Mr. Speaker, that is a very difficult question to answer in the little time I have because everything about it is founded on the lack of understanding of, first, what my colleague, the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore, said, and secondly, I think the member is very confused about the notion of a carbon tax.
What we have now witnessed is that only carbon tax that has surfaced in Canada to deal with climate change is the $100 to $200 per tonne charge that his colleague, the Minister of the Environment, blurted out after getting off a plane in Vancouver, as the charge that would be levied on Canadian large industrial emitters that do not comply with its regulated levels under the plan. The only party that has put forward a carbon tax is the Conservative Party.
The second thing that is important to remind Canadians about is that the Prime Minister, who led the fight against the Kyoto protocol for 12 years in Canada, also promised, not once, not twice but three times publicly, that he would cap excise taxes after fuel prices exceeded 85¢ per litre. He said that the excise tax applied by the Government of Canada would not be applied.
The third thing to remember here is that after extraneous questioning yesterday and the day before with senior officials from Finance Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada and Health Canada, a number of things were revealed to us. First, no environmental assessment was conducted on the government's own plan in breach of the cabinet decree that requires it to do this before it is made public.
Second, there is a four to five-fold increase contemplated in exploitation in the oil sands. The government has yet to reconcile anything around its carbon taxation strategy and a four to five-fold increase in those oil sands.
When it comes to inconsistencies in positions, the government is in charge. It wants to act like a majority government but it is not. It is a minority one. It is up to the government now to explain to Canadians how it intends to actually reduce greenhouse gases when its plan indicates that gases will increase for at least a decade.