Mr. Speaker, this is the big piece of legislation the government brings forward every year that outlines how much of taxpayers' money it is going to spend and where it is going to spend it. My comments are going to be focused on one piece, which is part 5, the greenhouse gas pollution pricing act.
When members hear “pollution pricing act”, they may think we are going to spend money on reducing pollution. Actually, we are not talking about pollution writ large. There is nothing here that actually deals with things such as NOx, SOx, volatile organic compounds, and the fine particulate matter that sticks in our lungs that can reduce one's lifespan. It does not deal with the issue of methane.
The former Conservative government had great success in regulating those compounds to make sure that we steadily improved air quality across Canada. We achieved significant success. Canada has arguably the cleanest air in the world. I think we rank number three. We are right up there among those countries with the cleanest air. That is significantly due to the fact that the former Conservative government invested heavily in regulating those noxious substances.
However, this act is actually not about pollution writ large. It is about greenhouse gas emissions and the government trying to force through its right to impose a massive carbon tax on Canadians. All Canadians are going to have to pay this tax. The Prime Minister has said that there are some provinces that already levy a tax. He has said that they will have to increase that tax, and the provinces and territories that do not have the tax are going to be forced by the federal government to actually levy a carbon tax of $50 per tonne. That will be expensive for Canadians, because it will affect everything Canadians use, whether it is groceries, whether it is home heating oil, whether it is natural gas, or whether it is gasoline at the pumps. Virtually nothing we consume here in Canada that we use on a daily basis will not be taxed under the Liberal carbon tax that is proposed in this bill.
Of course, the Prime Minister, when asked about carbon taxes, says that carbon taxes are good. He actually said that carbon taxes are good. The Prime Minister has made this carbon tax a foundational element of his climate change plan.
We, as Conservatives, believe that taxing Canadians is not the way forward if we want to address Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. There are many other ways we can address those. There are other tools that can be used to address greenhouse gas emissions, but simply taxing Canadians is not the way to do it.
The federal government has said that the carbon tax is going to be revenue neutral. In other words, it is not going to cost the taxpayer one cent. However, what the Prime Minister failed to say was that it is revenue neutral to the federal government, because it will transfer the revenues to the provinces. He wants Canadians to believe that the provinces and territories are going to refund that money back to their residents. In fact, there is not a province in Canada that has a carbon tax that is actually revenue neutral. What is happening is that the government sucks money out of one pocket of the taxpayer and dumps it into general revenue. Governments receive this money and spend it on their own political priorities, not on the priorities of Canadians.
Where we have seen this is in my home province of British Columbia. It was held up as a paragon of virtue carbon tax. It was a revenue neutral carbon tax brought in by former premier Gordon Campbell, a man I know well. He brought it in with the most sincere motives. Originally, that tax was, for the most part, revenue neutral. The government collected the tax and then returned it to taxpayers in the form of corporate and personal income tax reductions.
We recently had an election in B.C., and the NDP formed government. The first act of that government was to remove the revenue neutrality of that tax, which means that tax now goes into general revenues and is spent on the political priorities of that NDP government. We have seen this across the country, promises that this money will be invested in environmental initiatives, that the money will be given back, but that it will be invested in environmental initiatives. The governments pick winners and losers as to who will benefit from the money and who will not. We know that governments are woefully inadequate at picking winners and losers. They usually get it wrong.
The sad thing is that the Liberal government has been asked hundreds of times how much the carbon tax, which originally was supposed to be $50 per tonne, will cost the average Canadian family. My colleagues in the House have asked the question of the minister. We have had different ministers at committee and we asked them all how much they expect this will cost the average Canadian family. We have heard no answer. In fact, in one now infamous exchange, I asked the Minister of Environment to tell us what the carbon tax would mean for the average Canadian family. She refused to answer. I asked again and again. Finally, she said that she would let her deputy minister answer the question and he proceeded not to answer the question at all. The Liberals have the information, but they are afraid to let Canadians know how badly this will harm them.
There is a hidden agenda at play. What Canadians do not know is that in the backrooms of the Liberal government, the Liberals are starting to talk about moving that carbon tax from $50 per tonne in 2022 to $100 to $300 per tonne. Why? Because they have been told by economists that for a carbon tax to be effective, in other words for it to actually change the behaviour of Canadians, it will have to be $200 to $300 per tonne of greenhouse emissions. Imagine how expensive life in Canada will be with that kind of a tax. That is the secret plan.
The Liberals will not tell us that today, but there are indications in government documents that there are discussions on how they can hammer Canadians with a carbon tax sufficient to change the behaviour of Canadians, without regard for the impact this will have on individual Canadians and on the average Canadian family, on how much more expensive life will be.
I will go back to the British Columbia example where the so-called revenue neutral carbon tax was eventually replaced by a non-revenue neutral carbon tax where all the money would go to the government to spend on whatever it wanted. When that carbon tax was first implemented, the stated goal of that tax was to change behaviour to ensure greenhouse gas emissions would go down by 33%. That is a laudable goal. How did things work out? That tax has now been in place for some 10 years and to date carbon emissions are down by not 33%, not 30%, not 20%, not 10%, but by 2%. A decade of carbon taxes and all British Columbia got out of it was a 2% reduction. This tax will be harmful to Canadians and will have virtually no impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
We have asked the Minister of Environment to appear before committee to defend her estimates and this gas tax so we can find out what this will cost Canadians. She has yet to answer us and to publicly state whether she is prepared to come to committee and be accountable under the Westminister parliamentary system, as all ministers should be.
I am very disappointed with the Liberal government for bringing forward a tax policy that is going to harm Canadians without any benefit to our environment.