Environment committee  Jaccard, you said that if we were serious about reducing greenhouse gas--and I look forward to reading your book, and you've already answered regarding the carbon tax in clarification. You're recommending strongly that we have a graduated scheme. My background is in local government. I was a city councillor for almost fourteen years, and whenever you made an adjustment, you did it gradually.

Environment committee  That's well understood. Mr. Jaccard, you talked about taxes and you said that the carbon tax could be between $120 and $150 a tonne. If you consider that every Canadian has a reduction objective of 10 tonnes per person, we'd be sending a bill for $1,500 to everyone in Canada starting tomorrow.

Environment committee  The carbon tax would be $150 a tonne, and every Canadian has to achieve a reduction of approximately 10 tonnes a year. As there are 30 million Canadians, that means a greenhouse gas reduction of 300 tonnes.

Environment committee  Going back to taxes, you talked about carbon taxes that should be levied on businesses or individuals.

Environment committee  What you'd have to do is say, “Here's where the forceful policy instrument, the compulsory policy instrument that I'm talking about, is set in the year 2015, here's where it's set in the year 2025”, and so on and so forth. If you believe that your policy instrument is something like a carbon tax--that would be one of my two options, something that puts a financial penalty on using the atmosphere as a free waste receptacle--you would literally have to have a graduated schedule so everybody knew what that tax would be five years from now, ten years from now, and so on.

Petitions  The petitioners call upon Parliament to honour our legal commitment to the Kyoto treaty; to further pledge to reduce Canada's greenhouse emissions by 30% below the 1990 level by 2020 and to 80% by 2050, as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the State of California have done; to institute a revenue neutral carbon tax to increase prices of fossil fuels; and, finally, to enforce increasing fuel efficiency standards on all motor vehicles.

Finance committee  Ms. Taylor—you seem to be quite popular today—if you utter the phrase “carbon tax” around here, Pavlov's dogs go into full howl mode. Yet you can't continue to treat the atmosphere as a free waste disposal unit. We've come to that conclusion with respect to water, that somehow or other there has to be a cost attributed to what heretofore had been a free good.

Finance committee  Tax incentives for renewable energy are needed, combined with an end to subsidies for oil and gas. There should be carbon taxes on oil and gas production and consumption. Public transit within and between northern communities also needs federal support. Energy conservation through energy efficient buildings and renewable energy sources must also be encouraged through education and financial incentives.

The Budget  For us in western Canada that would be the national energy program too. That would be a carbon tax. There is no other word for it. On Thursday the minister gave me his verbal commitment that there will be no carbon tax. I say that here because I want that on the record. I could go on for a long time, as members know, but let me conclude by saying that there is no plan.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  CO 2 is plant food, juice for photosynthesis. The government wanted to use the regulations under CEPA to put a carbon tax on companies releasing carbon. Mark my words, the government will bring that back.

The Environment  For example, the hon. member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore, an aspirant to the Liberal leadership on the weekend, says that we need some form of carbon tax, I guess some kind of new national energy program. That is something this government will never do.

The Environment  Instead of focusing on domestic reductions, this plan encourages the purchase of billions of offshore credits that will not improve our environment. Finally, it paves the way for a backdoor carbon tax by using CEPA, which is a toxic reductions bill. All of this betrays the Liberals' ignorance of the economic and energy realities of our country. Canada's emissions reduction targets under the Kyoto accord are clearly unattainable and the Liberal government's plan comes nowhere close to reaching them.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  They are going to give us a win. Where does it appear? They are going to administer this new plan using CEPA, a carbon tax on Canadians. That is what it will be. That is how it will end up. It is a blank cheque for them so now they have snuck it into that plan out of the budget. In conclusion, we do have a better way.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005  One of the things that some members of the opposition have suggested, particularly in the official opposition, is that somehow this is a carbon tax. There is no carbon, climate or green tax. There is no tax at all. In fact, if we were to have a tax we would have to bring in new legislation. As the parliamentary secretary I want to point out to all hon. members in the House that they can put that rumour aside.

The Environment  Speaker, the following is what three senior Liberals are saying about the environment minister's hidden Kyoto agenda to use CEPA to push a carbon tax. The environment committee chair said, “CO 2 is not a toxic risk to human health”. The finance chair said that he had a hard time understanding taking CO 2 out of the atmosphere.