Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
So I was saying that, during the election campaign, the Liberals promised very small deficits of about $10 billion. We recently learned that the deficit for the current year would exceed $20 billion.
To satisfy my colleague who is wondering why I am talking about deficits, I would say that it's because certain factors lead to those deficits. What are those factors? They are quite simply unreasonable government expenditures. How will those unreasonable expenditures be repaid? By imposing a carbon tax on Canadians. So there is a direct link to the Liberals' promises to create very small deficits.
In reality, the deficit will exceed $21 billion this year. The Liberals are hungry and are trying to get as much money as possible anywhere they can to deal with those huge deficits. The carbon tax will be used to pay for the interest on the Liberals' credit card, which unfortunately doesn't seem to have a limit.
I could compare that to a family with a young child. This is in fact a young government of only 18 months that has access to credit and suddenly decides that it is wonderful to have a credit card without a spending limit and not to have to pay back the debt for another 30, 40 or 50 years. To hell with spending. They get into it, they spend and they will see later. Others will have to manage the debt. The children of our children will have to manage it.
However, a few people see things more clearly and tell themselves that borrowing is fine and well, but we have to at least pay back the interest on the credit card. The carbon tax, which is supposedly a tax to help protect the environment, is actually nothing but a way the Liberals have found to get even more money out of the pockets of taxpayers, families, SMEs and big companies to handle those large deficits.
When the Minister of Environment and Climate Change appears before the committee, she could answer those questions. Did she take action to improve the environment, to work on climate change, or did she simply react to an order from the Minister of Finance, who was unable to find funds anywhere other than in taxpayers' pockets? How to find money and make people pay by giving them the impression that it's the right thing to do? By imposing a carbon tax to protect the environment.
However, a tax is still a tax. The money taken out of people's pockets is money they cannot use themselves. That limits the decisions they will make with regard to their budget or actions they will take to protect the environment. The means to take action are being taken away from them.
I want to come back to the example of very small deficits that have now become very large deficits. We now understand better why, when we asked the Department of Finance to provide us with details on the real costs of the new federal carbon pricing strategy for Canadian families, those figures come to us blacked out. We understand why department representatives have no interest in disclosing those figures. It is because they know full well that people will be shocked and insulted by the extent of the costs for families.
That obviously affects the transportation industry. Many changes have been made. Bill C-49, which has been introduced, will allow foreign companies greater participation in airlines' shareholder structures. Some companies are trying to provide the most affordable transportation services possible. Very recently, the media reported that there are significant differences in the costs of regional transportation, be it in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada. Airlines in particular are very worried about the competition they will see from foreign companies, especially when it comes to long flights, owing to the carbon tax they will have to pay on fuel. I heard that here during the meetings we had with airline representatives. Will we be hurting our airlines through these measures? I believe that question deserves to be asked.
Concerning airlines, we want to ask the Minister of Environment and Climate Change whether she has analyzed the repercussions of the carbon tax on the transportation sector. We want to know whether she has only considered the quantity of products sold and the quantity of carbon produced before imposing a tax in order to produce revenue, without looking into the effects the tax could have on companies' competitiveness or the accessibility of air transportation for middle-class Canadians and those working hard to join the middle class. We want to know whether the minister has assessed the effects on them, on their wallet, as well as on airline companies. The same reflection applies to transportation companies....