Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise on behalf of the people of Simcoe North, and it is always an honour to rise in the chamber to speak about issues that matter to Canadians.
Before we get into the opposition day motion, the supply day motion, it is important to discuss, with respect to electric vehicles, how we came to be here today.
For years, the Liberal government was chasing an electric vehicle mandate such that, by 2035, 100% of the vehicles sold in this country needed to be electric. For years, the Liberals were wedded to this ideological view that the government should force people to drive certain kinds of vehicles. That was against all the advice from industry. Officials at Environment and Climate Change Canada even raised the prospect that the electric vehicle mandate would drive up the prices of used cars, in turn hurting low-income Canadians, and would harm individuals in rural and northern communities because of a lack of access to infrastructure.
Since the EV mandate was proposed, Conservatives constantly and consistently demanded that the EV mandate be abolished. I suppose one might say or think that Conservatives should now be very happy because that EV mandate has been abolished. I suppose one might think that we should be applauding the government for listening to Conservatives, for listening to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who do not want to be told what kind of vehicle to drive. The challenge the government has is that it has now replaced the electric vehicle mandate with an electric vehicle rebate scheme, which it is now reintroducing, that will subsidize the purchase by Canadians of electric vehicles that are not produced in Canada.
In this moment, we do not just have massive deficits. We have deficits double the size of what even former prime minister Justin Trudeau projected. In a time when we have these massive deficits, the government is bringing forward an unfunded program. It needs to borrow additional money to fund this new rebate scheme, where Canadian tax dollars will be going outside of the country to purchase vehicles not built in Canada.
There is another way. It includes the Conservative proposal to take the GST off Canadian-assembled vehicles to reward production that stays in Canada. The automotive sector is on its knees. It is 50% smaller today than it was when the Liberals first took office in 2015. We have seen automotive production continue to be sucked south of the border. President Donald Trump has made it his explicit objective to take Canadian auto sector jobs because, in his words, Americans “don't need” Canadian-made automobiles; they want American-made automobiles.
Of the $2.3 billion set aside for this rebate program, the lion's share of that amount will go to Canadians to purchase vehicles not assembled in Canada. Even worse, a large amount, millions of dollars if not hundreds of millions of dollars, will go to American automakers that are assembling vehicles in the United States and sending them to Canada. It is bewildering. It is stupefying. It makes no sense why we would take Canadian tax dollars and send them out of the country. It makes even less sense that we would take those tax dollars and send them to American companies. Why would we reward President Trump for his behaviour?
This is all too common a pattern of behaviour for the government. It introduces bad laws and bad regulation against reasonable advice, only to turn around and reverse itself and then expect that it will be applauded, that it deserves a medal. However, we do not have to think very hard about those examples. It took the Liberals years to realize they made a mistake with the carbon tax. In fact, they went on for years saying that the carbon tax put more money in Canadians' pockets. Then, when they cancelled the carbon tax, they said they were doing it to make life more affordable. No one can make this up.
They also seem to believe that the way forward is to assemble vehicles in Canada for export to markets other than the United States. That is just pure fantasy. There is no planet where it makes sense to build cars in Canada to send to Europe, China or to other countries, other than the United States. This is also evidenced by them linking the tailpipe emissions standards and aligning them with Europe. Those regulations make no sense. We should be aligning on a continental fuel-efficient standard so that vehicles can be assembled in Mexico, the United States or Canada to be sold in those markets. It is just not realistic.
Not only will we be diverging on our standards but safety standards for vehicles in Europe are incredibly different from those in Canada and the United States. That means that vehicles need to be assembled in a different way. It is just not a practical solution. We absolutely need to maintain an integrated market in North America for vehicles. We need to make a deal with the United States that would see a de-escalation of this trade war, especially as it relates to automobiles being produced in Canada. These jobs are not just a job for one individual. These jobs support families. These jobs support communities. These jobs are supported by thousands of other jobs throughout the rest of the supply chain in the conventional vehicle market.
I know the government likes to claim that there are electric vehicle parts produced in Canada for the integrated EV market in the U.S. and that some of the parts in these vehicles will be made in Canada and eventually shipped back in a finished vehicle, but it absolutely pales in comparison to the thousands of parts in the conventional internal combustion engine vehicles that are currently made today and that need to go to the U.S. It is absolutely imperative that we do not decouple and believe there is some fantasyland where Canadians are going to start making vehicles for shipping elsewhere around the world. China is already building plants in eastern Europe. Car manufacturers are building plants in Europe to service that market to reduce transportation costs. We need to be realistic that the most likely scenario to save our auto sector is to ensure market access for Canadian autos, and we should be rewarding Canadians for purchasing Canadian-made products.
In my last 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker, I want to wish you a happy Valentine's Day. I would like to wish my wife a happy Valentine's Day, as well as my two children, my friends at sunny ways and my close friends, including Tom Barlow.