Debates of June 13th, 2024

Questions on the Order Paper

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Opposition Motion—Government's Economic Analysis on Carbon Pricing

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved:

That an order of the House do issue to the government for a copy of the government's economic analysis on the impact of the federal fuel charge and the output-based pricing system referenced in the response to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's information request IR0776, provided that it shall be laid upon the table, in both official languages and without redaction, no later than Monday, June 17, 2024.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Today being the last allotted day for the supply period ending June 23, the House will proceed as usual to the consideration and passage of the appropriation bills. In view of recent practices, do hon. members agree that the bills be distributed now?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member for Carleton.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, the common-sense Conservative.

We just learned, moments ago, that the government has been keeping a $20-billion secret. Common-sense Conservatives have been demanding that the government release the real cost of the carbon tax, after the Parliamentary Budget Officer revealed that there was a report the government had been covering up and that he was gagged from releasing the report about the actual cost to Canadians. Now, because common-sense Conservatives brought forward this motion before the House, and because of our relentless questioning and the pressure that is weighing heavily on Liberal MPs, the government has finally relented and has released part of the information. It had to be pulled out like a rotten tooth, and rotten it is.

It is $20 billion per year in lost GDP, as a result of the carbon tax. That works out to $1,200 per family in extra annual costs for Canadians. Twenty billion dollars for 17 million families is $1,200 a family in higher costs that the Prime Minister has been covering up. Not once, in any tables that he released, which claimed that Canadians were somehow better off with the carbon tax and rebate, did the Prime Minister include these economic costs that he knew existed, because he wanted to continue to spread the falsehood. He wanted to tell Canadians that paying more for gas, heat and groceries would make them better off, just like he claimed that raising their income tax would make the middle class better off. Ninety per cent of middle-class income taxpayers are paying more now than they were paying nine years ago when he promised to cut their taxes.

Yesterday, we tested the Liberals' claim that only the $800,000-a-year investment banker, who is in the top 0.13%, would pay this new job-killing tax on home builders, farmers, small business owners and health care workers. We tested it by simply saying that if that were the case, the Liberals would amend their bill to say that anybody who is part of the 99.87% of the population would be excluded from any new capital gains taxes. The minister refused to do that because we all know that it would be plumbers, electricians, carpenters, farmers, small business owners and restaurant owners who would pay this Liberal tax increase.

What we are coming to understand is that we cannot believe a word the Prime Minister says about money or about taxes because at the end of the day, he has an insatiable appetite for other people's money. He wants to stuff the face of his morbidly obese government with the hard-earned tax dollars of working-class Canadians, and he has the full support of the greedy NDP to do it. The New Democrats believe that the people's money is their money, and they are here for one purpose: to help the Prime Minister vacuum up every single nickel that hard-working Canadians, including entrepreneurs, earn on the ground.

Common-sense Conservatives are exactly the opposite. People will notice that we take delight in the fact that, in this place, we do not fit in. We stand out as the only party that would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.

The Bloc Québécois voted in favour of a tax hike for Quebec entrepreneurs, farmers, doctors and home builders. According to the Bloc Québécois, Quebeckers should give more of their money to the massive Liberal federal government.

The Liberal Bloc is part of a centralist coalition. We are the only party that wants to allow Quebec entrepreneurs, farmers, doctors and small businesses to keep their money and be masters in their own house.

That is also the case with the Quebec City tramway. This project would cost at least $11 billion, or $28,000 per greater Quebec City family. If those families were asked if they wanted $28,000 or a tramway 10 years from now, I think it would be an easy decision for them. Quebec City residents prefer to have the money in their pocket. They want a third link to connect the two sides of the river.

That is what common sense is all about, and we are the only party that thinks this way. We do not want a white elephant. We want to fix the budget and axe the taxes. That is common sense.

Here we are today with the government again raising taxes and, again, making claims that are demonstrably false when we look at the government's own documents.

When I look at the capital gains issue, first, the government claimed that only 44,000 people would pay. That is a small number. They all live on a hill somewhere. Then, the government admitted that 300,000 separate businesses, most of them small businesses, would pay. Therefore, there are 300,000 businesses, but only 44,000 would pay. I find it hard to believe that each of these 44,000 people own six different businesses. In reality, those 300,000 businesses probably have millions of owners and definitely have millions of employees. All of them would pay the tax.

Then, the government members said that they were very concerned that welders are paying a higher tax rate than investors. We have a National Occupation Classification for a welder. We could say, in the law, that anyone who is a welder, as defined by the National Occupation Classification, is excluded, but the minister would not do that. I said to exclude the NOC for carpenters. She did not want to do that either. Why do we not exclude nurses? Nurses who invest in rental properties or who maybe have a family cottage they may want to sell could be excluded. We could look up the NOC code for nurses, and pop it right into the Income Tax Act. It could say that no nurse would pay that higher tax rate. The government was not willing to do that either.

In fact, we know that, because they want to tax nurses, carpenters, welders and electricians. They want to tax everybody. In fact, I went even further and asked why we do not just exclude everybody who makes less than $120,000 a year. The government did not want to do that either. It turns out that, if none of these people were affected by the tax, the minister should have said that it was easy and that she could have it drafted up this afternoon and could have it put in the bill with no problem, but of course she did not. She knows exactly what she is doing. She is putting her greedy hands in the pockets of working-class people and she is stealing their money, just like she did with the carbon tax, just like the government did when it raised income tax and just like it did in 2017 when it went after our small business tax creators.

The good news is that we have defenders of the taxpayers in this party. The tax fighters are all on this side of the house: the common-sense Conservatives. If someone out there is working hard, has seen their housing costs double, is worried about losing their home and has two or even three jobs just to avoid eviction, they might feel a loss of hope. The good news is that life was not like this before the current Prime Minister and the NDP, and it will not be like this after they are gone.

We are going to bring home the Canada that we knew and that we still love, by axing the tax system, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime. We would once again make this a country where hard work would pay off; where entrepreneurs would be incentivized, rewarded and honoured, not demonized; where we would not turn workers against business owners, but would turn workers into business owners; and where hard work would bring powerful paycheques and pensions that would buy affordable food, gas and homes in safe neighbourhoods.

That is what the common people deserve. The common sense of the common people is united for our common home. It is their home, my home and our home. Let us bring it home.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, what we are seeing here is nothing more than a desperate attempt by Conservatives to deflect from what is really going on.

The Conservative leader brought forward a motion to the House today, and then he barely even spoke to it because he got the data, moments ago, that he had been asking for: not a report, but data. He got all that data, but the data did not fit his narrative, just like we hear the Conservative leader today go on about his new-found desire to be against a capital gains tax. For two months, Conservatives sat silent and would not say a word about it. Their leader would not say a word about the capital gains tax. Now, after two months, we are expected to believe that he has suddenly come to the realization that this is going to be bad for Canadians. No. He is trying to tap into anxieties and fears of Canadians.

What I want to know about this motion is this: What is his plan for the environment? It cannot be more than slogans about technology.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is hard to figure out what part of that meandering, rambling rant to focus on.

Let us start with the two months. The two months that went by was the time during which the minister refused to introduce any bill to actually apply her job-killing tax increase on home building, on houses, on health care, on small businesses and on Canadians. She went two months, and it was not because of some brilliant strategy, but because she did not have any clue what she was doing. She did not know how to write the rules that she had blurted out in her budget. Then, she spent months flipping and flopping behind the scenes, telling doctors, high-tech investors and home builders that they might get an exemption if they were very nice and if their lobbyists sucked up enough. Finally, she introduced a bill, and within a day of its introduction, we stated our position on it. We are against this latest job-killing tax on Canadians.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am always blown away by just how much the Conservative Party leader fancies himself a god who will solve all the problems with his magic wand. I find it fascinating.

First, is the Conservative Party leader able to stop infantilizing Quebeckers about the choice they will make on their mobility?

Second, if one day the Conservative Party leader becomes prime minister, would he commit to giving Quebec the money it needs to be able to make its choices and decide about its mobility for itself? Does he pledge to commit these funds without conditions?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am the only leader who listens to Quebec City residents, 70% of whom oppose the tramway. We know why: It is a big white elephant. It is going to cost $11 billion. That means $28,000 per family in the Quebec City area. That means $28,000 for a project that will not benefit the majority of people.

As far as I am concerned, we should reduce waste, support common-sense projects like a future third link, and fix the budget. This is not magic, as the member suggests, but common sense.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is fascinating that all of Canada is asking about foreign interference and about actually having credible leadership on this, yet we have one leader who either cannot get security clearance or refuses to get security clearance, so he is in here doing another gong show on the same issue, again and again, yet he has not explained to Canadians why he cannot get security clearance.

What kind of leader refuses to understand the threats to our country? I would like to hear from the member for Stornoway.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would call him the member for Timmins—James Bay, but I am not sure he has ever actually been to Timmins. He does not live in his riding and never goes to his riding. People in that community think he is in the witness protection program; that is, if they have heard of him at all. When I last said this in the House of Commons, a week later he decided to turn tail and run. He announced that he was not running again, because he knew very well that the common-sense loggers, miners and farmers were going to fire him in the next election and elect a common-sense Conservative government.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order. I want to remind members that they have had an opportunity to ask questions. They should wait until there are other opportunities. I also want to remind all members not to interrupt.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There are members on both sides of the House who do not seem to want to heed the direction of the Chair. I would ask them to please do so, because it becomes very problematic in the House and it impacts the Orders of the Day.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I think the Liberals think they got ahead of this and cut us off at the pass. However, the fact is that nothing has really changed. The carbon tax cover-up continues, and I will tell everyone why. The Liberals across the aisle have big smiles on their faces, thinking they sure pulled one over on the Conservatives.

I have in my hands the article from the CBC. It says, “CBC filed an access to information request for the unpublished data. [The Minister of the Environment]'s department proactively disclosed the data to CBC and other journalists and posted it online today.” Here is the catch, “CBC's access to information request has not yet been fulfilled.” What else is it about the carbon tax that the government is continuing to hide? Nothing has changed and the Conservative motion is completely in order and appropriate.

We did learn one thing from this article, and that is that the Liberals are going to tax the GDP by $20 billion. It says that the carbon tax, by 2030, is going to cause the GDP to fall by $20 billion, from $2.68 trillion to $2.66 trillion. That is about $1,200 per family across the country.

This is what the Parliamentary Budget Officer said he was really concerned about. This is an exchange from the committee meeting on Monday last week.

I asked him the following question, “Mr. Giroux, in your earlier testimony, you said that you understood that the government had economic analysis on the carbon tax that it has not released. Are you saying that the government has not been transparent with the analysis it has?” His response was, “I mentioned that the government has economic analysis on the impact of the carbon tax itself and the OBPS, the output-based pricing system. We've seen that—staff in my office— but we've been told explicitly not to disclose it and reference it.”

I then asked, “The government has given you their analysis, but they have put a gag on you, basically, saying you can't talk about it.” His response was, “That is my understanding.”

Mr. Giroux went on later to say that the government's analysis confirmed the report that the PBO had already published, and concluded by saying, “That's why I'm comfortable with what we have already published”. In other words, when he said that Canadians are worse off, the government's data confirmed that. I will elaborate on that a little more in a moment.

I followed up with him and asked, “Are you saying the report the government did on the carbon tax, the report that they provided to you, confirms the analysis that you have done on the carbon tax?” Then Mr. Matier, from his office, responded:

Mr. Giroux filed a formal information request to Environment and Climate Change Canada [asking for] the underlying economic impacts related to the emissions reductions that the government published related to carbon pricing back in late March or early April. They provided us with their estimates on real GDP, on labour income, on capital income, and they indicated on the response form that these were confidential and that we could not disclose—

That is the exchange, and so began the carbon tax cover-up, which continues to this moment, notwithstanding the incomplete information that the government has decided to give to the CBC. The Conservatives are going to find out what the rest of that information is, by the way. We are not going to let this go until Canadians know the complete truth about the carbon tax.

The department gave the data to the PBO. The data confirmed his findings, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, that people pay more. The Liberals tried to muzzle him from talking about it. The only reason they released these bits and pieces of data that helped make their case that eight out of 10 people were better off was because the Conservatives put them under relentless pressure and embarrassed them into doing something about it. However, they have made it even worse, because providing part of the truth is, in itself, misleading Canadians. They need to put out the whole story.

When we finally see the report, hopefully after CBC's access to information request is granted, we will see what the Parliamentary Budget Officer is saying. I have no doubt in the veracity of what he is saying, that the government's own data confirms his findings that Canadians pay more in carbon tax than they get back. Those were the PBO's findings.

Fast-forward a year, when the PBO announces that he made a slight error when he prepared his report, but that he does not believe it will change his findings. The Liberals seized on that error, seizing an opportunity to attack his credibility. They attacked the PBO, who is an independent officer of Parliament, which is shameful. In fact, they attacked him in committee, and that is when Mr. Giroux said that he had received government data that confirmed his results.

We do not see that in the CBC article. The government held that information back. It needs to release it. We cannot make this stuff up. On November 4, 2015, the Prime Minister wrote an open letter to Canadians, in which he said that the government needed to be open by default. It is a famous letter and it has been quoted in the House many times. Those were high-sounding words.

The problem is, like most things, that it just was not true. Governments that are open by default do not silence independent officers of Parliament, but that is exactly what the Prime Minister did. The government is still doing it, because the information released does not confirm what the PBO told the committee, which is that Canadians pay more than they get back in rebates. That is the truth, and that is what the government needs to own up to.

For two years now, the Prime Minister has been misleading Canadians. He has been saying that the PBO found that most Canadians would get back more in carbon taxes than they paid. He said it again, by the way, to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities just a few days ago. It was quite a show. The mayors, the reeves and the councillors were at the FCM when the Prime Minister said that eight out of 10 Canadians would get back more than they paid. They started laughing at him. They booed him off the stage. They know, like Canadians know, it is just not true. He knows it—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. deputy House leader knows full well that if he has questions and comments, he should wait until the end. I would ask other members to not engage him, and it is coming from both sides.

The hon. member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley has three minutes remaining.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister was booed off the stage.

Canadians know it is not true. All they have to do is look at their energy bills. They know that when we tax the farmers who grow the food, the truckers who ship the food and the grocers who sell the food, the food costs more. I like to call it trickle-down taxation.

This debate has been raging for two years. The Prime Minister gets up and says that Canadians get more rebates. The PBO says not so fast. When we consider the trickle-down economic effects, Canadians pay more. That is the truth, but do not take it from me. I know the members opposite will not take it from me. We do not even have to take it from the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Members should take it from the Prime Minister. His own deputy minister of Environment did the analysis. He crunched the numbers. He sent the numbers to the PBO, and even under the threat of a gag order, the PBO spoke truth to power. He said in committee, “It confirms the report that we have published...That's why I'm comfortable with what we've already published.”

The Prime Minister, who says he is open by default, knows the truth, that Canadians pay more. He has hidden the facts, stonewalled the opposition and gaslit Canadians for too long. It is time to end the carbon tax cover-up, and that brings me to the point of this motion.

We are asking:

That an order of the House do issue to the government for a copy of the government's economic analysis on the impact of the federal fuel charge and the output-based pricing system referenced in the response to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's information request...provided that it shall be laid upon the table, in both official languages and without redaction, no later than Monday, June 17, 2024.

We are asking the Prime Minister to live up to his own words and to be open by default. It is time to end the carbon tax cover-up and let the people know the truth.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is the second day in a row that Conservatives are having a bad day. The reality is that yesterday we saw them fumble all over the place. We saw the Leader of the Opposition take all the questions away from his backbench so that he could pick a fight with the Deputy Prime Minister—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order, please. Again, I want to remind everyone in the House to please be respectful when somebody else has the floor.

The hon. deputy government House leader has the floor.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, what we have learned, what the member should have learned, although he probably would have just received the information moments ago, is that if we actually look at the data, and the data is holistic and is all the data the PBO received, it tells us two very important things.

The first thing it tells us is that we have reduced emissions by 25 million tonnes per year, and our reduction of emissions is continuing to increase. The second thing it tells us, point blank and very clearly, if we read the data, is that eight out of 10 Canadians get back more than they pay. I have actually done the math on what I pay versus what I get, and I know I get more. I am wondering if the member has done the math on the rebate he receives.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I have to say that hearing that that member has done the math does not give me a lot of comfort.

The reality is, I wish he would give us the information he is talking about. The CBC's access to information request was denied. The Liberal government released pieces of information that supports its narrative. It did not release all of the information.

I maintain that the carbon tax cover-up continues. That report and that data, all of it needs to be tabled in this House now.