Madam Speaker, in government, we have to ask ourselves what we manage to. If one is in the private sector, what one is managing to is usually as simple as profit and loss. In social entrepreneurship, the conversation around what one is managing to might be profit and loss in the context of delivering a socially acceptable good.
In government, when we put policy forward, we should always be asking ourselves what we are managing to. When it comes to the issue of Canada's approach to dealing with climate change, the current government has said that it is managing to the following: our 2030 target for reducing emissions 30% below 2005 levels.
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa.
The Liberal government has articulated that this is the goal, that this is where we are going. How do we decide if what we are managing to is something that, first, we should be managing to, and second, whether whatever public policy instrument we put in place to get there is actually working? To me, this is very simple economics. It is an opportunity-cost calculation. For those in the House who are not familiar with it, opportunity cost is the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen. It could also be described as a benefit we could have received but gave up to take another course of action. It is the value of the next-best alternative. Simply put, if we are trying to calculate the opportunity cost of something, we are asking this: what is the value of what we are sacrificing over what we are gaining?
By saying that a price on carbon, the price the government has articulated, is the correct public policy option, the government has an obligation to Canadians to provide information such that they can make that opportunity-cost calculation and then evaluate the government accordingly.
For a government that has said that transparency is something its members value and it wants Canadians to have information, there is a woeful lack of information for Canadians to make the cost calculation, on both sides of the equation. My concern is that if we are trying to calculate what Canadians are sacrificing to achieve this policy end, we have to have the information that is in the reports that are the subject of this motion today.
As I believe the Department of Finance actually said, a federally mandated carbon tax will cause “higher prices to cascade through the economy in the form of higher prices”. Canadian families should have that data, the estimates that show how much a price on carbon will actually increase their cost of living versus whether they think this emissions target that has been articulated by the government is worth sacrificing that cost for. What is more important is even more complicated than that. There are no data. Not only do we not know that, because the government is trying to hide the true costs to Canadians, we also do not know if this policy is actually going to work.
Why did I ask the parliamentary secretary earlier about the price elasticity assumptions, to which he quite hilariously asked if I was trying to trick him? I have never had that said to me in the House of Commons before, but wonders never cease. The reason I asked that question is that we actually need to understand how demand will be influenced by the price on carbon, this tax, to see if demand will actually decrease over time.
For those who are not aware of what price elasticity is, I put this forward to show the Canadian public that I was not trying to trick the member opposite. Price elasticity of demand is the measure of the relationship between a change in the quantity demanded of a particular good and a change in its price. Price elasticity of demand is a term in economics often used when discussing price sensitivity. The formula for calculating price elasticity of demand is price elasticity of demand equals the percentage change in quantity demanded over the percentage change in price.
If Canadians are to evaluate the government on this policy at all, first they need to ask whether this emissions target is something they are willing to accept.
How do they get to that decision? How much is it going to cost them? Is it actually going to work? Is demand actually going to decrease as a result of this price?
Right now, every single speech that has happened here in the House from the government side has a lot of rhetoric. I notice that the speech given before me was, “There are going to be jobs created. Our demand is going to decrease. This is going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.” It sounds like a snake oil salesman to me. It smells like a bill of goods. It sounds like something is hiding.
Now, if the government wants to refute this principle, wants to say it is not hiding anything and in fact this is an opportunity cost calculation that Canadians want to make, why would it not release these documents?
For those who are listening today, what we are debating is the fact that the Department of Finance actually put together a report on how much it would cost Canadians. How much is this carbon tax and its cascading effect going to cost? We know that the increase in price on a raw good that is produced by a manufacturer is going to be carried down and exponentially increase down to the consumer. The department calculated this. The documents are called “Impact of a carbon price on households’ consumption costs across the income distribution” and “Estimating economic impacts from various mitigation options for greenhouse gas emissions”. These are fancy, complicated titles for saying, “This is how much this policy instrument is going to cost you”.
If the government really was open and transparent, and if the government was confident that this is the policy instrument that Canadians should be saying that, yes, they support, why would it not put those documents out there, outside of the fact that it has something to hide?
We have seen reports recently, and British Columbia's much-touted carbon tax is something that many of you are familiar with. The government, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment, says, “Oh, British Columbia, fantastic, and it's working so well in its supposed revenue neutrality”. However, according to data from reports that have been released, according to the government's own projections, the carbon tax will result in a cumulative $865-million tax increase on British Columbians between 2013-14 and 2018-19. This is because the revenue neutrality of that carbon tax and the tax reductions in other areas have not kept up with the cost increases caused by this carbon tax.
Again, why is this information in this document so important to Canadians? It is because dollars to donuts, it shows that this costs Canadians a lot of money. However, in some ways, we really do not need these documents. The proof is in the pudding, because when somebody is going to fill up their car right now, certainly for myself in Alberta, I know that I am paying more for the same product than I did a few months ago. Has my demand for that product decreased? No. Why? It is because it is cold, and because we should be talking about public transit infrastructure.
In fact, in my riding in Calgary, the government has delayed investments into public transit projects such as the Green Line in Calgary. There are so many other public policy options that could be looked at, but in terms of being able to do that opportunity cost calculation, in terms of being able to say, “What are you sacrificing over what are you gaining”, Canadians need this information. The government has already produced it. It has looked at it. My issue is that the government has come up with a policy in spite of facts showing that this opportunity cost calculation is not in the best interests of Canadians.
Therefore, if the government were truly transparent, if it actually cared about the environment rather than just taking money out of the pockets of Canadians, it would do two things: it would release these documents and let Canadians decide about its competency based on putting forward a policy instrument without showing Canadians that data; and second, the government would release the price elasticity assumptions that it used when modelling this carbon tax.
I do not think the Liberals have either. I know they do not have either, and because of that, because this is a poor public policy instrument, all of us on this side of the House in the Conservative Party will continue to stand up for middle-class families, workers, their jobs, and their right to prosperity.