Mr. Speaker, British Columbia has had a carbon tax for a number of years and the carbon emissions have continued to go up. It is not working. The only thing it has done is to raise taxes on British Columbians and provide a bonanza of revenue for the provincial government to spend on initiatives as they see fit.
Actually, the environment minister of the Government of British Columbia had this to say, which was very interesting. He is a member of the NDP government. He said, “Greenhouse gases do not respect provincial boundaries or international boundaries for that matter.” He also said that the B.C. government would argue in court that there would be harm to its competitiveness “if other provinces do not put a price on carbon”.
This is the argument that Conservatives have been making for years. Greenhouse gases do not respect international boundaries, yet the Liberals want to put us at a huge economic disadvantage when it comes to our competitors. They might be willing to put our competitiveness into the toilet, and they might be willing to take more and more and more money from Canadians and say they are making bad choices. They might say they are bad Canadians for choosing to live in rural areas and for driving to work and school. That is never the approach that a Conservative government will take.