Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise on behalf of the overtaxed people of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. Like the overtaxed Canadians across the country, residents of the Ottawa Valley want a carbon tax election now.
The socialist-separatist coalition has made its position plain for all to see: There will be no relief for Canadians until the Marxist members secure their pensions. The need for an election and an end to the wacko government has never been greater. The government has lost touch with real Canadians. Just look at how the minister responded to my question last June about scrapping the carbon tax. Instead of defending the carbon tax, the minister tried to “change the channel” by bragging about the Liberals' higher capital gains tax. Canadians are angry about higher taxes and the Liberals' bold new policy is to increase taxes.
The Liberals have adopted the motto “Beatings will continue until morale improves.” The taxes will go higher until their polls improve. The government has lost touch with reality. Its members have trapped themselves inside a simulation. That is not a reference to The Matrix or a metaphor.
Statistics Canada built a tax simulator; anyone can download it for free. It is widely used by academics, banks, businesses, parliamentary budget officers and even the finance department. It simulates the impact of tax changes. The Liberals put their carbon tax in the simulator and it spit out the number 80/20. The simulator said that 20% of Canadians would pay more in carbon taxes than they receive in climate bribes. The simulator said those 20% were mostly the top 20% of income earners. Any time a simulator spits out a ratio like 80/20, it should set off alarm bells. 80/20 has its own Wikipedia page for a reason.
These technocratic-loving Liberals forget that sometimes a statistic can be both accurate and true while being completely fictional and entirely false. There is a good chance the parliamentary secretary who was selected to respond shortly was handed a speech that includes a phrase like, “The average household gets back more than it pays.”
In Canada, the size of the average household is 2.51 people. I do not need to conduct a door-to-door census to tell members there is not a single household with that number of people in it. The Liberals will tell us the average household is doing great under the carbon tax, that the average household gets back more than they pay. The problem is that the average household of 2.51 people does not exist. It is a statistical fiction, just like the government's mandate.
More Canadians voted for Conservatives in the last two elections than voted for the Liberals, yet these Liberals have arrogantly behaved as if they won a majority. They kept increasing the carbon tax. They have increased taxes on property and capital. They tax our work. They tax our energy. If we try to catch a break to relax, they increased the taxes on alcohol, tobacco and cannabis too. We cannot even watch a movie without paying their Netflix tax now. Just to rub the salt into the wound a little harder, on top of the Liberal carbon tax, the video streaming tax, the beer tax and the new digital services tax is the GST, because nothing says Liberal like charging a tax on a tax.
If there was ever any doubt the Liberals are out of touch, I expect this parliamentary secretary to put those doubts to rest. They will either invoke the simulation to claim the fictional average household is doing great, or they will resort to climate alarmism and try to convince Canadians higher taxes will fix the bad weather. Maybe they might even do both, but that proves they do not listen to Canadians.
It is time for a carbon tax election now.