Madam Speaker, let us first make one thing clear: It is not carbon pricing, it is carbon taxing. That is one of the buzzwords members of the left like to use when they talk about this issue.
If they want to talk about examples, we can certainly look at B.C. It brought in a carbon tax in 2008, which started at $10 a tonne and rose gradually to $30 by 2012. There was a small, temporary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for a few years, but emissions in B.C. have been steadily increasing. The reason they are increasing is that we live in Canada. We need to heat our homes. We live in a cold, barren wasteland. We need to drive our cars to different places.
If the government is going to penalize people for their everyday activities, not to mention the cost of goods that is going to increase because it will end up being passed down to the consumer by producers and shippers, then I do not see the sense in this, unless the government explains to Canadians how much it is in fact going to cost them. They have to get Canadians to buy into it. They cannot just arbitrarily impose a carbon tax and not tell them what it is going to cost. Maybe Canadians will buy into it. My guess is they will not, because once the information is known and released by this non-transparent government, then reality will start setting in and Canadians will see the actual cost to them, their families, and future generations in this country.