Andrew Scheer

[Main Estimates 2024-25, June 13th, 2024]

The Conservatives agree, and we will be voting no.

[Main Estimates 2024-25, June 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I agree, with Conservative members voting no.

[Main Estimates 2024-25, June 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, if the two members' votes that the NDP objected to will not count, then we will have to have a recorded division.

[Main Estimates 2024-25, June 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, there were two members' votes that the NDP have said should not count because of technical difficulties, so if we start applying all these votes, those members' votes will not count, is that correct?

[Business of the House, June 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the penultimate Thursday question.

I am just wondering if the government House leader could use this occasion to inform the House as to what may be the business for the rest of this week and into next week.

We heard some very helpful suggestions this week. If the government is telling the truth about its middle-class, working Canadian tax hike on the change to the capital gains inclusion rate, will it, next week, immediately table legislation to protect the bottom 99.87% of Canadians, who it claims will not be affected by this tax?

We would like the Liberals to enshrine that in law and to put the legislation where their rhetoric is. We would immediately fast-track that legislation once they do that. If they do not want to do it by income bracket and protect the 99.87% of Canadians, they could do it by profession. They could exempt plumbers, electricians, carpenters, farmers and fishermen, any one of the trades that they mentioned this week.

Will the Liberal government take us up on our challenge and enshrine into law that protection from this capital gains tax hike? What other legislation will it bring forward next week?

[Carbon Pricing, June 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, there are so many things wrong in what the parliamentary secretary said.

I did mention the rebate. I pointed out that the vast majority of Canadians are worse off even with the rebate, because they have to pay all the costs. He had nothing to say to that. He wants to get a gold star and a pat on the back because the Liberals have not applied the carbon tax to even more things. I am sorry, but Conservatives are not going to do that.

The carbon tax is not helping the government achieve its emissions targets. Since the government implemented the carbon tax, and hiked it year after year, Canada has fallen to 62nd out of 67 countries. We are worse off today on that metric than before the Prime Minister took over.

There is an easy way to settle this. No one has to take my word for it or the hon. member's word for it. Why will the Liberals not just table their own secret report, lift the gag order on the PBO and show Canadians the numbers so that they can make up their own minds? Why not just do that?

[Carbon Pricing, June 12th, 2024]

That is not true. It is incorrect.

[Carbon Pricing, June 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, a short while ago, I asked the finance minister a question during question period and was completely unsatisfied with the response, so here we are trying to get some details from the tax-and-spend Liberal government.

We have now known for months, if not years, that Canadians are worse off with the carbon tax than with any rebate that the government claims that they would enjoy. We know this because we experience it. We all go out and fill up our cars. We pay our home heating bills. We see the prices in grocery stores of anything that has to be grown, shipped, refrigerated or heated. All of those extra costs get passed on to the consumer. This is what Conservatives warned Canadians about in the last few cycles. We said that the government would never be satisfied with the rate of the carbon tax, that the government would increase it. The former environment minister, Catherine McKenna, accused Conservatives of making that up. In fact, many of her friends and Liberal friends in the mainstream media, the government-funded, taxpayer-subsidized mainstream media, carried that message for her. Then she was caught on tape saying that if one wants to get people to believe what one is saying, one just has to keep saying it louder, over and over again. Even if it is not true, people will begin to believe what one said. That is the Liberals' attitude towards voters: Just repeat the lie louder and louder, more and more often, and eventually people will believe what they are saying.

However, the fact is that we cannot argue with numbers. We cannot argue with math. No matter how many times Liberals say something here in this House, on television, or out in the communities, it will never take away from the fact that every single time a Canadian family struggles to pay that grocery bill or gets hit by an even higher home heating bill, or winces as they see the fuel pump tick over $100 for that fill, they know what the math shows, that they are worse off with the carbon tax. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that. The Parliamentary Budget Officer looked at all of the costs of the carbon tax, not just what we pay directly, which are the fiscal costs of the carbon tax.

A person will see the carbon tax, that fiscal cost, on their fuel bill after filling up their car. A person will see the carbon tax on their home heating bill. In many cases it is rising to 25%, 30% or even 40%, of the total bill itself, meaning it is almost as expensive as the fuel that we are using, whether it is natural gas or otherwise, to heat our homes. Those are fiscal costs. That direct line item people see when they pay a bill is called a fiscal cost.

The economic costs are a little bit difficult to see, but they still have a cost, nonetheless. The economic costs are the cascading effect of all those price increases; the fact that the retailer who sells the food has to make up for the fact that they pay higher utility costs, the fact that the farmer who grows the food has to pay to get it shipped, has to pay to fertilize it, to combine it, to store it, to dry it and to ship it. All of those businesses have less money to pay higher wages or to make investments in expansions. When we factor those costs in, Canadians are far worse off. The government is trying to only look at the fiscal costs, only look at one side of the ledger.

Here is the thing. Canadians do not have a choice. They cannot pick and choose which costs they are going to pay. They have to pay all of them. There is a report that the Government of Canada has possession of. The government produced the report. It has studied the report. The government has shown it to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, but it will not show Canadians the report.

My question last week is the same as it is tonight: Why will the government not just show Canadians what its own report says about the total cost of the carbon tax?

[Taxation, June 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, for nine years, Canadians have suffered from the terrible consequences of Liberal economic policies. Now what are the Liberals doing? For young Canadians struggling to be able to afford to buy their first home, the Liberals are raising taxes on home builders. For families barely able to afford groceries and lined up at food banks, the Liberals are raising taxes on the farmers who produce the food. For thousands of Canadians who have gone years without having a family doctor, the Liberals are chasing even more doctors away with a new tax on medical professions. How is any of that fair?

[Taxation, June 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister is about to impose another job-killing, wage-cutting, price-hiking tax on Canadians, and she wants us to believe the latest fairy tale that, somehow, we will all be better off if the Prime Minister just raises taxes again. We have heard this for nine years. Let us take a look at the result.

Canada is on track for the worst decline in living standards in four decades. Nine out of 10 middle-class families now pay more in income taxes, and Statistics Canada officials say that Liberal policies since 2015 have cost Canadians $4,200 in lost wages per worker.

The Liberals have made the middle class worse off with their last eight budgets. Why should anyone believe that the ninth time is the charm?