Debates of Sept. 22nd, 2026

Canadian Fuel Affordability Act

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, here before all of us tonight, we have to recognize that our job is to advocate and work and fight for the Canadian people. The government, for the last 11 years, has continually been making promise after promise, announcement after announcement. We need to do significantly more doing and significantly less talking.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the hon. member could reflect a little bit on the history of how we got to this place today and perhaps on the fact that the Liberals seem to be taking our good ideas and running with them. This particular bill would be another example of that. I am wondering if she could talk a little bit about the history of this idea of reducing the gas tax over the last couple of years.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think, as the loyal opposition, that we should take this as a compliment. My father once taught me that one never has to worry about who gets the credit as long as the job is done. I think, in this case, it is very clear where the idea came from. Nonetheless, what is most important are the results and Canadians getting results at the gas pump.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, in her response to my question, my colleague talked about the need for more doing and less talking. However, over the past year and a half, we have implemented meaningful measures. We have made Canada's national school food program permanent. We have lowered taxes for more than 21 million Canadians.

That is in addition to all the other measures we implemented in budget 2025 and the economic update. Still, when we rolled out these meaningful measures—not just empty words—to help put more money in Canadians' pockets, my colleague voted against them. I am just trying to square that with what we heard tonight.

I completely agree with her that we need to be there for ordinary folks, but how does she reconcile what she said tonight with her voting record?

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to reconcile what I am suggesting tonight, and that is the fact that we need to get the government to stop spending. We need to get spending under control. The deficit has doubled from what the government inherited. We, as an opposition, have identified $150 billion in potential savings, roughly $10,000 for every Canadian. Instead of having money swallowed up by unnecessary spending, like spending money on consultants or the boondoggle that is the Alto project, perhaps the government needs to put its money where its mouth is and look after Canadians.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this has been quite a debate this evening. I know that over the last number of years, we have watched the Liberals lay burden after burden upon Canadians, particularly with the deficit spending. We now see a reversal of a whole number of these things, whether it is this idea or some of the major project announcements that we have heard. I am just wondering if the member has seen a change in the rhetoric. I am just wondering if the member is seeing a change on the ground back home.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our support for this measure is very straightforward. When Parliament has an opportunity to leave more money in Canadians' pockets through lower fuel taxes, this measure is just a common-sense prerogative. I know, from people in Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, that when I am at the grocery store, when I am out at different community events, the tone is consistent. The concern is consistent, that affordability is the number one issue and that we need to get this under control.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this feels like déjà vu. It was not that long ago that we were here debating nearly the exact same issue as we are today.

Today, we have in front of us a bill. As opposition members, we get to propose ideas through opposition day motions, which are not necessarily binding upon the House or the government. Back in April, we were debating virtually the exact same thing. I would point out that the Liberals voted back in April against removing the tax on gas and diesel fuel. I reluctantly must compliment the Liberals on this bill.

Another thing about this bill is that it is quite brief, which is amazing for the Liberals. Generally, the Liberals say they are doing one thing, then come out with a bill that does three to five things; some of the things we like and some of the things we do not like. They have made it very easy to support this bill. Perhaps the bill is a day late and a dollar short, but nonetheless, it is a good bill.

This bill would remove the gas tax going forward past January. I think that is something that we have been calling for for a long time. This is an idea that the Conservatives put forward. What is becoming a trend in this Parliament is that we have the good ideas and the Liberal government steals those ideas, plagiarizes those ideas and implements those ideas. We will continue to do that. We will continue to propose good ideas that the government can then take and run with.

I just want to talk a bit about what this means for people who live in northern Alberta. The further away from Edmonton someone lives, the more their average driving per year happens to be. The average person in Enilda, which is a couple of hours north of where I live and about three and a half hours north of Edmonton, drives probably 28,000 kilometres a year. If someone lives in Keg River, which is about three hours south of the Northwest Territories border, they are driving 38,000 kilometres a year on average. If someone lives in Edmonton, they are driving about 14,000 kilometres a year on average. If someone lives in Vancouver, they are driving about 10,000 kilometres a year.

I say that to show that when people live outside major city centres, they are generally driving significantly more. This is why we have been proposing this type of legislation. This is something that would definitely help those folks. The savings may be modest, but they would impact those at the bottom much more. When they save $500 a year on fuel, that is 10 tanks of gas, essentially. For someone from Keg River or from Peace River, that neck of the woods, it could translate to approximately $500 a year in savings with these fuel reductions.

I argued back in April about the fact that we are coming into harvest season, and the farmers use a lot of diesel fuel when they are bringing in their crops. That is the reality. Diesel fuel makes our economy work. Diesel fuel makes it so that the farmers can take the food off the field. It makes it so they can truck it to a terminal. It makes it so they can take it from the terminal to the processing facility. If it is flour, that flour is then trucked to a bakery, which is then baked into bread. Often, that bread is then trucked to a grocery store. Every step along the way takes diesel fuel. When the diesel fuel price is reduced just marginally, it can have a big effect because of all those steps along the way, and it makes a big difference. That is one of the cases that we have been making and we will continue to make.

The other thing that we want to talk about in this session is about putting Canada first. We want to make sure that we have a government that takes care of Canadians first.

Some of the ways to do this are around changing the tax structure, and we support this particular bill. However, other things are just around ensuring that Canadian industry and business have the tools and that they have a government that is ensuring that Canadian businesses are taken care of. We have seen just recently in the United States, Donald Trump has put tariffs on our Canadian honey producers. This is a major challenge, particularly for western Canada and Alberta, as 70% to 90% of our honey, depending on the year, will cross the border and go to the United States.

What is very interesting about that is that we import more honey into Canada than we export into the United States. This tariff is just driving the cost of our honey up, as a 50% tariff as it crosses the border going into the United States makes it kind of unaffordable for Americans to buy our honey. We are bringing in honey from around the world, and we are bringing in more of that than we send to the United States. We could perhaps displace that foreign honey with our own honey, provided we were to protect the border a bit more. People would say, “We have free trade agreements and that would allow for the importation of honey from other parts of the world” and that is all true.

The challenge that the honey producers have in Canada right now is that there is stuff called adulterated honey or fake honey. It is stuff that just says “honey” on it but actually is not honey. It is made from corn syrup, rice syrup or a different sugar product and it is made to look like honey. In the past, we discovered this was happening. We would test the product that would say “honey” on the bottle and it would turn out that there was no pollen in this product. That was a pretty easy test. We could just test for the presence of pollen. If there is no pollen in honey, it obviously was not made by a bee because bees collect pollen and they tend to accidentally drop it in the honey, generally. Based on that pollen, they can actually tell where in the world that honey came from. There was this product sitting on the shelves here in Canada that said “honey” on the bottle, and there was zero pollen in it so we knew that it was not honey. Honey producers in Canada said this was a problem, so we started to test for that. Lo and behold, pretty soon, this stuff had pollen in it. It turned out that players around the world were buying pollen from Canada, dumping that pollen into the sugar water, essentially, and shipping it back, calling it honey.

I tell this entire story to say that there are mechanisms in place, things that we can do, to help our honey producers to ensure that our honey is consumed here in Canada. If we work hard on protecting our consumers from this adulterated honey, if we work to control the border around this adulterated honey, that will reduce the competition of our honey producers against stuff that is not honey. We have been calling for this for a very long time, but now it seems like there is a big opportunity to fix this problem. I am looking forward to seeing some action from the government on this topic, particularly because our honey producers are being disproportionately penalized by the 50% tariff that the United States has placed on honey. We have put a countertariff on the honey from the United States, and I anticipate that will have some effect. Instead of 80% to 90% of our product heading across the border down to the United States it will be diverted left and right across this country to other provinces. I am sure some of the honey was coming from the United States and different places.

Honeybees in Canada are extremely important. Approximately one-third of our food production relies on the bees to do their pollination, so it is incredibly important that our beekeepers remain viable in this country so that we have a stable food supply.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretary of State (Rural Development)]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed my colleague's comments related to honey. In my own family, we do, as a hobby, produce honey and maple syrup so his comments were very relevant to me. I do appreciate the need for labelling to say that things come from Canada, so well said.

Tonight we heard many comments from our colleagues across the aisle about the fact that it would be great if the relief were more permanent or if it could be extended. For me, the question is around the uncertainty. We did not know six months ago where we would be today and we do not know where we will be in six months. I would like to hear the member's comments about how we can fix things in the longer term when there is so much uncertainty.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Stephen Harper, back in 2007, pursued an agenda of decoupling us from the United States because, he said, we were good friends with the United States at that time, but it was a great risk to Canada that 90% of our commerce went to the United States. He worked on signing 42 free trade agreements around the world. He worked very hard to diversify our markets for our energy, given that we are an energy superpower. We had 14 pipeline projects on the books. We had several LNG projects on the books. All of these things came to a grinding halt when the Liberals came to power over a decade ago.

The Prime Minister now has kind of taken up that torch, albeit in a different fashion, but when he is willing to take our good ideas and willing to follow the mantra of Stephen Harper, we will continue to support that.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am hoping my colleague can acknowledge that supporting the bill before us is not giving the government a blank cheque. Could he speak to the hardships and impacts that fuel prices are having on people in his riding, be it business owners, farmers or young families?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Steve Van Raalte texted me just the other day. He is a heavy-duty mechanic. He is on the road often, driving from one job to the other. He was complaining to me about how the cost of fuel was really affecting his bottom line. He lives in a competitive environment and has to set his rate based on the other mechanics in the area. He lives kind of far from town and therefore is stuck paying this diesel price. He was saying that it was affecting his ability to make a living because he is on the road a lot with his mobile mechanic service.

[Doly Begum, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently, and I was quite intrigued by the story the member shared about the honey producer.

It is remarkable to learn about some of the things that you are interested in.

I want to ask something a little related to what you talked about but different from this specific legislation. If you were to suggest something that we could do as a Parliament, as government, to support producers like the one you referred to, the honey producers, for example, who are growing locally, what would you suggest? Sometimes we do end up with products that are not actual honey, for example, and it would be great to have some ideas on that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

I would remind the hon. member to please address her comments through the Chair.

The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member knows this, but northern Alberta produces about a quarter of Canada's honey. Alberta produces about half of Canada's honey, and northern Alberta produces about half of that, so about a quarter of Canada's honey comes from northern Alberta. I always say that my riding is the promised land. It is literally flowing with milk and honey.

Particular places in the world are of concern when it comes to this adulterated honey. One of the things we could do is block the border to some of these products coming in. There is a biohazard risk with some of the mites that may come in with the product. Also, some players have been bad actors in the space. We could just say that the door is shut to those places, particularly right now.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in late medieval Europe, the church sold something called indulgences. Indulgences were cash donations that would allegedly result in a person's temporal sin being removed or mitigated if they contributed money to the church. It was a highly innovative business plan that succeeded wildly until it backfired into 200 years of Reformation.

The Liberals have rediscovered a remarkable new form of indulgences, and they call it standing up for Canadians. First, they demand cash and tell us it will help save the planet. Second, they make it a tax so people have no choice. Then, when Conservatives try to stop them, they call us regressive for supposedly not wanting to save the planet. Finally, they bow to reality and common sense, adopt half of the Conservative ideas and expect kudos because no longer doing what they did in the first place is such a great idea that they expect thanks from Canadians.

They did it first with the carbon tax. First, they taxed energy. Then, when Canadians complained that making energy more expensive was making everything else more expensive, they told them it would clean the air. When Canadians finally got angry enough, the Liberals stopped collecting part of the tax and held a press conference to announce that they had rescued Canadians from the problem they created in the first place. Now they are doing it with the excise tax, the tax they installed over 50 years ago that they have only now discovered is not really necessary after all, until next year, that is, and then apparently the Liberals need half of it back.

This doublespeak and magical thinking has become a hallmark of the last decade of Liberal government. Instead of looking toward the good of Canadians, it looks toward the health of the government coffers, already shrunk to nothing under the weight of its wild and irresponsible spending.

Should we not instead be asking how this tax benefits the people of this country, rather than how it helps the Liberal government and Brookfield? Is the federal fuel excise tax a good tax or a bad tax for Canadians? Is it helping us or hurting our small and large businesses and our productivity as a nation? Is it helping our families? Do our jobs feel safer because of the excise tax? Are our streets cleaner? Are we more secure as a nation? Are those not the kinds of questions we should be asking about the excise tax?

Ottawa's message now seems to be that the tax is necessary until it is not. Removing it is irresponsible until the Liberals do it, and once they do it, we need to applaud them for protecting us from it. It is a little like setting somebody's pants on fire, handing them a bucket of water and expecting a thank-you note.

There are only so many things to say about this bill. I am going to vote for it not because it is a wonderful bill but because it is the best we are going to get from this gang. I am going to talk about something else instead.

The Prime Minister spoke to the European Parliament and got a standing ovation. The president of the European Union says she wants Canada to become the EU's first-ever associate member. There is even a line going around about how it would be lovely if Canada became the 28th state of the European Union instead of the 51st state of the United States. Those are lovely words, and they pair well with the Prime Minister's tendency to swan about in European sitting rooms, sipping wine and eating caviar, or whatever else it is that drives the bills to Canadian taxpayers into the stratosphere.

I have no doubt that the EU would love to get its hands on Canadian natural resources, but let us look at the reality. In 2008, the European economy and the American economy were roughly the same size. Today the American economy is roughly 50% larger. In 18 years, one of them grew like a teenager and the other one grew like a lump of coal. Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, a man of the same political convictions as the Liberals, wrote a report for the EU. His findings were that in the last 50 years, Europe had not created a single company from scratch worth more than 100 billion euros, not one. In the same 50 years, the Americans created six companies worth more than $1 trillion.

Europe's response to the Draghi report was, naturally, to hold a summit about the Draghi report. As for red tape, members have probably heard about the bendy cucumber regulation. Europe even had rules on how curved a cucumber could be. It repealed them in 2009, and to this day, that is the fastest decision the EU has ever made. It tried to ban refillable olive oil bowls in restaurants. It even gave us the cookie banner, that little thing that comes up asking us to accept all or not. It is the single greatest destruction of human productivity since Solitaire came pre-installed on Windows.

Here is my favourite: our free trade deal with Europe, or CETA, which we started negotiating in 2009 and signed in 2016. Now it is 2026, and it is still only provisionally in force because member states have not ratified all of it. The French Senate actually voted it down two years ago. It has been 17 years. My daughter went from kindergarten to a university degree in the time it took Europe to decide whether it likes Canadian beef.

Now we are told that the EU is going to be our new security partner too. This was clearly done without anyone thinking to ask the Canadian Armed Forces. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe announced strategic autonomy: no more dependence on America. Then, and this number comes straight from the European Defence Agency, nearly 80% of what the European government bought for its militaries came from outside the EU, and about 60% came from the United States. Almost 100% of the discourse the EU spends on strategic subjects is spent pleading with the U.S. to send more of it. Apparently, strategic autonomy is when someone declares independence from a country and then sends their credit card to the folks they just declared independence from.

Europe has 27 armies, one currency and no phone number. Henry Kissinger reportedly asked 50 years ago, “Who do I call if I want to talk to Europe?” It has since answered him: Call a switchboard, press “4” for defence, and be placed in a queue that is currently working on the 60-year-old question of Cyprus.

As well, there is a hot war in Europe, the biggest since World War II. It threatens to spread into a third general European war that will almost certainly become a conflagration on a scale we have never seen before. We should help the west in every way we can, but the Liberals want to make us political and economic partners with the combatants too. Again, that will be good for Europe and wonderful for Brookfield, but is it good for Canadians?

Here is Canada's situation in plain numbers. About three-quarters of everything we export goes to the United States. The EU, with a CETA deal we spent 17 years on, takes under 10%. Roughly $3.5 billion in goods crosses the American border every day. If we replaced the U.S. with the EU, we would need to sell Europe eight times more than we currently do, and we would have to do it by sailing past the one country that is actually next door.

The Americans are now the world's largest oil producer and largest natural gas exporter. Europe pays two to three times the American price for industrial electricity, and having shut its nuclear plants, it is now heating itself by burning press releases about hydrogen. One does not leave a booming neighbour for an anxious war-torn continent because the neighbour is going to be rude for the next two years. I will take a rude customer who buys 75% of my product over a polite one who buys 8% and needs a subcommittee to even approve the invoice.

Here is the part the Prime Minister's speech writers skip. Donald Trump leaves office on January 20, 2029. That is a hard date. It is a constitutional date less than two and a half years from tonight.

Therefore, Canada has two good options. Option one is to negotiate with Trump now. He likes deals. It is the one thing everyone agrees he likes, and we have leverage. He needs our potash, our oil, our uranium, our electricity and the aluminum in every beer can from Buffalo to Bakersfield. Option two is to hold our ground, protect our industries, not give away anything permanent and wait 28 months. That is it. That is less time than it took Europe to schedule a second reading of our trade deal.

Either way, the worst option is option three, which is to rebuild our entire economy around a partner engaged in a war and whose greatest strategic achievement of the decade is creating a unified phone charger, which, I will grant, is a real achievement. I have one, and it is excellent, but it is not a foreign policy.

My message to the Prime Minister, delivered with all the affection of a rural Conservative to a central banker, is this. The Europeans gave him a standing ovation. He can enjoy it. He can frame it. They are very good at applauding. They have had 70 years of practice in applauding historic steps by others. When the applause stops, our biggest customer is still just a walk across the border, still growing, still the largest economy on earth and in 28 months, under new management.

Mr. Carney, if you want to move to Europe, enjoy the wine and caviar, but please do not take us with you because the rest of us cannot afford it. Fix the—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

I remind the member not to use the proper name of the Prime Minister or any member of the House.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

My apologies, Mr. Speaker.

I ask the Prime Minister to fix the fence with the neighbour instead, and while he is at it, get rid of the excise tax permanently.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the content of my Conservative colleagues' speeches will never cease to surprise me, I think, because there seems to be a real disconnect between what they say and reality. The reality is that Canadians expect us to work to make the economy stronger and more resilient.

That means diversifying our economic partnerships abroad. We need to maintain a relationship with the United States, but we also need to look at how we can diversify markets elsewhere, including in Europe. That also means implementing affordability measures, like the one we are discussing this evening.

It must be a bit strange for my colleague to vote in favour of an affordability measure, since the Conservatives always vote against such measures. This time, they are going to make an exception. I think Canadians can see through the official opposition. The results of the last six by-elections speak for themselves. Canadians see that our plan to make the economy stronger and more resilient is working.

Does my colleague agree that Canadians want us to truly work on making the Canadian economy stronger and that we need to stop this type of rhetoric that has no basis in reality?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that was a bit of a mix of gratuitous insults and propaganda, but I am not quite sure. Obviously, we all want the Canadian economy to be strong. I think this is fairly obvious. I do not think that my supporting the bill in any way suggests that I think the Canadian economy should not be strong. I am not sure where that came from.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the speech by my colleague immensely. I was just surprised that he did not mention anything about the defence relationship that the Prime Minister seems to be pursuing with China. I was just wondering if he had any comments on that.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister's intent all along was to move toward the EU and join it as much as possible. He has been presented a perfect opportunity with all the tantrums going on south of the border. The meeting with the Chinese is quite likely another red flag, a gratuitous red flag, to throw in front of Mr. Trump, who will hit the ceiling as usual, further making it difficult for the next American administration to repair the damage that he has done. Mr. Carney is making it almost impossible for the next administration—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

I would remind the member not to use the name of any member of the House.

The hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, this evening, the bill we are considering is a straightforward measure. It is about affordability. It is about extending the fuel tax break. It is a measure that will put more money in Canadians' pockets.

My colleague did not say much about it in his speech, but earlier, my colleague from Peace River—Westlock said that it was a good bill. He even described extending the fuel tax break as an amazing idea.

How does my colleague feel about finally supporting a measure that actually helps with affordability? During this session, can we expect to see him supporting the measures we are putting in place to help Canadians with affordability? Can we expect to see him support what his colleague described as the amazing work our government is doing to help with affordability and to make the economy stronger and more resilient?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would not categorize the government's work as amazing. I would categorize it as a half measure destined to become even less soon. If it is good to reduce or stop the excise tax now, why in the world would it be a bad idea next year?