Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to put on the record that I vehemently and strongly disagree with Preston Manning's take on the carbon tax. He is wrong. It is not a policy instrument that works. I do not care if he is Conservative. There is no data to show that carbon is price elastic in Canada to the point where a $40 tonne will change behaviour and allow the economy to grow.
The reality is that the price has probably got to be at least $300. At that price, the only gains that we will see are sharp economic shocks. I do not want the single mom in my riding unable to drive to work. I do not want our country to go into the toilet economically. It is a false economy, and Preston is wrong.
Second, my colleague talked about the here and now versus the future. The future is determined by the here and now. If we are talking about policies and we are not measuring them based on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, then we are never going to see that reduction. That is just the reality. We cannot support a policy instrument that is bunk in the Canadian context. Maybe it works in Monaco, where it has a small principality that has public transit everywhere and it is loaded with billionaires. It is not going to work in the Canadian context. It just does not.
Anybody who has any background in economics knows that a carbon tax functions like a consumption tax. It does not change behaviour, outside of probably political behaviour and behaviour of things like going to work or creating jobs. It is a problem. There is no substitute good for carbon in Canada.
However, if we wanted to get to the point where we are talking about adoption of clean technologies and stuff, we need to have an industry and capital to receive that technology and adopt it. While we have been so busy chasing capital out of the country in the energy sector, we have been doing that at the detriment of our clean technology sector and all the workers about whom the member just talked. Those jobs are not going to happen here. They are going to happen in the U.S.
This is basic economics. The motions before us today are embarrassing. I am good to go on any one of these topics. I will debate price elasticity of carbon price. I will debate the best way to incent clean technology. We are not having that conversation. We are having a bunk, out left versus left virtue-signalling conversation for votes. That is the real problem with the climate change debate in Canada right now.