Madam Speaker, in Adjournment Proceedings, we debate questions that were not answered properly in question period, when members of the opposition ask a question and the government refuses to answer or provides an unsatisfactory answer. This, indeed, is the case with the question that I asked on June 14. I noted that the Liberals had promised to be the most open and transparent government in history and had said that the data paid for by Canadians belonged to Canadians. I went on to say that the Conservatives forced the government to release some of the data the government had been suppressing relating to the cost of the carbon tax, and it showed the Minister of Environment had in fact misled Canadians. I then asked if he would resign.
The answer I got was quite unsatisfactory. He did not speak to the issue at all, but insisted that the Conservatives should resign since they did not agree with him about the carbon tax. We are here tonight to debate this question.
The reason I asked this question is that the minister and his department had withheld a report clearly stating that the cost of the carbon tax was an additional $30 billion, which had not been made public. They suppressed this information and prevented the Parliamentary Budget Officer from having it. The Parliamentary Budget Officer was forced to resort to the access to information system, which goes to the business of the government's promise of openness and transparency.
It promised in 2015 to be the most open and transparent government in Canadian history. It made a big deal about this. This was an important promise. For those of us who go back to the election in 2015, this promise was one of the ways the Liberals, really, ate the NDP's lunch.
The New Democrats, to their credit, have historically been very concerned about the secretive nature of a history's worth of Canadian governments. At least before they started propping up the Liberals, they were for openness and transparency. The Liberals took away that plank from their platform, copied it and promised openness and transparency, with sunny ways. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, they said. However, as I said in my question on June 14, that is a sick joke. The government is so secretive that, right now, Parliament is seized with its refusal to table documents related to SDTC.
Getting back to the question, the minister suppressed information about the carbon tax and gamed the access to information system, which was used to deny information to journalists, academics, regular Canadians and individuals who are in a conflict or have a grievance with the government. It is unfortunate that it would not release the information.
I do not expect the parliamentary secretary to say the minister has resigned as we asked for, but we have new reasons for him to resign. The scandals continue. We have a new scandal wherein he has perhaps conflicted himself in the SDTC scandal.
I will ask it again: Will the minister resign?