Mr. Speaker, I want to address what I think are two separate components of the motion today. One has to do with the substantive question of a carbon tax and the role that such a price on carbon can play in helping us meet our climate change targets, and hopefully better targets than the ones we have. Unfortunately, we still have the Harper government's climate change targets. That is item number one.
Item number two is the piece on transparency and accountability on the part of the government when it comes to new measures.
On the first bit, I would just like to say that I support putting a price on carbon as part of an overall strategy to try to curb Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, because climate change is real, and it is already having real consequences for Canadians. Over the last number of years, we have seen all sorts of instances where a changing climate has led to different kinds of weather patterns that have caused natural disasters that have had serious consequences for Canadians and people around the globe.
We have a government that has said that it wants to be a climate leader, and that implies some real action. It is fine if carbon pricing is part of that, but it cannot be all of it. It particularly cannot be all of it in the kind of decentralized way the Liberal government has decided to implement this price, where there is no guarantee that any of the revenue raised from that price is going to be reinvested back in alternative energy or the other kinds of things we need to do to fight climate change.
It is a bit of a mystery to me how it is that the Liberal government believes that a price on carbon is going to make progress in terms of climate change, when we are not taking the revenue raised from that, or even any guarantee of any portion of that revenue, to invest back into cleaner energy or things like retrofitting buildings, and not just government buildings but buildings in the private sector. These are ways we can help reduce our emissions overall. We need some initial capital to get those projects going.
They are also ways we can help create jobs as we make that transition to a cleaner economy. Retrofitting buildings, for instance, actually, dollar for dollar, produces more jobs for tradespeople than investments in traditional oil and gas infrastructure. From an employment perspective, transit dollars are also extremely efficient in terms of the employment they create in building the actual infrastructure, such as the roads and the buses; having people drive the buses; and having all the positions that support a well-functioning transit system.
There are a lot of really excellent ways to transition us to a cleaner economy, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and create jobs at the same time. However, we really do need a plan.
Earlier my colleague was referring to the idea of a legislated limit for greenhouse gas emissions. That has to be a key part of the plan. That is how we say, “This is our target, and we are serious about it.” In the absence of having a legislated limit on the amount of carbon that is going to be produced, the plan for greenhouse gas emissions reductions is really just notional. It is a glaring lack of commitment, I would say, on the part of the government, that it is not willing to come out with a hard cap on emissions. Only then can we start to get serious about making the investments it is going to require to bring greenhouse gas emissions down to that ceiling.
I think that is a critical part of the plan. If we have a plan, it is quite possible to create economic prosperity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but unfortunately, we are not there. That was the upshot of the report that was released just a few weeks ago by Canada's Auditors General. They said that it is not just the federal government but many governments across the country that do not have a real plan when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We need to get on that. Part of that is a price on carbon, but there is a lot more that has to go with it for that to be effective and to make the cost worthwhile for Canadians who are going to be paying it.
On the side of government accountability, I agree with the gist of the motion that there is no reason, if we support a price on carbon, we should not also support Canadians having the information about what that is going to cost. That is part of having a real and informed debate about the cost of these initiatives. It is part of having a good plan.
I would say that the problem with the motion and what we have tried to fix with an amendment that I hope will pass is that it does not talk about the costs on the other side, the cost of continuing to have rising greenhouse gas emissions, how much we think this price on carbon is going to curb emissions, and what the economic benefit of that would be.
I would say that this is sometimes a particular kind of shortcoming or short-sightedness in some of my Conservative colleagues when we talk about many things. We see a similar short-sightedness in the conversation on pharmacare when they want to stress how much it going to cost but do not want to talk about the savings on the other side. They will throw a number at us and say the program is going cost $18 billion or $22 billion. What they are not saying on the other side is that we are already spending far more than that and that overall we are going to save money. That kind of costing is also important.
When we talked about child care in the last election, we talked about having a national strategy. Conservatives and Liberals in this case were quick to point to the start-up costs of such a program, but they were not talking about revenue the government was going to collect from income and payroll taxes from parents, especially from women who were going back to work because they could afford it. They were not talking about the increased revenue from sales taxes as parents spent that money in the local economy and they were not talking about the savings that would be realized through other social programs if parents, particularly mothers, could go back to work and support their families on the income from their work, as opposed to the income from other programs.
When all of that costing is put together, it turns out that not only is the marginal cost of a national child care plan quite low but that it may actually be able to pay for itself, and not by some mystery or magic in the way the Prime Minister seems to think that budgets would balance themselves, but in a costed way, costed by economists who have looked at it and said that the potential to gain revenue out of something like this by having more people involved in the workforce actually counterbalances the cost.
We believe that if we are going to introduce innovative policy solutions that help solve a problem, whether it is decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, whether it is helping Canadians afford the cost of drugs, whether it is helping parents who want to get back to work with a national child care strategy, what is important is that we actually look at the full costing. It seems to me that is an important principle of business.
Business leaders would agree with that too. I am sure that when business people look at an investment, they do not just look at the cost of the investment but also at the potential return. They weigh those things against each other and make a good judgment.
The problem with the motion is that it asks for one side of the equation without asking for the other side. In our view, that is not sufficient to be able to make a good judgment about carbon pricing. It is not just that we need to know what it is going to cost Canadians, although that is an important thing to know and we want to know that; we also want to know what the potential benefits and potential cost savings are over the long run. If we diminish the effects of climate change, what are we going to save in terms of mitigation costs and how does all of that cash out? We think that is important for good decision-making.
We are calling on our Conservative colleagues to appeal to their better selves and accept the full import of their instinct on this one, which is that if government is going to make a decision, Canadians should know the costs and they should also know the potential benefits. That is why we are asking them to accept our amendment so that Canadians can get a costing not just of what they are going to pay in the carbon tax but of what the potential savings are going to be. Then we can look at those numbers and have an informed debate.
I think it is wrong to say that we want the one information set but we do not want the other. That gives the impression that there is an underlying political agenda there, which I am sure is never the case here in the House and certainly not the case with our Conservative colleagues. I would call on them to put paid to that notion and support our amendment.