Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to follow my hon. colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands. I will be picking up some of the same themes she articulated so well. There are a few things about this motion that I want to agree with and thank my Conservative colleagues for pointing out. First of all, across this country, people are being stretched to the breaking point, and this motion is predicated on that acknowledgement. The cost of essentials, from groceries to rent and energy, continues to soar. Half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque. That is a fact I mention often in this place because I think it is profound. I want to emphasize that. Half of Canadians are two paycheques away from economic disaster. One in four parents is cutting back on food or skipping meals to feed their children. This is in a G7 country that my colleagues on the Liberal side of the House call an energy superpower, where 25% of parents cannot get enough food to eat because they are worried about their children. I also agree very much that Canadians need immediate relief from this affordability crisis. I further agree that after 11 years of Liberal government, at a certain point, we have to ask ourselves who is responsible for the current situation and who is accountable for the policy decisions that have gotten us in this position. They did not just happen. It is not only a cause of external factors, but a result of 11 years of misguided policies and lack of action by the Liberal government on the very basic foundations of affordability, which have caused so many Canadians to be struggling today. However, I do think that the Conservatives are proposing an ineffective measure that amounts to a corporate giveaway, with no guarantee that any savings will actually reach consumers, which also sets back environmental progress even more than is already the case under the current Liberal government. Conservatives want Canadians to believe that this is simply about taxes and regulation, but the evidence tells a different story. Gas prices are not set principally by tax levels or even basic supply and demand. They are shaped by global oil markets, financial speculation and the pricing power of a highly concentrated industry. The gasoline that Canadians buy today was refined weeks ago from oil produced months ago, often at much lower costs, yet prices at the pump can rise quickly in response to global events and market expectations, long before any real change in physical supply or production costs occurs. Canada produces far more oil than we consume. Three-quarters of our production is exported. Of the modest volumes imported into eastern Canada, almost none comes through the Persian Gulf. In other words, there is no energy supply shock in Canada. The cost of producing and refining gas has not changed at all in this country, yet Canadian consumers are being hammered at the pumps. That is because a significant driver of price movement is speculation in global oil markets. The truth is that traders respond to geopolitical developments and anticipated risks by bidding up prices based on expectations of disruption. These financial signals can move prices at the pump even when nothing at all has been changed in the real supply of fuel. This is also why the Conservatives’ call to simply get out of the way and further deregulate the sector would not stabilize prices. In fact, it would do the opposite. It would tie Canadians even more directly to volatile global markets, where speculation and shocks are immediately passed through to consumers, rather than strengthening any insulation from them. Tax cuts and deregulation will never solve this problem. If underlying market prices are being driven up by speculation and price gouging, removing taxes does not stop that dynamic. It simply reduces government revenue while leaving the same pricing system in place. Savings will not be passed on to consumers; rather, they will be absorbed into higher corporate profit margins. What I have just said is not just theory. We have already seen this approach fail to lower prices for Canadians in real time recently. The Liberal government temporarily suspended the fuel excise tax on April 20 at a cost of approximately $2.4 billion, claiming it would reduce gas prices by 10¢ per litre. Instead, prices have continued to increase while oil and gas giants continue to post record profits. When the suspension came into effect, the national average gas price was 169.1¢ per litre. Today, the national average price is $1.83 per litre. In Vancouver, where I live, a litre of gas is now routinely over two dollars. The result of the Liberals’ removing the excise tax since April 20 is that, so far, prices have gone up. Not a single consumer in Canada has benefited from the Liberal move, and this was predicted by New Democrats at the very time this excise tax reduction was put in place. This experience demonstrates a key point. When underlying market prices are driven by speculation and price gouging, tax cuts do not reliably translate into lower prices at the pump. That is one of the key flaws of the Conservative motion here today, which seeks to do that even more so. Instead, the benefit of the reduction in excise tax can be absorbed into higher margins in an already highly profitable sector. I have no doubt that oil companies have already absorbed at least a portion of that 10¢ excise tax reduction. Certainly, there was nothing in the Liberals’ measure to stop them from doing that. As I have said already, the proof is in the pudding. Prices have gone up since the Liberals said their measure would take prices down. While Canadians struggle with affordability, oil and gas giants are positioned to capture massive windfall gains. We are going to see some $90 billion in profits for Canadian oil companies this year. They were slated to make $30 billion in profits this year but are now expecting an additional $60 billion in profits as a result of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Yet, Conservatives want to hand these same corporations another tax break with no mechanism that is guaranteed to ensure that consumers benefit, and the Liberals consistently refuse to bring in a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas companies and use those funds to provide real relief to Canadians who desperately need it. There is no question that Canadians need relief. The real question is this: How do we make sure that relief reaches working people instead of padding corporate balance sheets? Rather than writing a blank cheque to oil giants, the government should look at measures to cap prices at the pump, crack down on profiteering and ensure that savings are actually passed on to consumers. Other countries, and Canada itself in past moments of crisis, have recognized this basic principle. When extraordinary windfall profits are generated by crisis-driven price spikes, the public has a right to recoup a fair share of those gains rather than allowing them to be fully privatized. They have a right to expect that their governments will protect them from what is called “war profiteering”. We have done this before. During both world wars, the Canadian government used excess profit measures to ensure that wartime windfalls were redirected toward the public good and the national effort, not captured by private interests. More recently, during the COVID pandemic, the Liberal government itself imposed an excise profits tax on major banks, recognizing that extraordinary gains during a national crisis should not simply remain as private profit. New Democrats believe, respectfully, that the same principle applies today in the oil and gas sector. I will pause for a moment to say that the motion also calls on the government to permanently scrap the clean fuel standard. That standard requires primary fuel suppliers, refiners and importers to progressively reduce the life cycle carbon intensity of the gasoline and diesel they produce and sell. This measure aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 million tonnes annually by 2030. It encourages fuel providers to innovate, like blending lower-carbon biofuels like ethanol into their products; invest in renewable energy sources; or purchase credits from EV charging providers. This motion would set that back, and New Democrats cannot support that. Finally, Jack Layton is the person who got the Liberal government to devote one cent of the federal excise gas tax to municipalities, including to provide stable funding for public transit. New Democrats will continue to work for positive proposals like that, instead of measures that will not help consumers, will hurt the government’s ability to innovate and will pad the profits of an oil and gas sector that is already enriching itself at the cost of Canadians.
