Happy Wednesday everyone! We’ve only got one Motion from Pierre Poilievre today as the House takes a week off for Thanksgiving holidays.
Motions
Carbon Tax
As mentioned, our only Motion of the week comes from Pierre Poilievre (Conservative Leader, Ontario, Carleton):
Given that:
- The Bloc Québécois supported the so-called “Clean Fuel Standard”, a second national carbon tax, which will raise gas prices in Quebec by 17 cents per litre, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer
- The Bloc Québécois said carbon taxes need to be “increased much more radically than it is now”
- The New Democratic Party and Liberals supported measures to quadruple the carbon tax to 61 cents per litre
- Atlantic Liberal members of Parliament allege they are not in favour of the carbon taxes but have supported carbon tax measures 23 times since 2015
The House call on the government to introduce legislation, within seven days of the motion being adopted, to repeal all carbon taxes to bring home lower prices on gas, groceries, and home heating
So here we go again with some important things to keep in mind.
First, the 17 cent increase is in 2030 and will be the maximum for refineries and importers that don’t reduce the emissions caused by the gas they produce. It can also be as low as 6 cents per litre for those that aren’t compliant, and the ones that hit their targets will be able to sell credits to those that can’t.
As above, the carbon tax is only set to hit 61 cents in 2030. The “quadruple” part is from the original price when the carbon tax was implemented, and this increase was always part of the plan. This is nothing new.
I know I have a habit of breaking into Pierre’s Motions pretty heavily, but that’s because so far I don’t think I’ve seen one that makes any sense aside from being used to produce sound bites. For example, with this one what he’s saying is “Because everyone supports the carbon tax we should repeal all carbon taxes” which doesn’t make any sense. His arguments would work better if he didn’t mention the other parties at all and just focused on the increases to the cost of living caused by the carbon tax.
As expected the Motion failed with everyone except the Conservatives voting against it.
| Party | For | Against | Paired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | 1 | 152 | 0 |
| Conservative | 117 | 0 | 0 |
| Bloc Quebecois | 0 | 30 | 0 |
| NDP | 0 | 23 | 0 |
| Green | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Independent | 1 | 2 | 0 |
Worth noting is the Liberal MP that voted in favour of this Motion, Ken McDonald (Liberal, Newfoundland and Labrador, Avalon). There’s been plenty of interviews with him over this, and his reasoning for supporting it is that the carbon taxes disproportionately impact the Atlantic provinces, which is accurate. The Clean Fuel Regulations will impact them particularly hard, which is why Pierre called out Liberal and MPs in that region.
So the Clean Fuel Regulations are an added tax on importers and refineries with the goal of getting them to mix in biofuels to reduce emissions caused by gas. The goal is to reduce emissions to 15% of their 2016 levels by 2030. Anyone who does this can sell credits to help those who can’t, and anyone without the credits will pay up to 17 cents per litre by 2030. The reason this is a problem for Atlantic provinces is that they’ve been slower to swap to biofuels and electric vehicles, and their geology makes this more difficult. Newfoundland is actually exempt from exempt from existing biofuel regulations, which puts them in a really bad spot as they’re already behind everyone else on using them. Companies there are going to be playing the catch-up game, so it’s going to be extremely hard for them to reach a point where they’ll be able to produce credits.
Closing Fun
And that’s all for the week! Next week will probably be a short post as well unless anything interesting happens in the two days I’ll be covering. Have a quote!
Climate change is like watching a bathtub that is about to overflow. Relying on offshore wind power would be like using a spoon to try to empty the bathtub. Meanwhile, this bill keeps the tap running full blast.
Christine Normandin (Bloc Quebecois, Quebec, Saint-Jean)