Debates of Dec. 1st, 2025

Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his great speech on Bill C-4, the unaffordability act, as the government wants to call it.

We know that the Liberals have no good ideas of their own, and that when they take our good ideas, they wreck them. Conservatives put forward a proposal to take the GST off new home builds, and the Liberals came in with something that sounds like that, but it is only for first-time homebuyers. First-time homebuyers are generally not buying newbuilds; they are buying older homes. Newbuilds are what we need in our country.

I am wondering if my hon. colleague has any comments around the fact that the Liberals steal our ideas but then wreck them.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

Madam Speaker, when I read this bill, a word comes to my mind, which is “smokescreen”. I see the Liberal government trying to deceive Canadians by telling them that this is going to help them, but, at the same time, they are doing other things that are going to hurt the economy, hurt people and make life more difficult for Canadians. In this case, they might say that the GST rebate is helpful, but again, it is to a very tiny subgroup of Canadians. It is not helping everybody. It is not helping the people who need help the most. The Liberals are using a smokescreen to pretend they are doing something.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Madam Speaker, a 26-year-old, a 24-year-old, a 22-year-old and a four-and-a-half-year-old and their better halves make up my family, along with my wife. They all live with me, and by the way, they have very good-paying jobs. They cannot afford a home or to start a family, so they all live under my roof. It is probably my greatest gift, but, at the same time, any loving parent would want their children to move on.

Other than the industrial carbon tax, what falls short in Bill C-4 that would truly give young adults an opportunity, something that Conservatives would put into this bill to give them a chance to start their own families and buy their first homes?

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

Madam Speaker, Canadians do not need handouts. They need a government that is competent and that will help us make the economy better and stronger, so that everybody can be self-reliant and independent and feed their families with the incomes they receive.

Canadians need more help, not in terms of handouts but in a government that is competent enough to help the country and the economy move forward.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, the third part of Bill C-4 reflects what could be called the Prime Minister's environmental fiasco. Actually, what we are witnessing with the abandonment of consumer carbon pricing is the beginning of the official end of the fight against climate change. This step back was taken on April 1, before the people had even given him an electoral mandate.

Instead of countering the Conservatives' carbon pricing disinformation, the Prime Minister simply starting chanting from their slogan sheet by eliminating one of the flagship measures for achieving the country's greenhouse gas reduction target. Since then, it has been one step back after another, back to the Stone Age, which happens to be exactly what the Leader of the Opposition wanted. That is what we are seeing. In the end, the oil companies will have gotten everything on their wish list, courtesy of the government.

Added to this, more recently, is the climate capitulation budget. The icing on the cake is a new oil sands pipeline. Getting back to Bill C-4, it is the elimination of the carbon pricing rebate. Let us be clear. This spells the end of any possibility of meeting Canada's greenhouse gas reduction targets. Obviously, the Bloc Québécois strongly opposes this environmentally irresponsible behaviour. This shows that the government has no intention of fighting climate change. It also highlights a major injustice for Quebeckers. I am talking about the elimination of the carbon rebate that came with a cheque for Canadians outside Quebec, but was paid for with Quebeckers' money. They were not entitled to a cheque. That means that money from Quebec was taken out of Quebeckers' pockets and sent as election goodies in the form of cheques worth $814 million in the middle of an election campaign. Once again, that money came out of Quebeckers' pockets.

The government told us that it was going to increase industrial carbon pricing, but this bill does not mention that at all. If we look at what is happening abroad, in the rest of the world, on January 1, the European Union will be imposing a tariff on the import of products and goods from other countries. If there is no price on pollution in those other countries, Europe will put a price on carbon at the border. Right now, given the uncertainty in the United States under Mr. Trump and given that access to the U.S. market is becoming more difficult, it is clear that this would be the worst time to close our doors to the European market. This is especially true given that the consumer carbon price is being removed in Canada and we do not yet know what will happen to industrial carbon pricing.

I want to remind the House that the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development believes that carbon pricing is one of the few effective aspects of the federal greenhouse gas reduction plan. By ending carbon pricing, however, the government is not only giving up the fight against climate change, it is also leaving Quebec in the lurch after it has once again been cheated, literally robbed. The Bloc Québécois has repeatedly demanded that the government acknowledge this situation in its budget and return the $814 million in question to Quebeckers. We are not alone in calling for this; the Quebec National Assembly is calling for it too. Every one of the parties in Quebec City is unanimously calling for the federal government to return that money to us. What has the government and its 44 Liberal members from Quebec done? They have shown us that they are utterly incapable of supporting the Quebec National Assembly's unanimous demand. They are ignoring Quebeckers and condoning the fact that Quebeckers were just robbed of $814 million to send out vote-buying cheques.

When we talk about carbon pricing, it is worth remembering that Quebec has a price on carbon. Quebec established a carbon market; it has taken action. However, by removing carbon pricing in the rest of Canada, the government is obviously putting Quebec at a disadvantage. It is important to remember that nearly 90% of the money collected by the government was returned to citizens outside Quebec. This rebate allowed 80% of the population, or the majority of households, to receive more money than they paid in carbon pricing.

The former environment minister said very clearly that this was a very good measure to combat climate change. However, what was the first thing we saw the new Prime Minister do? He took a big pen and, like Donald Trump, signed an executive order to proudly abolish carbon pricing, which the previous government and the previous environment minister considered to be a good environmental measure. The Liberals even dared to abolish this measure on April 1. What did they do on April 22, which is Earth Day? On Earth Day, they decided to send Canadians cheques totalling $3.7 billion. That was $3.7 billion to buy votes in an election campaign.

Obviously, it is important to remember how carbon pricing works. It is a rebate that has always been paid in advance. It was therefore an advance payment to households. This money was not being reimbursed. In other words, Canadians received a cheque for money they had never actually paid. I repeat that Quebeckers did not receive any, but they did pay for it. We believe that this amounts to funding the environmentally irresponsible behaviour of the Canadian provinces at the expense of Quebeckers. Quebec is being penalized because it has made efforts to fight climate change. The government stole money from the pockets of Quebeckers to reward Canada for not making an effort. That is why the Bloc Québécois is calling on Ottawa to unconditionally transfer the $814 million that was paid by Quebec, because those cheques were written for a carbon pricing system that no longer even existed. They were sent on Earth Day, which is truly a dark day and marked the beginning of the end of the government's fight against climate change.

The Prime Minister justifies his lax approach to combatting climate change—or rather his abandonment of the fight against climate change—by invoking Canada's need for economic development. What is the logic behind saying that we are going to develop the Canadian economy when we need to develop international trade partnerships with other countries, yet EU countries and other countries are going to impose carbon pricing at the border for non-compliant countries that do not put a price, or a high enough price, on carbon? What will the Prime Minister say to these trading partners when he himself abandons important measures? There is uncertainty in the United States, we agree, but we know that we need to strengthen trade ties outside the North American bubble.

I would like to point out that Quebec accounts for one-third of trade between Canada and Europe. We receive nearly 40% of European investment in Canada. We have an advantage and we are the gateway to Europe. Quebec is, in a way, the bridge between America and Europe. Obviously, we hope that Quebec will be able to double its trade with Europe, including, of course, the United Kingdom. Ideally, we would increase it from $42 billion to $84 billion within five years.

However, Europe currently has the carbon border adjustment mechanism. In 2023, the European Union adopted legislation creating this carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is set to come into force on January 1, 2026. What Europe wants to do is prevent carbon leakage and avoid unfair competition from competitors located in places where it is free to pollute. Europe will therefore impose a tax adjustment. Again, Europe will impose a tax adjustment on imports of certain products from countries where carbon pricing is too low or non-existent. This is now the case in Canada. In 2024, the United Kingdom also adopted legislation similar to the European law. The U.K. law will come into effect on January 1, 2027.

This is the direction the world is heading in. We need to keep that in mind when we talk about carbon pricing. Pollution comes at a cost, and a price has to be put on that cost. Other countries are preparing to do so, and Canada will pay a very high price if it ignores the cost of pollution. Canada intends to pass the cost on to taxpayers as a whole, forcing them to pay the cost if the companies that pollute do not.

Essentially, when a product enters Europe, a levy will be charged that is equal to what the carbon price would have been in Europe. In the beginning, this levy will apply to select products, such as aluminum, iron, steel, cement, fertilizer, hydrogen and electricity. Gradually, it will be extended to include all goods. While border carbon adjustments may be a new mechanism, similar mechanisms already exist. They are completely legal and trade-rule compliant. Examples of equivalent measures include the excise tax on tobacco or alcohol, which is charged when these products leave the factory where they are made, or at the border for imported goods. This is a global trend that Canada is bucking.

The World Bank compiles a list of carbon pricing mechanisms around the world. In 2023, it counted 53 countries with carbon pricing. That is five more than in 2022, 12 more than in 2021, and 69 more than 20 years ago. The trajectory is very clear. The world is waking up to the reality of climate change and is putting a price on pollution by choosing carbon pricing. No country in the world has abolished its carbon pricing. Canada would be the first to choose this path. Clearly, it is sinking deeper into climate irresponsibility, primarily to satisfy oil and gas companies.

It should be noted that carbon pricing does not apply in Quebec. Quebec has its own cap-and-trade system for emissions. It is not the only one to have implemented such a system. It works with the Western Climate Initiative, among others, with California. There are exchanges between companies, including between Quebec and California. Together, they have a combined GDP of $4.8 trillion. That is enormous. It is a major market. There has never been carbon pricing at the federal level in the United States. The states are taking action. Washington is also taking action in this regard. Having Mr. Trump as President does not change the situation.

Nothing has changed, since individual states are continuing to move forward. California has even strengthened its market under the cap-and-trade system and committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions even further. This means that the fight against climate change is accelerating in certain countries, whether in the state of California or in the European Union, which, although imperfect, is continuing the fight against climate change. That is the opposite of Canada, which is bucking the global trend. Quebec could once again suffer because Canada has taken on certain responsibilities while Quebec is going to play by a different set of rules. In Quebec, we decided to put a price on pollution because, otherwise, it is passed on to society as a whole. We need to have carbon pricing, just as we have other types of pricing. There is a price for electricity and a price for water consumption. There must be a price for pollution, because it is not free.

The Conservative Party wants to abolish industrial carbon pricing. According to the Conservatives, any pricing would be bad. They never explain how we are going to combat climate change if we abolish the basic principles recognized by some of the world's most renowned economists. There is a consensus that putting a price on carbon is an effective measure, and it is a measure that the world is moving towards.

For its part, Canada has chosen to return to the 20th century. It wants to abolish and reduce carbon pricing. Once again, this will undermine the efforts of Quebeckers, who believe it is important to diversify exports and export destinations and to ramp up trade with Europe. Obviously, Quebec's businesses, our SMEs, will find themselves at a disadvantage if the rest of Canada does not feel the same way.

I would like to remind members that both the European Union and the United Kingdom have implemented exemption schemes and carbon pricing at the border. The Bloc Québécois will oppose this bill to ensure that Canada stops thwarting Quebec's efforts to diversify its markets and combat climate change. We will not allow ourselves to be distracted by the Trump effect. There is a global reality on which countries are taking action, and I mentioned several examples, but unfortunately, it is not a reality that Canada has embraced so far.

It is not just one measure. If there were something to replace that and if it could be shown that there was a willingness to meet the country's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, comply with the Paris Agreement and reduce pollution, we would believe it. Unfortunately, the very first thing that the new Prime Minister did, through an order in council, was followed by several other steps backward. That is concerning from the standpoint of the fight against climate change. This is not just one major step backward. We were expecting the government to show us a climate competitiveness strategy that would highlight the government's commitment but, in reality, there is no new money to fight climate change. There is no clarity on industrial carbon pricing. How much will it cost? To what extent will it be increased? What kind of additional greenhouse gas emission reductions will it bring? In fact, we see a desire to come to an agreement with Alberta, which is currently refusing to harmonize its industrial pricing system with the Canadian system. Once again, this will likely lead to a decrease in Alberta's commitments.

We cannot give a blank cheque to a government that is eliminating important measures, such as consumer carbon pricing, while giving billions of dollars more in its latest budget to increase or extend funding and subsidies to oil and gas companies, removing the cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector, and striking a deal with Alberta that makes it very clear that they plan to harmonize their standards. Harmonizing with Alberta means lowering the standards. Just look at the carve-out for Alberta on the clean electricity regulations.

For us, abolishing industrial carbon pricing means abandoning the fight against climate change, and that is completely irresponsible—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

We have to move on to questions and comments.

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the legislation provides tax relief for all Canadians, including those in the province of Quebec. There are significant tax savings for over 22 million people in total. It also provides the opportunity for first-time homebuyers to benefit by being exempt from the GST. Both of those programs benefit the people of Quebec.

How have the Bloc members made the determination to say no to those particular benefits?

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois has been very clear. We had six non-negotiable demands for the government and it turned them all down. It refused to pay back the $814 million that was stolen from Quebeckers. It refused to increase health transfers. It refused to help young people access home ownership, as we proposed. It turned down a wide range of requests that garnered consensus in Quebec and that cost very little. It also refused to provide assistance to seniors aged 65 to 74. That is like putting arsenic in a cake, and that is not good for Quebec. It is not something we will accept.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member's speech. While he is new here, his ideas are quite outdated as Canadians fully rejected a carbon tax in the last election. Even people like Bill Gates are saying that we have to focus on things like eliminating hunger and poverty, which are on the rise right here in Canada. This bill purports to do some of those things.

Why is the member bringing these outdated ideas back to this place and not focusing on reducing hunger and poverty in this country?

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our Conservative colleagues say nothing about the roughly $10 billion in subsidies that the Canadian government gives oil and gas companies every year. They say nothing about the $10 billion it costs Quebec to purchase hydrocarbons, oil and gas each year. That is money that leaves Quebec and goes to Alberta, among other places. That represents a cost.

They say nothing about the cost of insurance, which is rising because of climate change. They say nothing about how droughts, floods and the problems facing farmers are driving up the cost of groceries and food. I would like them to talk about the real issues. I would like them to tell us who will pay if we do not put a price on pollution. Everyone is paying now, and we can see that in climate change and the devastating consequences we are experiencing today, such as the forest fires that have occurred again this year.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. It is always interesting to hear him speak, particularly when he talks about the environment. However, I do not think that these subjects are mutually exclusive. Our Conservative colleague just told us that his constituents want us to get rid of the carbon tax and to instead focus our efforts on economic measures so that people can buy homes and so on.

There is something that I am wondering about. We often hear this kind of rhetoric. I would like to hear my colleague's comments on that. Is taking care of the environment and leaving a healthy, viable planet for our children really at odds with investing today to enable families to put food on the table and a roof over their heads? Are these two challenges mutually exclusive or not?

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we believe that it is actually possible to grow the economy, help people cope with the rising cost of living, including insurance premiums and groceries, while also fighting climate change and developing the jobs of the future. Yes, we are concerned about the cost of living and access to home ownership. That is one of the reasons why we proposed two key measures that we wanted to see in this budget, but the government did not include them.

For example, we proposed a measure for a down payment for first-time home buyers. We proposed that parents be able to use their RRSPs to help their children access the home buyers' plan. It is hard to get the money needed for a down payment.

We also suggested offering interest-free loans, which would cost the government next to nothing, but would allow these new families, these young people, to make the necessary down payment to buy a home. This measure would have complemented what the government has proposed. Access to home ownership is important to us. We think it is important for everyone to have access to it, not just those who can afford a down payment, which is becoming increasingly expensive.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the boldness of the answer I was provided. It is somewhat disappointing that the members of the Bloc believe that the people of Quebec, through their eyes, should be denied a tax break on their income tax and, further to that, that first-time homebuyers should not be provided the opportunity to get an exemption from the GST.

Does the member believe he is consistent with what his constituents would want to see happen with respect to those two measures?

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are simply asking the question. If the government really intended to move forward with the decent measures in its budget, why is it presenting everything as a take-it-or-leave-it package? Why did it not split it up so that we could support the decent initiatives?

What we are being asked to do is swallow a bitter pill in exchange for a few small, interesting measures. Looking at the budget, we are stuck with it as a whole. We had six specific demands for Quebec. The government deliberately chose to ignore them and did not want to work with the other opposition parties. As a result, we cannot support it, unfortunately.

It is undemocratic to say that we must take it or leave it. We are telling the government to work constructively with the opposition and make amendments, for one. Then, perhaps we could accept it, but at this point, the package deal is unacceptable to Quebec.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora—Kiiwetinoong, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals, throughout this debate, have spoken a lot about the GST relief for first-time homebuyers, leaving out the fact that relief is available particularly when it comes to first-time homebuyers buying new homes. I know in northwestern Ontario, this is something that almost never happens, in part because there are not many new homes being built but also because what young first-time homebuyers can afford are often homes that are 20 or 30 years old. I wonder if the member shares my assessment of things in his own riding as to how this program or this proposal being brought forward by the Liberal government is not going to be as effective as it would have us believe.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I completely share my colleague's concerns about how difficult it is for young families, among others, to buy a home and to save up enough money for a down payment. Obviously, we support the GST measure, but we think it needs to be complemented by other measures. The biggest obstacle to home ownership is how hard it is to save up a down payment. With house prices continuing to rise, it is becoming increasingly difficult for young people to save and to buy their first home, partly because of the cost of living.

I hope my colleague will say that he supports the idea that parents should be able to use their RRSPs to help young people get into the housing market, that the government should introduce low-interest or even interest-free loans to help young people get that down payment so they can buy a home, because there is a fundamental problem with access. Eliminating the GST is not enough. The problem of saving for a down payment also needs to be addressed.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives rise to say that all Canadians voted in the last election to get rid of the carbon tax. However, the political reality is that people voted for the current Prime Minister because they were afraid of the Leader of the Opposition. They believed that getting rid of the carbon tax was a temporary compromise, even though they still supported the fight against climate change, but thought that things would be worse under the Conservatives. In voting for the Liberals, they were choosing between the lesser of two evils.

Today, however, we have a Liberal Prime Minister who is even worse than the Conservatives. He going farther than people dreamed the Conservatives would go. That is exactly what we got with the infamous pipeline agreement. The Prime Minister is also discarding other carbon tax policies, including in Alberta. It is the end of the fight against climate.

I would like my colleague to tell me whether he believes that this is truly what people voted for.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, people never even saw the current government's real oil and gas agenda. During the election campaign, the Liberals did not say a word about the fact that they were even more in favour of oil and gas than the Conservatives, who never approved a pipeline project under Stephen Harper.

Yes, people were tricked.

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Kenora—Kiiwetinoong.

Like a few members, I am brand new here. This is my first term as an MP, but I was an MLA back in B.C. for seven years. I was also a chief councillor for six years, and previous to that, I was a councillor for eight years. A lot of the issues we talk about are very similar to what I have done in the last 20 years, but I have not really seen what is happening here happen before in my previous political life.

What I am talking about is the Liberal government basically borrowing, or stealing, ideas from the Conservative platform. Whether it is stealing or borrowing, it is all in the same vein to try to get life more affordable for Canadians, which is the short title of Bill C-4, the making life more affordable for Canadians act. It is not bad for the Liberals to steal Conservative ideas, as long as they take 100% of the idea and not water them down. If they were to water down the ideas, they would not actually be making life more affordable for Canadians. It is political spin, or rhetoric, and it would not achieve what Conservatives wanted to do in the first place, which was to make life affordable across the board for all Canadians, not just those who would get a tax break buying a $100-million jet.

Take the carbon tax, for example. I watched CPAC when the Conservatives were hammering the Liberals to get rid of the carbon tax: Axe the tax. However, the Liberals would not hear of it. They would accuse the Conservatives of burning the planet if people took their family for a drive in a car. Anybody who questioned the carbon tax was a climate change denier. How did it turn around? The Liberals are the ones who are burning the planet by driving their family all around Canada and jumping on jets to go to Brazil for an environment conference of all things.

The Liberals pulled off a sleight-of-hand trick. They pulled off taking the carbon tax off for fuel, for example, which Conservatives wanted, and overnight that created savings for Canadians, but they kept the industrial carbon tax. We just got through talking about that in committee today where a farmer told the Minister of Environment that the industrial carbon tax on farmers is not imaginary. It is real. The farmer sees it when he is purchasing fertilizer or purchasing equipment. The farmer cannot absorb these costs, and so it has to be transferred down the line to average Canadians.

On top of this, the Liberal government basically admitted today that it is going to support the International Maritime Organization for a carbon shipping tax. However, it will not say how that is going to affect Canadians who want to purchase goods and services in Canada. I do not like the carbon tax, but in this case, when the Liberals support an international shipping tax, unlike the carbon tax, that money is going to leave Canada and it is not going to come back. It is going to go to a foreign agency, and who knows what it is going to do with it, at a time when Canadians are trying to decide whether or not they should skip a meal or pay the energy bill. That is an absolute shame.

I heard my colleagues talking about housing affordability and about first-time homebuyers. First-time homebuyers really cannot afford to buy the construction of a brand new home. They are usually buying homes that were built 30 or 40 years ago. This would work if Canada was building houses, but Canada is not building houses. Now, the government is taking unprecedented moves where Liberals are promising to build houses when really it is the private sector that has been building houses in Canada for the last 100, 150 or 200 years. It was not a problem until the Liberals brought in policies to crunch Canadians in affordability in all sectors.

We would not need this if the policies were not in place, and now the Liberals are trying to unwind them. The Liberals' 10 years of policies created these issues, and now they come to the table and say, “We have the solutions to the issues we created.” Why do this to Canadians? Why do this to a country? Why do this to the next generation, who cannot really imagine buying a house in Canada and building a home?

In B.C. alone, in September, food prices increased by 3.9%, with beef jumping 17.8% and coffee and tea increasing by 26%. The Business Council of British Columbia reported that costs have risen 23%. What does the Liberal government say about the costs and the taxes? It says they are imaginary. I can say that the two million people lining up at food banks do not think these costs are imaginary. They do not think the idea that they cannot afford to live, to eat, or to pay their energy bill is imaginary. The costs are real. I do not think the 700,000 kids who are lined up at food banks think this is imaginary.

The only ones who think it is imaginary are the Liberals. They think that if they keep saying the word and the phrase over and over, Canadians will believe this. I did hear this as a statement coming from previous Liberal ministers: that if we say over and and over something that is not true, Canadians will ultimately believe it is true, but we have to keep repeating it.

I can say right now that the costs and the unaffordability crisis Canadians are facing are real. I know people in my riding who know that the costs are real and that the unaffordability crunch is real. When an elder in my riding has a shopping cart with two items in it, expired items at 50% off, it is not the food she wants. It is not nutritious, but it is what she can afford. This is Canada. I could see this maybe happening in a third world country.

What is so shameful about this is that the Liberals have known for years that people are suffering and struggling. Low-income people and seniors are hoping to see some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of affordability, but they are not seeing it. They are hearing more rhetoric.

We have not even talked about the idea of either printing more money or borrowing more money and dumping it into the economy without addressing the goods and services that go into that. I thought that, as a banker, the Prime Minister would know better. Apparently he does not, so laymen like us from small communities are trying to point out that this is not the way to run a country; it is the way to run a country into ruin. It is a shame that this is coming from a first world country like Canada, which used to be a leader in affordability and freedoms. We are going the wrong direction.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, obviously I disagree with the members' assessment. Canada is still the best country in the world to call home. Quite frankly I am a bit disappointed in the members of the Conservative Party, in the words they have been using to try to justify their positioning of what is actually in Bill C-4. It is a very straightforward piece of legislation. One is either for it or against it. The Conservatives like to criticize it, but I think they will likely end up voting in favour of it.

Would the member not recognize that if we want to deal with the issue of affordability, one of the ways we can do that is by voting in favour of Bill C-4? Will the member make a commitment to the House today that he wants the legislation to pass before Christmas?

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I could not care less about what the member is disappointed in. Why does he not come to talk to the people in my riding who cannot afford a loaf of bread? What does he say to that? Why does he not get around the spin and the rhetoric of the budget and Bill C-4, and actually do something of substance to reduce costs like the Liberals promised?

Right now I am judging the member and his Prime Minister on the prices at the grocery store, which the Prime Minister said he would reduce. He said to judge him by the price of groceries. I am passing judgment on you right now. What do you plead, guilty or not guilty?

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

As a reminder, all comments are through the Chair. The Chair will not be pleading anything, but he will let other members do so.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Flamborough—Glanbrook—Brant North.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook—Brant North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley raises a good point. The Prime Minister said to Canadians to judge him on the price of groceries at the grocery store. We know that he has not actually visited a grocery store, but we also know that grocery price inflation is 40% higher in Canada than in the U.S. There have been multiple reports as to the food price pressures that Canadians are facing.

Why does the member think that the government would not do something as straightforward as scrapping the industrial carbon tax, which we heard about in committee, as a measure for increasing affordability?

[Ellis Ross, Conservative, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a mystery as to why the Liberal government will not go 100% of the way, in terms of taking the Conservative ideas to reduce the pressure on families. It is a mystery. All the government seems to do is water down Conservative ideas and take 50% of what we did. The carbon tax is a great example. The government is keeping the industrial carbon tax and keeping the International Maritime Organization's tax and then telling Canadians that this is somehow going to make our lives more affordable, when, in reality, we all know that it is not going to make a difference.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-4 sets out a GST rebate for first-time buyers of new homes. The Prime Minister promised this rebate in March, when he was Prime Minister. We went on the campaign trail, then we came back. The Prime Minister finally tabled the notice of ways and means and the bill.

Everyone who bought a home between the time the Prime Minister promised this rebate in March and the time of the election was denied the GST rebate. The Bloc Québécois and our Conservative colleagues had to table amendments to force the government to keep its word and grant the GST rebate to those who had been promised it, those who had been naive enough to believe the Prime Minister and who, in the end, would have been forced to pay the full price.

I would like my colleague to tell me why, in his opinion, the Prime Minister and the government decided to behave in this manner and why the government tried to take away a GST rebate that had been promised to thousands of Quebeckers and Canadians.