QUESTION PERIOD — Environment and Climate Change
Carbon Tax
November 9, 2023
Senator Gold, the Trudeau government has repeatedly claimed that their punishing carbon tax scheme aims to encourage Canadians to use more efficient sources of energy. We in Saskatchewan have been doing that for decades. In the early 1980s, Progressive Conservative premier Grant Devine changed our province’s heat source from heating oil to natural gas at a then cost of about $150 million — a huge investment for our small province. Now only about 0.3% of Saskatchewan homes still heat with oil. That is roughly equivalent to the number of Liberals we elect — net zero.
The Trudeau government’s supposedly national carbon tax carve-out applies only to homes heated with oil, which creates much more pollution than natural gas. Why is your government discriminating against the Saskatchewan people when we implemented cleaner energy 40 years ago?
Thank you, Senator Batters. You have made me nostalgic for the good old days when there was a Progressive Conservative Party. But I digress.
Kudos to any government who took action and takes action to help its citizens transition to a cleaner, more sustainable economy, whether it is provincial, territorial, Indigenous or federal.
The fact remains that what you have termed the “carbon tax” — the price on pollution — continues to be and continues to be considered to be the most effective market-driven tool to create incentives for businesses and Canadians to make the change to a cleaner, more sustainable form of energy. It continues to be the centrepiece of this government’s environmental policy.
Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Rural Economic Development said that if the Prairies also want the carbon tax carve-out, they should elect more Liberals. Thanks, but no. This sure does not say much for Ralph Goodale’s years at the Trudeau cabinet table when the carbon tax was created. Regional discrimination is no way to run a country. When will this Trudeau government cut the hot air and axe this unfair tax on home heating for all Canadians?
It is not the intention of this government to implement that which you suggest. The government continues to believe that maintaining the price on pollution on a national basis remains the most effective way forward to combat climate change.
