Mr. Speaker, sadly, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, time and time again despite its promises, the reality of what is actually happening here in Ottawa is the polar opposite. Before the Prime Minister came into office, he said he was going to have the most transparent and accountable government Canadians had ever seen. Fast-forward nine years, and it has never been worse. The open-by-default promise the Prime Minister made is blown and completely decimated.
Here we are again, with months and months of a continued, in this case, carbon tax, cover-up, where the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer has been gagged. He is not able to provide to the public, not only the House but all Canadians, the real numbers and the real facts on the impacts and the proof of the negative impacts of the carbon tax plan currently under way and set to expand significantly and make life even more unaffordable in the coming years.
We see the reality on the ground every day, regardless of what part of the country someone comes from. Food bank use has skyrocketed; two million Canadians are using a food bank in one month. Even with the increase so bad, it is expected that a million more visits will be made to food banks in Canada this year alone. Canadians are going to pay $700 more on their grocery bill in 2024. Every metric with respect to trying to make life more affordable, to give Canadians some relief, is getting worse, not better, the longer the Liberals are in office.
Here are the games the Liberals tried to play and failed miserably on today. For months, we have called on the Liberals to allow the Parliamentary Budget Officer to table the full report that he has been gagged about. He cannot speak about it. He cannot make it public. He cannot show Canadians the facts we all know on the ground but that would be proven through the work that he has done.
Just as we started to debate our opposition motion on document production, which would order the government to release the full report and show all the homework today, the Liberals played a game. They tabled, to the CBC of all places, spreadsheets, bits and parts of the report, in an attempt to say, “Here you go; here's the information.”
Like everything with the Prime Minister, and everything that the Liberals do these days, propped up of course by the NDP, we cannot trust the Liberals, and rightfully so. They have earned that reputation after nine years here in Ottawa.
What the data has shown so far today confirmed what Conservatives have been saying all along and what millions of Canadians are feeling in their communities in the past couple of years. The government plans to quadruple the carbon tax on the price of gas and diesel in the coming years to 61¢ a litre, with the first carbon tax, the second carbon tax being brought in, and of course the tax they taxed with GST as well.
The report and the numbers that we have seen so far today show just how devastating it will be. There will be a $30-billion hit to the Canadian economy in the coming years. It is a massive hit to our GDP, our economic growth, our potential and our engine that is already stalling under the current NDP-Liberal regime.
What does that mean? Every Canadian family, with the Liberal carbon tax plan, not just at the rates that they are at but with the plan to drastically increase them, will be hit by $1,800 per year just from the carbon tax. This is at a time when Canadians are already hurting, at a time when our federal deficits are endless, with no plans to balance the budget, and at a time when Canadians desperately need more houses but fewer houses are getting built. Everything the Liberals touch is broken. Everything they touch gets worse. The more solutions and photo ops they claim to do, the worse it gets for Canadians.
Here we go. The government has known for months just how devastating the carbon tax is, and for months it has just blocked it from even being talked about. They gag the Parliamentary Budget Officer. They claim the carbon tax is so great and people are further ahead after all the carbon tax money the government collects is redistributed.
If it is so true and if that is correct, why are the Liberals hiding the report? Why do they not table the full documentation with the report and everything included, not just the morning of? Finally, when they get backed into a corner, when they know they have to do something, they do not do the right thing and produce everything; they sliver off something and give it to the CBC the morning of and try to say that their work is done.
We see the first part. We see the $30-billion-a-year hole it is going to blow in our GDP and in our Canadian economy when the carbon tax gets even larger on the price of gas and on home heating, driving up the cost of everything. It is endless how much the carbon tax impacts Canadians: the price of gas for families to go around on their own and the price of diesel for trucking companies to transport food, furniture, goods and supplies. The carbon tax is driving up the cost there as well. In aviation, there is a carbon tax on plane fuel, and airlines use tens of billions of litres. The government is driving up the cost of every mode of transportation and driving up the cost of living.
Therefore we need full accountability, not the game the Liberals tried to play today of tabling something minutes after debate started and saying that it is enough. It is not enough. Canadians are sick and tired of the games the Liberals play. They were sick and tired when the Prime Minister bragged about the line “open by default” and said that the government would just share all the information and let the chips lie down. Now the government is blocking.
I have never seen this. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has a report and would like to make it public. He has both hands tied behind his back, and backbench Liberal MPs are taking shots at him. There is a report that can vindicate the good, independent work that this public servant is doing. The Liberal government has gagged him, and then it played the game this morning of tabling only selective pieces: some Excel spreadsheets and numbers, not the full picture.
It is important that Canadians see the full report, not only the report or the numbers that the Liberals tried to show today. They need to show their homework. They need to provide their sources. The Parliamentary Budget Officer needs the ability to show the work that he did and how he got to the numbers showing just how devastating the carbon tax is, the economic vandalism that is going to be further exacerbated the more the carbon tax goes up.
On this side, we are going to be very clear. The entire House, the Bloc, the NDP, the Greens, the Liberals and everybody must allow full transparency, when it comes to the work of the Parliamentary Budget Officer in the report, so in my remaining time I would like to move an amendment, just so we are clear to Canadians and in the vote that will be taking place this evening.
I move:
That the motion be amended by replacing the words “provided that it” with the following: “, together with any bilingual memoranda or other briefing materials prepared in relation to this analysis, provided that these documents”.
It is time for full transparency. It is time for all of the information. Allow the Parliamentary Budget Officer to be ungagged and show all of his homework, and let Canadians see just how devastating life is after the carbon tax and after nine years of the Liberal-NDP government.