Madam Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary referred earlier in his speech to the origins of the B.C. carbon tax. Having been involved, I was amazed to find that a fairly right wing premier in British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, came up with a letter perfect, academically rigorous, revenue-neutral carbon tax, driven, as he was, by the disaster of the loss of the forests of interior B.C. due to climate change. It is a longer story, but this was due to the pine beetle assault because we lost our cold snaps in winter. Just to wrap it up, Gordon Campbell would have been defeated in that election, but the NDP in B.C. ran a campaign against him called “axe the tax”, and because British Columbians supported the carbon tax, he was re-elected.
In the House of Commons on May 30th, 2024. See this statement in context.