Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Lethbridge for her excellent and heartfelt speech on agriculture.
Today, I rise to speak to the Conservative Party's opposition motion, which seeks to cancel the carbon tax on food inputs and production. There is a great deal of partisanship and many different points of view in the House, but today I hope we can shed light on the situation that farming families are facing in Canada.
Everything has become more expensive in this country. Canadian families are struggling to put food on the table. Seniors and low-income Canadians are having a hard time paying their bills and heating their homes. They are even finding it difficult to keep the lights on because they have so little money. The cost of food is at a 40-year high. I find it hard to believe that the current government cannot see that its policies have caused the cost of food to increase here in Canada. The Liberals cannot blame the pandemic or the war in Ukraine. It is a problem that they have created. The carbon tax is preventing family farms from being viable. With the government's plan to triple the tax in January, things will only get worse before getting better.
According to “Canada's Food Price Report 2023”, a typical farm will pay a carbon tax of $150,000 per year when the tax increases in the new year. Family farms simply cannot afford this punitive tax.
The Liberals and New Democrats seem to be fine with bankrupting our farmers to feed their selfish ideology. Canadians need to eat. The data speaks for itself: This carbon tax does not work. This government has not met a single one of its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this country. We are far behind the rest of the world when it comes to finding tangible ways to limit pollution in this country. We currently rank 58th out of 63 countries, according to the latest studies.
I found the questions asked by the Liberals and other opposition parties today quite amusing. For those parties to stand up and say that our party does not believe in climate change is very comical. We are very much aware of the impact climate change is having around the world and in our country. My family has been farming for over 175 years on our family farm in Beauce.
In committee, all parties supported Bill C-234, a bill from a member of our party that seeks to add natural gas and propane for heating buildings and drying grain to the carbon tax exemption. However, this motion does not go far enough.
We cannot just pretend that our country is not facing food insecurity and poverty. Many families can barely put food on the table these days. Food bank use is at an all-time high in Canada. There were 1.5 million visits to food banks in March 2022. It is frankly a disgrace. Why can we not find solutions to the problem of food prices without being accused of denying climate change?
After seeing a massive 20% increase in people using its food bank, Moisson Beauce in my riding noted that one-third of its clients were children. We Conservatives are compassionate. We want to find a way to bring down food prices across the country, and that begins on the farm by eliminating the carbon tax. Not only has this government messed up with its carbon tax, but it has also decided to impose an extremely unfair 35% tariff on fertilizer needed by farmers. It also plans to limit fertilizer emissions by 30% without even analyzing the impact this could have on our farmers' yields.
This government is so out of touch. People in my riding are skipping meals to stay afloat financially. That is outrageous. I am starting to get the measure of this government, since I have been here since 2019.
After I finish my speech, a Liberal member will no doubt stand up to tell me that I do not know what I am talking about because the federal carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change loves reminding me about that in the most condescending way possible. I actually have a very good understanding of how it works in my province, and that comment is not even remotely true. Our province does business with every other province in the country, and they are all subject to this tax on food production. Whether the Liberals want to believe it or not, this tax affects every province and territory in the country because it affects the goods we import from other provinces and the transportation of those goods to put on our tables.
Now I would like to take a moment to thank our Canadian farm families and share some interesting statistics about their work. One study found that only 8% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions come from the agricultural sector. Does anyone know the average in the rest of the world? It is 26%. Our farmers are very advanced. They care deeply about the environment and are constantly adapting and adopting more environmentally friendly practices. Instead of thanking these hard-working Canadians, the government continues to demonize farmers collectively.
The Liberals recently outlined their plan to reduce fertilizer use in Canada by 30% by 2030. However, as I mentioned earlier, no studies have been done to show what impact this will have on our yields in the future. This will ultimately be an extremely expensive and unscientific plan that could not come at a worse time for Canadian agriculture and its consumers. The reality is that farmers are already outperforming the rest of the world in terms of sustainability. In fact, Canadian farmers are already up to 70% more efficient in their use of fertilizers and fertilizer supplements than other countries, on average.
Food prices have risen by more than 10% in the last year, and these avoidable increases will eventually make things worse. Grain drying and other sectors will be seriously affected by the Liberal carbon tax increase. Canadian grains are a very important commodity for our country. They are a major source of nutrition, but also one of our major exports. When natural gas and propane are taxed on top of other taxes, farmers have to wonder if they will even bother planting those crops the next season. Their margins will evaporate, and it will be no longer profitable for many of them to do business here in Canada.
In conclusion, we need to seriously re-evaluate many of these Liberal environmental plans. We need to clear the way for our farmers to feed our nation healthy, affordable food. The only way to reduce food inflation is to lower input costs, not triple them. Families want to shop local and eat Canadian products, but lately local produce has become increasingly expensive due to this government's mismanagement of priorities. How can local strawberries cost more at the grocery store in the summer, here at home, than strawberries from California? Our system is broken. Meanwhile, other countries are supporting their agricultural sector. Considering these foreign products are shipped to Canada, whether by plane, train, ship or truck, how can the government not see that this is what is really causing climate change?
This country needs to be more self-sufficient and more competitive. We need to look after Canadians by voting in and implementing meaningful changes in appropriate sectors. I therefore invite my colleagues opposite to carefully consider this motion. They can even propose amendments. The fact is, Canadians need lower food prices, and farmers need our help to remain profitable so our family farms can keep operating and feeding our people.