Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank my colleague Ms. Stubbs for providing this opportunity to this committee. We have a unique opportunity today, and that's to send the House of Commons the message from this committee, as a natural resource committee, that they need to end the increases to the carbon tax—and better yet would be to axe the tax completely.
As a committee, we have that opportunity here today. The Liberals and the NDP refuse to even debate it. They always move to adjourn debate as soon as they get the floor, and I think it's reprehensible: to not even willingly debate this issue that's costing every single Canadian thousands of dollars every year.
I want to talk a bit about exactly what this motion does.
It asks the House to stop the proposed increase to the carbon tax on April 1, when an additional 23% hike to the existing carbon tax will take place. We know the carbon tax has already crippled many households. A 23% increase to that tax is going to push them over the edge.
I don't think people fully understand the carbon tax when they hear the words “carbon tax”, thinking that it's just like the GST or it's like the HST or the PST. No. The carbon tax is very different. The HST, the PST and the GST are all end-user taxes. The carbon tax is a compounding tax. It's taxed on everything from the point of origin until it hits the consumer, and it's tax on tax on tax.
In the case of food—and this applies to whole goods as well—the producer pays the carbon tax. The transport company pays the carbon tax to get it to the processing facility. The processing facility pays carbon tax on the energy they use to process the product. Then the transport company again pays carbon tax on top of that to get it to a distribution centre. The distribution centre, whether it's a cooling or heating facility, pays carbon tax on what it does. Then, again, a transport company picks up the product and takes it to the retailer, and again pays the carbon tax. The retailer gets it, and he pays the carbon tax on his energy costs.
At every step along the way, for everything that consumers purchase, the carbon tax is compounded, Mr. Chair. That's important to note, because it's not a one-time GST. For that, all along the process there are input tax credits; this is a compounding tax. Canadians are wondering why everything costs so much, and it's because of this compounding tax. It's not a single end-user tax like the PST, GST or HST; it's a compounding tax, right from the grassroots to the end user.
People think, “Well, why is there such inflation?” That's because everything costs more. That's because this Liberal-NDP coalition has broken everything and then they've whacked every Canadian with this carbon tax.
Let me tell you what the Canada Gazette said about the clean fuel regulations and how they would apply to everyday Canadians—and the carbon tax is exponentially worse than the clean fuel regulations—but let me tell you what the Canada Gazette says:
...according to Statistics Canada, single mothers are more likely to live in lower-income households, and may be more vulnerable to energy poverty and adverse impacts from increases to transportation and home heating prices.
Seniors living on fixed incomes may also face higher transportation and heating costs resulting from the proposed Regulations. This may be the most acute for seniors living in the Atlantic provinces, where they account for a higher share of the total population compared to other Canadian provinces and are also more likely to experience some of the highest energy expenditures in Canada proportional to income.... It is possible that there could be other socio-economic groups that may have disproportionately lower income, may be at an increased vulnerability to energy poverty, or may be adversely affected by the proposed Regulations. However, these groups may not be fully captured in this analysis due to [the] lack of [available] data...scarcity of research, or under-representation...[available in other] studies.
That's what the Canada Gazette printed in response to the clean fuel regulations, and the carbon tax exacerbates that. We know that lower-income households, seniors and single moms trying to get by are exponentially impacted by the carbon tax. We know that it hits them the hardest. They are disproportionately affected by a carbon tax increase, unlike middle- and upper-class Canadians or higher-income Canadians. We know that. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. The carbon tax disproportionately affects low-income families.
It's interesting, because on my ride from the airport yesterday to the centre of Ottawa, my taxi driver said that in the last two weeks he's taken two families back to the airport that were moving away from Canada. They came here as immigrants in the last 10 years but decided to go back to their respective countries—one being in Africa and one in the Middle East—because they couldn't afford to live here.
Mr. Speaker, Canada used to be the country of promise. This used to be a place where people had hope, where people could afford to live, and that's no longer the case. Now this Liberal-NDP coalition wants to whack Canadians, and whack low-income people the hardest, with another 23% increase to this carbon tax.
Colleagues, today we have an opportunity to send the House of Commons a clear message that as the natural resources committee, we're asking the government to stop the proposed increase to the carbon tax, to spike the hike, to axe the tax. I'm asking, colleagues, that you support my colleague Mrs. Stubbs in her motion.
We have a unique opportunity. Let's exercise it.