Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to stand and speak in the people's House. In my riding of Miramichi—Grand Lake, we have great people, folks who do not ask for much from the government except to defend our borders, protect our streets and then kindly get out of the way. Now we have a Liberal government trying to tell us what kind of car we can drive.
The government's plan to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 is not just out of touch; it is out to lunch. This is the kind of thing someone dreams up after a latte in a downtown Toronto espresso bar, not after a hard winter on the Plaster Rock-Renous Highway. This is the plan of an urban elite who are blind to the hard facts of geography, weather, industry and the dignity of hard work borne by everyday Canadians who work hard for a living.
Let me put it plainly: Where I come from, a truck is not a toy. It is not a fashion statement, and it is not a mobility solution, as one Liberal minister so helpfully called it. It is a lifeline. It hauls the lumber, tows the boat and plows the driveway. It gets people's kids to hockey and their parents to the doctor. One cannot strap 10 sheets of drywall to the roof of a hatchback and call it progress. Unless someone has figured out how to get 500 kilometres out of a battery in -30°C with no charger in sight, I suggest the Liberals stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Any path to a cleaner-energy future must proceed at the pace of possibility, not ideology.
The Prime Minister says he is all about progress. Well, let me tell people something about progress. Progress is not forcing a single mom in Blackville to buy a $70,000 electric car she cannot charge and does not want. Progress is not replacing the family mechanic with a government-approved software update technician. Progress is not shutting down the dealerships, the mechanics and the supply chains that keep rural Canada moving. If the government wants to build electric vehicles, that is fine, but it does not have to kill the combustion engine upon which our modern society depends.
Let us remember that freedom is not about the right to vote; it is about the right to choose. Let us be real here: This is not about the environment. If this were about the environment, we would instead be debating a national charging network and a plan to build more reliable charging stations. If this were about the environment, we would be talking about grid resilience, rural access, battery disposal and the cost, both present and future, of electricity.
Does the government have a plan where everyone in New Brunswick plugs their Liberal-mandated vehicles in at 6 p.m. in January? In Miramichi, our power flickers when the next-door neighbour turns the microwave on during the evening news. Our electrical infrastructure can barely stay ahead of current demand. What do the Liberals decide to do? Let us burn out the grid. Let us double electricity bills. Let us crash the system and blame it on the provinces.
We know the Liberal government prefers Canadians to stay at home. We saw it during the pandemic, and we see it today in the federal civil service, still on Zoom, still on mute, still on break. Maybe that is the plan. Maybe the Liberals do not want people to drive at all. Maybe they do not want them to leave their homes or go to work or take their kids to the rink. Maybe they want Canadians to be at home, dependent, plugged in and powerless because the government has slogans, not solutions.
Now, let me be clear about one thing: The government has a strategy. Just one month ago, in the middle of the federal election, the Liberals' promise was that they were going to pretend they were Conservatives and axe the carbon tax. That is what Canadians heard. What Canadians did not hear and what the Liberals did not say was that their real plan was to replace the tax with something even worse. They did not say they wanted to ban the very vehicles Canadians use to work, raise their families and live their lives.
This was not a change of heart; it was a sleight of hand. The Prime Minister did not kill the carbon tax; he replaced it with something even worse, a carbon ban. He figured, why bother taxing the gas in people's trucks when he can just make sure they are never allowed to own one? The Liberals did not ban carbon pricing because they changed their minds. The Liberals abandoned it because they were blaming the very thing they used to tax. How very Liberal of them. They do not need to tax gas when their plan is to outlaw the engine that burns it.
The only thing this plan is guaranteed to reduce is freedom, people's freedom to choose what they drive and to work where they want, live where they want and drive what suits their family and their job. It is typical Liberal government overreach, plain and simple, and here is the kicker: Hard-working New Brunswickers are not going to trade in a sturdy, reliable, rustproof pickup truck for a plastic pop can on wheels because some deputy minister in Ottawa wearing a turtleneck said so.
People in Miramichi—Grand Lake do not take kindly to being told they are backwards just because they know how to run a chainsaw and change their own oil, and they sure do not want to be lectured by a Prime Minister who spent 10 years sipping champagne at the Bank of England. This plan is a slap in the face to rural Canada. This is a slap in the face to every tradesman, farmer, hunter and contractor in this country. This is one more example of the government thinking it knows better than the people it is supposed to serve. Let us not forget that once the government takes away people's ability to choose what they drive, it will not stop there. Today it is gas vehicles; tomorrow it is our furnaces, our wood stoves and maybe even our barbecues.
We cannot call it a choice when there is only one option on the shelf. This is not a plan about lowering emissions; it is about increasing control. It is not about saving the planet; it is about control. This is not about climate; it is about compliance.
The truth is that this ban will not save the environment, but it will make life harder, colder and more expensive for millions of Canadians. The people paying the highest price will not be the downtown elites or the Tesla crowd. It will be the diesel mechanics, the forestry workers, the young family in Doaktown trying to barely make ends meet.
Through you, Madam Speaker, I say this to the government: Back off. Scrap the ban. Let Canadians decide for themselves.
The Conservative Party does not fear the future; we believe in it. We believe in people, and we believe in choice. We know the best decisions do not come from Ottawa; they come from the ordinary Canadians who pay for and live with the consequences. The Conservative Party respects and has faith in the common sense of the people of Canada, because the only thing more dangerous than a government that wants to take away someone's truck is a government that thinks it knows better than the guy who drives it. If the Prime Minister wants to take away our pickup trucks, he had better bring himself a convoy.