Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the MP for Saanich—Gulf Islands. There is an old saying in military circles: Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics. It is as true on a farm as it is in an army. Getting a crop in the ground and off the field is a logistics exercise from start to finish to have the right equipment in the right place at the right time with fuel in the tank, and that fuel is diesel. Diesel is not a luxury fuel. It runs the tractor and the combine. It runs the grain truck and the locomotive that takes the crop to port. It runs the potash mine and the gravel hauler, and the pickup trucks that Canadian workers drive every day. Nothing in Canada’s food system moves without it. Right now, Canadians are paying more for it than they should, for reasons this government can control. Last month, diesel fuel averaged $2.74 a litre in Canada and a year ago, it was about $1.53. That is an increase of nearly 80%. On September 28, Canadians were paying about 24¢ a litre more than the American average and 31¢ more than the world average. This is a country with the fourth-largest oil reserves in the world. Global turmoil explains why prices went up everywhere. It does not explain why they are higher here. Let me talk about home. Harvest in Saskatchewan has not been kind this year. With waterlogged fields, heat, hail and delays, producers in my riding were already behind, and then diesel costs spiked at precisely the moment they needed it most. Grain Growers of Canada estimates that fuelling a single large combine would cost more than $15,000 more this harvest than it did last year. Reporting out of Saskatchewan this fall put the added cost of diesel fuel at roughly $20 an acre. The president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan summed it up plainly, saying that “[i]n the spring, [farmers faced] record...fertilizer prices. Now [it is] record...diesel prices, and on top of that, [trade uncertainties threaten what they will get for the crop].... [They are] looking at higher expenses and possibly lower returns.” Here is what members opposite need to understand about agriculture. Farmers are price takers. A manufacturer can raise the price of what they sell. A canola grower near Lanigan or a wheat farmer outside of Moose Jaw cannot. They sell whatever the world price is that day, less the cost of freight. Every cent added to the cost of diesel fuel comes straight out of their margin. There is nobody to pass it on to and the diesel bill does not stop at the farm gate. The grain is trucked to the elevator. It goes by rail to the coast. The fertilizer comes back the other way. Processors, packers and grocers all run on fuel. The cost compounds at every link in the chain and it lands at the checkout in Moose Jaw and in downtown Toronto alike. Tax the farmers’ fuel and that is taxing the food. Tax the truckers’ fuel and that is taxing everything they carry. I expect the government members will stand up today and say they have already acted. They suspended the federal excise tax on fuel and they have extended that suspension. I will give them that. It was the right call. Conservatives called for it and Canadians welcomed it. However, let us look at the calendar. Under the government’s own plan, the excise tax on diesel fuel comes back at half-rate on February 1 and at the full rate on April 1. Anyone who has spent time in rural Saskatchewan knows what this means. Farm fuel use is not spread evenly across the year. It comes in two surges: seeding in the spring and harvest in the fall. In between, through the winter, the machines sit in the shed and the fuel bill is at its lowest. The government’s relief arrives in the months when farmers are using the least diesel. The tax comes back on April 1, just around ground thaws and when the trucks that serve agriculture go back to work, when the farm trucks and the semis haul seed and fertilizing fuel out in the field and the grain is still moving to the elevator. There is relief through the quiet months, but the tax is back for the busy ones. It does not stop with the farmer. Spring is when the seed moves, when the fertilizer moves, when the trucks and railcars that serve agriculture are running flat out. Everyone knows those leaders will carry the tax again. Some members will say it is only 4¢ a litre. In Ottawa, 4¢ sounds small, but if we multiply it across every truckload of seed and fertilizer, every load of grain to the elevator, every delivery that keeps a farm running in the spring, it is not small at all. On a farm already absorbing record fertilizer prices and record diesel prices, there is no such thing as a cost that does not matter. Here is the question for the government: If the tax was worth suspending this fall, why is it worth bringing it back in the spring? Nobody in the House can promise diesel prices will have come down by April. If, as the government’s own news release says, this relief is meant to help the food and the agriculture sectors, we should not set the end date right in the middle of the agriculture year. This is not a plan built around how farmers work. It is a plan built around a fiscal calendar in Ottawa. Our plan is different. We would eliminate all taxes on diesel until at least Canada Day to carry farmers through seeding, not just through winter, to carry truckers through spring hauling, and give Canadians real breathing room, not a countdown. I want to be honest with the House about something. Tax relief alone does not close a 24¢ gap. Tax relief is the bridge. Supply is the destination. Canadian diesel is more expensive than American diesel because we do not make enough of our own. In southern Saskatchewan, much of our diesel comes from the co-op refinery in Regina. It is a tremendous asset, but western Canada still relies on fuel brought in from the United States. Last year, nearly 80% of the refined petroleum products Canada imported came from the United States. For decades, Canada has shipped its crude oil south and bought it back as gasoline and diesel as a profit to American companies. With a weak Canadian dollar, every one of those imported litres costs us more. This is not just an affordability problem, but a vulnerability. We have the resource. What we have lacked is the will to build. For 11 years, the Liberal government has blocked and delayed the projects that would have made us self-reliant, like pipelines to carry Canadian crude oil and diesel across our own country, expanded production and a strategic reserve to protect us during shortages. Energy east was abandoned. Approval timelines stretched into decades. Investors noticed and capital went elsewhere. The result is exactly what the motion described: fewer ways to produce, refine and transport our own fuel. Members opposite may have a new leader, but it is the same caucus and the same cabinet that built the record, and Canadians are paying for it at the pump. We have a better plan. We have shared it within my speech. We are asking the Liberal government to listen to us, to listen to the farmers within my riding and across Canada, because we are a food-producing nation. We are a breadbasket and we are starving our own people because of bad Liberal policy. There needs to be a change. We are asking for support.
