Madam Speaker, long-time members are used to seeing the parties, when tabling bills or presenting motions on opposition day, do a sort of brief reading as a preview, to give an idea what it will be about.
Unfortunately, when I looked at the motion today, I thought that the Conservatives had to know that a lot of members tend to do that. The motion lists all kinds of things that are much like half-truths. They thought people would repeat all of them, one after the other, and would present the information. I may be wrong, but this time, for that reason, I will not do that.
In fact, I find it unfortunate that the facts are being somewhat twisted and situations exaggerated. I am not saying that no one is having problems with the cost of heating. Mainly, what I find is that the Conservative Party seems to be increasingly interested in blowing things out of proportion. Instead of wanting to debate substantive issues, they want to find anecdotal topics.
Another thing I deplore is that the Conservatives constantly revisit the same topics. It seems like every question period is the same. That is pretty much the case today. Every time we have an opposition day we feel we have gone through it before. In 2022, the Conservatives are still stuck in the same place. Maybe they will evolve in 2023. I hope so for their sake.
I think the debate is about the last part of the motion, not the long preamble that might take half my speaking time to read. The motion asks that “the House express its agreement with the comments of the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, and call on the government to exempt all forms of home heating fuel from the carbon tax for all Canadians.”
Here, in the wording of the motion—and this is just the last little bit—things are being twisted a bit. We can see that the Conservatives are using the fact that the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador wrote to the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada as a confrontational tool. It is not the worst we have seen, but I would say it is not exactly a very subtle tactic.
A little further into the motion, there is a mention of an exemption for home heating fuel. We understand that, when Conservatives talk about “home heating” and “carbon tax”, they are talking about heating oil and gas. As we know, there are Conservatives who defend one industry, and that can only be the oil and gas industry.
This is what really needs to be understood from the motion. The Conservatives have found another way to put forward a proposal to support the fossil fuel industry, the oil industry, which, unfortunately, is effectively an industry of the past. It seems that the Conservatives just cannot wrap their heads around that.
That is sad, because they seem to be obsessed with oil and gas. It seems like that is all they can think about when they get up in the morning. I think that they put oil in their coffee and have lunch and dinner with oil; I do not know. It really seems to be an obsession. I was elected in 2015, seven years ago, and I cannot remember a single question period when there were no questions from the Conservatives about oil. I think that is their only topic.
For example, take the war in Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine. As a solution, the Conservatives began saying more oil was needed. Right now, there is an inflationary crisis and the Conservatives are trying to find ways to say that we need more oil. When we have a recession, because a lot of economists are predicting a recession—hopefully it will not be too severe—I am convinced that their solution will still be more oil.
Earlier, I said that it seemed like the Conservatives eat oil, but unfortunately, most of us breathe it. We breathe the fumes from these fossil fuels in our daily lives. Because the climate is also affected, the entire planet is grappling with global warming.
We do not hear much from the Conservatives on that. It would be interesting to hear them talk more about it, because it has a real impact on people’s lives. This costs billions of dollars. True, when we pay our bills at the end of the month or receive our paycheque, we never see anything saying “climate bill”, unfortunately.
Maybe we should find ways to say it more so it will be clearer. Maybe that would help the Conservatives understand that this phenomenon really exists and has a real cost for our society. When there are people with respiratory issues, I do not think it is a good idea to put more money into the oil and gas industry and encourage it even more. When there are species going extinct and our biodiversity is threatened, I do not think it is a good idea to cut down more trees and smother nature.
I have not been to Alberta yet, but I am really looking forward to going there one day. However, I have seen pictures and news reports, and it did not look like very joyful. I wonder what we will have to do in the future to fix all the damage and clean up the mess that has been created there. For example, bodies of water that are used for drinking water have become completely toxic and are now off-limits to the public. That really worries me. Animals are being poisoned by that water. The contamination will also end up in the water table, and people will be poisoned. When the green transition is complete, there will still be problems from the past to deal with.
I wish the Conservatives would offer up solutions and proposals that are look forward, not backward. For example, they often say we need to find a way for people to have more money in their pockets in the short term. However, the Conservatives' solutions for achieving that always revolve around encouraging dirty industries. Could they come up with suggestions that involve funding or supporting clean industries instead?
That would be nice. We would be more open to listening to proposals like that. As members know, in Quebec, we rely heavily on hydroelectricity and increasingly on wind energy. We are also looking at other modes of energy production, but we are trying to avoid fossil fuels as much as possible.
The Conservative motion mentions the Premier of Newfoundland. Historically, we have seen Newfoundland take legal action and start feuds with Quebec to prevent us from fully executing our projects. For example, rather than use Hydro-Québec's lines, they demand a line funded by the federal government. Then they end up on the brink of bankruptcy with their projects, instead of trying to collaborate with us. It is sad.
It is sad, considering that there are solutions out there. For instance, we have electricity that we could supply to people in other parts of the world. It is very likely that we will be supplying electricity to the United States. We already do, but we will supply more. We supply some to Ontario, but perhaps we would like to supply more. The Conservatives do not talk about it, but the Ontario premier who is showing less and less appetite for Quebec hydroelectricity is not a Liberal. He is a Conservative. That is sad, because hydroelectricity is a much greener solution than oil and gas.
It might be worth looking into solutions like these, where Quebec could play a role and maybe even help the Canadian provinces decarbonize. Would that not be amazing? Quebec could help the other provinces and the planet, instead of watching the constant push toward gas, oil and the oil sands that will end up poisoning us all. I do not think the Conservatives' solution is the right one.
I also have not heard the Conservatives talk about the increases in gas prices. They are talking about possible tax hikes, but those hikes do not exist in Quebec. Gas prices are going up because the oil companies are lining their pockets. The Conservatives have never suggested investigating the oil companies, their profits, or the oil cartel that is going on.
Unfortunately, we should really be asking why all prices are going up at the same time everywhere. Why is no one able to explain the relationship between the price at the pumps, the price of extraction and international phenomena? What we often see is that prices go up at Christmas. They go up at the start of vacation season. Sometimes, prices go up on Monday mornings too, and there is no good reason for that either. All of this is to say that it would be nice to see the Conservatives come up with some useful, meaningful ideas, instead of backward-looking suggestions.
In closing, we see that the Liberals seem inclined to support them. Countries often base their policies on their interests, and unfortunately, Canada is an oil-producing country.