Madam Speaker, the current Liberal government is making life more expensive for middle-class Canadians at a time when the majority of families can least afford it. The average middle-class family is already paying over $800 more in taxes because of the Liberals' tax hikes, while the wealthiest 1% of Canadians, of course, pay less. Almost half of Canadians are currently within $200 of not being able to pay their bills at the end of the month, and now the Liberals have decided to increase the cost of everything with their job-killing carbon tax.
When asked if Canadians were going to pay higher costs for fuel, the Prime Minister said that was “exactly what we want”, because of course he does not have to worry about money. It does not matter if they are talking about fruit or vegetables, meat, dairy, diapers or formula. Every single product in Canada is going to be more expensive because everything is shipped on planes, trains and transport trucks that use fossil fuels.
Canadians, particularly rural Canadians, do not have alternatives to paying the carbon tax, so life just gets more expensive. That is why the Liberals have a tax plan and not an environmental plan. They tax Canadians who have no other real options. The Liberal carbon tax is universally regarded as too low to actually reduce emissions or cause a wholesale transition, but high enough to make Canada less competitive, to drive jobs and businesses to other countries without carbon taxes, and to be yet another layer of costs and red tape the government is imposing on families and on the private sector in Canada. Who is going to pay this tax? Everyone will pay it, and it will hurt middle-class families, Canadians with low and fixed incomes, the working poor and rural Canadians the most.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer pointed out that major emitters will pay only 8% of the total revenue collected by the Liberal carbon tax, leaving the remaining 92% for families and small businesses to pay through higher gas, grocery and home heating costs. Thankfully, a Conservative government would give every single Canadian a 100% exemption from the carbon tax by cancelling it.
If the carbon tax does not hike gas and diesel prices enough, then Canadians will be shocked to hear about the potential costs of the new Liberal fuel standard. That new policy will force refineries and natural gas suppliers to incorporate higher percentages of renewable fuels or to provide credits to electric car owners for reducing emissions. In short, it will increase the price of gasoline, diesel and natural gas for cars, trucks, homes, businesses and factories.
I asked both the environment minister and the natural resources minister just last week how much the clean fuel standard, CFS, will raise the cost of a litre of diesel, but neither of them had an answer. The environment department's website confirms that there are “no models within the Department designed to model emission reductions, credit supply or economic impacts of a CFS policy in detail”. Therefore, just like with the carbon tax, the Liberals cannot say if their fuel standard will actually reduce emissions. They do not know how much damage this policy will do to the Canadian economy and how much it will cost individual Canadians. However, they are still moving forward with it and planning to announce regs this spring.
The kicker is that the Liberals' own analysis showed what Conservatives have been warning for years: that their carbon tax will kill jobs and businesses in Canada. Big companies' operations are emissions intensive, and they cannot pass through their carbon costs while they compete internationally. Therefore, the Liberals have provided them with 80% to 95% exemptions from the $20-a-tonne carbon tax, so that these businesses can, in the environment minister's words, stay competitive and keep good jobs in Canada.
Even so, not a single Canadian refinery in provinces where the Liberal carbon tax backstop applies can meet the 20% reduction standard set by the Liberals. In fact, of the 200 refineries in OECD countries, only 10% would be able to meet the standard. Canadian refiners will simply all be forced to increase the price of fuel in order to purchase credits, because the Liberal approach is not an environmental plan; it is a tax plan.
However, there is no exemption for these same businesses from the Liberals' fuel standard. The Chemistry Industry Association of Canada says it will be the equivalent of a $200 a tonne carbon tax. Other private sector proponents and economists warn it will be anywhere between $150 and $400 a tonne combined with the carbon tax. It is the first of its kind in the entire world, because the Liberals aim to apply it to solid and gaseous fuels and to industry buildings and facilities, not only to transportation fuels. It is a reckless, risky experiment that the Liberals are rushing through, with consultations actually taking place now, five months after they announced the policy. The reality is that the Liberal fuel standard will potentially cost 10 times the full price of the Liberal carbon tax, which the Liberals have already admitted will kill jobs and businesses in Canada.
More and more Canadians are beginning to realize the importance of the oil and gas sector for every community across the country. It is in fact the largest private sector investor in the Canadian economy. Canada's responsible resource development is the major factor behind closing the gap between the wealthy and the poor in Canada.
Energy in the form of oil and gas is Canada's top export, at $125 billion in 2018. To put that in context, that is 65% more than the value of automotive exports. Electricity exports were $3 billion, almost a rounding error compared to oil and gas exports.
Just this month, Canadians found out that because the Liberals cancelled the energy east and northern gateway pipelines and are delaying the Trans Mountain expansion, oil producers lost $20 billion in sales this last year alone. Over 115,000 oil and gas workers have lost their jobs, in addition to the tens of thousands of family businesses and individual contracting jobs that have collapsed. Another 12,500 jobs will be lost this year, and over $100 billion in energy projects have been cancelled since 2015.
Canada, literally the world's most responsible energy-producing country, is now the only top 10 oil producer in the world with a carbon tax. Under the Liberals, more energy investment in Canada has been lost than at any other time in more than seven decades. This is a result of policy, not external factors.
The consequences for the entire Canadian economy, for every government and for every community across the country will be significant. It will mean less money for pensions, health care, schools, social programs, charities and recreation. It will mean fewer jobs for highly skilled young Canadians and experienced industry leaders, and fewer opportunities for indigenous communities. It will have especially detrimental impacts for rural and remote regions, where economic opportunities are limited and where natural resources development is often the only source of income.
The Conservatives know how to set the conditions for the private sector to develop major energy infrastructure. Under the previous Conservative government, the only two proposals for pipelines exclusively for export beyond the U.S. were proposed because companies had confidence in investing in Canada. As well, four major pipelines were constructed under the previous Conservative government.
The reality is that when the Liberals took office in 2015, three companies wanted to build major pipelines in Canada, and today every single one of them is gone. The Prime Minister outright cancelled northern gateway, even though he had the option to redo indigenous consultations and get it right. Then he imposed delays and a double standard on energy east, which were deliberately designed to force the private sector builder to back out. TMX, of course, remains stalled because of Liberal mistakes.
The lack of pipeline capacity is related to increased gasoline prices in British Columbia. B.C. refineries cannot get enough crude or refined petroleum through the existing pipelines, which is, in fact, why British Columbians are facing record prices at the pumps. This is the obvious and logical result of blocking pipelines, and the Liberals want to replicate it across Canada.
Canada has never had an anti-oil and gas government like the current Liberal government. There is the ban on shipping oil on B.C.'s north coast, which the Liberals announced a month after the 2015 election. There is the power they gave themselves just before Christmas, to do the same thing on every other coast in Canada. There was the removal of the new oil and gas well exploration and drilling tax credit during the height of catastrophic oil and gas job losses, while allowing the foreign funding of anti-energy activists to stop Canadian resources and block Canadian pipelines. There was even the funding of these activists with Canadian tax dollars through the Canada summer jobs program last summer on top of the government's “no more pipelines” Bill C-69, and, finally, the virtually unilateral banning of offshore oil and gas exploration and development just a couple of weeks ago. These are all examples of the layers and layers of Liberal anti-energy policies that are causing such uncertainty and killing businesses and jobs.
It makes no sense whatsoever, because the International Energy Agency predicts that global oil and gas use will climb for decades. We are home to the world's third-largest crude oil reserves, and we are the fifth-largest producer of natural gas, with enough supply to meet our own needs for the next 300 years. It makes no sense whatsoever for Canada not to be able to produce all sources of energy and ship it to global markets, because, by all measures, Canada is and has long been the most environmentally and socially responsible oil and gas producer in the world. Every time a resource project or a pipeline is cancelled in Canada, that money and those jobs go to other countries with much lower environmental, consultation, transparency, safety, labour, and civil and human rights standards than Canada.
Canada's energy industry is an environmental leader. The intensity of emissions from Canada's oil sands has fallen significantly over the last several years and will continue to decline. In fact, half of the commonly traded crude oils in the United States have the same or higher emissions than the average Alberta-produced crude oil. The increase in Canadian oil and gas production will actually lower predicted global emissions growth if Canadian oil can displace higher-emitting sources of oil and gas around the world.
In short, the world needs more Canadian energy, not less. The question for Canada is whether our country will continue to be a world-leading resource and energy producer. Do we want to play a leading role in that responsible production or allow countries like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia to supply the world's increasing energy needs?
The choice is clear. The responsible development of Canada's oil and gas is good for Canadian workers and it is good for the planet.