Madam Speaker, I would not want to offend anyone on the other side, so let me withdraw that.
The point is that the collective Conservative reformers across the way have no problem at all in misleading Canadians. When they say that they are going to get rid of the carbon tax, that also includes the rebate, which means 80% of Canadians will be worse off financially. They will have less disposable income. That is fairly significant, not to mention the environmental aspect that I just finished amplifying, but it does not end there. It does not matter where the leader of the Conservative Party goes; this is what he talks about.
Some provinces do not have the carbon tax, because this is a federal backstop program. In other words, any province can come up with a plan of its own and opt out of the federal program. The province of Quebec and the province of British Columbia are not in that program. Why is it that the Conservative leadership does not even want to recognize that? That is why I say there is misinformation or misleading information that consistently comes out of the Conservative Party.
Let us take a look at the motion today. It was interesting, as I kind of enjoyed question period. I kind of wish it had been extended today, in one sense, because of the questions that were being asked. I thought we saw a little bit of shame, possibly, that was starting to creep into the Conservative benches. Think about what they are proposing. They are saying they want to get rid of the carbon tax and the gas tax for the next few months. That way, the average family would get $670 in savings. In order to achieve that $670 in savings, people would actually have to drive. The more they drive, the more they get back, and gas is not free. Conservatives are encouraging people to go out there and consume as much gas as they can to actually get that $670 break from the Conservative Party.
There are a few things that I would like to suggest my colleagues across the way should focus a little bit of time on. As they focus on that, they should think about the word “hypocrisy”. Here is one of the things they should think about. Let us look at the carbon tax increase that occurred on April 1. How many seats are there for the province of Alberta? I think there are 34 seats. I might be wrong. I might have the number wrong. Out of the 34 seats, I think the Conservatives have 30-plus of those seats. Then there is the Conservative Premier of Alberta. In Alberta, on April 1, the Conservative premier brought in a gas tax hike that was larger than the carbon tax that was increased on April 1. Members will recall that not one, but numerous Conservatives were hanging from the ceiling here yelling and screaming about the tax increase on gas that was taking effect in April. They were jumping all over the place, condemning the government. On the other hand, how many of those Conservatives, in particular those reformers from Alberta, stood in their place here in Ottawa, or on their social media accounts, to criticize the Conservative policy guru from Alberta? I did not hear one of them.
I say to them across the way right now, is there any Conservative member of Parliament who was critical of the gas tax hike in Alberta and the impact that it was going to have on Albertans? Is there one Conservative member, of the hundred members of their caucus, who actually stood up for those Albertans the same way they were critical of the Government of Canada for the increase that was less than the Alberta increase? The short answer is no. Not one of them stood up to criticize it in any fashion. They would say that it is provincial. I have been here long enough to recognize that when it comes to jurisdiction, on issues of this nature, Conservatives have no problems standing up. All one needs to do is take a little bit of a history or a look at some of the things that were said in Hansard.
I can tell members that, at the end of the day, the policy that is being proposed really does not make sense. When one stops and thinks about what the Conservatives are talking about, they go around saying, and again, it feeds into this misinformation, that they are going to give a $670 break to average Canadians this summer, between now and September 1 or the long weekend in September. That is a conditional amount of money that they are actually giving, as I have pointed out.
What does it actually mean? A couple of my colleagues did some math on that issue. If we think about it, the carbon tax is 17.6¢ a litre. The gas tax is 10¢ a litre. If we add the GST to it, that gives us just under 29¢ a litre. If we look at $670 and do the math, that means an individual would have to use 3,293 litres. When we average things out, in terms of what the average person drives, in terms of a gas vehicle or a gas engine, it works out to approximately 37,000 kilometres.
As has been pointed out, whether by the deputy House leader or the Minister of Environment earlier today, who I thought did a fantastic job in explaining it to the official opposition, one could literally, if there were a highway between the North Pole and the South Pole, visit the polar bears at the North Pole, and then drive all the way down and visit the penguins at the South Pole, and still have thousands of kilometres to be able to drive. If one did all of that driving, then one would benefit from that $670.
I do not know how much of a benefit that is, because people are going to pay a whole lot more on the gas in order to achieve that $670 amount, yet Conservatives seem to think that this is a sound policy. That does not say anything about the policy that the Conservatives do not have in regard to our environment. On the one hand, their understanding of basic arithmetic seems to be really off, I would suggest. As was suggested by the Minister of Environment and others, the Conservatives need to get that calculator fixed or go back to some AI or maybe do a bit of a Google search on it. At the end of the day, their math just does not add up. If one takes a look at those who would actually benefit from it, I would suggest that it is a very small percentage of people.
If we factor in those individuals who do not drive, which is a fairly significant percentage of our population, there is absolutely zero benefit for them, yet the Conservatives go around saying that they are going to give a $670 break to people this summer. Just do not ask them to explain it because the moment they have to explain it, I suspect they would be lucky if 10% of Canadians would actually benefit from it in any way, and that is being somewhat generous with the numbers.
What about the impact in terms of the environment itself? I would suggest that it reinforces something that Canadians already know, and it is that the Conservative Party of Canada does not have a climate policy. There are still members of the Conservative/Reform caucus who are climate deniers. I still remember a resolution, not that long ago, that passed within the Conservative annual meeting that denied the existence of climate change.
There are genuine concerns, and we wait with bated breath until we can actually hear something of substance. The last time we actually heard something was two or three leaders ago, when Erin O'Toole was the leader of the Conservative Party. He made it very clear to Canadians that Canada needs to have a price on pollution, and he came up with a plan, but he was not alone.
Stephen Harper actually had a plan for a price on pollution, too. He did not do a good job in implementing it, but he did have a plan. The thing that Stephen Harper and Erin O'Toole had in common was that they both believed in a price on pollution. In fact, for the Conservative candidates in the last election, all they need to do is open up their platform book, and they will see that they supported a price on pollution, but unlike Erin O'Toole or Stephen Harper, the far-right Conservative Party today, which I see as more of a Reform party, to be honest, are so far to the right that they do not believe in things such as climate change.
The environment is not something that they have truly demonstrated any interest in dealing with when it comes to public policy. They are more interested in the flashy bumper sticker, even though that bumper sticker is misleading Canadians. That is truly unfortunate because young and old alike understand the importance of our environment. Constituents, not only mine but also 80% plus of all Canadians, are getting a net benefit with the carbon rebate.