Debates of June 10th, 2025

Opposition Motion—Canada Carbon Rebate and Payment to Quebec

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

Mr. Speaker, Quebeckers are making an effort when it comes to the environment and the transition, but the rest of Canada has decided to stop trying. I think that is obvious. Now, in this debate, people have made the mistake of thinking that the April 1 cheque that was sent to eight provinces was in some way related to the carbon tax in those eight provinces, even though it no longer existed, or that it was related to the emissions trading system, to the fact that British Columbia had cancelled its tax, and so on.

These vote-getting cheques were paid out of the federal consolidated revenue fund and were sent to eight provinces, but not to Quebeckers. There is no connection between those cheques and any carbon pricing policy whatsoever, be it federal or provincial.

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

Mr. Speaker, in the early 1980s, René Lévesque, a man I greatly respect and who inspired Quebec and Quebec society as a whole, said that Canada is not a gulag. Once that was said, a number of federalists began to ask why people still wanted to separate from Canada. Why would Quebec want to become a full-fledged sovereign country if, in the end, Canada is not a gulag? Perhaps we should read the second part of his statement, where he said that the federal government is a haphazard system that, all too often, hinders our development. The situation we find ourselves in today, the decision that the Prime Minister of Canada made when he took office on March 14, fully justifies that statement that Canada's federal system is a haphazard system.

In Quebec, our problem is that we are a people governed by another people. It is a Canadian people managed by a Canadian government for which the Quebec people are a negligible part. They can do whatever they want with Quebeckers' money, as they can with the rest of Canada's money. As always, Quebec will have to suck it up.

That is what we are seeing right now. The government came along and said that there would be no more carbon tax. On April 1, it was cancelled, but on April 22, money was still sent out. I cannot say that the money was returned, since it was never collected. Anyway, the government sent money to the people of eight provinces to compensate them for what they would have had to pay if the carbon tax were still in effect. That is some warped logic.

If it were coming from someone who did not know how to count, it might be understandable, but it is coming from a Prime Minister who was a banker before becoming Prime Minister, who ran the central banks of major countries, including the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada. It is hard to believe that he is gullible, naive or clumsy. This man is clearly competent at managing public finances. Under the circumstances, if he is competent, how should we interpret this move?

He is not taking money from tax revenues, because he did not collect any in April, May or June. He is taking money from all Quebeckers and Canadians. He is taking a portion of that money and returning it to citizens in only eight provinces. My colleague from Mirabel spoke earlier about cheating. If that is not cheating Quebeckers, I would like someone to explain to me what is. I do not understand how the government can take $800 million out of Quebeckers' pockets to compensate the people of eight provinces. The reason given, as our colleague from Winnipeg North explained to us earlier, is that it was planned that way.

Does this mean that if we in Quebec start planning for the federal government to be fair to us and give us back our share, it will give us that money? Can we expect the Prime Minister to say over the summer that since Quebec had planned to receive $800 million, he will make sure we get the $800 million?

That logic does not hold water, not even in a kindergarten classroom. No one would dare make those kinds of arguments. It is flawed logic. It makes no sense. I find it hard to understand how a government that governs Canada, a government led by a Prime Minister who is competent in public finances, can try or think that it is going to make us swallow this bitter pill. It makes no sense. Not only is it unfair, but it is illegal. Actually, it may be legal, because a certain number of things can be done by decree, but it is immoral.

In Quebec, we are bothered by immorality. We have had commissions of inquiry into situations that were deemed immoral. Here, we are faced with another immoral situation. Our money is being taken from us and given to others under the pretext that these people were counting on it. Give me a break.

Today, I have heard colleagues on the government side repeatedly say that Quebeckers did not want to join the carbon tax and that is too bad for them.

Funny enough, I did not see it that way. I think that the carbon exchange is an effective system, but Canadians, except those in British Columbia, decided not to join it.

How can anyone say that we did not sign onto the tax, when the tax was imposed because the others did not join the carbon exchange? That logic is flawed. We each have our own pricing system because, in Quebec, we think that the carbon exchange is the most effective system. That is the system we adopted. We joined it, as did British Columbia and certain U.S. states.

Still today, in June, Quebeckers are engaged in decarbonization. Through the carbon exchange, companies that emit carbon buy quotas and pay a levy. It will come as no surprise that Esso and Petro-Canada did not become charitable organizations that felt like making everyone happy. These are companies that want to make profits, which is normal. If the manager of a company of that scope fails to ensure that the company makes a profit, it would not take long for the shareholders to give them the boot.

These companies are out to make a profit. They buy quotas on a carbon exchange and, in so doing, end up paying a carbon tax directly. Once again, since they are not charitable organizations, they pass the bill on to their customers, the oil distributors, who in turn pass it on to Quebeckers who fill up their gas tanks every day. People with electric cars help with decarbonization and do not pay that form of tax or fee because they do not buy gasoline, but that is another debate.

Quebeckers are bearing the cost of decarbonization, while citizens of the eight compensated provinces have not had to bear it since April 1. Where am I going with this? It makes no sense. Not only are these other provinces not paying up—so the government does not owe them anything—but on top of that, Quebeckers, who do pay, are giving money to those who have not paid the tax since April 1, money that they could have spent themselves had the Prime Minister not decided to abolish the carbon tax on April 1.

I do not know how to explain it. If anyone in the House has a logical explanation, I would like to hear it. The explanation given by the member for Winnipeg North is that the government sent out the cheques because people were expecting them. I am sorry, but with all due respect to those people, because there are people that I really like in those provinces, I am not willing to hand out cheques to them.

The only rational explanation that I can think of is what my colleague from Mirabel said just now, which is that it was to buy votes. The Liberals figured they were probably not going to win the election in Quebec and were prepared to let it collapse and continue paying. However, in the eight provinces where the Liberals had a chance of winning, they could hurt the Conservatives, beat them and win the election. That was the gamble taken by the Prime Minister of Canada.

This was about pleasing everyone by scrapping the carbon tax, because that is what people liked about the Conservative leader. It was as though the Prime Minister was telling them that he agreed with them, that he would scrap the tax himself and that he would do even better than Pierre Poilievre. Although Poilievre wanted to axe the carbon tax, he did not want to send out the money, because that would not have been logical. However, the Prime Minister went against all logic. He scrapped the tax just like the Conservatives had promised, but he also issued the cheques that people would have received had the tax not been scrapped.

I do not know what to call it. My colleague from Mirabel referred to it as cheating. It is starting to look a lot like that, based on the definition he read to us earlier. Buying an election with Quebec's money by giving that money to the western provinces makes no sense, is immoral, and is very disappointing coming from someone in whom Canadian voters had placed a lot of faith by giving him power in the April 28 election.

That said, I have an amendment to move to our motion. I move, seconded by the member for Mirabel:

That the motion be amended by adding:

(a) after the words “including those from Quebec” the words “and from British Columbia”;

(b) after the words “to pay Quebec” the words “and British Columbia”; and

(c) the following “for Quebec and $513 million for British Columbia”.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

It is my duty to inform hon. members that an amendment to an opposition motion may be moved only with the consent of the sponsor of the motion. If the sponsor is not present, the House leader, the deputy House leader, the whip or the deputy whip of the sponsor's party may give or deny consent on the sponsor's behalf. Since the sponsor is not present in the chamber, I ask the whip of the Bloc Québécois if he consents to this amendment being moved.

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

Mr. Speaker, we do give consent.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

The amendment is in order.

Questions and comments.

The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to say a number of things about this and to explain it in great detail during my comments on the motion itself, but suffice it to say that the federal government put in a backstop, the consumer carbon tax. For the provinces participating in the program at the time it was cancelled, it was literally weeks later that the rebates went out to those provinces. It is as straightforward as that.

Even in the province of Quebec during the leadership visits, as was pointed out, it was raised by the leader of the Bloc. The Bloc tried to make it an issue during an actual federal election. My account is that the Bloc numbers went down and the Liberal numbers went up. I think it is because the Liberal members were focused on building a stronger and healthier economy that would actually contribute more to the future of Quebec, B.C., and in fact—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I have to stop the member there to give the member for Rivière-du-Nord enough time to reply.

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

Mr. Speaker, I understand what my colleague from Winnipeg North is saying.

I wish I could have owned a grocery store in his riding during the pandemic. During that time, my colleague probably did not have time to go grocery shopping. However, based on his logic, he would still have given a cheque to that poor grocery store because they expected to receive one. If I have an electric vehicle instead of a gas‑powered vehicle, he thinks I should still give money to the corner gas station because the owner expects to receive a cheque. That is pretty flawed reasoning.

Quebec will never benefit from a stronger Canadian economy. We need our own economy. We need to be respected at home and spend our money in sectors that are priorities for us, based on our interests and values.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his fourth election to the House of Commons.

My colleague has explained the fundamental problem he sees looming and explained it very well, even more so because all of the explanations were given during the election campaign. This is not something we learned after the fact. Remember that in 2015, the Liberal Party was elected on a platform of three small deficits and no deficit in 2019. The Liberals completely lied to the public, because that is not how things turned out.

However, in this case, they were very clear. They said it clearly; they announced it from coast to coast to coast. The Bloc leader raised the issue during the debate, and the Liberal leader had a hard time explaining himself. He tripped over his words.

Regardless, more people voted for us than in previous elections. Unfortunately for the Bloc Québécois, voters ditched them and they lost about 10 ridings. The Liberal Party got 44 members elected—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I must interrupt the member to give the member for Rivière-du-Nord a chance to answer the question.

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

Mr. Speaker, I also salute my colleague, who is someone I respect a great deal. I met him in 2015 and have been friendly with him ever since.

That said, merely stating that someone is going to do something nonsensical and immoral does not make it acceptable. I completely agree with my colleague: The Prime Minister announced it during the election campaign and he followed through. However, I think it is deplorable, and so does the entire population of Quebec. It is simply outrageous.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised by the comments of my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk. We should ask him how many Bloc Québécois seats he thinks it takes to make cheating morally acceptable. I sense some moral ambiguity in my colleague's questions now.

I have a question for my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord. We know that the Liberals do not want to pay. Usually, we would expect the reason to be that they have no money. However, they have been playing fast and loose with public funds since they came to power. With no budget in hand, they expect to overshoot the amount provided in the estimates by $38 billion and plan to spend $9 billion on defence. This frenzy of government spending is happening without any transparency to Parliament.

If their reasons for not paying an amount this size are not financial, why are they refusing to pay?

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

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague. In fact, as I said earlier, I am one of the people who believes that the Prime Minister is smart, despite what some may think. I truly look forward to seeing him table a budget or explain how he is going to pay for all this spending and make this equitable. He must have a printer in his office that can print Canadian dollars or something. I do not have that skill, but he must. I look forward to hearing him explain to us how he is going to fund this.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience]

Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your appointment to the role of Deputy Speaker of the House. I will be sharing my time with the member for Compton—Stanstead.

I am very proud to be in the House with this new member because there are now 44 of us members from Quebec on the Liberal side. With the 11 members from Quebec on the Conservative side, there are 55 members who are able to be both proud Quebeckers and proud Canadians and to build this country together with our counterparts across the country.

Regarding the Bloc Québécois motion, we can see that there is an inconsistency that could have been fixed simply by adopting the Conservative Party's amendment, which the Bloc Québécois initially rejected but is now putting forward itself. Let me explain.

The original plan to pay the carbon rebate in the month of April to all Canadians in the eight provinces who were already receiving the carbon rebate makes logical, coherent sense. The rebate had historically gone only to those provinces that were subject to the federal backstop on the carbon pricing. Quebec, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories had their own systems and were excluded. That was the choice of Quebec, the Northwest Territories and British Columbia, to be exempt from the federal system by putting their own system in place.

That also allowed those provinces to decide where the monies went that came in from the revenues generated by their own carbon pricing system. They went to provincial programs in Quebec and British Columbia. That allowed the province the flexibility to choose where the money went. The federal government chose, in those provinces that were not part of the federal system, to give the monies back through a consumer pricing model. That was what happened in the month of April.

Earlier today, the Conservative Party looked at the motion and said that it is not coherent, because British Columbia was also not part of the federal system.

However, the Bloc Québécois's original motion only called for the money to be returned to Quebec, leaving out British Columbia, and the Bloc Québécois rejected the Conservative Party's amendment. For the sake of consistency, the Bloc Québécois ended up adding its own amendment to say that British Columbia should also get a rebate.

That is not the perspective that the Bloc normally brings to the House. Bloc members are looking at it only from the perspective of what more or what less they can get for one province. That is not the way the federal system works. In the federal system, there are equalization payments paid to provinces. Quebec is the biggest federal beneficiary of equalization payments.

[An hon. member]

From Alberta.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, they come from Alberta and other provinces; that is correct. When we look at federal programs, we see that federal programs' monies do not always flow equally to every single province. They flow directly to different things in different programs.

We would imagine, in the end, that the country is made better as a whole by all the programs we have. The idea that we would take each and every program and allot the amount equally by province would, in the end, actually hurt Quebec. It would, in the end, actually take monies away from Quebec, not give monies to Quebec.

I do not understand the logic of the Bloc Québécois, which is insisting that, in this one particular case, we have to allot all of the monies equally by province, when that is not the opinion of the Bloc Québécois when it comes to many, many other programs.

I also find it a bit odd that the Bloc Québécois thinks it is wrong that Quebec decided to have its own program. We respect Quebec's autonomy. Quebec has its own program and British Columbia has its own program. The rest of the country had a different program. I would have thought that the Bloc Québécois would be very happy that flexible federalism allows Quebec to have its own program. Saying that the model used by the other provinces should also apply to Quebec, when Quebec has its own model, is completely contradictory to the general position of the Bloc Québécois, which wants absolute autonomy for Quebec.

I am happy that the new government removed the carbon tax as one of its first acts, the federal backstop, leaving the flexibility for each province to handle that the way it wants to handle it. That does not mean we are not going to invest in the economy. It does not mean we are not going to invest in clean technology. It does not mean we are not investing in the environment. However, there also has to be a general consensus on what happens.

I am also very pleased that the government, at the same time, announced the removal of the capital gains inclusion rate changes, which I had not agreed with. I think that was a very good step.

I think all the steps the government has taken by lowering income taxes on Canadians, building one national economy where free trade applies across the country within federal jurisdiction and asking the provinces to do the same, allowing for big national projects to be built, and allowing our energy and resources to go to market are bringing the government to the centre, which I think most Canadians want.

I think there is a willingness to work with the other political parties joining us in the centre to govern the country and make Canada's economy the best in the G7. We now have a real opportunity to do things differently than in the last Parliament, when we were always fighting and squabbling.

We can work together to build a stronger Canada, a Canada where Alberta oil can make it to market and can get to tidewater. We can have a Canada where big national projects get built in a fast time frame. We can have a Canada that respects provincial autonomy but understands that there are big national projects and national goals to fulfill. We can have a Canada where we all understand that in a changing world, where we are faced with a lot of challenges, we have to work together as a country. Whether we are Conservatives, Liberals, Bloc members or New Democrats, we have to work together as a country.

If I come back to the Bloc motion, it did not look at things, at least originally, from the perspective of the country. It looked at things from the perspective of one province only, even though other provinces and one territory were not part of the initial system. Nobody even considered them when it came to the motion. That is not how we should be looking at things. There has to be some logical coherence.

For my first speech in this Parliament, I am pleased to reach out to my opposition colleagues and tell them that I look forward to working with them on all our country's major issues and on various matters. We are here to stand together and build a better Canada.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite talked about how we are going to work together to build all these projects that are in the national interest, and he mentioned getting to tidewater. I wonder if that means he does not need consensus, because David Eby has already said that he does not want to build a pipeline.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my hope is that everybody looking at the challenges we are facing from the United States will come to the rationalization that we need to exploit Canadian energy to its potential.

I am going to hope and pray that everyone will look at this as rational actors and will understand that we need to be resilient across our country first so that we are not buying oil from other countries to import to Canada when we have enough oil on our own. It is about understanding that we have to have the ability to access foreign markets, because we need an economy that is resilient regardless of what our American friends do or do not do.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague for his speech.

There are many things we disagree on, but there is one thing he may have avoided mentioning in his speech. He talked about redistribution and tax sharing. He talked about equalization payments. However, he did not mention that Quebec receives the least money per capita in all of Canada. It is not good enough to say that a province receives a certain amount; it must be calculated per capita. I would invite my colleague to clarify this in his future statements.

My question for my colleague is this. According to what the member for Winnipeg North said in his speech on December 3, 80% of Canadians receive more money than they pay for the carbon tax. I would like my colleague to explain something to me today.

If the Liberal government's goal is to help Canadians, why did it eliminate a carbon pricing system that put more money in the pockets of Canadians in 80% of cases? My question is simple. Why eliminate a tax—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I have to give the member for Mount Royal the opportunity to answer the question.

The hon. member for Mount Royal.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, they talk about redistribution, but fail to say that there are several provinces that do not receive equalization payments. Albert and Saskatchewan do not receive any money through this redistribution, while Quebec does. As a Quebecker, I am very pleased to live in a federation where there is a willingness to help one another. I am grateful to the people of Alberta and Saskatchewan who give us this.

It is very easy to say that Quebec is the province that receives the least money per capita of all the provinces that receive equalization payments, but there are some provinces that do not receive any and give money instead.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am distressed that the member is happy the government's first act was to remove the one climate measure that was actually reducing emissions.

I want to ask him if he is aware of when Canadians will be told what the new government plans to do to try to get on track to meeting our legal obligations under the Paris Agreement for the year 2030. We are far off target, and we just killed the one measure that was doing anything to bring down emissions.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think there are those who would argue that it is not the only measure that has brought down emissions, and I am sure the government will come forward with its plan in due time.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first full day of House duty and listening to eight hours of similar talking points. I am so happy about the goal of making Canada the strongest economy in the G7. However, I am worried that it is a bit of a platitude.

Could the member tell us what that actually means and by which date I may hold him to that definition?

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me welcome my colleague from Kitchener South—Hespeler to the House. It is always nice to have more doctors in the House. I think they say that often.

It is funny that he is talking about prepared talking notes, because I think people watching me will note that I did not use any talking notes whatsoever for my speech, which is actually how I think speeches should be given in the House as much as possible, as with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk and the member for Winnipeg North, by the way. I hope the member for Kitchener South—Hespeler follows that going forward.