As already stated, earlier today the Trudeau government released internal data to the CBC which shows the carbon tax cost Canada’s economy $20 billion. This information was first provided to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, in a letter dated May 14, 2024, from the Deputy Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada. The letter states:

The data the department is providing contains unpublished information. As such, I request you to ensure that this information is used for your office’s internal purposes only and is not published or further distributed.

Senator Gold, over the last nine years, how many times has your government sent a letter to the PBO with the same request? If you don’t know, could you table it?

Just how many times?

As I’ve tried to explain — and I encourage all interested senators to read the material that is now public — the information to which you refer did not include a full analysis of the costs and benefits of the price on pollution. It failed to include not only the costs of inaction, which are enormously considerable — equal to the change in GDP that is projected — but also the over $10 billion reinvested in the economy in terms of rebates given to Canadians, as well as investments into our economy as a result of clean energy.

But the key point here is that the Canadian public needs transparency. Regarding these instructions to the PBO about keeping it internal versus open and transparent, Senator Gold, how many times over the past nine years has your government sent similar requests to other officers or agents of Parliament? Could you make inquiries and table that information in the Senate as well?

How many times?

I’m not prepared to make that engagement, senator. I’m trying to explain that within government, many analyses are done in order to inform decision making and policy‑making. It is not accurate to characterize it the way you have.