Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House. I am going to split my time today with the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, a great guy, a fantastic guy. I look forward to hearing his words of wisdom here this afternoon.
Primarily, even though the costly coalition wants to talk about climate change, the motion is about the duplicity of the NDP-Liberal government that Canadians have sadly had to put up with for a long time. I am not sure why, but the Liberals continue to want to somehow induce scandal upon themselves and keep facts hidden from Canadians. Of course, today, the facts, as presented from the secret report, which was in some way, shape or form made available this morning, are that the Liberals' carbon tax is going to cost Canadians $30.5 billion, yes, “billion” with a “b”, which turns out to be about $2,000 per Canadian family. Certainly, this is above and beyond the direct costs of the carbon tax at the pumps, on people's heating bills and on food.
This is really no surprise. There are many, many things that the government has wanted to keep hidden and, thanks to the great work of my colleagues here on this side of the House, we have been able to uncover many of those things. Certainly, the carbon tax, though the government would have people believe it should be named something else, is the tax on everything. We have heard it multiple times in this House, and I think it bears repeating: When they tax the farmer who grows the food and tax the trucker who ships the food, the person who buys the food in the end has to pay for that cost. That is just simple economics, but good luck trying to explain that to the costly coalition. It really fascinates me, because it appears that maybe the Liberals' constituents experience it differently than those of us on this side of the House.
As I have said in this House many times, I was a family doctor for 26 years, and people reach out to my office as a member of Parliament every single day wondering how they are going to make ends meet. I would suggest that often the relationship with a family physician is an incredibly intimate one, where people often tell their deepest secrets, and that is something that I never heard in my office previously. Certainly it is not because I lived in an incredibly affluent neighbourhood and that just was not happening there. We live in a rural place. It is very average in terms of income, but I never heard that before, and that is incredibly troubling. Therefore, when we begin to hear this from everyday Canadians, we really wonder how difficult times are out there, and we actually know that they are incredibly difficult.
We know, though, that there are some Canadians who want to speak up on behalf of others, including the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Certainly we know that on television the Parliamentary Budget Officer said, “overall, a vast majority of people will be worse off under a carbon pricing regime than without, and we don't expect that to change.”