Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my hon. colleague for Yellowhead.
I am an Albertan MP who represents families who are standing on the brink in the middle of a jobs crisis. I will not stand in this place and vote to support a significant tax increase that will burden Canadian families for which the government has provided no details. Mark my words, the devil is in the details, which the Prime Minister conveniently left out of his speech today.
First, there is virtually no data on any region in Canada proving the Prime Minister's tax would actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Here is the question that the Prime Minister and my colleague for Davenport could not answer. At what price does the demand for gasoline, heating fuel, and other carbon products actually decrease in Canada, by how much and over what time period?
If demand is mostly inelastic, then the Prime Minister's tax will increase government revenue without any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to show for it. Simply put, if gas is 90¢ a litre or $2.50 a litre, Canadians are still likely to fill up their cars. If natural gas goes up significantly, and it is -30°C in Winnipeg, furnaces are still going to be turned on. It is just going to cost them more, either in money or opportunity.
Along this line of thought, Mark Lee, a senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said this about B.C.'s carbon tax. He said that since 2010, B.C.'s greenhouse gas emissions had increased every year, and as of 2013, they were up 4.3% above 2010 levels.
If the Prime Minister wants to take more of our money, he should be able to tell us where it is going to go. Would revenue from this tax be dumped into the offsetting of the Liberal deficit? Would it fund the development of new technology? How much would it cost to implement the administration of this new tax?
Without any of this information, the Prime Minister cannot tell Canadians what the impact of his tax on Canadian workers and lower income Canadians will be. Without this information, there is no way he can pretend to say that this tax is “revenue neutral”.
Because carbon products are highly inelastic and pervasive, the reality is that the tax the Prime Minister announced today is likely to look and act a lot like an increase to the GST. Further, the Prime Minister is not talking about the development or adoption horizon of alternative technology that could alter these assumptions over time, or what the effect of his tax would be on different income brackets and industries will be.
If he cannot answer if one region of the country will be affected more than others, he cannot provide Canadians with assurances that this will work. He also cannot answer if rural and urban Canadians will be affected differently.
We also need to look globally.
In order to see the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions across the world, major emitting countries need to take action. Nations such as China, which emits over 20% of total global emissions, and the United States with nearly 18% of global emissions, have ratified the Paris agreement. Compared to initiatives like the Kyoto protocol, this is a marked improvement, as previous agreements did not see all major emitters commit to targets.
This is important in the context of Canada's overall greenhouse gas emissions profile, which is 1.95% of all global emissions. Canada has a relatively low greenhouse gas emissions profile.
A question the Prime Minister cannot ignore is that even if Canada imposes one of the most restrictive greenhouse gas emission frameworks in the world, what can we do to make major emitters like Brazil, India, China, and the United States reduce their greenhouse gas profiles? What happens if we implement a framework that makes our industries less competitive than those located in countries that are not taking action? Have the billions of dollars that Canada has spent on global mitigation and adaptation efforts made any impact?
It is completely irrational for the Prime Minister to impose new taxation measures on Canadians and let them pay the cost while the biggest offenders take advantage of our potential economic inferiority as a result. The Prime Minister needs to address this dichotomy to have credibility with Canadians before he raids their pocketbooks with his new tax. At the very least, which he did not do today, he needs to explain how our domestic policy will align in the North American context.
Contrary to the Prime Minister's assertion, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions profile is in a much better place then when the Liberal government was in power. Recent Canadian emissions trends reports shows that regulations on specific high-emission sectors, such as vehicles and the coal-fired electricity sector, have reduced our overall greenhouse gas emissions growth. More important, this has happened while the Canadian economy has grown. The decoupling of economic growth in Canada's natural resource-intensive economy from greenhouse gas emissions growth is significant positive progress.
Any national greenhouse gas emissions framework should set achievable targets. It should be fully costed and measured by arm's-length data collection programs. It should simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the job security of Canadian workers, the jurisdiction of provinces, and lower income Canadians.
This means that presenting a price on carbon as a painless, stand-alone cure-all, as this government is doing, is a costly fallacy in the cold, regionalized, natural resource intensive Canadian economy. That is not to say that we should not take action. Rather, it is saying that the Prime Minister's dogma on a new tax, without any proof that it will actually work, coupled with his intrusion into provincial jurisdiction, will inhibit the development of a multi-faceted approach that recognizes Canada's uniqueness.
Among many instruments, Canada could include phased-in sector-specific regulations, and members will note that the current government is not talking about repealing regulations put in place by the previous government, clean technology development and adoption. It must leverage energy efficiency standards and incentives, and involve working with conservation groups that understand the importance of the sustainable management of Canada's forests and wetlands. It also must involve first nation communities whose traditional knowledge has long helped sustain our country's environmental health.
If it is going to include a tax, then it has to address the concerns that I have raised here today. I highly doubt the Prime Minister will be able to do that.
The Prime Minister also needs to acknowledge that we are not a European country when we compare international greenhouse gas reduction policy to ourselves. The practical reality is that it is cold here. We live far apart. We are a young country with a developing public transit infrastructure. As such, the plan needs to involve smart long-term urban planning, public transit investments, and investments into disaster mitigation infrastructure.
The Prime Minister's tax will require the financial sacrifice of Canadians, and Canadians should have a say in whether they want to make it. They should be aware of the costs, which should not be hidden in line items on electricity bills to avoid political scrutiny, the way the Ontario Liberals have shamefully gone about doing.
To gain credibility, the Liberals need to move away from mythology on this issue. There is no evidence to back up assertions that a carbon tax would instantly result in the United States allowing us to build projects like KXL. They should admit that the few rich CEOs of Canada's big energy firms probably support their tax because it may force junior firms out of the market, enabling them to make a play for assets. The energy sector is not the CEOs, it is its workers. Right now they are laid off and getting by on their credit card. They are not asking for more taxes.
It is also worth noting that the last time the Liberals were in power greenhouse gas emissions rose by 30%. Therefore, I do not trust the government to be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I certainly do not trust it to do it without killing the jobs of my constituents. That is because in 1980, the father of the current Prime Minister announced a similar pan-Canadian strategy, which used words such as “fairness” and “opportunities” in its objectives. This colossally disastrous social engineering experiment, which was the national energy program, forced thousands of Albertans out of their homes and set the Canadian economy back for a generation.
Today, the Liberal Prime Minister is embarking down the same path his father did, imposing a significant tax on the provinces without detail and encroaching on their jurisdiction, coupled with other policy that is decimating investment prospects of the development of our energy sector during a time of economic stagnation. Frankly it is history repeating itself.
Notably absent from the Prime Minister's tax announcement today is the corresponding research showing what effect this will have on the energy sector in Canada, and on the millions of jobs dependent on our continued economic success derived from Canada's abundance of natural resources.
Last week, the Liberals stood here and said that the main reason why energy infrastructure projects were not proceeding is because, “right now the issue is low commodity prices.” Is that not convenient? This shows a complete ignorance of the criteria that job-creating companies use to make investment decisions in the energy sector. Certainty is needed to make multi-billion dollar energy sector investment commitments. Quasi-changing the environmental assessment process in a closed, unpredictable and non-transparent way, unpredictable increases in taxation, such as the CPP increase and today's new tax, create uncertainty that puts a chill on job creators.
The Liberals refuse to admit that market access is a critical factor in seeing the value of Canada's energy resources translate into things like jobs and social programs, which is made evident by their silence with respect to support for pipelines.
While the Liberal government was busy initiating a new tax on a region that was already struggling to stay on its feet, today we started the Alberta jobs task force.
The inconvenient truth that we are dealing with today is that these questions need to be answered. There is a lot at stake. With the government failing to do so, once again all that the Liberals will have left Canadians is debt, uncertainty, job losses, increases in greenhouse gas emissions, and a dog named Kyoto.