Mr. Speaker, the concerns raised by my colleague opposite are what we have heard from the Conservatives over and over again. They would like to blame carbon pricing for all of the affordability challenges Canadians are facing. However, it is clear to me that this member has not gone to an economist. The Conservatives have not even looked at the simple math. They have not read the PBO report, which indicates not only that carbon pricing works, but also that the price on pollution instituted by the federal government as the back-stop program gives back to 80% of families more than they pay.
Like the member opposite, I live in a rural riding. A lot of my community is agriculture-based. Many in my community drive long distances to work, and a lot of my constituents use home heating oil to heat their homes. I understand full well the impact that the price on carbon has on the economy.
At the same time, I am listening to economists who have indicated that, sure, pricing carbon causes a moderate increase to the price of food, but let us look at how much. For an average family of four in Ontario, it is less than three dollars. Why? It is because there is no HST on food. Food is not taxed. There is also something called “output-based allocations”, which mitigate a lot of those concerns back to industry, such as farm fuels, as my colleague acknowledged, which are mostly fossil fuels. They are exempt from the price on carbon. That is something that the members opposite ignore entirely.
It is also important to recognize that all of those Conservative members, including the member for Dufferin—Caledon, ran on a promise to price pollution. When Erin O'Toole was the leader of the Conservative Party, in their election platform back in 2021, they all ran on a commitment to price carbon.
I knocked on doors in Caledon in that last election for the Liberal candidate, and there are a lot of environmentalists who live in downtown Caledon. They want to know that we are fighting climate change because they recognize events like wildfires and floods. No, a price on pollution does not automatically prevent them as if this were some sort of fairy tale that the member just popped the bubble of. That is not how it works. However, we do have to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and the price on pollution, carbon pricing, is the cheapest and best way to do that according to expert economists, paleoclimatologists and people who actually study this for a living.
Now, the member opposite mentioned that Canada is 1.5% of the global emissions, which is true. We are also 0.5% of the global population. What does that mean? It is simple math. It might not be something that the member opposite believes in because he also does not believe in climate change. As I have acknowledged, if he does not believe in climate change and simple math, it is possible he might not believe in gravity either, but it is right in front of us. If we are 0.5% of the global population and responsible for 1.5% of emissions, that means we are responsible for three times the average amount of anybody else from another country, which is too much.
We all have a role to play. Conservatives used to be a party of personal accountability. Let us be accountable for our own actions. Let us make sure that our personal finances are sacrosanct. That is not the case with this Conservative Party. Its members have completely abandoned the concept of accountability. In just the last couple years, the new leader, the member for Carleton, has been leading their party on a downward spiral of Tucker Carlson conspiracy theory videos and climate change denial. However, that does not change the facts that carbon pricing works, climate change is real and this government is committed to affordability while the party opposite has no credibility.