Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to deal today with an issue that is very important and very crucial to the future of Canada as well as the prosperity of the nation and the well-being of its citizens.
Bill C-66 is a bill which deals with a very small portion of our energy policy. This bill is long overdue. We need a debate on energy policy in this country. We need a debate not only dealing with very small elements, rebates, a little bit of retrofitting for houses and urban transportation, but an overall comprehensive debate of where we have been, what we are doing and where we are going. These are all facets of energy policy, not only one specific area. We must do this because the government tends to get into this crisis mode. It is only when there is a problem does the government act.
Today we are being somewhat distracted by events outside this House, but again they reflect the general principle. Something happened. The problem had been going on for years. Only after the government got caught, only after something came immediately to the surface did the government act. This is the same principle that the government has applied to its energy policy.
When I was first elected to this House, the Conservative Party began to deal with our energy problem by setting up an internal energy caucus over a year ago. It began to look at the specific long term and short term issues that are involved.
The Liberal government which has been in power for years talks about its energy framework in 2000. It has talked about updating it, but really has no plan, no agenda and no way of looking at it. It was only this summer when gasoline prices began to spike because of the run up in crude oil prices and the refining problems in the gulf coast did the government begin to think of this problem.
It has been known for years that we are going to have particular problems with home heating costs because of the rise in demand for natural gas and the inability of supplies to meet it.
My hon. colleague noted that in prior years $2 or $3 per million BTU was the price for natural gas. I believe the last numbers I saw were $13 or $14 per million BTU. That is an enormous run up in cost. It is one area in particular where the government should have been able to deal with the problem through long term thought and foresight to begin to handle this issue.
I understand crude oil prices are an international commodity. We ship to one place and we ship to another. It is an internationally set price because it is a very fungible commodity.
When dealing specifically with home heating prices and natural gas, which has tended to become the fuel of choice for most of the country for many consumers, the government could have thought ahead. It could have had a priority and could have had a plan, but the government chose not to. It chose to ignore it. It used the exact same procedures that it followed in the ad scam problem. The government did not worry about anything until it was caught in front of the media.
As I was noting, particularly with natural gas and so forth, it is a continental market and not so much an international market. That will be changing as LNG, liquefied natural gas, becomes a part of the North American experience in increasing fashion.
I will note just how much this costs the average Canadian by not thinking ahead and not planning. There was a study released the other day by the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association about the higher costs of natural gas for Canadian consumers in its totality if there was a regulatory delay of merely two years for things such as the Mackenzie pipeline and liquefied natural gas plants.
The association came to the conclusion that over 19 years it would cost consumers $57 billion. That is $3 billion a year for each and every Canadian in sum, using a rough number of roughly 30 million Canadian and I know we are slightly higher. That is roughly $100 for every man, woman and child in this country.
We are talking about energy rebates for one year, not two years, three years or four years, but for just one year. It is $565 million according to the numbers I have. We are talking about these numbers merely through lack of planning and lack of foresight which would result in $3 billion in higher costs to the Canadian economy. This is for the next 19 years, not just for one year, but for the next 19 years.
For a high flyer, a wealthy person, $100 a year per person in the family may not be very important. One of the supposed purposes of this legislation is to deal with low income earners and to help them. For a family of five, it is $500 a year for the next two decades, all because of a lack of planning and foresight. This is an area which needs to be taken seriously and looked at not just for the immediate and the now, but for the future.
There are other impacts of a poorly thought out energy policy on other elements in the Canadian economy. I wish to make special note, coming from a riding that is one-third agriculture, of the effect on farmers. Farmers use intensely more amounts of fuel than the rest of the population to fuel up a combine, to fuel up a tractor, and to drive over their fields. Be it for seeding, harvests, swathing, whatever, they continue to use up more fuel than merely commuting to and from work every day once or twice.
That is not to downplay the impact on any other consumer or any other element of society but to stress the importance of how the burden is disproportionately placed on certain elements, and this is with very low prices. Farmers are already struggling, particularly in certain elements of the agriculture community. Prices are lousy. There is very little support from the government on overall agriculture policy, and now they are being hit with higher fuel prices.
I would also note, something that the general public does not always appreciate, higher fuel prices contribute to higher fertilizer prices. Fertilizer is a substantive input. It depends on what particular methodology is used for farming, but fertilizers have a particularly high input cost for farmers. The run-up in natural gas prices directly impacts the price of the fertilizer and has for years.
This lack of planning, particularly when it came to a natural gas and energy framework policy for this country, has had particular impact on farmers, more so than anyone else. In this legislation, there is absolutely nothing for agriculture. There is absolutely nothing for agriculture to deal with the higher prices of diesel fuels, gasoline and the higher resulting prices of fertilizer. It was completely forgotten. As my colleague was noting at the end of his remarks, that is generally true for rural Canada. There is absolutely no planning or no specificity of a plan for the rural areas.
I come from the province of Saskatchewan. Per capita, we are the second largest payers of the national fuel tax, the infrastructure funding which is being juggled around between various bills. We pay 4% of the national tax with 3% of the population. We are only getting 3% of the tax revenues allocated to our province, and that is because it is disproportionately being taken away from rural communities.
Rural communities are being completely forgotten and completely left out in this plan. It is something that the government has shown repeatedly, a bias against rural Canada. That is one of the reasons why the government nearly lost all of its seats and in the next election will lose all of its seats in the rural and farming areas of this country.
Those are some of the impacts on the country. One could go on about other industries that are specifically impacted such as chemical plants and the chemical industry. With the high input costs for key feed stocks and energy stocks, they are being driven out of business along with the fertilizer industry and manufacturers due to higher electricity costs.
What is the alternative? What is the better plan? First, we need to have a long term energy framework which deals with both the supply and the demand side. I wish I had more time to deal with it because there is a lot that can be done.
There is a need for general overall tax cuts that are sustainable for the future and for everyone. This plan that the government has is a one year rebate plan. Next year there are going to be high prices again for natural gas. Thankfully the government will not be in office at that time, but we need to have sustainable tax cuts. Tax cuts help everyone. They help grow the economy. They help diversify. A diversified base of tax cuts helps everyone.
It is important that we deal with energy issues, not just on an ad hoc basis but on a basis which addresses the future and the now. This bill has a few good things about it, but honestly not a lot. It is one of those typically mediocre pieces of legislation that we have become accustomed to seeing from this government.