Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in the House today on behalf of my constituents in Chilliwack—Hope.
I will remind everyone that today we are discussing a motion that states:
That, given that the cost of government is driving up inflation, making the price of goods Canadians buy and the interest they pay unaffordable, this House call on the government to commit to no new taxes on gas, groceries, home heating and pay cheques.
It is a pretty simple motion. Basically, we are asking the government not to make things worse. It has already gotten us to where we are today. The price of gas in my hometown in British Columbia is $2.25 a litre today. That means a student driving a Honda Civic has to pay over $100 to fill the tank to get to school. The cost for a mother to fill up her SUV is over $135, and a contractor filling up their pickup has to pay over $250 just for the fuel to get to work to conduct the duties they perform in our communities. In my community, that is often agricultural work. It is work done in the construction industry, work that cannot be done with a Prius, work that needs to be done with a truck.
My community is rural. It is a community where there are not a lot of rapid transit options. There are long distances between places people need to go to. However, the Liberals want to make the cost of gas, which is $2.25, a record high, worse. They propose tripling the carbon tax next April.
B.C. has its own carbon tax. It has been a failure on every level. It has not reduced emissions; it has increased the cost of everything in British Columbia and, unlike in some of the other provinces in the country, there is no federal rebate. The money goes to Victoria to spend as it sees fit. It gives some of it back in rebates, but the rest of it goes into government coffers. This is just what the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer indicated, that 60% of Canadians pay more in the tax than they get back in rebates. I would anticipate that in British Columbia it is at least that bad, but this is what the government wants.
It pays lip service every once in a while and pretends that it cares about these high gas prices, but that is actually what it wants. It wants the prices for Canadians to go up. It wants people who are driving their aged parents or grandparents to doctor's appointments to pay more for gas. It wants moms and dads who are taking their kids to after-school activities to pay more. We heard it in the House earlier this week. It is a market incentive somehow. It is trying to incent people to drive less.
In my community, people have to drive to get from place to place to place. The government disrespects rural Canadians. It disrespects people who need to drive to get from A to B. It also disrespects, quite frankly, people who need to heat their homes. It tells seniors that it is going to drive up the price of their home heating fuel, whatever that may be, natural gas or furnace oil, etc., and that it is going to triple the price of the carbon tax, further driving up the fuel price. It suggests that maybe they can do without, perhaps turn the heat off. Seniors can shiver so that the Liberals can put more money in government coffers. It is unacceptable, and Conservatives are calling on them to stop making it worse.
There are articles that we should all be aware of and be seized by: “B.C. soup kitchens, food banks struggling with increased demand, decreased donations”. We heard this yesterday in question period. The member for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte indicated that former donors to a food bank have become clients, and, according to Food Banks BC, “the number of new clients accessing its 105-member hunger relief agencies has increased 50 per cent between December 2021 and March.” We are also seeing that the majority of Canadians are making changes to their grocery store habits amid higher prices. According to Bloomberg, almost a quarter of Canadians are cutting back on how much food they buy, because of higher inflation. This is more prevalent among female shoppers, such as single moms in many cases, with 29.6% of them buying less food, compared to 18% of men who are making that choice. It is not a choice, though; they are forced into it.
What do we see? We know that when the price of fuel goes up, which the government wants, as that was its policy change and the effect it desires, the price of transportation goes up, which means the price of the goods that need to get to a grocery store go up as well. We are already at a 40-year high in grocery inflation. It is up over 10% year over year, and growing at a rate that is at a 40-year high. We have not seen these numbers since the eighties.
The response of the government should simply be to stop making matters worse, stop raising the carbon tax and stop taking more money out of the pockets of workers through increasing taxes on their paycheques, which is what it is planning to do on January 1.
I have heard the Liberals now say that it is not a tax and that these are not taxes. Their website says they are taxes. The Government of Canada's website lists these as taxes because they result in lower take-home pay for Canadians.
Paul Martin thought they were taxes when he made it a priority to make the country more efficient and more competitive. He said payroll taxes kill jobs and drive down competitiveness. He got it, but he would not recognize the Liberal government today because it has abandoned all of its fiscal anchors. It has completely—