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.

Finance committee  I think that's one of the rationales for trying to think of this as a destination-based tax rather an origin-based tax, which is the way we've generally thought of carbon taxes. I'd agree with that. I don't want to slam Germany, though.

Finance committee  It's true that the potential for protectionist uses of that carbon tax or tariff could be a problem, particularly when you're imposing a tax on the embedded carbon content—and it's often hard to trace exactly what that is. There is a precedent for this in the U.S., I think, with the import tax they imposed on ozone-depleting substances, when they had a tax on ozone-depleting substances to help phase out those substances.

Finance committee  It's unfortunate to exempt the exports, but I think that unless you do that, you're just creating an incentive for industries to flee to the non-carbon tax jurisdiction over the short term. Obviously, the goal in the long term is to get more countries on board and to expand the scope of the regime.

Workplace Psychological Harassment Prevention Act  For some, it is totally foreign from anything they have experienced before. The relationship between a worker and his or her employer used to be black and white, cut and dry. A worker would go to work, put in a good eight hours, would get paid for those hours and everybody was happy. However, with the corporate structure we have in place and the ever increasing pressure on companies to make more money, that does not seem to be the way it is now.

Business of Supply  Sarkozy, clearly indicated during a debate and again following his election that he planned to impose a carbon tax on all countries that refuse to comply with the Kyoto protocol. This is no trivial matter for Quebec. Forty percent of Canadian exports originate in Quebec. What is this, if not a telling blow against inaction?

Environment committee  Keith, you have told us that in order to have the best chance of success, we need a clear regulatory system. You also emphasized the fact that it might be worthwhile to impose a carbon tax. Are you in favour of a carbon tax or of a cap and trade system for emissions?