Madam Speaker, I have been listening to this with great amusement, as well as to the members' references as to why we have not actually been addressing the motion. As the member opposite said, the motion is actually quite irrelevant at this point. I want to talk a bit about what the Conservatives have been doing recently in terms of actually wasting the time and resources of the House; the current motion is another example of that.
I sit on the environment committee, and we repeatedly get these motions from the Conservative Party asking to produce this, to produce that and to produce all the information on the model. I am not quite sure what they do with the information when we produce it. However, it is incredibly costly for the government to produce all these documents, in both official languages, solely to be used for political purposes.
The Conservatives talk about the price on pollution program. First, they spread misinformation in calling it a carbon tax. We know that it is a levy. As reaffirmed today by the parliamentary budget office, the rebate associated with the levy benefits eight out of 10 households across the country. However, the Conservatives repeat time and time again that it is impacting affordability for Canadians. The Conservatives like to scare people and say it is part of the problem and not the solution. They never, ever talk about the real problem that we are facing with climate change.
Liberals know there is an affordability issue. We have been working very hard to introduce measures to help Canadians with the affordability crisis, which was largely the result of the postpandemic economy combined with supply chain disruptions from the war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East. We acknowledge that there is an affordability crisis, and we have been addressing it. However, the Conservatives vote against every program we introduce to address the affordability crisis. They then introduce scare tactics and motions that say the price on pollution program is the problem, and it is causing all the problems in Canada.
Well, I have said it before and I will say it again: The Conservatives not only need lessons in basic math, but they also need lessons in causality and correlation. Just because things happen at the same time, that does not mean they are caused by the same thing. The Conservatives do this over and over again. We can look at the price on pollution program, and we can see that when the carbon levy was increased, inflation came down. Do the Conservatives ever discuss that? How do they explain that if, in fact, it is the price on pollution that is causing inflation?
We can look beyond our borders to other countries and see that inflation has been worse in those countries. Some do not have the same kind of price on pollution program we have; they have different programs to address climate change. How does that work, if the price on pollution program is causing inflation and our affordability crisis? Is our price on pollution program here in Canada causing global inflation? Are we that powerful? Does it make that big a difference? I do not think so, and I do not think the Conservatives think that either. I think they believe it is to their political advantage to continue to say that this is what is causing the problem.
However, let us look at this in terms of what it is doing. Once again, today, the parliamentary budget office reconfirmed that eight out of 10 Canadian households receive more back in the carbon rebate than they pay through the levy. The only households that may not do better through this program, for which it does not address affordability, are those making over $250,000 a year; yesterday, we heard the Leader of the Opposition say the same households were the poor, the ones who needed help. The Leader of the Opposition was arguing that households that realized capital gains of over $250,000 a year somehow needed a tax break. I do not know where the Conservatives have been looking at Canadians and Canadians' wages and their living, but those people I know who realize capital gains of more than $250,000 a year or who make more than $250,000 a year are generally not the ones lining up at food banks. They are generally not the ones having problems paying for dental care or child care.
When we talk about the Canadians whom the government is helping, we are talking about the Canadians who do need help, not the wealthy and the corporate elites who are making more than $250,000 a year, either in earned income or in capital gains. For the people who earn less than $250,000 a year, who have capital gains of less than $250,000 a year or who perhaps do not have a corporation they are putting their income into at a lower tax rate so they do not pay the normal earned income tax rate, the programs we have put in place over the past year, and I would say since 2015, have benefited them.
The price on pollution will not only address the affordability crisis; it also addresses the climate crisis. Unlike those of us who agree that there is an affordability crisis and a climate crisis, it seems that many members on the opposite side, in fact some of the members who sit on the environment committee with me, do not acknowledge there is a climate crisis.
Some of the questions that are asked in committee and some of the witnesses they bring are so astounding that I want to fall off my chair. Some of the other witnesses who know the science, know the facts, actually look like they are going to have a problem in committee, and I worry about them because of some of the things that are being said.
We need to have a government whose members all understand that the climate crisis is real and that not taking action is not a possibility; it is not an option. We have to take action, and we know from experts around the world, from experience in other countries and from experience here in Canada, in British Columbia, that a price on pollution program works. In fact, we have been told again that 30% of the reduction in emissions we are putting out will be from the price on pollution program. We have already seen the reduction in carbon emissions due to the price on pollution program, and the data has been presented again and again.
All the Conservatives can do to address that is to say, “Let's see every detail of the model.” In fact, they wanted a spreadsheet. The modelling that is used to look at what the economy would do under a price on pollution scenario or without a price on pollution scenario is so complex and so great that we were told that a mainframe would have to be brought in. The data could not be given to the Conservatives, and they could not start to analyze it themselves.
Nonetheless, they demanded that from ECCC, which has a lot of very important work to do on things like the biodiversity legislation that is being advanced to protect 30% of Canada's nature, and the really important work to do in helping Canadians adapt to climate change. That work is being supplanted by producing more and more documents, in both official languages, and that is irresponsible. For members of the House, a party, to be trying to set us back in that way is completely irresponsible.
I hope that Canadians listening to the debate today will understand that yet another Conservative motion means time being used in the House of Commons, time being used in committee, and time when we would be asking departments to produce documents so the Conservatives can nitpick and try to find little things that they think are not exactly correct. They do this rather than listening to 300 experts from around the world and rather than looking at the science, the facts and the data to see the evidence that not only is there a climate crisis but also that a price on pollution program will help address that crisis and benefit their constituents as well as mine.
We need to support Canadians through the affordability crisis, and we need to support Canadians now and in the future by fighting the climate crisis. That is exactly what our government is doing, and I really wish the Conservatives would get on board and move forward instead of moving backwards.
