Debates of Feb. 1st, 2024

Food Security

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Mr. Speaker, a bit of the ruling yesterday was with respect to how long these were taking, and we were told that there are tight rules about how petitions should be presented in this House. We were not to mention members, and it was supposed to be a brief statement, which I had brought to you, Mr. Speaker. Where is the brief statement in this case? Again, we are seeking consistency. I wish you, Mr. Speaker, would be consistent in this case.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I thank the hon. member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies. What was also mentioned in that ruling is that, although the Standing Orders have been very clear about terms, if we were to strictly interpret that, it has been the habit of this House through all Chairs and people who have assumed the presidency here to allow a bit of latitude in terms of the length. However, we ask members not to offer opinions as to whether they agree, but just present the points of view of the petitioners to the House.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion to that petition, I was just saying that I wanted to thank the incredible school community of Bayridge Secondary School in Kingston for its advocacy on this issue and for using its voice in Parliament.

The Environment

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise here today on the traditional territories of the Algonquin Anishinabe nation. To them, we say “meegwetch”.

I am presenting a petition that speaks to an issue that has seized this House in a number of different ways in terms of pending legislation. The petitioners are asking the government to take account of the degradation of Canada's waterways and watersheds. The current laws do not adequately protect Canada's waterways and watersheds from irresponsible industrial practice. The petitioners call on Canada to update our water laws to ensure that no industry or single corporation can take precedence over the health of Canada's waterways and watersheds and, by extension, over the health of the people of Canada and the very species that also rely on the health of these waterways. We must ensure that Canada's water laws are updated under the guidance of professionals and specialists in the field of water conservation.

Questions on the Order Paper

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand at this time.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Opposition Motion—Carbon Tax

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved:

That, given that the carbon tax has proven to be a tax plan, not an environmental plan, the House call on the Liberal government to cancel the April 1, 2024, carbon tax increase.

Mr. Speaker, after eight years in office, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost. That is why Canada needs a common-sense government that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop crime.

After eight years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. That is why we need a common-sense Conservative government that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Today, I rise on the first of those Conservative priorities. I think members across the way are becoming more and more convinced that we might be onto something with this four-point plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.

Why do we want to axe the tax? Let me start with yesterday's debate with the Prime Minister.

I highlighted, once again, the Medeiros family farm. It produces mushrooms for all the city of Ottawa but has been facing tens of thousands of dollars in monthly carbon tax bills alone. Now, the Prime Minister claimed that I told the farm to stand on its own two feet when it was trying to bring natural gas to the farm and that I could not possibly understand what he was referring to because, of course, I helped the farm. I dug up the quote, and I said, in response to high energy prices, that the goal was “to find a commercially viable way that this kind of...project”, natural gas for farms, “can stand on its own two feet, pay for itself and create some jobs”.

From that moment, I went to Enbridge, which, being a large multinational pipeline company, had been hard for an individual farmer to contact on the phone. I got the executives on the phone. I told them the pipeline was needed to take gas to the mushroom farm in order to generate the steam and the other power that is needed to produce mushrooms. Ultimately, the project got done without any tax dollars and paid for itself, because natural gas is significantly cheaper and less polluting than propane and oil. That is an example of how we can do great things for our farm families without costing Canadian taxpayers money and without creating new federal bureaucracy.

The Prime Minister's comments do speak to his patronizing view of all Canadians. He believes that Canadians can never stand on their own two feet. In fact, the only reason Canadians are struggling to do so is that he is on their backs. It is like the Canadian people are carrying a backpack, and he comes along and asks: “Can I help you with that? It looks heavy.” He puts the backpack on his shoulders, and then he piggybacks on the Canadian who was carrying it in the first place. Now, they are not only carrying the bag but also carrying him. In this case, the analogy refers to his carbon tax.

That same family farm, which was thriving through intelligent investments, including in natural gas that he and his radical environment minister want to eliminate, was thriving and employing dozens of people in our community. Now, it is paying carbon taxes of $10,000 to $20,000 per month, an amount the Prime Minister wants to quadruple to 61¢ a litre and place an equivalent charge on natural gas. On April 1, the Prime Minister, with the full support of the NDP, intends to raise the carbon tax by 23%. This is at a time when Canadians cannot afford to eat.

Moments ago, the Prime Minister had one of his parliamentary secretaries, the member for Kingston and the Islands, get up and say that one in four school children is not able to eat. That is quite an admission by a government that has been in power for eight years. It used it as a justification to create a new federal bureaucracy. The Liberals say that it is a school food program, except there is no food in the program. In fact, it is not even in the schools; it is in Ottawa. In downtown Ottawa, the Liberals propose to create a series of meetings, bureaucracies and organizations that will collect yet more money from the rest of the population in order to talk about creating agreements and frameworks for discussions and consultations about an eventual program that supposedly will feed the one in four kids who is hungry because the government is taxing their food. Why not skip all those steps and just stop taxing the food?

Like everything the Prime Minister does, he doubles housing costs, and then he says we need a new government housing program. He doubles the number of shootings in Canada with his catch-and-release policies, and then he says we need new government programs to combat the gun violence the government unleashed with its Criminal Code changes. He causes these problems, and then the problems he causes are a pretext for him to have more power and more money. We all know that the Prime Minister is not the solution. He is the problem. The last thing we need is to take more money from our working-class families, our farmers and our seniors and to put it in his hands.

We stand in the House of Commons as the only party that opposes the carbon tax hike. The NDP has betrayed working-class people in places like Vancouver Island, northern British Columbia and northern Ontario where its constituents rely on pickup trucks, where the rural people and the farmers use energy to power their combines, their tractors, their farm drying equipment and their barns. The NDP raises taxes on all those people. The NDP wants to shut down Canada's resource sector. Just the other day, the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie cheered at the prospect of shutting down the entire natural gas economy, which would devastate the people in the NDP riding of Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

What we have is a radical agenda by the Prime Minister and his NDP allies, coalition partners, to quadruple the carbon tax to 61¢ a litre, all while shutting down our resource sector so that we can import from dirty dictatorships.

What we have from the Prime Minister is a pro-Russia energy policy that shuts down our energy industry to give more and more business to power Putin's war machine. All of that is supported by the NDP.

These facts build a firm and final case that only common-sense Conservatives stand on the side of working-class people, who need their pickup trucks to do their jobs and to build the country; seniors, who need to heat their homes in Edmonton in -50°C weather; single mothers, who are putting water in their children's milk because the cost of produce has risen under the Liberal-NDP carbon tax; children, one in four of whom, by the government's own admission today, are going hungry in our schools. This is the misery that Canadians are living after eight years of the Prime Minister.

The definition of insanity is when one does the same thing over and over again and expects a different result. Raising taxes and shutting down industries has sent two million people to the food bank. It has doubled housing costs. It has led to homeless encampments that we never had before in cities across this country. There are 30 homeless encampments in Halifax alone. There is the re-emergence of illnesses that were long ago banished, like scurvy, because people have become malnourished under the Prime Minister's impoverishing policies.

We, as common-sense Conservatives, will undo this damage. We will axe the tax to lower the cost of gas, heat and groceries so that our seniors can heat their homes, and our families can feed their kids. Our farmers can, once again, repatriate production of food to this country and can use the best environmental stewardship on planet earth. Our energy and resource companies can harvest the cornucopia of bounty that our country has beneath its feet and can use those resources to lift the world out of poverty in the most environmentally friendly way that could possibly be imagined.

We are the best. Our workers are the best. Our inventors are the best. Our businesses are the best. If we could get the government out of the way, then we could have the best. We will have that, and we will do it not by big powerful government dictating from on high, but we will do it by the great Canadian people standing on their own two feet and by the common sense of the common people united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives make it sound like using tax policies to fight climate change is never a good idea.

We disagree with some of the measures the Liberals have in place because we think they are unnecessary. I am talking about measures like the tax credit for carbon capture, utilization and storage, the clean tech tax credit and the hydrogen tax credit. I would like the member for Carleton to tell us about his vision for these tax credits.

Do they actually work, or does using tax policy to fight climate change only work when the money does not end up lining the pockets of oil companies?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, we are not lining any industry's pockets. Furthermore, our energy industry is capable of increasing its own revenues in a free market. It is the barriers put in place by the Liberal government that prevent these companies from doing business properly. It is not that we do not want to subsidize anything. Rather, we want to allow free enterprise.

When it comes to green energy, we have to green-light green projects. We have to green-light hydroelectric dams in Quebec, not tie them up for years, as the federal government wants to do with the Bloc Québécois's support. We are the ones who want to allow lithium, cobalt and graphite mines to open quickly, within 18 months instead of 18 years, so we can produce electric batteries here in Canada. We are the ones who want to allow nuclear energy that will provide zero-emission electricity. We are going to green-light green projects.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, last week the Leader of the Opposition referred to two Quebec mayors as being incompetent. I wonder whether he has had an opportunity to reflect on that and whether he still feels that way, or whether he would like to apologize for having called two mayors in Quebec incompetent.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely false. I referred to far more than two mayors as being incompetent. The former mayor of Vancouver, who made it $1.3 million in government costs for every newly built home, is incompetent. The current mayor and council in Toronto, bringing in a 10% tax increase on their people, are absolutely incompetent.

There are many competent mayors across the country: in Victoriaville, in Saguenay, in Trois-Rivières and in other places. The former mayor of Langley was very competent. They got out of the way and accelerated construction.

Conservatives believe that we should reward those mayors and councils that get out of the way and let builders build. Let us incentivize local municipalities to speed up and lower the cost of construction so that we can put roofs overhead after the Prime Minister doubled housing costs.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians have been witnessing flooding, extreme weather and droughts, and experts have been clear that what is raising costs on food is far more the climate crisis than carbon pricing.

Over a decade ago, when the Leader of the Opposition was a minister, the Harper government cut the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which collected information on the costs of the climate crisis. He says he wants to cut taxes, but we know he wants to cut child care and the school food programs. He wants to cut the experts who would—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre is rising on a point of order.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I know it is really hard for the Conservative men to control their toxic masculinity. They do support “men gotta go their own way”. My colleague is trying to ask a question, and—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I am going to ask all members to please allow questions to be asked and comments to be made without interruption so we can hear.

The hon. member for Victoria.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, he says he wants to cut taxes, but what we know is he wants to cut child care. He wants to cut school food programs, and he wants to cut the experts who will refute his misinformation.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, let us go through this point by point. She says that natural disasters would be stopped by a carbon tax. The carbon tax has now been in place for five years, and, as she points out, these events continue to happen. Clearly the carbon tax is not solving the problem; in fact, it has not even reduced emissions. The government has missed its own targets in all but one year, and that was when we were locked down for COVID. Its own environment commissioner says the government will not hit its targets by 2030.

Second, she just revealed what she wants to spend money on: a national round table of a bunch of activists, lobbyists and bureaucrats in Ottawa. She refers to a food program she claims I want to cut; there is no food program. What the government has is a program to bring a bunch of bureaucrats and activists to Ottawa to talk about food. This is exactly the kind of waste and mismanagement we will get rid of so we can bring home affordable food.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to follow up on our leader's speech about our opposition day motion today, which is calling on the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois to support common sense.

After eight years of the Prime Minister and the NDP-Liberal coalition, Canadians by the millions are getting increasingly frustrated at the out-of-control tax increases under the Prime Minister. Let me give an example: $27,571.29 on an invoice from Rutters Elevators. I was speaking to Michael Aube in Chesterville yesterday and again this morning. That is the carbon tax bill, the line on the bill, for drying at their elevator for one farm in Chesterville, Ontario, last year.

Canadians believe that this is getting absurd. The worst is yet to come. On April 1, the carbon tax is going to increase by 23%, and the Prime Minister and the NDP, coalition partners together, are going to quadruple the carbon tax in the coming years. This means Canadians are dumbfounded at the fact that the Prime Minister, the finance minister and their government believe that putting a $100,000 carbon tax bill for one farm alone is not going to increase the cost of food and inflation in this country. Nobody believes it. Again, just this week, the finance minister and Deputy Prime Minister went out and said that the carbon tax is revenue-neutral. It is no wonder we cannot balance the budget in this country under their watch. They cannot do basic math and economics to understand that.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed the impact the tax is going to have on farmers; $1 billion in carbon taxes is coming under the current plan and the continued carbon tax increases to farmers in the coming years. Nobody believes that one can add a billion dollars in taxes to the bills of Canadian farmers and not expect food prices, the cost of living and the cost of doing business in this country to go up. That does not even include the carbon tax on trucking.

In my family, I am proud of my father, Ed, now happily retired from JED Express in South Mountain, Ontario. We were in the trucking business for years. One cannot put 61¢ a litre on the price of gas in the transportation business and not have it drive up the cost of food and of everything that Canadians buy. Everything has to be shipped and trucked in this country, driving up the cost. Canadians are tired and have had enough of these tax increases.

We have our common-sense Conservative motion here today that builds on our four priorities: axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. That is resonating because it is what Conservative members heard in every part of the country once again over the Christmas recess and holidays, out and about in our community.

Let us talk about being out of touch. I want people to picture this for a second if they can. We went home to our ridings, to Christmas open houses and to public events, and we were dropping by. I want people to picture a Liberal MP and just how out of touch they are. Apparently they went home and went to the local Tim Hortons coffee shop to grab a coffee and shoot the breeze with people in Avalon, rural Newfoundland. They came back to Ottawa and, after weeks of feedback, the Prime Minister had a great idea this week.

They said they heard the message about the carbon tax loud and clear: People do not like the name of it. The Liberals' idea, after going back and hearing from Canadians, apparently, was that it was not the fact that the carbon tax was going to quadruple. It was not the fact that it is driving up costs, and it was not the fact that we are adding a billion dollars in taxes to Canadian farmers in the coming years. It was the fact that maybe Canadians just do not like the name of the carbon tax. The Liberals are out of touch.

On this side of the aisle, the motion is clear. On April 1 the carbon tax is going to increase by 23% as part of the plan to quadruple it from its current rate. If Canadians think it is bad now, just wait until, year after year, it gets to the totals in their plans. They may not even be done after that.

There is no part of this country that is not impacted negatively by the failed carbon tax, and it has been a failure. Emissions are not going down; they are going up. The cost of living and the cost of doing business are skyrocketing at rates like we have never seen before.

I want to point out a couple of things in this country. Just this week, CTV News had an article headline that said, “40 per cent of N.S. households struggle to pay their electricity bill”. The Liberals still plan to quadruple the carbon tax and drive bills up even further.

The part of the country I would like to highlight today are the good people in northern Ontario, who, for years, have overwhelmingly elected Liberal and NDP MPs to go to Ottawa. They are now seeing week by week, month by month, and budget by budget, just how out of touch their Liberal and NDP MPs have been.

It was very interesting here, and I want to call out the hypocrisy particularly of the NDP members. They always talk a big, tough game. They yell and do all their things, whether it be at committee or in question period, and they always claim they have these great ideas. They vote and do all these things that make it look like they are fighting on behalf of folks, particularly in northern Ontario. At the end of the day, when the budget comes, the NDP are just as complicit as the Liberals in driving up the carbon tax.

On hypocrisy, I have to call out the member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, an NDP MP who goes on record about the carbon tax and says, “I think it's a black eye for the Liberals for what they have done.” Excuse me to the NDP members, but they have voted with the Liberals every single time, and they are going to quadruple it. The only reason Canadians do not have a choice right now is that the NDP keeps propping the Liberals up time and time again.

I think what is important here is that the NDP members say one thing back in their ridings, but then they come to Ottawa and vote a completely different way. What we say is that rent is up, gas is up, the carbon tax is up, housing costs are up, and for the NDP, time is up. Canadians, particularly in northern Ontario, are not buying it anymore.

One of my favourite parts is the NDP member for Timmins—James Bay, who gets triggered. I am glad he is here this morning. I am glad that at the—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

We cannot refer to whether someone is here or not. I think the hon. member knows that.

The hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what I can say is that when I visited Timmins last year, and when our Conservative leader has visited Timmins time and time again, the constituents said they never see or hear from their NDP MP. They say just how out of touch the NDP has become. It has sold out working families, particularly in northern Ontario, in Timmins—James Bay, and continues to prop up the Liberal government.

It was just in the news last week, in The Daily Press, up in Timmins. The airport manager of the Victor M. Power Airport said he has a serious concern about the rising cost of living in this country. I am going to quote him. He said:

We’re burning hundreds and hundreds of litres of fuel and that price is going to go up a huge amount. That cost gets passed onto the traveling public right out of Timmins. So my budget is going to go through the roof in the next couple of years.

My focus is running the business of the airport. I need to do something to make sure...people can afford to fly, and not have [to pay] $800 seats to [go to] Toronto.

That is because carbon taxes are driving up the cost of living in northern Ontario. It gets cold in northern Ontario. To heat their homes, people need to have heat. They should not be penalized for doing that.

They have to drive. If they are going from Timmins to Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, North Bay, Kapuskasing, Hearst or any point in between, there is no subway. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance just hops on the subway. I have been up there a few times in northern Ontario. I found a Subway restaurant, but I have not found the subway that she suggests people in northern Ontario can just use.

The motion we have is clear. Our position, as Canadian Conservatives, is clear as well. We will axe the tax entirely, on everything, for good. The Prime Minister is playing games with Bill C-234 and giving an exemption or carve-out to farmers to save $1 billion. They will not go for that. They are playing games in the Senate and now here in the House. They now have the opportunity to go on the record. They do not have to increase the carbon tax again on April 1.

It is time to cancel the increase and give Canadians some much-needed relief after eight years of the Prime Minister and his NDP partners.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives, and that member in particular, want to talk a lot about the price on pollution but do not want to talk about the other things the government is doing, in particular for the agriculture sector.

There is one riding in Ontario that receives $6.8 million through the agriculture sector emissions reductions and clean-tech funding. This is money that is actually given to the agricultural sector to help it reduce its emissions and find clean technology.

Do members know whose riding receives $6.8 million a year from the federal government for that? It is that member's riding. That member's riding receives $6.8 million of federal money to help the agricultural industry move away from emissions and in the direction of clean tech.

I am wondering, in the interest of axing everything, whether the member would comment on whether the Conservative government would axe this clean-tech funding and this $6.8 million to his riding.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Kingston and the Islands talks about six-point-some million dollars. I just went through and told him that the millions of dollars in carbon tax that is being paid by farmers is going to be quadrupled in the coming years. They are getting tax increases like they have never seen before.

A billion dollars is what Canadian farmers are going to pay in the coming years. The arrogance of the Liberal government, and that Liberal member in particular, says that the government knows best. It is driving up their taxes and giving it back. We have a common-sense solution. It is to get green technology red tape out of the way, like on tidal energy in New Brunswick. There are numerous hydroelectric projects in Quebec that are being stalled because of federal red tape. The Liberals' answer is to tax them, jack up their taxes and carbon tax, and try to cut a cheque for some of it back. The provinces do not believe it. It has failed, and it is not working.

I encourage the member to come and visit a farmer in Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry; he would get an earful about the Liberal record on everything.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to preface my question with how disappointed I am in the member opposite. The member speaks about being out of touch, while we see, in my home province of Alberta, children and trans kids being attacked. That member has the power and should have the courage to stand in this place and condemn that violence.

Will the member now, as I give him the opportunity, stand to protect trans rights in this country and stand against Conservative premiers who, as we speak, are attacking children's rights? Will he have the courage to do it now?

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that does not have anything to do with the motion and the debate here at hand on the carbon tax, but I will say, as a proud gay man, that he should not question my integrity or my commitment on anything. I have been proud, as an example, to stand up to end the discriminatory blood ban that the NDP and Liberals propped up for far too long. I will not take any lessons from him trying to lecture me about anything.

Back to the matter at hand, talking about out of touch and talking about aloof, we have that member from Edmonton. Temperatures in Edmonton reached -50°C or -45°C only about a week or two ago, and that member does not like the inconvenience of it. He is going to have to go doorknocking in the next election and explain to people in Edmonton why he wants to quadruple the carbon tax and their home heating bill when temperatures hit -45°C.

The reason people are using food banks, the reason people are struggling, the reason housing costs and the economy are out of control is the constant tax increases that the member keeps voting for. I know he does not like talking about it, but it is about time he smartened up and did.