tax, and then they look at places like Louisville or Louisiana, where they don't have any of those expenses in their inputs. You can see exactly that it becomes a no-brainer in terms of where they're going to locate their facility.
I was talking to some Calgary businesses last weekend when I was attending Mr. Prentice's funeral. They were telling me that people from American cities are coming up into Canada and poaching businesses because of the carbon tax in Alberta. Look at our science and industry, and our science and technology. We have great research going on in universities right across Canada, and we're going to continue having great researchers, but when it comes to commercialization, they're going to commercialize in areas outside of Canada. Why? It's because the playing field isn't level, because other jurisdictions don't have a carbon tax, and because they compete in a world market. It's a shame.
When you're competing in a world market and you're looking at your costs of production, you'll say, “Well, because of the carbon tax in Saskatchewan now, it's cheaper to produce it in Montana.” What are you going to do? You're going to produce it in Montana.
We've talked to investment bankers and people in that area who deal in billions and billions of dollars. Look at the oil and gas sector. They're saying that right now, with the uncertainty in Canada with what's going on with carbon taxes and big debt.... Look at the economic update, where they talk about attracting this foreign investment to build Canada and make it stronger. People are saying that they have projects that they can do in Texas, Montana, or North Dakota, or they can do them in Alberta, but they know that their costs down there are substantially less, so why would they go to Alberta? Why would they come to Canada? What is the incentive? They might say, “You're great guys and I love ya, but when I look at my balance sheet and I have to make a decision on where I'm going to spend this amount of money on behalf of my investors and shareholders and you've made it so unattractive to go there, why should I?”
I think you're being very naive when you think that you can start doing things unilaterally. In fact, I think you should learn from the Ontario experience on power. It's not a bad thing to go to renewable power. That's not a bad thing, but it's tough, though, when you make your businesses pay a higher rate for power and then tell them to go out in the world and compete, and by the way, you're going to dump the excess power into another jurisdiction outside of Canada that they're going to compete against. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't work.
If you're going to do a carbon tax and if you're going to look at an environment policy, you have to look at it in a North American picture. You have to make sure that you don't disadvantage your industries, your small and medium-sized enterprises here in Canada, or your farmers. You haven't done that. You haven't done the study.
That's where I get really concerned. I think that's where this committee could show great responsibility and do the work the committees are supposed to do. Do the study. Look at it. Look for suggestions. Look for other alternatives. We all want to reduce our carbon footprint. We all want to make the environment greener and safer, and we want to see booms there. Nobody's denying that, but how we go about doing it is so important. Thousands of jobs across Canada are at stake, so I would encourage you to support this motion.
Chair, I don't think there's going to be much more debate on this motion. I think it makes a lot of sense. I move that we vote on this motion now.