Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the Liberal-NDP government, the standard of living in Canada is in a total free fall, and the carbon tax is causing this crisis. The only goals that the government has accomplished is to indebt Canadians more and more, and to make bankers and bondholders wealthier.

Common-sense Conservatives have a plan for Canada and have a plan to restore the promise of Canada, where people are the masters and the government is the servant. It would be a Canada where, if they were to work hard, they could accomplish anything. It would be a Canada that would be glorious and free. We would axe the tax so that Canadians could afford to put food on their tables, to put gas in their cars and to put heat in their homes. Back in March, I asked the Liberal minister this: When will he see the facts and axe the tax?

The fact is that, in Canada, life has never been so unaffordable. Our next generation will be the first generation that has it worse than the previous generation. I understand the frustration that Canadians are facing, and I know that because of the current government's incompetence, Canadians are broke and Canada is broken. Our young people are stuck in their parents' basements because under the Liberal-NDP government, rent has doubled, home prices have doubled, the cost of a down payment has doubled, and our dollar just does not go as far as it used to. Therefore, people's hard work does not pay either. All of that is due to the reckless government spending and bad Liberal policies.

Since I asked the minister my question, the Liberals have refused to listen to the 70% of Canadians and the 70% of premiers who asked that the hike be spiked and that the increase on the carbon tax be avoided. Nonetheless, the Liberals did not listen, and they increased the carbon tax on April 1 by 23%.

The minister is making life more unaffordable for all Canadians every day. We have said it over and over again, and I will say it again. If the Liberals tax the farmer who grows the food, tax the trucker who delivers the food and tax the grocer who sells the food, Canadians cannot afford to buy food. The carbon tax is a tax on everything, both indirectly and directly, and it makes all aspects of our life more unaffordable.

For example, a school division in my riding, Peace River School Division, reported that it has spent $522,000 on the carbon tax since 2020. That is over $280,000 on transportation costs and $240,000 in carbon tax to heat its facilities. What a shame it is for the government to be putting this strain on our education system, and in every area of the country for that matter. I wonder how many teachers the school division would have been able to hire with that money. I wonder how many new books or how many new building materials to build new schools could have been paid for with that money. Let us think about all the property tax that needed to be raised and collected to pay this tax. This is a tax on a tax.

This also affects municipalities, which are not exempt from the carbon tax. For the Town of Whitecourt, just heating its municipal buildings is costing it $30,000 a year. There is no dimension of our society that is not being crushed by the carbon tax. Therefore, my question to the minister, again, and to the Liberal government is this: When will the Liberals do something good for Canadians and axe their disastrous carbon tax?

Arnold Viersen

$592,855.00