Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to discuss the matter before the House, and we know what that matter is. It could not be a more appropriately timed subject to bring before the House than the one before us, because there are two raging controversies at this time.
One deals with the government's decision to allow a $7-billion private sector pipeline expansion to be wrapped so thoroughly in red tape and so burdened by taxes that the investors decided to take their money and run. The government gave that company $4 billion of Canadian tax dollars to take with it. The government spent that $4 billion, and we do not have a single centimetre of new pipeline to show for it. All we have is a promise that a company and a project owned by politicians will be more successful in building a pipeline than a project that was previously owned by one of the biggest pipeline companies on planet earth, a company that literally has tens of thousands of kilometres of pipeline around the world and that makes a living and pays its shareholders by profiting from those pipelines, believing, in the Prime Minister's words, that this project had become “too risky”. Now those risks belong exclusively to Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.
This project is really an economic and environmental no-brainer. Economically it is a no-brainer, because the company had already been willing to put forward its own resources to pay for the construction of that pipeline.
There is a gap between Western Canadian Select prices received in Alberta and Saskatchewan for oil and the world price this pipeline would enable Canadian producers to receive. That gap could have been arbitraged out of existence by allowing an extra 600,000 barrels of oil to go from where oil is cheap, in Alberta and Saskatchewan, to where it is more expensive, on the world market. The world Brent price has been consistently higher, sometimes $20 a barrel higher, than the Western Canadian Select price with which our producers have been stuck because they are landlocked. Of course, those producers would have been willing to pay a handsome sum for access to those higher prices, making this investment an economic no-brainer.
It is an environmental no-brainer as well. We know that, because it is actually not really a new pipeline. It is just the twinning of an existing pipeline, one that has operated since 1953, 65 years, and that delivers 300,000 barrels of oil per day without incident and without any environmental problems. The right-of-way is already there. Bulldozing a new direction or charting a new course do not need to be done. I do not even think any land has to be confiscated, which most large projects require. Therefore, it is an environmental no-brainer just as much as it is an economic no-brainer.
However, because the government, along with left-of-centre allies at provincial and municipal levels, have so wrapped our natural resource projects in red tape and taxes, the company believed that it could no longer get a reasonable, risk-adjusted rate of return and headed for the hills. That $4 billion will go not to a pipeline in Canada but to a pipeline company in Texas, which will likely use it to build new pipelines that compete with the Canadian industry.
How did we get here? Before now, a Texas company wanted to invest $7 billion in Canada, and now we are giving $4 billion of Canadian tax dollars to that company to take out of Canada. That is where we have arrived, and the Prime Minister today trumpets it as a grand success.
We still do not know what it will cost to actually carry out the construction of the new expansion. The government will not tell us. Presumably, it would know. One would think that people spending $4.5 billion would know what additional costs they would be forced to bear if they went ahead with such an investment. One would think, but again, the Liberals are using other people's money, so such calculations perhaps are not as important to them as if it were their own.
Speaking of other people's money, the government is planning to impose a carbon tax, which will collect billions of dollars of other people's money. It would not be the first time a government raised taxes. Governments do that, although typically, they tell us what they are collecting and how much we will pay.
Many taxes are so visible and transparent that we can look at our bills when we pay them. When people purchase something for their kids at a sports sport, they can look at the HST or GST right on the receipt and they will know exactly what it cost them. At tax time, they can calculate what they will pay in income tax. Those taxes are visible, and calculable, to the folks who are paying them.
A carbon tax, however, is far more insidious. The price effect of it is buried in the consumer products themselves and is not broken down item by item. If we buy some fresh fruit at our local grocery store, that fruit will be even more expensive, because it was transported by truck to that store, but we will not know how much more expensive, so we might be inclined to blame the local grocer. However, do not blame the grocer. Do not get angry at the grocer, because part of that pricing is actually the carbon tax the Liberal government is imposing on the grocer and on the farmers and the transportation company that brought that fruit to the storefront.
To my knowledge, it is unprecedented for a government to impose a tax without revealing what that tax will cost people. As a result, we in the opposition are of the view that the government is engaged in what many Canadians are now calling a carbon tax cover-up. We believe that the government should end the carbon tax cover-up by telling people what this thing will cost them. We know the government knows, because it has the documents. There is a 2015 memo that calculates how much families will pay based on the income they earn. Unfortunately, all the numbers are blacked out.
I am standing right next to the hon. member for Lakeland, Alberta. She is the pride and joy of Lakeland, Alberta, who is here fighting for jobs in her community, and it is indeed lucky to have her.
I move:
That this House do now adjourn.