Madam Speaker, in Canada, we have been blessed with generations of abundance and prosperity. Nine years ago, the average Canadian could be confident that, if they worked hard, saved their money and invested, they would be able to afford a home, start a family and leave more for their children than they inherited, and more than they had achieved. That is not the case anymore.

Under the Prime Minister, Canada has seen the worst growth in income per person since the 1930s and is on track for its worst decline in the standard of living in 40 years. The Liberal government has managed to squander the inheritance of generations through irresponsible and wasteful spending. These policies have not made Canada better off, but have impoverished Canadians. The Liberals have also misled Canadians about the true cost of the carbon tax and have failed to prove that their environmental plan is anything more than just a tax plan.

It is clear that Canadians across the country, whether they are farmers, carpenters, business owners or single parents, are just struggling to get by. Canadians are paying the price for this punitive carbon tax and see their grocery bills skyrocketing. It is so sad that the government not only failed to put forward policies in the best interests of Canadians, but also seeks to hide the truth from from them and gaslights them by telling them that they are better off for paying more carbon tax every single year.

The government tried so hard to hide the truth about the carbon tax. It even tried to do it with its own report because it did not want Canadians to find out that the carbon tax is responsible for driving up the cost of almost everything in Canada. The Parliamentary Budget Officer had to call out the Liberal government for blocking the release of its own economic impact report.

Let us be clear. If Conservatives had not applied pressure on the government and shamed it into releasing even just part of the report, we would have never learned of the $1,800 that each Canadian family is paying as a result of the carbon tax. I must say that the motion we have proposed today has already succeeded, in some respects, in holding the government to account. However, the government has not yet offered up all of the data, and Canadians deserve nothing less. They deserve nothing less than the full report and all the data the government has. That is why this motion remains of vital importance.

The Liberals have broken their promise of transparency time and again. It is not too late for them to release the full data on how the carbon tax hurts Canadians. To be fair, we see why the government did not want the numbers out. Its own report shows that the carbon tax has cost Canada $30.5 billion in economic activity, in lost GDP, every single year. That $30.5 billion amounts to the cost of $1,800 per Canadian family every single year, which they do not get a rebate for. The trickle-down economic impact of this carbon tax is too high for a rebate to even begin to address it. This is terrible at a time when, on top of this outrageous cost to our economy and the cost to every single Canadian family across the country, the government knew there was a cost and that Canadians were suffering all along.

Even though the Liberals knew the true cost of their carbon tax, they had the temerity to tell Canadians that this tax was making their lives better. They knew two million Canadians per month were going to the food bank. They knew one in five Canadians is skipping meals just to get by. They heard the stories of mothers diluting their baby's formula, even though it could lead to malnutrition, because they had to stretch the food for their baby due to a lack of money. They knew families were paying hundreds of dollars more for food for every year that the government was in power. Even members of the armed forces, people who fought in the war for our freedom, could not afford the price of groceries and have turned to food banks for help.

In the community of Haldimand—Norfolk, where I reside, the health unit came out with a report earlier this year that warned there was a growing number of residents who do not have enough to buy food that is healthy for their diets. The report said that for many, incomes are not enough to cover even the basic expenses.

Knowing all of this, the Liberal government refused to listen to the cries of Canadians, and it has not responded to the suffering. Even as the evidence mounts of the negative impact of these policies on everyday Canadians, the government has chosen year after year to raise the carbon tax on Canadians. In the middle of this historic cost of living crisis, the Liberal-NDP government decided earlier this year to hike the carbon tax yet again another 23%.

In fact, under the Prime Minister, fuel prices have surged by more than 50%. Then the Liberals refused to give families a summer break from the carbon tax so they could afford just a simple road trip. The Liberals are not done taxing Canadians. They plan to quadruple the carbon tax over the next six years, which would make everything even more expensive.

What the government has repeatedly failed to understand is that, when one taxes the farmer who grows the food, taxes the trucker who transports the food and taxes the store that houses the food, one taxes the Canadian who buys the food.

Why are Liberals putting Canadians through this financial pain at the worst time in our nation's history? The Liberals have always defended their ideological tax on the basis that carbon emissions will continue to go up, global temperatures will continue to rise and Canada will burn if there is no carbon tax, yet they fail to mention that Canadians and our industries already lead the world in sustainable practices. They also do not want to talk about the fact that there is no evidence to show the carbon tax works.

In closing, the Liberal government clearly does not believe in the efficacy of its own carbon tax regime. If it did, why would it not have measures to measure the impact?

Leslyn Lewis

$555,234.00