moved:
That, given that the government has announced a “temporary, three-year pause” to the federal carbon tax on home heating oil, the House call on the government to extend that pause to all forms of home heating.
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Peterborough—Kawartha.
“A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.” Those were the words of the Prime Minister, and that is the principle of my motion today. It reads, “That, given that the government has announced a ‘temporary, three-year pause’ to the federal carbon tax on home heating oil, the House call on the government to extend that pause to all forms of home heating.”
It is very simple. How does anyone argue with that? If the Prime Minister has now caved on the carbon tax for those heating with oil, then he ought to be intellectually consistent and do it for all forms of heating for all Canadians. We know that the Prime Minister has decided to create two classes of citizens. He, under pressure and under duress, decided to pause the carbon tax on home heat until after the election, at which point he intends to quadruple it. In the meantime, there will be a temporary carve-out. Asked why there was a double standard and why this carve-out applied only to about 3% of households, the Minister of Rural Economic Development said that other Canadians could have had the break too, but they did not elect enough Liberals. In addition to that being a bloody-minded, divide-and-conquer approach to politics, it is actually inaccurate, because many did elect Liberal MPs and are still forced to pay the tax on the heat. These are people in Liberal-held ridings who will be excluded and will be forced to pay the higher tax on the heat as the temperatures go down and the snow starts to fall.
Are these citizens less Canadian than those who are getting the pause? Is the malnourished senior in the Liberal riding of Sudbury who heats with gas any less Canadian than those who get the pause? Is the single mom in the Liberal ridings of Thunder Bay any less Canadian as she is forced by the Prime Minister's tax to skip meals so her kids do not have to? Is the welder in North Bay any less Canadian, as he cannot gas up his truck to go visit his dying relatives in other parts of the province, any less Canadian? Of course they are not, but the Prime Minister thinks they are.
Once again we see his divide-to-distract strategy. He thinks that if people are afraid of their fellow Canadians, they might forget that they cannot afford to gas their car or heat their home. We have seen this divide-and-conquer strategy of the Prime Minister over many years. We saw how he called small businesses “tax cheats”. We saw how he called anyone who disagreed with him a “small fringe minority”, even though he later had to apologize for those comments. Recently, we saw how he tried to besmirch Muslims, Sikh and Christian parents, calling them “hateful” simply because they wanted to protect their children. We see, again and again, how the Prime Minister tries to demonize hunters, calling them “American” and saying that people who live in Cape Breton and hunt or who live in northern Canada and hunt for sustenance are the reason we have record gang shootings in downtown Toronto. That has become his go-to approach, and here we have it again with a “two classes of citizens” approach to his carbon tax.
Let us not forget that his plan is to quadruple the carbon tax if he is re-elected. My plan is the opposite. I propose, with this motion, a compromise in the meantime. What I propose is that we take the tax off so Canadians could keep the heat on this winter, and then, when Canadians go to the polls, we could have a carbon tax election where people choose between his plan to quadruple the tax on gas, heat and groceries, and my common-sense plan to axe the tax and bring home lower prices.
The Prime Minister, in his desperation yesterday, would not even show up and defend this approach in the House. He was in Ottawa and he was in the building, and he would not—