Madam Speaker, it will be my absolute pleasure to be sharing my time with the member for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne.
As always, it is a pleasure for me to speak on behalf of residents of my riding of Davenport to today's opposition motion by the Conservatives. I am going to read the motion, just because, in my own imagination, I always think that of course there are people who might want to look at this at a future date and they are going to want to know what the opposition motion is about. The motion states:
That, in order to help Canadians afford a simple summer vacation and save typical Canadian families $670 this summer, the House call on the NDP-Liberal government to immediately axe the carbon tax, the federal fuel tax, and the GST on gasoline and diesel until Labour Day.
First of all, there is no NDP-Liberal government, so we should probably just state that up front. There is a supply and confidence agreement between the Liberal government and the NDP.
I would also say that I do not agree with the premise of this motion. It is not the carbon pricing that is stopping Canadians from affording a summer vacation. The only provinces that are actually subject to carbon pricing are those provinces that do not have a current plan in place to reduce their carbon emissions. For example, my home province of Ontario, and it was just mentioned by one of my NDP colleagues here, did have a carbon-pricing mechanism before the current provincial government was elected in 2016. It was a cap-and-trade system with Quebec and California. When the provincial Conservative government in Ontario got into office, it cancelled that system and, unfortunately, not only was there a cost to cancelling it, but the province actually lost, and I remember this very clearly, $3 billion in annual revenue. On top of that, the government did not replace it with another system to reduce carbon emissions.
It is known that climate change is happening. Every country in the world needs to do its part to reduce emissions, to meet its Paris Agreement targets and to move to a low-carbon future.
The Conservatives like to make bold and, sadly, unfounded assertions that carbon pricing is worsening food-security challenges in this country, but there is no evidence that this is happening. In fact, time and again, the data suggest that the impact of carbon pricing on inflation is the equivalent of a rounding error. We hear that time and time again in the finance committee. This fact is also supported by the Bank of Canada and many others. Carbon pricing has no real, discernible impact on any increases of food costs in this country. We have seen experts appear at the agriculture committee suggesting the same, saying that they can find no straight line between carbon pricing and food costs.
Therefore, what do we know? During a high inflationary period worldwide, compared to G7 countries, many that do not have carbon pricing, Canada has the second-lowest food inflation rate.
What else is the data telling us? It is telling us about the impacts of climate change on food costs. Let us take, for example, the impact on grapes or cherries, like those in Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. Increased forest fires taint the crops, rendering the products of those farmers unsellable. Blueberry farms in Nova Scotia, like the one in the riding of the member for Cumberland—Colchester, who unfortunately spoke against carbon pricing yesterday, are losing large amounts of crops to huge fluctuations in precipitation that lead to either drought conditions or extreme wet weather. Let us also talk about the impacts of flooding on animal agriculture, like what we saw during the atmospheric river flooding in the Lower Mainland of B.C. We saw cows up to their udders in flood water; we saw many barns destroyed; and, unfortunately and very sadly, we saw many animals perish.
We also have seen the climate impacts on invasive species on our crops. We have seen that climate change helps the spread of new pests that threaten both crops and animals. We are also seeing the climate change impacts on the warming of the oceans, and that this warming poses a serious threat to the billion-dollar east coast lobster fishery.
I could go on and on with a lot of examples, but these are the costs that we have to be very focused on. These are the real costs of climate change, and they are happening in real time, year after year.
Where is the leader of the party opposite to be found in actually addressing these issues with real solutions? He is nowhere. We all remember last year when, being the leader of the party opposite, he had to cancel the axe the tax rallies in Yukon and Okanagan Valley because of wildfires. Yet, he has absolutely nothing to say about climate change, nothing to say to farmers and the next generation of farmers about how the Canadian government will take their concerns seriously and support them to be more resilient in the face of a changing climate.
Actually, there is something else that members opposite are not being honest about. Taking away the price on pollution would also remove the Canada carbon rebate and hurt people with that key income support, which is helping them to put food on the table. The Canada carbon rebate benefits lower-income Canadians the most. These are Canadians who tend to suffer most from food insecurity.
Germaine Romberg in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is on a fixed income and depends on the Canada carbon rebate payments to make ends meet to pay for rent and for other necessities. The $300 she got every four months last year on top of her disability payments made a world of difference for her monthly bills. She is not alone; this story has played out with Canadians across the country.
A study published late last year in the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, called “Canadian food inflation: International dynamics and local agency”, looked at the difference between the amount Canadians pay and the amount they get back in the Canada carbon rebate. The author concluded that:
Removing the tax may actually make some Canadians, particularly lower-income and rural Canadians, worse off than they are under the carbon tax...The impacts of the carbon tax on food prices are suggested to be small. If they are smaller than the difference between CAI payments and carbon tax paid, many Canadian households will suffer a net loss due to the repeal of the tax.
This is the same thing that the Government of Canada has been saying all along: Eight out of 10 Canadians get more back than they pay.
There are tens of thousands of Canadians out there like Germaine in Saskatoon, who, if they lost their rebate payments, would have their ability to purchase food severely diminished. We know that Conservatives, sadly, would deprive people of these rebate payments if they ever got into power.
I am going to repeat something that one of my colleagues said this morning, because I really believe it is important to be repeated. It reads:
Carbon pricing continues to be the most efficient, simple and cost-effective way to meet our targets. It is a measure that encourages the whole population, every household and every business, to find ways to cut pollution, whether and however they would like. It sends a powerful message forward of confidence to businesses to invest in cleaner technologies to be more energy efficient in the future.
Carbon pricing does not raise the cost of living. In provinces where the federal fuel charge applies, as I mentioned earlier, it represents only a tiny fraction of inflation and increase in the price of groceries, which is less than half a percent. However, there is a 10% supplement for people living in rural and remote communities. We proposed increasing it to 20%, but the Conservatives, sadly, have been delaying Bill C-59 for months now. I am hoping that they will stop delaying this, but for provinces under the federal pricing system with a Canada carbon rebate, 80% of Canadian households receive a refund greater than what they pay. In fact, if carbon pricing were abolished today, not only would clean energy investment and job creation grind to a halt, but our low- and middle-income families would have less money in their pockets.
I am urging all members of this House to vote “no” to the opposition day motion, because, unfortunately, the Conservative opposition party has no plan to address climate change, and no plan to actually help Canadians who are struggling to make ends meet.