Business of Supply  The Competition Bureau already has the power to do what the member is asking so why would members of the Bloc be trying to act like they care about high gas prices? The fact is that it is the Bloc that supports dramatically higher gas prices through a carbon tax under the Liberal plan, which would mean billions of dollars in new carbon taxes and sending billions of dollars outside of Canada? The Liberal plan is a bad plan and it would not reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply  That party wants to get down to business. We want to govern this country. It is there. It is in black and white. If he needs something specific, let us address it. I am wondering which part of the black and white my hon. colleague forgot to read.

Business of Supply  As I said, these are fixed targets, but this time for the post-Kyoto period. They include the creation of a carbon tax,which is extremely important for establishing a carbon exchange that would allow market forces to support government regulations; the creation of an independent agency to monitor and govern the greenhouse gas emissions of the major industrial emitters, not only to ensure that we achieve the targets, but also to be able to establish this carbon exchange with the necessary credits that will be sold by those who perform well to those who perform less well; and finally, the fact that the territorial approach is recognized.

Business of Supply  We do not know what they thought but they were thinking the wrong thing. The Liberals imposed the Liberal leader's carbon tax plan into the bill, a plan that would lead to zero greenhouse gas reductions. The health and the prosperity of Canadians depends on the quality of the air we breath, the quality of life.

Business of Supply  There are two obscured assumptions that I want to put to the member if I could. First of all, anyone who is not tied to a table is proposing a carbon tax and a carbon tax of $195 a tonne. The only place this seems to have come from is the hon. minister's desk when he invented the number. The second assumption is that Kyoto is not doable but excludes all the tools, like international emissions trading.

Environment committee  But in Germany, following reunification, it saw the closure and the replacement of economically non-viable industrial facilities of the former East Germany, as well as some fairly proactive government policies, such as the introduction of a carbon tax in that country. And for the United Kingdom, success in reducing emissions arose from a combination of government policies introduced since late 1990s, and it benefited as well from a long-term trend away from coal as a primary source of domestic industry and household energy.

Agriculture committee  What is the reaction in your industry to the carbon tax imposed the other day by the government of Gordon Campbell in British Columbia?

Finance committee  We are producing CO2 right now, and the consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that it is having an impact on our physical environment; therefore, we think we have to start attaching a price to CO2. That is the whole point of a green tax or carbon tax, which is to treat that as what's called an externality in economics, a bad thing that we're treating as free, and it's not free but actually having some sort of deleterious impact.

Finance committee  I believe it was actually the Government of Quebec that was the first provincial government in Canada to announce a carbon tax, and not—

Finance committee  It's a very small amount applied to a very narrow base, so it's technically not a carbon tax—although we could perhaps quibble on that.

Finance committee  They also tried to tell producers not to pass it on to consumers, which frankly is the wrong position. The whole point of a carbon tax is to get people to understand that whether they're buying a big car or small car makes a difference to the environment, and thus to shape consumer behaviour going forward.

Finance committee  I believe we are at a stage where we need to make major investments in retooling the Canadian economy. Coming from British Columbia, where the carbon tax and other measures to fight global warming have just been introduced, I would suggest that those are some of the really important areas where we need to do that. If we are entering a period of economic downturn where we could see a growing slack in the employment market, it would be an ideal time not only to use fiscal policy to maintain full employment, but also to make those much needed investments that equip our economy for the future.

Finance committee  I live in Vancouver, so greetings from British Columbia, where last week the provincial budget brought in the country's first carbon tax, something that I'm sure you'll be studying as time goes on. The CCPA does not do independent macroeconomic forecasting. What we do is provide fiscal forecasts as part of our alternative federal budget process.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  It is weak leadership. It is not leadership. I'm opposed to opposition attempts to not only foist the carbon tax on us, but to kick the auto industry when it's struggling right now with an extreme auto emissions standard. They've put politics into Bill C-30 rather than practicality. Real people's lives hang in the balance.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Chair, what's being proposed is a major change in focus from what the original Clean Air Act was proposing, focusing on clean air quality, cleaning up pollution, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the health of Canada and the health of the planet. What's being proposed in this preamble is a carbon tax. The carbon tax gives a very clear direction that there's a national carbon budget, which would require billions of dollars from new taxes on Canadians. We heard a few weeks ago that the Liberal government was....