Thank you for the invitation to be here today.

My name is Devin Drover. I'm the general counsel and Atlantic director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm here today on behalf of thousands of Canadian taxpayers who want to see the carbon tax scrapped.

This is for three key reasons. First, the carbon tax makes life too expensive. Second, Canadians should not be punished for the necessities of life, like driving to work or getting groceries. Third, the carbon tax is ultimately not working.

First, let's talk about that cost to Canadians.

It's currently $80 per tonne, which adds 18¢ to a litre of gasoline, 21¢ to a litre of diesel and 15¢ to a cubic metre of natural gas. If you look at this, you see that it costs about $13 extra for someone to fill up a minivan, $20 extra to fill up a pickup truck and about $200 extra to fill up a big-rig truck with diesel.

Let's talk about truckers. Nearly everything we need is brought by truck. This is nowhere more true than in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, where food is delivered by boat to the island's west coast and then trucked 900 kilometres to the island's east coast, where most of the population is. When you charge a carbon tax of 21¢ per litre on diesel, you are charging more for everything. The Canadian Trucking Alliance says that the federal carbon tax will cost that industry about $2 billion this year.

It's not just about the truckers. Let's talk about farmers, who grow the food the truckers bring. They pay the carbon tax on fuels they use to heat their barns, dry grain and keep livestock alive through the very cold winter. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that the carbon tax will cost Canadian farmers $1 billion by the year 2030.

I'd like to use this opportunity to briefly thank the members of the Conservative Party, the NDP and the Bloc for voting to exempt farm fuels from the carbon tax. I understand the bill has been gutted by the Senate—the unelected Senate, but that's a matter for another day—and sent back to the House.

Let's talk about home heating. We live in a very cold country, and heating our homes is essential for survival. The government admitted that this is a problem when they exempted—for political gains, one would argue—certain fuels, predominantly benefiting Atlantic Canadians, while across this country, people are still struggling to heat their homes and did not receive any form of exemption. For example, the average Alberta household will pay about $440 extra for home heating this winter. It's no surprise there's a constitutional challenge launched in Alberta to these exemptions.

We wish this government would consider the position of the late leader of the NDP, Jack Layton, who opposed putting a carbon tax on home heating fuels because ultimately it is wrong.

Second, let's talk about affordability. Canadians should not be punished for the basics of life, driving to work and heating their homes. They have, in most cases, no other choice but to do those things, yet about half of Canadians are within $200 of not being able to make the minimum monthly payments on their bills. These people are scraping by. We're hearing from them every day. We're receiving letters and emails from supporters who are being pulled into difficulty by this carbon tax.

We can go back again to the recent PBO report, which shows that the carbon tax will cost the average household about $400 extra this year and more than $900 by the year 2030, and that's with the rebates factored in. Despite what the Prime Minister said in Brazil, I think those families who are in survival mode rightly value feeding their children over paying his carbon tax.

Last, the carbon tax is not working. In British Columbia, the place in Canada where this tax was first brought in, the government promised a 33% reduction in emissions below 2007 levels by 2020. Instead, emissions went up by more than 2%. In 2021, the federal government said it would reduce emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels, and the data have clearly shown that this is not happening. We went up in emissions.

Overall, this carbon tax experiment is a failure. It is causing huge financial pain without the promised environmental gain. It's making life too expensive. Canadians should not be punished for driving to work and heating their homes. Ultimately, it's not working. Therefore, on behalf of thousands of Canadian taxpayers, we are here today to ask the government to scrap this carbon tax.

Thank you.

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