Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Red Deer.
I am pleased to rise on behalf of my price-conscious constituents of the fall foliage-filled riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke.
The motion before us today simply asks that we recognize reality. Reality is that the Liberals have been in power 11 years. Reality indicates that we have an affordability crisis. Our Liberal colleagues would prefer we ignore reality. They prefer the fantasy world in which they are now a new government. They prefer that Canadians forget that higher prices are the official policy of the Liberal Party. The Liberals want to send the Trudeau years down the memory hole, but Canadians are living with the consequences of 11 years of bad Liberal policy.
When it comes to affordability, there are four bad Liberal policies that truly stand out. The first is the industrial carbon tax, the second is the new fuel standard, the third is the plastic packaging ban for food and the fourth is the Liberal electricity regulations. Liberals will insist that, taken in isolation, each policy is done with the best of Liberal intentions. The road to higher prices is paved with Liberal intentions.
The Liberals will claim that the purpose of the industrial carbon tax is to reduce emissions. What they do not tell us is that the consequence of the carbon tax is higher prices. Canadians understand that carbon taxes increase prices. Every Canadian saw first-hand the impact that eliminating the consumer carbon tax had on gas prices. The only difference between the consumer carbon tax and the industrial carbon tax is visibility. Most Canadians do not pay for the industrial carbon tax directly. It is paid indirectly, and the costs are absorbed first by employers. Companies have to pass those costs along to consumers if they can.
Some companies will not be able to raise prices, because of foreign competition. That is why the Liberal Prime Minister even promised carbon tariffs. As all Canadians know, tariffs increase the price of everything. The point of the Prime Minister's promised carbon tariff is to allow those companies paying the industrial carbon tax and facing foreign competition to raise prices. Before my Liberal colleagues start howling in outrage, I want to be clear: The Prime Minister has not imposed his promised carbon tariffs yet, and I have never met a Liberal prime minister who has not been prepared to break a promise in the face of poor polling.
Canadians should note that the Liberals' favourite defence of the industrial carbon tax is to claim that if we do not penalize our companies with a carbon tax, our European allies will violate our trade agreements and impose carbon tariffs on our exports. Given Europe's current energy crisis and growing debt concerns, our European friends are in no position to impose carbon tariffs, yet the Liberals will continue to repeat that carbon tax talking point. They will say with a straight face that Europe will tariff us. At the same time, they claim to be expanding free trade with Europe because we can trust it not to tariff us.
The deeper irony is that the industrial carbon tax has the same impact on our exports as the U.S. tariffs do. Tariffs and taxes increase prices. It is the same as the other bad Liberal policy I mentioned, the Liberal fuel standard. Just as with the carbon tax, the Liberals claim that the intention behind the fuel regulations is to reduce emissions. The impact, though, is to increase prices on fuels.
Yesterday, the Liberals voted against our emergency fuel relief plan. It is part of a pattern with the Liberals. They vote to increase prices at every turn but then vote against any action to reduce costs for Canadians. They even had the audacity to call their legislation that hikes gas taxes in the middle of winter a fuel affordability bill. The only thing more cynical than that piece of gaslighting is the Liberals' rebranding the GST credit as the Canada groceries and essentials benefit.
When Mulroney brought the GST to tackle the first Trudeau deficit, his government established the GST credit and made sure not to apply the GST on most groceries and essentials. Stealing Conservative policies has become stock and trade with the Liberals, and if they actually adopted our policies faithfully, I would sing their praises, but they never do. They always have to put their own Liberal spin on it. With the GST credit, they increased the payment by 25%. That increases demand, and given the name change to the credit, the Liberals want increased demand to go toward groceries, and that means even more grocery inflation.
At the same time, the Liberals are pursuing their policy to ban 90% of plastic packages in the grocery store. Switching from plastic bottles to glass bottles would increase prices and reduce supply. A truck filled with glass jars of peanut butter will carry less peanut butter than if it were in plastic jars. Maybe our economist Prime Minister should explain to Canadians what happens when he increases demand and reduces supply.
The Liberal intention behind their plastic packaging ban is to reduce plastic pollution. The road to higher prices is paved with Liberal intentions. Bad Liberal policies are raising the prices of industrial goods, diesel, gasoline, everything that is made or shipped, and, worst of all, the price of food. Of course we need to give an honourable mention to the Liberal plan to increase the price of electricity with the constitutionally dubious clean electricity regulations.
It will not surprise me if my Liberal colleagues try to defend these policies individually. Their first impulse will be to deny and deflect. They will claim that the policy is not raising prices, and then they will point to $10-a-day day care, which is not $10 and is not available to many of our most marginalized families. The problem for the Liberals is something called the Canada Gazette. That is where they must publish their regulations and, most importantly, tell Canadians the truth. That is where Canadians can see in black and white that the Liberal regulations increase prices.
Most important, even if they reveal the impact of higher Liberal prices, it is not shared equally among Canadians. Lower-income Canadians are hit hardest. Rural Canadians and seniors are hit hard. For lower-income seniors in rural communities, its hits compound. The upper-income urban progressives can afford the luxury of paying for Liberal intentions. What the Liberals should not be doing is passing the higher cost onto those who can least afford it. Of course, if they do not deny and deflect, they will try to diminish the impact. Today they might claim the Liberal fuel standard has increased the price of gasoline by only five cents a litre, and they will ignore the PBO report that proves the cost will reach 17¢ per litre by 2030.
Whether it is for gasoline, diesel or electricity, every extra penny of the cost of energy cascades through the economy. Five cents a litre might not sound like much. It might not sound economically crippling for the average urban commuter, but what about the lakers, those ships on the Great Lakes that take iron from northern Ontario to be smelted into steel in southern Ontario? The lakers carry well over 500,000 litres of marine diesel. The Liberal fuel standards means they are paying over $34,000 more to fill up that ship.
They pass those costs on to the steel plant. The steel plant passes those costs and their own extra costs onto the primary parts makers. The parts makers pass those costs on plus their extra costs to the appliance manufacturer. Those appliances are loaded onto trucks powered by diesel and shipped to the retailer. Sitting at the bottom of that cascade is every single consumer.
Only Conservatives are proposing positive policies to reduce energy prices. We are fighting for the cascade of lower prices. We want policies to increase supply, not demand. We need policies that will increase competition, not more protectionism. We need broad-based tax reform, not gimmicky megadeductions. Most of all, we need every Liberal member to follow the advice of their leader, to look inside themselves. They need to ask if their intentions are aligned with the impact they will have on Canadians.
Higher prices are the official policy of the Liberal Party, and Canadians can see the results after 11 years of Liberal rule. Housing, energy and food have become more expensive. Bad Liberal policies and out-of-control spending have led us to this affordability crisis. The road to recovery starts with the Liberals' admitting they have a problem, by supporting our Conservative motion.