Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity tonight to participate in the debate on gas prices. This provides me with an opportunity to point out some of the clear differences in the House between the Conservative government and the parties opposite.
High gas prices are a huge concern to everyone. This is not the time to be making points for partisan gain. This is a time to be concerned about the residents in each of our ridings, whether they are homemakers, business people, or farmers, and I will talk a bit about that also.
The price of gas is on the minds of Canadians across this country. Constituents have phoned me and emailed me about their concerns, and they have asked me what I am going to do and what can happen.
The Liberal leader recently stated that he wants Canadians to use less of what is bad. I guess the gas is bad and we are to use less of it. He announced that his party would impose a massive gas tax on all Canadian families. This gas tax would take billions of dollars out of the pockets of working families, seniors, those who are not working and already struggling to put food on the table.
As my colleague the Minister of Natural Resources said, if the price of fuel is $1.30 a litre and we added on a 60% hike, the price would rise to around $2.25. This is not going to be good for Canadian families.
My daughter works part time and she drives to work. Her husband has a construction business which runs excavators. He has people on the road all the time. To increase the cost of fuel by another 60% in these days would be unconscionable. Not only would it make it hard for families to afford gas but there is not a doubt in my mind that it would also take away jobs. It would take away businesses because of the high energy cost involved. People also have to heat their homes and the like.
This is not just about raising the gas tax, which the opposition wants to do, but more so about what we as a government have done by reducing taxes over the past two years. We were ridiculed by many at the time for reducing the GST. The GST in my riding for every per cent is $18 million. Some $36 million dollars goes back into the economy of my riding, not unlike the ridings of most members sitting here today. If those members ever get back into power, they will raise the GST back up to 7% plus add a gas tax to it. Canadians would not be able to endure that.
Those members continually talk about raising the gas tax, but we cannot control the price of the product. It is a global commodity. It is on the stock market. It is not just us saying that.
We should listen to some of the other ones, other voices of credit. Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium warned that carbon tax shifts the burden from the richest to the poorest families because most of the energy purchases of low and middle-income families are not discretionary whereas almost half the energy purchased by the wealthy families tends to be discretionary.
Perhaps he should listen to a few of the Liberals who have spoken out against the potential imposition of a new regressive carbon tax on Canadians. Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella recently stated that a carbon tax was unfair to people on fixed incomes such as the elderly, the poor or those who have to heat their homes and buy food too, and it was therefore profoundly not Liberal.
The member for Kings—Hants stated that he was strongly against energy taxes. He said that he would never propose higher taxes in Canada in any area and yet as we talk about how we are going to keep Canadians and our economy strong we have a party that is in the official opposition, the Liberal Party, that continually wants to boost the taxes of the country against the working people.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day when he was putting his crops in. When he pulled up to the fuel tank to fill up his tractor it cost him $1,200. That runs him a little less than between 10 and 11 hours of work.
If it is this much now to fill it up, and that is when we have dropped the taxes, and we allow a government to come in and raise the taxes back up higher than they are now by another 60%, not only is it going to affect the cost of production but it will put the businesses like farming and construction, which are struggling now to make ends meet, at a greater disadvantage.
We talked earlier today about food and fuel, and whether it is food for fuel or growing crops for food. As we start to talk about this whole issue, as we continue to make food more expensive because we would have to add the tax to the production of the food, then again it becomes counterproductive when we start to think about how we are going to keep a strong economy and how we are going to feed nations with food that is costing more to produce.
I think we always have to be careful about whatever we do. That is why the principle of this government has been to work for working families to lower personal taxes, lower the GST, and raise the personal exemption on tax. Quite honestly, when we talked to seniors this year about income splitting, it was incredible, particularly the uptake that was received and the moneys that have been saved by our seniors, just in those tax savings.
That is the difference when we talk about what our government wants to do for families. We want to lower taxes and make things affordable. We do not want to increase them and make them unaffordable.
As we get into the debate on this and as it goes on for a while, I just want to wrap up by saying that we are concerned about high gas taxes but we should always remember that those are global issues. What we can do is keep taxes low, keep the economy strong, and keep our families and businesses in business.