Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege and honour, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin County, St. Thomas and London, although, despite our absence from this chamber over the last few months, I note that not much has changed with the Liberals. They are still out of alignment with where the majority of Canadians are right now, which is finding that they cannot afford life in this country after 11 years of the Liberals. They are still unwilling to look in the mirror and recognize that they themselves are the problem and, therefore, not the solution. More importantly, they must be dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. The bill they are coming forward with today is a step in the right direction, but only a step, and only a little nudge towards where we ultimately need to be.
Back in April, when we were seeing the rising high gas prices in this country, Conservatives said we need to cut all of the federal taxes on fuel for Canadians to give them a break. The Liberals eventually came around, but they offered a fraction of the tax relief we were pushing for, for a fraction of the time. Even this proposed extension does not go nearly far enough when Canadians still cannot afford to fill up their fuel tanks. I will say that is especially clear in ridings such as mine where driving is a necessity and not a luxury. If someone is living in Vienna, Fingal or Port Stanley, Ontario, they have to drive to get around. Oftentimes, workers have to drive to get to work. Students have to drive to get to school. This is a reality.
High fuel prices and high fuel taxes bear a disproportionate weight on rural Canadians, the people who the Liberals have often looked down upon and have not really acknowledged. We know this by looking at what the Liberals themselves have said about fuel taxes in the past.
Now, interestingly enough, going back to April, when we originally called for this fuel tax cut, the bigger one, not the Liberal one, Liberals pooh-poohed it. They kind of brushed it off. The finance minister said, when we asked if they were going to cut the fuel taxes, “we will not take lessons from the Conservatives.” That was on Monday. On Tuesday, they took our policy.
We have had other examples of this where people have risen in the House of Commons on the Conservative bench and asked the Liberal government when it was going to provide tax relief at the pumps for Canadians, and the Liberals said anything other than yes, because they fundamentally do not believe in it. We know this.
For example, the member for Winnipeg North actually said that it was “far right” to oppose the Liberal carbon tax. Mark Holland, the former Liberal health minister, rose in this chamber and, believe it or not, said that if a family takes a road trip, they are letting “the planet burn” because they are filling up the tank to go on a nice, affordable family vacation.
This is what we have heard from the Liberals, time and time again, about their true allegiance. They actually support fuel taxes because they do not want people to fuel up their cars. Steven Guilbeault, a former Liberal cabinet minister, said opposing the carbon tax is a plan “to let the planet burn. It is immoral.”
This is what we get from these Liberals who, when it is politically to their advantage, decide to pretend that they are actually against the carbon tax and that they are actually against fuel taxes. A fuel tax is a tax on productivity. It is a tax on anything that needs to be shipped. It is a tax on groceries. It is a tax on transport. It is a tax on literally anything in a productive society, but when Liberals see taxes, they see opportunity.
Funnily enough, going back to April, when we were calling on the Liberal government to cut fuel taxes, the Minister of Jobs and Families rose in the chamber and saw dollar signs. She said there was “a generational windfall.” Her response in question period to my colleague, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party, was that Liberals would spend the money better than Conservatives would.
That is what the Liberals see. They see opportunities. They see Canadians as a cash cow, while Canadians see a life that is unaffordable and has only gotten less and less affordable under the Liberals. That is why we reiterate our call to eliminate all federal taxes on fuel. We think it should go until at least Canada Day, but I would personally say that we need to be looking at ways to get federal fuel taxes off entirely.
This is a lever the government has at its disposal. It is a direct way to make life more affordable for Canadians and to ease the pressure, not just on rural Canadians, but on industry, students, single parents, seniors and anyone who needs fuel to live, either directly or indirectly. This is common sense. The Liberals have already come part of the way. Why do they not come the whole way? Why do they not actually take a stand for a real, concrete affordability measure that would support Canadians where they are right now?
This is where I go back to my thesis from the beginning of my comments. The Liberals have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. This was true with the consumer carbon tax, and it is true with the federal fuel excise tax holiday. It will probably be true with the industrial carbon tax. At some point, they will come along with us because they realize the error of their ways, and they will pretend that they were with us the whole time.
Ironically, gaslighting comes without a carbon tax when the Liberals do it. I do not know how they have managed to make that work, but why do they take so long? I do not know if it is that they had to see the polling. I do not know if it is that they were waiting to find out if it was politically to their advantage, but it is the right thing to do.
It is interesting that all the deficit hawks somehow emerge from the Liberal benches when we start talking about the need to give Canadians a break on fuel. These folks are nowhere to be seen when the Prime Minister is posting $70-billion dollar deficits. They do not care about the deficit then.
Just to pre-empt a potential question that may come from one of my colleagues opposite, this is because of heightened fuel prices due to things that are matters outside the government's control. No one is claiming the government is responsible for some of the global factors, but it is responsible for taxes. This is because of a sudden surge in prices, which means that the fuel tax revenue the government is going to get was never actually budgeted for.
Unless the government's previous budget was based around this war, which I do not think it was, the government never foresaw the increase in fuel revenue, so it is not actually hurting the government coffers, of which there is a lot that needs to be trimmed, but that is a topic for another day. This measure would not actually hurt the government coffers, but not doing it is hurting Canadians. Not doing it is putting pressure and strain on families who already cannot withstand it.
I mentioned earlier today in the House a story that was actually very difficult for me to hear. It was not as difficult as it was for the people sharing it. A group of seniors I met with spoke about the fact that they are literally skipping meals because of food affordability problems, and ever since I posted that clip on social media, I have had other people reach out to share very similar things, heartbreaking things. They are the human faces that go along with the stats we have seen about the millions and millions of Canadians who are now using food banks, who have never before had to.
People who are employed, people who have jobs and careers, are finding that that is not enough to survive in Canada after 11 years of the Liberals, who do not put affordability front and centre, who are not devoted to saving Canadians money, who are not putting forward a concrete plan to save Canadian jobs and who are following their Prime Minister, the very model of all talk and no results.
The results are that the Liberals have to put forward this bill because they have failed Canadians. The Liberals have to put forward this bill because Canadians cannot afford the price at the fuel pumps after the Liberals have driven up the cost of absolutely everything.
We are the party that is fighting for Canadians. We are the party that is fighting for Canada. We are the party that is going to make sure that fuel taxes are not driving more people into untenable situations with household finances that are sending them to the food bank. It is a sad reality that most people would never have thought possible in a G7 country, that food bank stats would become the norm. We are not even surprised. The Liberals smirk and chuckle when we raise them because it is just window dressing to them, but we will continue to stand up for that.
I want to say to the Liberals now that I would be happy to support any measure that saves working Canadians money, but I want to know, if they are going to take our policy on this, why they are not taking the whole thing. They should get rid of the federal fuel taxes once and for all, not just for a few months, but in a way that is meaningful in the long term.
If it is right for Canadians now, it is right for Canadians always.