Debates of June 13th, 2024

Opposition Motion—Government's Economic Analysis on Carbon Pricing

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thought the member's intervention was interesting. The area that I represent is a rainforest, and we have seen a drought like we have never seen before, to the point that even during the very rainy winter season when we gather up a lot of that wetness, we just did not see that. We continued to be in a drought into the winter season, which was quite concerning to me.

I hear from the Conservatives this vague idea of having a technological solution to climate change, but I am wondering if there is any particular example of what that actually means, because it is very vague, and it would be great for us to have a better understanding of what their plan is.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleague to come to southeastern Saskatchewan and visit a carbon capture and sequestration plant. There are tons of examples of what has legitimately been done in Saskatchewan. I was proud to be part of the government that brought in the world's first scalable carbon capture and sequestration plant, which has been working wonderfully. It has taken the equivalent of millions of cars off the roads in terms of pollution, which is one reason to use technology over taxes. It worked well and cleaned up our environment.

Other manufacturers will continue to use carbon capture. Evraz is looking at doing it. With the upgrader, the Co-op Refinery is looking at doing it. If Liberals would just take their heads out of the sand and look at the technology, there would see a lot of examples in Saskatchewan. They have beneficial effects on the environment, unlike a tax plan such as the Liberals' carbon tax.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak about a very important topic, which is the Liberal-NDP government's almost religious dedication to the carbon tax, where they ignore the impact it is having on Canadians right across this country. Listening to most of the debate today, I find it interesting that the overarching message from the Liberal government is that Canadians have never had it so good and that paying the carbon tax is a benefit to Canadians.

As I was sitting here only a few minutes ago, going through my Gmail account, I received an ad from the Ottawa Food Bank. It is desperately asking for help because 490,000 visitors are expected this summer, with 40% of them children. If Canadians were really benefiting so much from the Liberal carbon tax, then why are food banks right across Canada talking about visits and demand being up more than 50%? Food banks are unable to meet demand and are asking for donations and volunteers while we see families, many of them first-time users, now using the food bank. It is quite hypocritical for Liberals to say that Canadians have never had it so good when we see record lines at the food bank.

I do not know why the Liberals are being so coy with the economic analysis of their carbon tax. They refused to table those documents; they actually muzzled the parliamentary watchdog and did not allow him to table that document. If the Liberals are so proud of the impact the carbon tax is having on everyday Canadians, they should be more than happy to table those documents here in the House and brag about the impact it is having. By their metrics, the carbon tax has never been more successful. If their goal is to ensure that Canadians cannot put gas in their car, cannot afford to put food on the table and cannot afford to heat their homes, the Liberal carbon tax is doing exactly what they wanted. Certainly, many Canadians will not be able to afford a summer vacation. If those are the metrics of success, then they are to be congratulated.

The carbon tax has caused an unaffordability crisis right across this country, and Canadians have had enough. If the Liberal members of Parliament and their NDP and Bloc partners can honestly say that their constituents are telling them to please keep racking up the carbon tax, because they are enjoying seeing their grocery bill go up $700 this month or their fuel go up 61¢ a litre, they are delusional. Otherwise, they are misleading the House to say this is the message they are getting.

Liberals are saying their documents prove that what the Parliamentary Budget Officer was saying was incorrect. I want to mention what the Parliamentary Budget Officer said when he was being harangued by the member of Parliament for Whitby, who put his foot in his mouth trying to challenge the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The Parliamentary Budget Officer was adamant, and he said that the overall conclusions were that the vast majority of households are worse off with a carbon pricing scheme regime than without. He was confident this would remain, based on preliminary analysis and discussions with government officials and stakeholders.

That is a pretty damning statement. The Parliamentary Budget Officer's job is to analyze government legislation and policy, yet the Liberal government is trying to say there is nothing to see here. It says that Canadians have never had it so good and are quite pleased with what is going on.

The Liberals were under relentless pressure not only from the opposition but also, I would argue, from Canadians right across this country. They demanded to see the documents the Liberals refused to table, which highlighted the economic impact of their carbon tax. After it was tabled today, I can see now why the Liberal government was so anxious about tabling those documents. The documents show that the carbon tax steals $30 billion from the Canadian economy every single year. It is costing every Canadian household close to $2,000 every year. I am not sure where their argument would come from when they take $2,000 out of the pockets of Canadian taxpayers and give them back a little, which does not come close to what is being taken by the carbon tax.

Initially, the government's argument was that the carbon tax was going to be revenue-neutral. We have gone from revenue-neutral to the vast majority of Canadians being worse off with the carbon tax than they are getting the phony rebates. That shows how far this has come since 2016. The government keeps having to change the story about Canadians being maybe a little bit better off; we now know the exact impact. This is devastating to Canadians and increases prices right across the supply chain and on just about everything Canadians do.

I know that the Liberals have talked quite a bit today about these 300 economists, these 300 Liberal elites who are supportive of the carbon tax. Unlike the Liberal government and their NDP cohorts, I know that on this side of the house, Conservatives are not listening to 300 Liberal elite academic economists. We are listening to our constituents. We are listening to Canadians, who have a very different point of view of the impact the carbon tax is having on their everyday lives.

I want to quote from a letter I received the other day from a small business owner in Bragg Creek, Alberta, one of my constituents. This is quite common in the letters I am getting every single day. It reads:

As the owner of a heating company operating in rural Alberta, I hear every day from my customers how [the Prime Minister's] carbon tax has forced them to make the decision weather to “heat or eat” and how the hike on April 1st is only going to force them into deeper and deeper poverty.... The fact that anyone in this great [country] has to live impoverished is already distasteful, the Liberal government seems to take pleasure in our suffering.

The same is true for businesses. Especially rural businesses. We are barely staying above water as it is.... We need...the government [to] release the [small business] carbon tax rebate.”

Where is the rebate small business owners were promised? He has not seen it.

I have dozens of these letters. I know my Conservative colleagues across this floor have similar ones.

As the shadow minister for agriculture and agri-food, I would certainly be remiss if I did not talk about the impact this is having on Canadian food production. I know we have said this many times in the House, but when one taxes the farmer who grows the food, the trucker who ships it, the manufacturer who processes it and the retailer who sells it, there is no question that the Canadian consumer is going to be paying for that carbon tax at the grocery store shelf when they go to buy that food.

The Agriculture Carbon Alliance did a study. It took a number of farmers from across Canada and asked them to give it their carbon tax bill for the one month when it was at its highest. Fifty sample farms paid a total of $329,644 in carbon tax in one month. That was before the April 1 increase of 23%. In Alberta alone, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Alberta farmers paid $17 million in carbon taxes last year just on natural gas and propane. That was to dry their grain and heat and cool their livestock barns. This year, Alberta farmers will pay $20 million in carbon taxes. By 2030, that number will be $209 million. Again, according to the PBO, whom the Liberals tried to muzzle, in Ontario, farmers paid $44 million last year in carbon taxes just in natural gas and propane. After the increase, Ontario farmers will be paying $53 million in carbon taxes. By 2030, that total will be $566 million in carbon taxes. One farm in Simcoe—Grey paid $25,000 in carbon taxes in one month.

There is no way that farmers can be economically viable under the pressure of those costs. Now the Liberals want to add a capital gains tax hike on those farmers, something that the Minister of Agriculture had no idea was actually going to be in the budget. We know that this policy is going to be devastating to succession planning for Canadian farmers and young farmers trying to get into the business. How is it possible that the Minister of Agriculture did not know about this pillar of the Liberal budget?

In conclusion, it is crystal clear that the Liberals were trying to hide the real data from Canadians; this is going to cost Canadians more than $30 billion a year and almost $2,000 per household. That is insurmountable. The Minister of Environment should resign, and the Minister of Agriculture should not be too far behind.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, I am sitting here reading data from a School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, economist Trevor Tombe. This is not coming from the Liberal government; it is coming from an economist in the hon. member's hometown:

“We find that carbon taxes increase air transport costs by about 0.9 per cent. We find that food in B.C is only 0.3 per cent more expensive as a result of carbon taxes and clothing, only 0.2 per cent.”

The paper says if Canada eliminated the carbon tax as a whole, consumers would likely not see a lot of extra cash in their pockets.

“All in, we estimate that the changes in carbon taxes affect consumer prices today by only 0.6 per cent”.

Does the hon. member believe Mr. Tombe, an economist from the University of Calgary?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, as much as I respect the member for Malpeque, questions like that say why it is a Conservative safe gain if that is the message he is giving his constituents.

I will point out that the Caring Cupboard food bank in P.E.I. has seen an increase in food bank usage of 70%. The food bank operators are out there asking for people to step up and help. Those are the member's constituents; therefore I would ask him to go back to his constituents and say, “Hey, I do not know why people need to use the food bank, but we are going to increase the carbon tax another 23%. Have a great summer.”

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is quite fascinating. When I was elected, I was advised to always try to tell the truth, especially in the House, and in parliamentary committee. I was told to just try to tell the truth, to talk about the facts. We have been debating the carbon tax for months now, and what the Conservatives have been saying is nonsense. First, they refuse to accept the idea that the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. It simply does not apply.

In response to a question at the Standing Committee on Finance, Bank of Canada representatives said that it applied indirectly to products transported from, say, Winnipeg to Quebec. The financial impact on consumers, as calculated by the Bank of Canada, is 0.02%. Basically, out of $100,000, that is a difference of $20. To hear my Conservative colleagues say that the carbon tax in Quebec is what is causing lineups at food banks is completely absurd.

I would like my colleague to comment on that.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, I do not know where the out-of-touch positioning comes from, wherein the Liberals want to say that food inflation is up less than 1%. One just has to go to a grocery store. We know that the cost of bread is up almost 30%. We know the cost of produce, in many cases, is up 25%.

The “food professor” from Dalhousie University, who is an expert on this, said that as a result of the carbon tax and other Liberal policy, wholesale food prices are up 54%. He suggested the Liberals cap the carbon tax and not increase it on April 23, but they did so anyway. The facts are clear: Carbon tax is driving up food prices.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am going to pile on a bit like the member from the Liberal Party and the member from the Bloc have done.

The member started by talking about the cost of food. Trevor Tombe from the University of Calgary was somebody we witnessed. I have read articles in the National Post, which I think we can all agree is hardly a left-wing socialist rag, that have said that actually the carbon tax does not impact the price of food to nearly the extent the member is saying. It is minuscule.

In Alberta, the cost of groceries is out of control. In fact food insecurity in Alberta is at 20% higher than in the rest of the country, under the UCP government. I am wondering how the member keeps wanting us all to believe a fact-free zone, when economists, journalists and members of Parliament have made it very clear that the carbon tax is not what is responsible for the cost of food increasing so much. Corporate greed is responsible for that, and the Conservative Party voted against the NDP plan to stop corporate greed from taking more dollars from Canadians.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question, but the member just said herself that food prices are higher than they have ever been. It is just a coincidence then that the carbon tax has gone up 23%. The government is increasing taxes on farmers, truckers, processors, manufacturers, grocery store retailers, every other part of the supply chain, fertilizer and feed. All of those things have gone up because of the carbon tax, but it is just a coincidence that food prices are also at a record high.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the member for Berthier—Maskinongé.

We are here today to discuss the Conservatives' opposition day motion. It is not hard to guess what today's topic of discussion will be. For at least a year, I cannot recall a single Conservative opposition day that addressed anything but the carbon tax. Generally, when another party has an opposition day, we wonder what the next day's debate will be about. We do research, we discuss it and we look forward to finding out the topic. For the Conservatives, however, it never changes, it is always the carbon tax. It is like an obsession. For them, oil is a religion. Any interference with that and they lose their minds.

More specifically, today's motion seeks to uncover more information about the impact of carbon pricing on the national and provincial GDP for the period from 2022 to 2030. Essentially, the Department of the Environment did the calculations and submitted them to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Projections were made to determine what the impact of carbon pricing might be. The Conservatives were outraged because the government ordered the Parliamentary Budget Officer not to disclose these documents.

To everyone's surprise, five minutes before today's session, the Liberals decided to unveil the famous documents that they did not want the Parliamentary Budget Officer to unveil. With the Conservatives' motion now moot, they had to come up with a new angle of attack. They had a look at the documents and examined the numbers. To their eyes, it was catastrophic: The impact on the GDP is expected to be about $30 billion by 2030.

One member, who thought he was pretty clever, came to tell us this would be a big deal for Quebec. We have been saying for months that the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. For the longest time, the Conservatives did not seem to get it, but eventually they understood. They understood and changed their tune.

Now they are back at it after finding one row. I know which row it is. It is row 17, column AN. The file tab is labelled “Grrowth_GDP_pivot”.

That was like the holy grail for them. They were pretty proud of their coup. The number on row 17 is $5 billion, so when they saw “Quebec” and “2030”, the Conservatives concluded that the carbon tax would cost Quebec $5 billion.

I wondered about a few things when I saw that, so I had a look at the document, which is an Excel spreadsheet. I looked at the estimated effect of the infamous carbon tax in 2030. The figure for Alberta is $4.9 billion. The figure for British Columbia is $3.5 billion. The figure for Saskatchewan is $1.2 billion, and the figure for Ontario is $8 billion. The figure for Quebec is $5.25 billion.

I had to wonder. The figure for Quebec is $5.25 billion, but the carbon tax does not apply there, so these are all indirect effects of the carbon tax. Quebec will therefore have more indirect effects from the carbon tax than Alberta as a whole. That is what the Conservatives are saying.

I do not know if the Conservatives have thought about this, but there may be another hypothesis, another possible explanation for that much-touted figure. The document provides an explanation, in the preamble, but it seems that the Conservatives may have been too lazy to read it. The document states that this is basically a theoretical model. It is based on the cost of the carbon tax and GDP growth over time. This is then applied to all sorts of calculations, taking into account greenhouse gas emissions by sector, to show the impact it would have in each of the provinces.

That is the effect that it would have in each of the provinces if the carbon tax applied everywhere. The thing is that the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. It is as simple as that. The Conservatives have been lying through their teeth all day. They have gone all out. Basically, ordinary citizens need to start realizing what is happening. The Conservatives think that this will all go off without a hitch, that no one will ask any questions. They are talking about the $5 billion in column AN for Quebec and saying that it is settled until 2030. They are saying that that is the impact of the carbon tax in Quebec, when in actual fact, the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. It will never apply in Quebec because Quebec uses the carbon exchange model, so this $5 billion they keep talking about does not exist. It is hypothetical and comes from a fictional, theoretical model in an Excel spreadsheet. That is where it comes from. It is as simple as that.

One question comes to my mind when I see all this. It took me five minutes of looking the Excel spreadsheet to figure it out. The Conservatives are the official opposition. They have a research team. They want to form the next government, yet they are being sloppy and behaving like amateurs. They think people will swallow anything. The Conservatives want to govern a G7 country, but they cannot even read an Excel file and some documents. Nevertheless, they take themselves seriously and think that people will trust them. That is just sad.

The moral of this story about the Conservatives trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes is that their fearmongering must never be believed. Basically, they failed to prove that the carbon tax would be a disaster for Quebec's economy. No, all they proved was their shocking bad faith. That is all they proved. They have shown that they will say anything and everything to fool people into believing their cockamamie stories. They think people are stupid. The good news is that they have been caught in the act. The Conservatives can huff and puff all they like, but what they say does not matter.

The fact is, the real carbon tax that Quebeckers pay is all the lovely subsidies the Liberal government hands out to oil companies. The Liberals blew $35 billion on the Trans Mountain pipeline. In the last two budgets, they shelled out $83 billion in carbon capture tax credits so oil companies could pump even more oil out of the ground. Who pays for all that? Ordinary people. It impacts their bottom line. It is a lot of money. Ordinary people foot the bill, but the Conservatives and Liberals will never talk about that. Instead, the Liberals finance oil companies with our tax dollars. It is downright scandalous. Quebec needs to get out of this country now. Canada needs to stop using Quebec taxpayers' money to finance oil companies and pollution.

The good news is that the train has already left the station in Quebec. No matter how worked up the Conservatives get or how much they huff and puff, the reality is that there are already 275,000 electric cars on the road in Quebec. The reality is that one in four cars sold in Quebec is a zero-emission car. The reality is that by 2030, gas-powered vehicles will no longer even be sold in Quebec. The Conservatives are panicking. The reality is that, sooner or later, Quebec is going to separate. Quebec will be independent and we will finally be free from the lies we keep hearing from the Conservatives, the Liberals and all federalists. All they do all day long is try to scare us out of moving forward as a nation, to prevent us from doing what we need to do to fulfill our destiny.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to hear that my colleague opposite understands math better than the Conservatives do.

It is odd that the Conservatives are saying that doing away with the carbon tax, or rather the price on pollution, will put more money in Canadians' pockets when, on the contrary, many economists and experts of all kinds are saying that the carbon tax is putting more money in Canadians' pockets. I would like to hear my colleague's comments on that. I would also like him to tell us how doing away with the carbon tax would set back the fight against climate change.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

To be perfectly honest, I did not really examine the effect the carbon tax has on all Canadians, and I did not calculate how much money does or does not end up back in their pockets, because it simply does not apply in Quebec.

The Conservatives do not seem to understand that, because they insist on discussing the carbon tax on every one of their opposition days, even though it does not apply in Quebec. Every opposition day, they show how little they care about Quebec, they ignore Quebec. Then they wonder why they are not making any headway there and why they have never had more than 10 MPs in Quebec since 2004. Sometimes they have no MPs at all; other times, they have five. It could also be because they do not talk about Quebec or care about it. All they care about is oil.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, I find my Bloc Québécois colleague's comments a bit sad.

He said that this carbon tax does not affect Quebec because it does not apply there, but the fact is, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it is costing Canada more than $30 billion per year, and that does have an impact on Quebec. We are also seeing a significant decline in quality of life, and people's earnings are going down year by year.

Does the Bloc member not realize that his party's support for the Liberals is having negative repercussions on both Canada and Quebec?

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Madam Speaker, what I find sad is the Conservatives' total lack of intellectual integrity. That is what I find sad.

All day, they have been saying that the tax will have a $5‑billion impact on Quebec, but that is utterly false. That $5 billion does not exist. It will never exist. It is a number in an Excel spreadsheet, and they know perfectly well that it does not apply to Quebec. All they wanted to do was lead us down the garden path.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member's speech made a lot of sense to me, and I have not heard that from every speech in the House today. I wanted to express my appreciation for that.

One of the things that concerns me, and I think we share this concern, is that the loopholes in the carbon pricing system mean that oil and gas companies are paying a tiny fraction of the cost of their pollution. We know, for example, that Suncor only pays one-fourteenth of the full carbon price.

I am just wondering if he shares that concern about seeing a lot of money going toward these oil and gas companies as they are making huge profits and not really respecting everyday Canadians.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague raises a good point.

She asked me whether I am concerned about so much money ending up in the oil companies' coffers. My answer is yes, absolutely. The government is taking our tax dollars and sending them to the oil companies.

Here are some figures on oil company profits in 2023.

Suncor made $2.8 billion in profits. Imperial Oil made $4.9 billion. Enbridge made $5.8 billion. Shell made $28 billion.

How could we not feel sorry for them? Those companies really need our money. I think we have the answer to that question.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

A brief question, only.

The hon. Minister of Environment.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Minister of Environment and Climate Change]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for his many very relevant answers to questions.

I would like to ask him the following question.

The claim is that this will cost the Canadian economy $25 million, but that does not take into account the annual benefits of investments made in the fight against climate change. That figure is $25 billion a year now. It also does not take into account the costs associated with climate change that will be avoided between now and 2030. That figure is $23 billion a year.

Would that not add up to two, almost three times as much as the Conservatives claim?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The response will have to be brief.

The hon. member for Pierre‑Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Madam Speaker, my response will be very brief.

The minister just raised a good point. However, I also wonder about the cost of all these tax credits that the Liberal government is offering to the oil companies and all these subsidies in terms of the impact on climate change.

That is information that we would very much like to have. Perhaps our next opposition day could be on that issue.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my hon. colleague from Pierre‑Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, who set the bar high, as usual. When we, the members of the Bloc Québécois, share our speaking time with each other, we always want to go first because we are all good and that puts pressure on the next person. I will try to make sure my speech is as good as my colleague's.

Today's motion is indeed repetitive, as my colleague mentioned, but it is quite simple. It calls for information. It is too bad that I cannot address the minister directly to ask him the question. I hope he will ask me or that he will want to participate in the exchange, but the first question that I will raise in the House is the following. Why did it take this motion for the document to be released? That bothers me tremendously.

What I find the most difficult about politics is not the long hours, the travel or the documenting work. It is working with so many elected officials who are not always working for the common good or who do not always seem to be doing so. There is a lot of partisanship in political parties in general. One might wonder why the Liberal Party did not make this study public. Is it because it confused its electoral interests with the interests of the public? I am throwing that question out there because it is important and because we have a responsibility here. However, not everyone lives up to that responsibility.

Today is another Conservative opposition day on the carbon tax where we are hearing nonsense. Earlier, a member even referred to the line of the report that gives the projected impact the federal carbon tax would have in 2030, if it applied in Quebec. The cost would be $5 billion. That number was used in question period today and members said that Quebec was losing $5 billion every year. What is that if not a cheap populist approach? I would invite parliamentarians to elevate the debate and show some discipline.

They got the documents. Now, they want something else, they want the notes and the emails. What will they then do with those? That question deserves some thought, considering how the tables obtained today were used. In very short order, the information in the documents was cherry picked rather than subjected to serious analysis. What would happen with the emails and briefing notes? It is a worthwhile question.

I want to reassure everyone, however, that the Bloc Québécois has always supported transparency, and that we are not afraid of information. We want to know how measures like the federal carbon tax will affect the environment, even though the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. We know that we are here, in the federal Parliament and that we are called upon to deal with things happening in the other provinces now and then. That is fine. We have to know the repercussions.

However, we should also find out how much it costs not having measures in place. How much does insurance cost? In recent years, the cost of insurance has risen by tens of billions of dollars. There have been increases of over $30 billion. Do the claims for natural disasters not cost anything? I did not realize that. The floods and torrential rains that affected our farming operations, did that not cost anything?

Many businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy. This week I received a delegation of produce growers. According to what these Quebec strawberry and raspberry producers were telling me, dozens of members have announced that they will not be farming this year, because they lost too much last year and the government programs are not working.

They are now telling themselves that climate change is not going to stop, because there is a group of real winners promising to abolish the measures that can help mitigate climate change. It is rather astonishing. That same group of winners actually includes a decent number of elected representatives in Quebec, who agree to speak 9.5 times out of 10 on measures that do not apply to their constituents. That is what amazes me the most.

For a year I have been watching members from Quebec rise in the House and get all worked up over the big bad federal government, over the carbon tax. They say that our farmers are suffering. That does not apply in Quebec. Are they not supposed to be working for their constituents? I keep asking questions. I do nothing but ask questions.

To inform my Conservative colleague who is rising while I am in the middle of making a speech and who seems to be unaware, Quebec is covered by a carbon pricing system called the carbon exchange in association with California. This represents a much bigger market than Canada can offer, by the way. These measures are very effective. What we are seeing in Quebec is that having those measures ends up being less expensive for people and is having an impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Maybe the people in the other provinces who are unhappy with the big bad federal carbon tax should look at what Quebec has put in place, as they are doing on child care and as they want to do on dental care and on pharmacare. Let us look at what Quebec has been doing since 2014. We are still ahead on this. Let us look at what Quebec has done and how this has affected Quebeckers. Maybe some will wish they got on board at the time, but no, because these people want pollution to be free.

I have a lot to say. I am going to run out of time again. However, I want to raise one important point today, concerning the much-touted Bill C‑234. We, the Bloc Québécois, agreed to support this bill even though it did not apply in Quebec. We did so because we thought it seemed reasonable to give people who produce food credits for grain drying and for certain buildings. The bill came back from the Senate in early January. My first speech in 2024 was about Bill C‑234. It had come back with amendments. Instead of returning it to the Senate and having it come back or not come back, or leaving it stuck there without making any progress, we thought that since it had something to offer grain farmers, that it could give them the credit for drying grain, we should support it. I understand the Conservatives' reaction. They initially said no because they wanted the bill to stay in its original form. That is fine; it is part of the debate. However, once the debate ends, voting has to follow.

Now, I am going to talk about hypocrisy. It is June. We are coming up to the summer adjournment and we still have not voted on Bill C-234. As I said earlier, the first speech that I gave in early January was about this bill. Sometimes bills stall in the Senate, but that is normally not the case in the House of Commons. How does someone stall a bill? It is easy. Every time the government wants to put it back on the agenda, people keep rising to fill the time so that we cannot finish the debate and can never vote on the bill. One has to wonder why the Conservatives would want to avoid voting on their own bill. It is because they are getting political mileage out of it. They talk about the bill at least 12 times a day. If we do not vote on the bill, then they can call the government incompetent, unfair and mean. However, they could vote on the bill now and give grain farmers the credit next fall.

I hope there are farmers listening, and I hope they realize that their Conservative MPs are working in the interest of getting themselves elected, not in the interest of our farmers. That really irks me. It grates on me. It gets under my skin when MPs put their energy into scoring political points, posting clips on social media and launching fundraising campaigns. They are raising money. The people who donate that money do not have all the information. I just gave them all the information. The people who are up in arms about the carbon tax are currently blocking Bill C‑234. So much for integrity. So much for noble intentions to help our farmers.

Earlier, I heard a member say that this is why grocery prices have gone up. We know there are all kinds of reasons for that. As my colleagues said earlier, the impact on Quebec is minimal. Yes, inflation is high, and there are other reasons for that. The member stands to answer questions, and he says the answer is no, it is the carbon tax. He can say that a dozen times, but that will never make it true. I would like MPs to be a little more diligent. Let us get serious about working for the common good. I think that would be a good thing.

[Han Dong, Independent, Don Valley North, ON]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order. I apologize for the interruption.

I missed the earlier vote on the third reading of Bill C-70. I humbly ask for the unanimous consent of the House to allow my vote to be recorded as in favour.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Madam Speaker, I completely agree with my colleague about making the carbon tax discussion partisan.

I am really quite disappointed with the Bloc Québécois and how they think this does not impact them and does not impact the people of Quebec. The carbon tax knows no boundaries, just like carbon emissions. People from Quebec still have to buy energy from other provinces, other entities, actually. When farmers have to buy propane from Ontario, they have to pay a carbon tax. This is directly impacting the people in Quebec.

I wish to God they would understand that, and that this has a very severe impact on farmers right across the country, including in Quebec.