Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech, I would like to point out that I believe there is an error in the wording of the motion. The motion calls on the Liberal government to cancel the April 1, 2024, carbon tax increase.
However, there is no carbon tax. It is actually a price on pollution. I believe that both the House and Canadians are being misled on this issue.
Why is it not a tax? For it to be a tax, the government would have to put the money into its coffers with a view to spending it on programs or investing it in the future of Canadians.
That is not what the price on pollution does. With the price on pollution, the government is only an intermediary, because the proceeds are returned to Canadians. It is a price mechanism, something that the Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman endorsed as an economic measure for fighting pollution.
How does this mechanism work in terms of carbon pricing? It is very interesting. It involves a little bit of magic. When a consumer goes to spend money and sees that the price is perhaps a little higher, they are not thinking about the quarterly deposit they will receive from the Government of Canada in their chequing account as compensation. They just look at the price and decide that, since it is a bit more expensive, they will consume a little less. That saves them money in the short term, and then, on January 1, April 1 and so forth, they realize that money has been deposited in their bank account.
They will feel doubly lucky, because they saved money at the pump and also got money from the government. That is how carbon pricing works, and it is the key to its effectiveness as a measure for fighting pollution, especially greenhouse gas emissions.
What is very frustrating about this debate, in addition to the fact that it is the same debate over and over again based on a very symbolic and superficial understanding of what the price on pollution is, are these flimsy conclusions that the official opposition wishes to draw about the impact of the price on pollution on inflation and, more specifically, on food prices. However, rigorous academic study after rigorous academic study has pointed to the fact that the impact of the price on pollution on food prices is extremely small.
Now, we know that the official opposition has no respect for the Bank of Canada and that it would like to take the Bank of Canada under its wing and dictate monetary policy, but it is an incredibly credible institution filled with some of the best economists in this country. What does the Bank of Canada say about the supposed link between the price on carbon and inflation? It says that the price on carbon contributes about 0.15 % to inflation overall.
The University of Calgary, is not, I might add for anyone who does not follow schools of thought and academic life in this country, what I would call a hotbed of socialism. What did the University of Calgary say about the supposed link between the price on carbon and food inflation? University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe estimates that the price on carbon I will call it, because I do not want to mislead people as it is not a tax, is responsible for less than 1% of grocery price increases. How did Professor Tombe come to that conclusion? Did he just pull a number out of the air the way the official opposition likes to do? No. He used a Statistics Canada modelling program. Again, we have some of the country's greatest econometric experts working at Statistics Canada, like we do at the Bank of Canada. I do not know if the official opposition members are calling into question the integrity and expertise of Statistics Canada, maybe they are, but I would say that the Statistics Canada modelling program is a credible instrument and that is what Professor Tombe was using.
He goes on to say that in Alberta, because this is very much focused in many ways on Alberta and the oil industry, the price on carbon has increased prices by about 0.3%, which is 30¢ on a $100 bill, in Manitoba it is 0.9% and in Ontario it is 0.4%. These are credible, rigorous academic studies. However, we do not get any of that from the official opposition; rather, we get this kind of false logic, like the shin bone is attached to the knee bone and the knee bone is attached to the thigh bone, etc. It starts with the idea that there is a price on carbon, which means it is going to cost more to drive a truck, or this and that, and eventually it is going to show up on the shelves. The fact of the matter is that is not real logic founded on a rigorous analysis.
The other point I would like to make is that the price of food has gone up. However, according to credible news media like CTV News, and an article posted on its website, there are a number of factors that are contributing to the high price of food.
The first is climate change. Devastating wildfires continue to rage across Canada, destroying forests and farmland. Let us use a bit of simplistic logic that maybe the official opposition can understand. If farmland is destroyed, what happens to the supply of food? It goes down. The Leader of the Opposition thinks of himself as a wonderful and great economist, but what happens when the supply of food goes down and the demand stays the same? What happens to the price? It goes up. That is the number one cause of rising food prices. It is basic logic.
The really interesting thing is that greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector are not regulated. There is no price on carbon on greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector. As a matter of fact, a lot of people have been writing to me saying that we have to price greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural lands, but we have not done that.
What is another aspect that is causing challenges to the supply of food? Can members guess what Ukraine has been called? It has been called the breadbasket of Europe. I think it is going through some tough times, which may be limiting the supply of wheat from that part of the world. Again, if we constrain supply in the face of a demand that is stable or even increasing, we get higher prices.
I do not know why the leader of the official opposition does not click into that. It is basic economics 101. Therefore, we have to look at these other causes. The price on carbon is not the cause of all the woes around the world and we have to stop saying that.
What the members of the official opposition like to do, over and again, through these opposition day motions is build straw men, which they then demolish on social media while pretending to be heroes. That is all this is about. It is all about social media hits.
