Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
As the member of Parliament for the riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, located in the heart of the beautiful upper Ottawa Valley, it gives me great pleasure to rise in this place to support the motion from my colleague, also from the Ottawa Valley, the hon. member for Carleton.
There is an old parliamentary saying in Canada that a government is only as good as the opposition. The member for Carleton is doing an outstanding job on behalf of all Canadians. The sad legacy of the member for Toronto Centre of deficit budgets on the backs of our children and their children, and now massive carbon taxes on the backs of their parents and grandparents, is a legacy he should be ashamed of.
It is a method. Carbon pricing will not lower pollution emissions. Carbon taxes will increase government revenues. A tax is a tax is a tax.
There are many things we can do to improve the environment. A made-in-Canada environmental policy, by Canadians and for Canadians, would be an honest start for the government.
Carbon taxes are wrong for the Canadian experience. We live in a cold country, which by its very nature is energy intensive. Carbon taxes are not revenue neutral. No money will be returned to taxpayers. Carbon taxes are not going to save the planet. Adopting carbon taxes in Canada raises global carbon emissions by offshoring economic activity from relatively environmentally friendly places like Canada to places with lax environmental laws, like China.
Data from the World Bank reveals that China and other developing countries produce far more carbon per dollar of economic output, at purchasing power parity, than do western nations, and China shows no signs of decreasing its emissions anytime soon. China is currently building hundreds of new coal-fired plants, which will ensure its CO2 emissions continue to rise for decades to come. Taken together, these facts mean that every factory pushed out of Canada because of a carbon tax will actually increase global emissions dramatically, and this will continue to be the case for decades to come.
Study after study confirms this fact. For example:
Developed countries can claim to have reduced their collective emissions by almost 2% between 1990 and 2008. But once the carbon cost of imports have been added to each country and exports subtracted - the true change has been an increase of 7%. If Russia and Ukraine - which cut their CO2 emissions rapidly in the 1990s due to economic collapse - are excluded, the rise is 12%.
In 2003, it was calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear power plant's worth of clean energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change, which is 1,100 megawatts of clean power capacity every 24 hours. At the moment, 15 years on, and in the midst of what we keep hearing described as a green energy revolution, we are adding about 151 megawatts, or barely 10%.
The development of small modular reactors, SMRs, is a big opportunity for Canada and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, or CNL, located in the Ottawa Valley, and it is a big win for the environment. A small modular reactor is one that produces anywhere from a few hundred watts to a maximum of about 300 megawatts. A conventional reactor produces about 800 megawatts.
“Modular” refers to the construction style and “reactor” refers to the energy source. Recently, CNL hosted the premiere screening of The New Fire, which was filmed across four continents over the course of 22 months. The New Fire follows a group of young engineers and entrepreneurs who are developing advanced nuclear technology while working to overcome long-standing societal perceptions about nuclear energy and the role it will play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the challenges facing residents living in northern Canada is the high cost of living, which includes the high cost of energy. The high cost of energy in many remote communities reflects the short shipping season and the use of diesel fuel to operate generators. Not only is that expensive, but it is bad for the environment. As a greenhouse-gas-free source of energy, an SMR is an ideal solution to solve both problems.
Energy policies take a very long time and great effort. It takes just as long to undo mistakes, as Ontario residents are now discovering with the Hydro One wind turbine scandal.
By supporting SMR research and development, Canada has he opportunity to get it right the first time. Despite what the Prime Minister and the member for Ottawa Centre tell Canadians, carbon taxes basically amount to useless virtue-signalling. Canadians have come to the conclusion that carbon taxes are nothing more than a green hustle. Carbon taxes are just that: taxes.
Since the member for Toronto and the member for Ottawa are so evasive when it comes to the massive Liberal carbon tax scheme, I am obliged to share with Canadians some of the things we do know about the massive carbon tax scheme. The carbon sales tax will be hidden from Canadians. It is buried in the price of what Canadians purchase, in an effort to shift the blame for rising prices to things like the weather. The Liberals voted to keep the carbon sales tax hidden rather than allowing the carbon sales tax, or CST, to appear on a separate line on Canadians' energy bills.
The next thing Canadians should know about the carbon sales tax is that one pays HST on the CST. Since the carbon tax is hidden in the price of everyday purchases and services, we will be paying a tax on a tax on a tax. The GST, the HST, and now the CST all have one thing in common, apart from being a tax: they are all consumption taxes.
As the member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I am proud to have listened to my constituents' pleas to cut taxes and I voted to cut the GST. More than any other of the many tax cuts brought in when our Conservative government was expertly managing our economy, the tax cut that benefited the poor was our cutting the GST. It is a fact that when the Liberal Party brings in a tax increase using a consumption tax like the carbon tax, the poor in Canada pay more as a percentage of their income, while the member for Toronto's rich Bay Street buddies pay less in carbon taxes as a percentage of their income.
The CST, the GST, the HST: a tax is a tax is a tax.
Our Conservative government of the day was bitterly opposed by the Liberal Party when we cut the GST, and the Liberal Party has been looking for a way to increase consumption taxes in Canada ever since. The wealthiest of Canadians have been steadily increasing their share of the national wealth—think Toronto's single-family housing prices—and now control much more than ever before.
As people like Mike Crawley, past president of the Liberal Party, became vastly richer on the backs of Ontario electricity consumers using a carbon tax scheme, the wealth of middle-class and lower-class Canadians barely increased in real terms, and the poverty rate remained static. After all, was this not what former Liberal cabinet minister David Dingwall was referring to when he clearly stated on behalf of his party, in a moment of unusual candour for a Liberal, that he was “entitled to his entitlements”?
This is no accident. The fortunate few prosper by influencing public policy to their advantage. That is why working-class people pay most whenever a new tax, like the carbon tax, is dreamt up by the technocrats in Ottawa. Working folks are told to content themselves with the vague hope that a subsidy or a handout will lessen the sting of the latest tax increase. It never turns out that way.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that he wants to phase out Canada's energy sector. Carbon taxes are the stick to beat the energy industry. The Prime Minister is denying government funding to groups that do not share his personal values, but the Liberal Party is prepared to provide government funding to extremists, who have been misled about the value of the Trans Mountain expansion and the thousands of jobs it will create. How does the government justify this blatant political favouritism? It is by claiming free speech.
Shutting down the pipeline supports the carbon tax agenda. I really do not know if Liberal MPs understand the irony in that statement. The government has no problem cutting funding to groups that feed the poor, provide summer camp to underprivileged kids, and help refugees integrate into Canada. If they refuse to compromise their values and sign some demeaning loyalty attestation, these citizens are attacked.
However, the Prime Minister funded a group that even said that the sole purpose of the job was to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which in the mind of the member for Ottawa is the reason she needs carbon taxes, which is to shut down pipelines.