Madam Speaker, I move that the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, be concurred in.
It is my absolute joy to rise in the House today and speak to this important report. I will say at the outset that I am splitting my time with the amazingly talented member for Bay of Quinte, who is single-handedly going to bring trade back to Canada. I am excited to split my time with him.
The order of business today is to talk about the report entitled “Lessons Learned from Canada's Record on Climate Change”, delivered by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development.
The report was delivered pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g) with respect to the public accounts committee. I was pleased to be on the committee when we studied this important report. I will just read a couple of highlights into the record before we get going in earnest with my speech here. It states, “The report further clarifies that although ‘Canada’s population and economy have grown faster than emissions have,’ its GHG emissions ‘have increased since the Paris Agreement was signed, making it the worst performing of all G7 nations since the 2015 Conference.’”
An update to the report sees that the trajectory has not changed in recent months or years. In 2023, the commissioner wrote in a new report, “While some progress has been made, we are still extremely concerned about the federal government’s ability to achieve meaningful progress”.
What we could really entitle both the committee report and the environment commissioner's report is “all pain and no gain”. We have experienced tremendous economic challenges because of the current government's environmental policies, without any real achievements on the environment side. In fact, I had the privilege of asking the environment commissioner some questions, and I will read from the testimony.
This was a couple of years ago, and the question was, “In the last seven years, has this government achieved any of the international carbon reduction targets?” Mr. DeMarco responded, “Not that I'm aware of”. The pain this has caused without any gain is incredible. We are sitting here among the lowest ranking when it comes to achieving reductions in GHGs, yet we are dealing with the economic pain. A large portion of that can be explained by the government's ideological, reckless, dangerous obsession with the carbon tax.
We recently received a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which once again amplifies that it is all pain and no gain when it comes to the government's environment policy. Among other things, the report states that the carbon tax has actually had very little, if any, material impact on our total GHG emissions. This means that the carbon tax's impact on climate change is negligible. In reality, then, one side of the equation is that, clearly, we are not achieving anything.
However, let us look at the financial impact of the carbon tax. We hear over and over again about its fiscal impact. I will just start off by saying that there is an artificial division between fiscal impact, which is the direct impact, and economic impact, which is indirect. The reality is that a Canadian does not get up in the morning and decide that they are going to go with fiscal impact today and economic impact tomorrow. We are all dealt it, so the artificial division between fiscal and economic impact should not even exist, in my opinion. When we look at just the fiscal impact, depending on where we are in the economic spectrum, there are situations where we could be ahead by getting the rebate. That is absolutely true, and I like to be an advocate for the truth. However, the reality is that we cannot live in Canada without the Canadian economy affecting us. When we look at the economic impact, which is the total impact of the carbon tax, nearly all Canadians will be behind.
I just want to read this into the record because there has been a great deal of discussion and debate about the impact of the carbon tax. Let us pick Newfoundland and Labrador. What is the net negative impact in, let us say, 2026? It is $876, so once again people in Newfoundland are behind because of the carbon tax, even including the Liberals' phony rebate. Let us flip over and pick another province: Saskatchewan. Let us go to 2028-29. The average Saskatchewanian household is out $434. Let us flip over to Alberta. The average Albertan in 2027-28 will be out $436.
It is beyond frustrating to sit here day after day, hour after hour and month after month and hear the government not telling the full story, if I am being kind. “Willfully changing the information” would be perhaps another way of casting it. The fact is that when we look at the global economic impact, which is really the only sensical way of looking at the carbon tax, we see that Canadians are behind when it comes to the per household figure. We see the impact.
Actually, that does not even fully capture the challenge of the carbon tax, because of course we live in a dynamic economy. The more money we give to the private sector, the more money grows in the private sector in the economy. It is perhaps not surprising that in 2015, when the current government was elected, there was immediately a diminution in our productivity, which has then led to a lower GDP per capita.
GDP per capita is a stat we are probably going to hear about a fair bit, because in Canada it has not risen a bit since 2015. We are facing one of the worst economies in the OECD. GDP per capita really just means per individual. Our economy has not grown, which means that while Canada, because of the growth in its population, may have technically avoided a recession, the reality is that Canadians, individuals, have been in a recession for a very long time, as per capita growth has not risen since 2015.
The challenge is that, while the Governor of the Bank of Canada is saying that we are in a break-glass emergency, the government just wants to put more and more barriers in front of our economy.
One of the bright lights in the Canadian economy is actually the energy sector, which, despite all of the impediments and all of the barriers the government has put in place, continues to work and to thrive. For example, petroleum and petroleum-related products account for 40% of our total exports. What do we do with the golden goose? We tax it and tax it some more, and we try to regulate it.
There are many members who, if they could press the switch tomorrow, would cut off Canadian energy. They are radicals and extremists. The reality is that we need clean Canadian energy to power our economy, because right now, as I said, Canadians are in an extended recession that has gone on for years. It has decreased our standard of living and made it tougher for all Canadians to do the things that they want to do, including feeding themselves. That is why two million Canadians are going to the food bank.
That does not even tell the whole story, because there are students living in cars. There are tent encampments across our country that are the direct responsibility of the government's irresponsible and radical plans for our economy. Its economic malfeasance has led to the lowering of Canadians' standard of living, making every Canadian poorer.
In addition to that, the government has not achieved any of its goals with respect to climate change. It has not lowered GHG emissions. Canada continues to be an outlier and a poor performer when it comes to reducing carbon and other emissions. The government is a failure on every account.