Gasoline Prices  Mr. Speaker, there are two ways to deal with this issue. One is to slap on carbon taxes, raise income taxes and raise the GST to put it back where it was or raise it an additional point. That is what the NDP and the Liberals in the House would do. Another way of dealing with it is to lower taxes: to lower the GST, to lower income taxes, to raise personal exemptions and let Canadians keep their money.

Manufacturing Industry  The turmoil is not over. The European Union is looking ever more seriously at imposing a carbon tax on goods imported from countries that did not sign the Kyoto protocol or that do not respect its rules, such as Canada under the Conservative government. Will the minister admit that his government, by favouring the oil industry and not respecting Kyoto, is harming Quebec and Ontario manufacturing industries?

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  It would be the people who are driving gas guzzlers and being energy gluttons who would quite rightly pay more in terms of carbon taxes.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Some of those programs could already be done under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. As I mentioned, the act will need to be amended to make carbon taxes and other environmental taxes available, because they're not currently in the list of economic instruments authorized by CEPA.

Natural Resources committee  I'm going to agree with Mr. Jaccard, and I'm also going to disagree with him. Regarding his proposal on the carbon tax, you need the right price signal long term so that people can make the right decisions that have a value in terms of addressing climate change in the long term. I think your concern, Mr.

Natural Resources committee  Technically you're relying on other provinces to help balance your load, and you need that generation from other sources. How can we deal with this jurisdiction, Mr. Jaccard, first, with a carbon tax, and how do we help utilities get over that provincial jurisdiction issue?

Natural Resources committee  Right. If you put in a carbon tax, all you're doing is changing one of the many parameters that different jurisdictions look at when they negotiate with each other. There were no carbon taxes in the 1990s when I chaired the B.C.

Finance committee  In a sense you say the excise tax should go into general revenues, but then you turn around and say that perhaps the excise tax should come down--that we should introduce a carbon tax and that some of that money should go back to the people who are paying it. At what point should we do that for personal taxes? What should we do in terms of corporate taxes? The question is, when should we be using dedicated tax, and when should we skim a little bit off the top to really get the taxpayers for whatever we can?

Finance committee  We're hoping to see that happen all across the country. I have a couple of things. You have both talked about a fuel excise tax, a carbon tax, or an environmental tax. I just wonder, blue-skying here, how, if we ever decided that was going to take place, we would make it fair. My colleague across the table from Toronto, who seems to think it's a no-brainer, doesn't have quite the travel challenges, the distance challenges that many of our rural residents have in this country.

Finance committee  With respect to my comment about restructuring the federal fuel excise tax, it's already an existing tax, and you can restructure it in all sorts of different ways, including, for example, reducing the gas tax to let's say 5¢, and then bringing in a broad-based environmental tax that would apply to natural gas and coal products as well as other petroleum products that are not subject to the environmental tax. I've calculated, in the case of a carbon tax, that if you have a 5¢ tax on gasoline--so you're cutting the gas tax by 5¢ and then applying the carbon equivalent--in effect the federal government would actually still raise about $2 billion to $3 billion.

Finance committee  Well, I'm sure you know that I'm not going to be out promoting in the riding of Macleod, just south of Calgary, a carbon tax as of yet. I think we're a long, long way from that. I have one quick question, if I could.

Finance committee  I don't do any modelling; I talk. You may have noticed that. As I responded to the question about carbon taxes, I think the practical implications of these things are important. You guys have to take them into account. When I write, I try to take them into account too. We'll have a conversation about gift and inheritance taxes at some point.

Finance committee  Thank you. Professor Duff, regarding this notion of putting on a carbon tax, anybody who lives in 2008 knows you have to price carbon somehow or other, and whether it's a tax or whether it's cap and trade, or whatever it is, there are all kinds of ideas out there.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. I want to go back to the carbon tax issue that was raised and discussed at some length when Mr. McCallum was asking questions around that. There was some discussion on taxing imports and tax-exempting exports. Bearing in mind that Canada is an exporting nation and not an importing nation, aren't we opening ourselves up to the real danger of countervails and damaging the Canadian economy under that kind of theory?

Finance committee  I think that's why the Prime Minister has been working towards a global consensus on the environment, something that would actually get things headed in the right direction. It might incorporate a carbon tax here in Canada and allow us to remain competitive, because ultimately we want our Canadian companies to be able to compete. We don't want to put undue penalities on them so that they're not competing.