Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak again on a very important topic: carbon tax and the policies that affect agriculture.
The carbon tax is a huge one. The capital gains tax was supposedly for some kind of elite businesses, but it really does affect businesses such as family farms. The capital gains tax is another one that is a very significant challenge. It goes along with the GST tax break, which the Liberals found is not getting them any bump because it is not one that works either.
However, there is some information on the carbon tax. The average 5,000-acre farm in Canada is paying about $150,000 every single year in carbon taxes. For an irrigation company, that multiplies at least to another $100,000. I know that my colleague will suggest other forms of energy, but natural gas and propane, and natural gas in particular, create power, and this is what is used in our part of the world.
For greenhouses, and I have significant ones in my riding for tomatoes, green peppers, lettuce and strawberries, they are facing huge costs, at $22 million a year in carbon taxes. By 2030, it will be $82 million to $100 million, which is a huge cost on greenhouse produce in our country. We have 44% of fresh fruit and vegetable growers already telling us that they are selling at a loss, and their statements show it. We have 77% who cannot cover their production costs, and we have 77% of produce growers in Canada close to going under.
Alberta farmers paid $17 million in carbon tax last year just on natural gas and propane to dry their grain and to heat and cool their barns. Bill C-234 would have eliminated the carbon tax on natural gas and propane, saving farmers that billion a year, but the senators gutted that bill.
However, we have ways that we can work on this. Some people do not get that we have institutions. This is from the president of the University of Alberta. He said:
...we understand energy, and we understand innovation. After more than a century of energy breakthroughs, we have learned the key to success: when you bring together the right people, you push the boundaries of innovation.
...This Alberta-based project brings together academia, industry, and government to advance the solutions that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions and diversify the economy.
We have ways that we can work with the energy sector and work with emissions. We have great academic institutions, like the University of Alberta, who can bring people together to work on this.
However, there are some other costs that are really interesting. At the ag committee recently, CN Rail representatives were there and they were asked about the carbon tax. For Saskatchewan, CN said that the carbon tax bill was $36 million just for transporting produce out of Saskatchewan, and then we can multiply that by Alberta and Manitoba. They were asked whether CN pays the carbon tax, and they said, of course not; we just download it to the farmers. This is the problem, which is that the carbon tax will be downloaded.
These are not rebate operations. There is no rebate for these large farm operations. They are the ones who do a great job of producing great food, food security produced in Canada, but they are being taxed severely. This is the challenge with the carbon tax, and it needs to be stopped.