Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to speak to Bill C-4. First of all, I want to make a couple of observations about the legislation we are seeing in this place under the new government.

I am distressed. It may be a manageable issue, and maybe I am the only one who is noticing that almost every bill that comes before us is in omnibus form; in other words, many different bills are addressed within the same bill. Some of the issues are connected one to the other, which makes it a legitimate omnibus bill, and some seem to be for the purpose of convenience, to save the government time. For instance, in Bill C-2, the strong borders act, there are some aspects that do not really have to do with borders at all, and there is significant concern from people who are in the refugee law community, and from Amnesty International.

We are looking at Bill C-4 tonight, and I will give it more detail, but briefly, Bill C-5 should have been two different pieces of legislation. Part 1 deals with interprovincial barriers between labour mobility and recognizing different kinds of restrictions to moving goods. Part 2 is the building Canada act, which is entirely different. Part 1 has drawn attention from the Canadian Cancer Society, as it is concerned the bill may lead to a weakening of standards across the country. Meanwhile, part 2 needs massive study, appears, at least to me, to give unprecedented levels of unfettered political discretion to cabinet, and is unprecedented in its scope.

On Bill C-4, before I go to the affordability section, let me just point to the anomalous inclusion of changes to the Canada Elections Act. The Canada Elections Act and privacy concerns for Canadian citizens under the Elections Act have no connection whatsoever to affordability. However, here we have it: part 4, Canada Elections Act amendments that are similar to what we saw in the previous Parliament in Bill C-65, which I do wish had carried before we went into the last election, as it would have certainly expedited the collection of signatures for candidates and their chances of getting nominated candidates onto ballots.

This is weaker than that, but it does have some connection to what we saw in Bill C-65 in relating to restrictions on political parties' ability to save information and violate Canadians' privacy. It does not belong in an affordability act at all. We have heard at least one other MP tonight, the hon. member for Souris—Moose Mountain, mention the issue that we want to protect personal information and that privacy laws should extend to political parties.

Unusually, in Bill C-4, new subsection 446.4(1) would assert an ability for federal legislation to negate provincial privacy laws and what provincial privacy laws can say about federal political parties. That is questionable at best. It also, to me, is somewhat offensive, or very offensive I suppose, that clause 49 of part 4 of Bill C-4 deals with the date of coming into force.

Experienced members of this place who look at statutory interpretation, which we do, and I hope we all read the legislation and all bills carefully, know certainly that coming into force is usually a date in the future. A bill would pass through the House, pass through the Senate and then come into force, sometimes at a date that is certain. I have a pretty good memory. I may have forgotten that there was ever a bill like this one, but within my ability to remember everything I have ever read in legislation, I do not think I have ever seen a bill that purports to come into force 25 years before the date on which it is passed.

Members who are learning this for the first time, if they look at clause 49 of Bill C-4, will find that the date on which the bill we are discussing today, June 11, 2025, would have come into force is May 31, 2000. This would exempt federal political parties from any offences they may have committed in failing to obey provincial legislation to which we were subjected, by going all the way back, resetting the clock, to May 31, 2000.

In this place, we like time travel; let us face it. We do like seeing the clock at midnight when it is not midnight, and we can do that in this place. We can say, “Gee, I wish it were midnight. I am ready to go home. Let us all agree we see the clock at midnight.”

I do not know whether anyone has ever tried a trick like seeing the year at 25 years ago. I am worried about this, and I do not know that we will have time, but I certainly hope we will properly study Bill C-4 in committee, and maybe we can persuade the government that part 4 should be pulled apart and studied separately from the rest of the bill.

The rest of the bill is tax measures. There is only part of the tax measures I would want to address at this point, and I am cognizant of the time. I know we are coming near a point where I should close to avoid being interrupted, but I do not mind interruptions, certainly for unanimous consent motions, because I think we are unanimous on that.

However, let us just say I am probably the only remaining member of Parliament who will stand up and say that the consumer carbon price was a good idea. It is a shame to see such cowardice on all sides of the House from the parties that used to support using market mechanisms, which is actually from the right-wing tool kit invented by Republicans in Washington, D.C., of how we can reduce emissions of whatever. Air pollutants in the area around Los Angeles is one of the first places market mechanisms were used.

Carbon pricing is being accepted by economists around the world as having a more efficient economic impact, reduced transactional costs of implementing the regulatory approach. Generally, people on the right do not like regulation. That is a choice: If we are going to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, we could use a regulatory approach. We could use the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, part 4, which already exists, and put in place regulated, required hard caps on emissions of any pollutants, thus bringing them down sharply without having to use the more complex measures of pricing.

I would rather see the consumer carbon price used as what is called, in the literature, carbon fee and dividend, in other words, maintaining pollution taxation as revenue-neutral. A key feature in good, solid gold-standard carbon pricing is that the government should not live on pollution as a source of revenue to government. We want to make sure that whatever we take in on a carbon price is rebated as efficiently as possible to those who paid it.

To the idea that we do not want to have this, I just add again that according to the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development—

Elizabeth May

$565,861.00