Tako Van Popta

“Madam Speaker, I would like to take a quick minute to note that Canada mourns four of its soldiers. On Saturday, fire overtook a training exercise at CFB Wainwright, as we all know. Thirty-nine soldiers were injured, some critically, and four soldiers were killed: Sergeant Morgan Wong, Private Shaun Farrell, Private Aidan Goulding and Private Hayden Lykkemark. At CFB Wainwright, Canadian soldiers train to defend our country. They serve alongside allies and uphold the values that bind Canadians together: courage, duty, sacrifice and service. Their loss belongs to the whole nation. To their families, their comrades, the injured and those who rushed to help, Canada owes them our gratitude, our prayers and our lasting support. On behalf of the people of Calgary Heritage, we will remember these soldiers for how they lived: in service to their country, in loyalty to each other and with the quiet courage of those who accept responsibility for others. In Calgary Heritage, the work trucks leave the yards in the southwest before dawn. They haul materials to job sites across the city, and then turn south past the city city limits where the farms begin. Those same diesel engines pull the tractors that put the seeds in the ground and the combines that bring the crops home. When the price at the pump moves, the arithmetic hits the operator first, then the grocer and then the family filling a cart on a Saturday afternoon. Last month, diesel reached a record $2.75 a litre. Even after the spike eased, it was still averaging roughly $2.64. That is about 70% higher than a year earlier and nearly 60% higher than the weeks before the war in Iran began interrupting shipments out of the Persian Gulf. Global events explain why prices rose everywhere. They do not explain why Canadians are paying roughly 24¢ a litre more than Americans and about 31¢ more than the world average. The difference is not geology; it is policy. Statistics Canada reports that gasoline prices have risen 27.8% over the past year, energy costs 19% and transportation 8.4%. Diesel is a cost of living issue, because it is a cost of making and moving nearly everything. Every increase reaches the family filling a grocery cart. Bill C-38 would extend the temporary suspension of the federal excise tax on diesel until the end of January. Conservatives will support it. Every dollar that stays in a working family’s pocket matters. We fought for the first cut. We fought for the extension. The Liberals followed. The bill would still place an expiry date on relief: Half the tax returns in February and the full rate returns on April 1. Also, the GST continues to apply, and the clean fuel regulations continue to add costs that the government’s own officials estimate at six to seven cents a litre today. The Parliamentary Budget Officer projects it could reach 16¢ by 2030. The industrial carbon tax also continues to raise the cost of production. Taken together, these measures leave Canadians paying a premium that global markets alone cannot justify. A round-trip semi-haul between Montreal and Toronto that cost about $850 on New Year’s Day now costs roughly $1,400. Rail fuel surcharges for October stand as high as 73% above early August levels. Some large farms are spending as much as $5,000 a day on diesel. Independent grocers operate on margins of about 2%. Those costs do not stay on the loading dock. They appear on the shelf. The leader of the opposition put the same facts before the House on September 23 and again the following day. He described a full-scale diesel crisis. He noted that with the fourth-largest oil supply on earth, we do not enjoy the lowest prices. He identified three persistent causes: a weaker dollar, insufficient refining and transport capacity because governments have refused to get out of the way, and taxes that continue to apply. He called for an emergency fuel relief plan that would remove all federal taxes on diesel until at least Canada Day, permanently eliminate production taxes and set a national goal of producing one million barrels of diesel a day. Those are the measures on this side of the House that were advanced in successive opposition motions. Each time, the government and its partners have voted them down. Just last week, the International Energy Agency warned that global diesel shortages could persist well into 2027. Why is the Liberal government scheduling higher fuel taxes while the crisis remains unresolved? Conservatives support Bill C-38 because partial relief is better than none. We will continue to press for the full plan: removing the remaining federal taxes on diesel until at least Canada Day; scrapping the clean fuel regulations and the industrial carbon tax; and clearing the path for the pipelines, refineries and storage that would let Canadian diesel reach Canadian markets. The objective is simple: eliminate the premium Canadians now pay; raise domestic production; and ensure that the fuel that moves our food, our freight and our families is made here and priced here. A decade of Liberal carbon taxes and expanding bureaucracy have eroded the gains of Conservative GST cuts and smaller government from over a decade ago. Canada has the fourth-largest oil reserves, and we should be among the best-prepared nations to withstand an energy shock. Instead, our 16 refineries operated at roughly 90% of capacity last year. Ontario and Quebec refineries import more than 99% of their crude from the United States, while 93% of the crude we export moves south. There is still no pipeline connecting western Canada to eastern Canada. Energy east, proposed in 2013 and withdrawn in 2017, would have closed that gap. It was stopped not by markets but by a deliberate policy of obstruction that treated major energy infrastructure as something to be delayed or defeated. The last new refinery, Sturgeon in Alberta, took years and more than $10 billion. New capacity requires permits, pipelines, storage and a regulatory environment that treats builders as partners instead of as adversaries. How did a country so abundantly endowed allow itself to become so vulnerable? Russia’s invasion has cut diesel exports and weaponized energy. Iran has turned Hormuz into an instrument of coercion while funding proxies across the Middle East. Conflict threatens the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb and the Suez Canal. Venezuela’s collapse has removed another major supplier. In a world of energy chaos, Canada could be instrumental in achieving energy security, security for our people and security for the world. Imagine if over the last decade, and especially from a year and a half ago, Liberals had made energy security a national undertaking: prepermitted projects, partnerships with first nations, approved pipelines to new markets with shovels in the ground today, more refining, and transport and storage ready for this age of disruption. Imagine Canadian energy reaching our provinces and allies at scale because we had built the means to move it. Instead, the Prime Minister declares that Canada will become an energy superpower while preserving the net-zero orthodoxy and antidevelopment machinery that has held Canadian production back. The United States holds a strategic petroleum reserve. After major withdrawals, it has fallen to approximately less than 20% of its accessible capacity. Today the United States is searching for diesel in all the wrong places. Canada could have stabilized supply had we built capacity before the emergency. That is why Conservatives have proposed a strategic reserve of refined fuels and emergency prepermitting for refineries, for our growth as a country. I appreciate the opportunity to address the House today and conclude my remarks here.”