Mr. Speaker, the Liberal carbon tax harms Canada's agricultural industry and unfairly penalizes rural communities, a reality that the Liberal agriculture minister continues to disregard. Instead, the agriculture minister declared that most farmers fully support the Liberal carbon tax and went so far as to say that farmers got exactly what they voted for. It is unclear what evidence the minister has to support that statement.
One would be hard pressed to find a single farmer in my riding of Battlefords—Lloydminster who supports the carbon tax. My constituents are concerned that it undermines their competitiveness and hurts their already-strained bottom line. On top of that, contrary to the Liberal government's claims that it is working together with provinces, it refuses to acknowledge the merits of a made-in-Saskatchewan plan to tackle climate change.
The Liberal government needs to listen to the serious concerns of farmers and rural communities, drop its punitive carbon tax, and work in co-operation with my province of Saskatchewan.