Madam Speaker, we hear some of these questions, and frankly I have been hearing them for years: “Make polluters pay.” It is veiled language for making families pay more for food, transportation and home heating. That is what people need to understand. When folks in this place talk about making polluters pay, they are talking about us and about our constituents. They are talking about the seniors who are struggling to afford food, because our main fuel, oil and gas, is what heats most of our homes in Canada. It is what the farmers use to produce food. It is what the truckers use to ship the food to the manufacturing facility. It is the fuel the manufacturing facility uses to make goods that we buy at the grocery store. It is the fuel that fuels the grocery store to keep it heated and cooled.
The main source of our energy, the pollution that they are talking about, is the reason that we can heat our homes and eat the good food that we have. I encourage people not to be fooled when they say, “Make polluters pay.” They are talking about everyday families' paying more for transportation, heating and food.