Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this official opposition motion concerning gas and natural resource development. I am also very pleased to inform the House that I will be splitting my time with the member for Lakeland, who I am certain will give a passionate speech like the ones we have become accustomed to hearing from her over the past three years.
Everybody gets up in the morning saying that we must stop polluting, we must save our planet and the future of the environment is important. The difference is that some believe we must tax people to reach this objective while others believe that we need to help people so we can get there.
The Conservative Party's policy is to help people and businesses pollute less. Just 10 days ago, in Victoriaville, our leader stated that he will soon unveil our environmental platform to Quebeckers and Canadians. We already know that this platform will focus on technologies and on exporting Canadian hydroelectricity know-how and other innovative technologies developed in Canada. Most importantly, concrete and positive measures will be introduced to help Canadians and businesses pollute less.
This government prefers to keep piling on the taxes instead.
The Liberal policy is not environmental policy, it is tax policy. Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it raises taxes on Canadians. Later on, I will come back to the highly questionable theory that taxing what they call pollution could substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Liberal plan, which was released two years ago and has been in effect since April, creates a tax on pollution, but not on all forms of it. For some reason, the big companies emitting the most pollution are exempt from the Liberal carbon tax. However, parents who have to drive their kids around, people who need to drive to work and people who do not have access to public transit because of their daily routine, their activities and their geographic location are not exempt. Quebeckers are also feeling the effects of the Liberal carbon tax, because all goods brought in by truck or other means of transportation are getting more expensive. The Liberal carbon tax is fuelling higher gas prices, and this has a direct impact on how much consumers have to pay for products.
What is more, the price that is currently being taxed could go up significantly. When we were in power, we called for a study to determine what the real cost would be to the public if there was a carbon tax. Their document was supposedly made public when this government was sworn in. We wanted to obtain that document. When we get to the details of the results, they are redacted. We see nothing at all. The reality and facts about how much the Liberal carbon tax would cost consumers were totally obscured.
The fact that major polluters will not have to pay this tax is another display of this government's hypocrisy. It makes no sense. In fact, the only environmental plan the Liberals had to offer was to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline at a cost of $4.5 billion.
There are two things I never thought I would see in my lifetime. First, I never would have imagined that the Liberals would cancel the credit that we Conservatives had created to help people use public transit. I never would have guessed the Liberals would do that. Second, I never would have thought that a government with the least bit of intelligence would take $4.5 billion of taxpayers' money and hand it over to an American company in Houston for a pipeline. It is an idea so ridiculous that only the Liberals could have cooked it up. That is the legacy associated with those folks across the aisle, who, let us hope, will no longer be in government six months from now.
As for taxation, the Liberals keep saying that it is the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but that is not true. The facts speak for themselves. It does not work. Look at Quebec, where, for the past three or four years, we have had what is known as a carbon exchange, another form of the Liberal carbon tax.
The carbon exchange has been in place in Quebec for some time now. An analysis of it was done, based on real, concrete results, using real people in real life, in a real situation in an actual Canadian province, Quebec.
What were the results? The document I have here was tabled in the Quebec National Assembly on November 29 by the Premier of Quebec. The Standing Orders prevent me from showing it to members, but it is entitled “Inventaire québécois des émissions de gaz à effet de serre en 2016 et leur évolution depuis 1990”. It is a report on Quebec's environmental footprint, particularly as it pertains to the carbon exchange, which is a way of taxing pollution. What were the results? I would like to quote the Premier of Quebec, who said the following before the Quebec National Assembly on November 29:
...the only numbers we have right now are those for 2016. They show that, over the past two years, from 2014 to 2016, there has been no reduction in GHG emissions. On the contrary, GHG emissions have increased.
He went on to say:
This report shows that Quebec produced 78.4 megatonnes of emissions in 2014, 78.55 megatonnes in 2015 and 78.56 megatonnes in 2016, so we can see that emissions are rising.
The Premier of Quebec said this based on a report on Quebec's carbon exchange prepared by the Quebec Department of the Environment. The result is that there has been no drop at all in GHG emissions.
Now the Liberals want to lecture us, saying that we are against putting a price on pollution and that we want to continue polluting everything. First of all, they are hypocrites, since they are not taxing the biggest polluters. Second, pollution pricing has no effect on reducing greenhouse gases. Quebec's experience speaks for itself. On May 5, 2015, when he was leader of the second opposition group, the current Premier of Quebec published a news release calling the carbon exchange a new $100 tax on the middle class.
That is why we believe that taxing people to reduce pollution is not the right thing to do. It does not work. If we want to reduce pollution, we must implement incentives to encourage people to pollute less, such as the tax credit we created for bus riders. The Liberals abolished that initiative. We must help people manage their pollution better. That is a smart solution. We must help businesses pollute less instead of taxing them. That is an effective solution. At the very least, we should not say that we want to put a price on pollution and then avoid taxing the biggest polluters.
That brings me to the whole pipeline business. As I said earlier, the Liberals’ expertise in pipelines amounts to taking $4.5 billion of taxpayers’ money and sending it to the United States. It is ludicrous. It is patently ridiculous and unacceptable.
Quebec knows about pipelines. There have been pipelines in Quebec since 1942. The first was built between Montreal and Maine to export oil in order to help defend Europe against the Nazi menace. There are currently 2,000 kilometres of pipeline in Quebec. Nine pipelines run under the St. Lawrence River. In 2012, we built and inaugurated a brand-new pipeline between Lévis and Montreal. It is 248 kilometres long and pass through one of the most densely populated areas in the province. It runs under 630 lots and 26 waterways, including the St. Lawrence River, but it works. There are 2,000 kilometres of pipeline in Quebec. Nine pipelines run under the St. Lawrence. We built a 248-kilometre pipeline just a few years ago, and it works.
The planes in Dorval use four million litres of fuel every day. How does the fuel get to Dorval? It is not transported by train or by truck, but by pipeline. Yes, we have pipelines in Quebec, and no one has been killed. We are aware that things need to be done properly, and we are capable of doing that.
I would like to point out that, in our opinion, the energy east project is dead and buried. Building pipelines is not the government's job. It is up to private companies to build pipelines in a respectful way. That being said, the energy east project is dead, and we need to be clear on that. We are not afraid of pipelines, and we certainly do not try to frighten people over them.
No, my main issue is that in Quebec we have experience with putting a price on so-called carbon pollution, experience with what I would call the Liberal carbon tax.
We have a cap and trade system in Quebec, which has existed for four years, and we have data on that. The data was tabled by the Premier of Quebec on November 29, a few months ago, at the National Assembly, and it is crystal clear. I cannot show the document to the House now, but I will table it after my speech if members would like me to.
The document is published by the environmental ministry of Quebec, the Quebec government. It is crystal clear regarding the real effects of the cap and trade system we have in Quebec. The results for 2014, 2015 and 2016 show zero lowered greenhouse gas emissions. This is the reality.
We are not talking about a study by people who think they are right because they are right; no, we are talking about reality. We have experience with the cap and trade system in Quebec, which is like the Liberal carbon tax, and the reality is that there has been no decrease in pollution.
Our plan is very clear. It will help people reduce their pollution and it will help businesses reduce their pollution. Based on our technology and our Canadian experience in exporting our knowledge, we will do that six months from now when people realize we need a strong Conservative government in Canada.