The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Exempting Farmers from the Liberal Carbon Tax

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm

00:00:10.520 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton for the Legs Brock with new

00:00:14.600 content every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. I know it is the summer, you are the

00:00:19.760 hardcore, you're sticking with us. And for that, we will continue to produce new content

00:00:24.020 because we know the Liberal agenda never stops moving and we need your help to push back

00:00:29.320 against it. We need you to like, comment, subscribe, share this program and together we can push

00:00:34.560 back against that agenda. If you can't watch or listen to this program at this exact moment,

00:00:40.060 you can download it later on. Listen to it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play,

00:00:44.580 Spotify, you name it, it is out there. And I welcome to the show a first-time guest,

00:00:51.660 Philip Lawrence, the Member of Parliament for North Humberland, Peterborough South, my neighbour

00:00:55.420 to the South and the Shadow Minister for National Revenue. Hello, Philip Lawrence.

00:01:01.720 Hey Jamie, it's great to be here, an absolute privilege and honour to be what I believe is

00:01:06.860 not just the best Conservative, but the best podcast in Canada. Certainly the best podcast.

00:01:11.660 That's what we're working towards every single Tuesday with new content to be Canada's number

00:01:15.520 one Conservative podcast. And with words like that, why have we not had you on before? I don't

00:01:20.880 have to talk to some people, have my people talk to other people. Okay, what we're talking about

00:01:26.620 today, Mr. Lawrence, my neighbour to the South, Bill C-206, your private members bill. As we all

00:01:33.360 know, private members bills rarely get passed through the process, rarely make it to the Senate,

00:01:38.980 rarely make law. Now yours is still stuck in the Senate, but it's gone through the process in the

00:01:44.700 House of Commons, which is a feat all to itself. And with private members bills, for those just paying

00:01:49.980 attention, I know we talked about it a bit last week with Larry McGuire and his private members

00:01:54.380 bill. After every election, there's basically a lottery, all the names, all 338 names, minus the

00:02:00.260 speakers, so 337 get put into, and I guess the ministers get put into a, I guess a lottery,

00:02:06.940 it's drawn and you get your place up to one to 300 and some odd after the ministers and speakers are

00:02:14.080 removed. So it is quite the process. So if you get high up on the list, you're golden.

00:02:18.980 And there are some MPs that have served for, for multiple years who have not had a chance,

00:02:24.500 but Philip Lawrence, the one and only gets a chance right off the bat. Tell us about your

00:02:30.040 private members bill. Yeah. So I'll start with a little bit of a preamble here, Jamie. So

00:02:34.780 as you can recall back, I think you were elected in 2015, if I've got that right. When you're first

00:02:42.140 elected, it's a bit of a whirlwind and you're trying to get all the constituency pieces, your office in

00:02:46.840 Ottawa, your staff sorted, just a million things coming at you. And so I can remember in being in

00:02:54.160 my Ottawa office and having my staffer walk through the, walk through my office door and literally say

00:03:01.040 to me, Philip, you won the lottery. Well, what? All right. Well, I'm out of here. No, just kidding.

00:03:07.460 Sorry. And that was the lottery for the private members bill. So at that point, we, we were trying

00:03:14.840 to, like I said, there's a million things. It's like taking water out of a fire hose. We're trying

00:03:18.300 to figure this out. And so, and you have, you can pretty much select anything within reason to take

00:03:25.000 and put, write your private members bill about. And so we conducted a search and we, we, we talked to

00:03:32.060 numerous experts, other MPs about what we should do with our private members bill and our riding,

00:03:38.440 having a large proportion of rural and agricultural areas to it. We, we wanted that, that, that sort of

00:03:44.760 came to the top of the top of the list of a number of things. And in talking to, to our farmers,

00:03:49.920 our local constituents and advocacy groups, what came out over and over again was the impact the

00:03:55.880 carbon tax Jamie was having on our farmers. I mean, the carbon taxes had, had a damaging impact

00:04:01.620 really across our economy, but particularly in agriculture, the, the pain is acute because in

00:04:06.900 other, in many other industries, when an input cost or the cost of production increases, that can be

00:04:12.480 passed on to the consumer. That simply cannot happen in, in many of the areas of agriculture, because

00:04:17.560 ultimately are lots of times agricultural production prices are not set by the free market, but are set

00:04:24.740 and said by international boards and other things like that, where the price just simply cannot be

00:04:29.680 pushed along to the consumer. And because of that, our farmers were hurting. And so my bill, bill C206

00:04:36.680 was to reduce, or actually eliminate, I should say, completely exempt the carbon tax on natural gas and

00:04:43.620 propane for our farmers, making them more competitive and, and hopefully reducing the

00:04:49.300 burden on our farmers. So they can be increasingly competitive and also reduce the food costs for

00:04:55.200 Canadians as well. Yeah. Farmers are one group that has been hit very hard. Of course, Larry McGuire's

00:05:00.840 bill that we talked about last week, which leveled the playing field on the farms and some small

00:05:06.120 businesses that want to sell their, their business, their operation to a family member, maybe a son or

00:05:12.120 daughter wants to carry on, on the operation. They, if they would be put on an unlevel playing field 0.79

00:05:17.980 prior to this bill passing, that would make it more advantageous to, and I'm telling this to a tax

00:05:23.460 lawyer here, I'm telling this to a tax lawyer, maybe he can do this better than I can. But basically,

00:05:27.680 you were punished for selling that operation to a family member, it was actually more advantageous to

00:05:33.500 go to a international corporation or someone outside of that circle that would somehow, you know,

00:05:40.280 if you're looking at a retirement package, uh, it would really disadvantage keeping the, the

00:05:45.800 operation in your family. So that fixed that you're trying to fix the other side, which is

00:05:50.320 in a wet season, like I believe 2019 was fairly wet. All these farmers had to, to dry, uh, dry their

00:05:57.420 grains. Uh, and that really, really ate into their profit margin. Yeah. So when it was referred to

00:06:05.020 colloquially, uh, by, uh, by our then minister of agriculture, uh, John Barlow is a harvest from hell.

00:06:11.620 Um, it was extremely difficult. And so, uh, for those of you who aren't farmers, who aren't involved

00:06:16.920 in, uh, grain, uh, production, uh, when the grain is taken off the field and in wet conditions is it's

00:06:23.720 absolutely essential that it's machine dried, uh, failure to have put that in the dryer and get that

00:06:28.980 grain dried will mean that that grain will simply rot, which means a whole year's worth of income,

00:06:34.580 a whole year's worth of work will literally just rot away. And so farmers have to put it in grain

00:06:40.640 dryers. Those grain dryers are powered primarily either by natural gas or propane. Um, and, and so

00:06:48.620 farmers were paying carbon tax on that, Jamie, and it was costing them tens of thousands of dollars.

00:06:54.200 I had farmers from all across our great country, send me their receipts. And then which was the

00:06:59.360 irony, which was, I mean, just added insult to injury was the fact that they actually charged

00:07:03.840 GST on top of that. So you actually paid tax on your tax. So farmers would show me their receipts

00:07:09.760 where they paid 10, 15, $20,000 in carbon tax. Um, and then on top of that paid five, a thousand

00:07:16.080 dollars on, uh, of GST or HST on top of that. So farmers were paying tens of thousands of dollars.

00:07:21.820 And this was something that was absolutely essential. And then we studied it for a long

00:07:25.940 while. Actually, we had six or seven meetings at the agriculture committee. Um, and, uh, the,

00:07:31.040 the liberals, uh, attempted to get witnesses that said that there might be other ways to do this more

00:07:35.780 environmentally sustainable. And they couldn't know witness gave testimony that there was a viable

00:07:40.540 alternative. And so there wasn't, it wasn't like farmers could avoid the carbon tax in any way.

00:07:46.040 This was a completely inelastic curve to use. Um, so all that happened was it wasn't the whole,

00:07:52.080 the idea or the belief, uh, on the left with the carbon tax is that if they incentivize, if they

00:07:57.880 make, uh, environmentally sensitive, environmentally more sustainable technologies, beneficial,

00:08:03.460 less expensive, then people will move that way. There was no such alternative. All this was doing

00:08:08.580 was a tax grab from, from our farmers who are amongst the hardest working people in this great country. 0.91

00:08:14.280 It was completely, completely ridiculous. And so, uh, was very happy to introduce bill C 206.

00:08:20.200 And as you said, Jamie, we were one of, uh, of only 3% of, uh, private members bills, make it outside

00:08:26.200 of the, um, um, sorry, make it pass through the house of commons. And if I could just comment for a

00:08:32.020 moment, I, I think it's shameful what's going on with Jerry or with, uh, Larry McGuire's bill, um, in the

00:08:37.700 fact that the finance department is refusing to implement it that bill. I'm sorry. I'm going to go a little

00:08:42.540 bit geeky here, uh, as a tax lawyer, uh, here that the, the legislation that meant to correct

00:08:48.120 was a, it was a bill to, uh, uh, originally that legislation was put in place to, uh, to avoid,

00:08:55.140 uh, non-compliance with the tax, to avoid people circumventing it. But the unintended consequences

00:09:01.180 of that legislation is causing farm, uh, family farms to go out of business. Larry McGuire's bill

00:09:07.660 was a great bill. It has to be, and it should be put in immediately. And the fact that the finance

00:09:12.420 department is delaying that is just shameful. All right. You got a bit ahead of me here. I want to

00:09:18.600 ask you about that, but before we, we jump to that, uh, it is a minority parliament. Obviously

00:09:23.600 bills cannot proceed if there is not in our case as the opposition to at least two parties support

00:09:29.800 of the major parties, uh, one, if you're the governing side. So your bill made it through the

00:09:35.120 house of commons process through the committee stage here in the Senate, what, who voted against

00:09:40.520 it? Which party voted against your bill? Yeah. So, so I'll, I'll just set the context here. So

00:09:46.440 we got on our side, the block Quebec law, the new democratic party, um, not exactly climate change

00:09:55.260 deniers, um, and the green party of Canada to support exemption from the carbon tax, because all of

00:10:02.380 those parties saw this was a common sense solution to help our farmers. And they realized that the tax

00:10:08.260 on propane and natural gas, the carbon tax on natural gas and propane were, were not, was there

00:10:14.000 was no way for farmers, um, to avoid it. There was no more economic or environmentally sensitive tool.

00:10:19.160 So the only party to vote against this was the liberal party with a notable exception of Francis

00:10:25.160 Druin, the one liberal MP who broke ranks and actually voted for our legislation. And I thank

00:10:30.660 Francis for that. Um, but there was no really grounds for it, but, uh, I'll, I'll pass the floor back to

00:10:38.960 you as I tend to take up too much auction here. No, you're doing just fine. All right. Let's throw

00:10:43.220 the tax lawyer hat on. Let's talk about Larry McGuire's bill. Since we did that interview with

00:10:47.560 him, the finance department has come out with, uh, with a few notes, uh, basically, as you said,

00:10:52.880 uh, basically almost saying, yeah, we're not going to, to implement this, but it is law. It passed the

00:10:59.820 Senate. It got Royal assent. Uh, maybe just talk a bit about that and explain to it what the next

00:11:04.560 steps are and why this is happening. Yeah. So it's part of a pattern, Jamie, a troubling pattern of

00:11:10.480 this PMO. And I say PMO it's, it's not even the liberal party per se, but the PMO taking on greater

00:11:17.320 and greater powers that they're not entitled to. So as you know, Jamie, of course, they ignore the

00:11:23.020 call from parliament, um, to disclose certain documents to the parliamentary law clerk. We see

00:11:28.940 once again, that they're ignoring the will of parliament by not implementing Larry McGuire's

00:11:34.040 bill. Uh, and it's extremely disappointing that they won't put this, the, the, it was the will of the,

00:11:40.180 it was the will of the house of commons, the will of Senate that Larry McGuire's bill be implemented

00:11:44.660 and their failure to implement it is simply shameful. And this is exactly what, uh, what

00:11:49.580 Jody Wilson-Raybould, um, uh, of course she resigned last week, uh, or said she wouldn't

00:11:54.980 run again, I should say last week. And that's what she was commenting too. I thought in a very

00:11:59.680 well drafted letter that the, the continualized centralization and ignore it and ignoring the

00:12:05.360 power of parliament is just so troubling and so difficult, uh, because they're not just

00:12:10.200 ignoring Jamie, Jamie, you and I, which maybe is understandable to some people.

00:12:13.980 Uh, but they're ignoring the will of Northumberland, Peterborough, South end of, of your riding and

00:12:18.980 of our people across Canada, because we're their voice in parliament.

00:12:23.080 It's a good tee up to the show for next week. Next week, we're going to talk to Michael Chong

00:12:27.040 about those documents, about why the government is keeping the documents related to the firing of two,

00:12:33.200 uh, scientists that were escorted out by the RCMP from the high security lab in, in Winnipeg and

00:12:39.500 continuing, continuing to lay, I guess the liberals are hoping an election call happens so they can

00:12:44.760 put that behind them and don't have to actually release those documents and tell Canadians why

00:12:49.320 that happened and what's actually going on. But how, how, how is this possible? How can the,

00:12:54.640 the, the, the executive branch continue to just basically push aside the legislative branch?

00:13:03.180 This, this, this is very concerning. It's, it's extremely concerning and not just for a particular

00:13:08.500 bill. And of course, as I've talked about, Larry McGuire's bill is very important for our farmers,

00:13:12.740 particularly our family farms. And, uh, of course we want to have the documentation with respect to

00:13:18.180 the, uh, the Winnipeg lab scientists, but it's, it even has bigger repercussions than that because it

00:13:24.220 affects our entire democracy. And I said, Jody Wilson-Raybould wrote about it in her,

00:13:28.420 in her resignation letter. We, parliament is critical. It's a core of our democracy. When

00:13:33.760 we start ignoring the will of parliament, they said, we are ignoring the will of the people,

00:13:38.340 which is an incredibly dangerous precedent. And I must say, uh, just, uh, it is, we need,

00:13:44.860 we need to make sure that, uh, that we have an Aaron O'Toole government going forward, because

00:13:50.160 that's the only way we really get, um, to the root of this corruption is that we, we, uh, we elect

00:13:55.880 Aaron O'Toole as an ex prime minister of Canada. All right. Well, we only have a few more minutes

00:14:00.580 left, but, uh, I just want to continue on about, uh, those in the agriculture sector. The,

00:14:05.660 these individuals, these family operations in many cases are the stewards of the land. They

00:14:10.900 are using techniques that help reduce their, their footprint. They are the ones looking after,

00:14:16.840 uh, the land producing food that we can eat, that we can export, that we can help feed the world.

00:14:21.880 So we want to make sure that they are competitive, that they are able to, to make a living at the

00:14:27.360 end of the day and make it actually worthwhile to transfer that operation to the younger generation

00:14:33.360 so that they can continue the, the proud tradition of, of feeding Canadians and feeding the world.

00:14:39.940 Absolutely. Well said, uh, instead I was talking to, I have a little bit of land out, uh, out in

00:14:45.220 Orono where I live and, uh, we leased that out to a local farmer. And so, uh, he came over and we

00:14:50.560 were talking about the field and he was talking about his GPS. His GPS is literally down to a

00:14:55.980 half an inch. That's how precise he is. So that makes sure that he doesn't use any more fertilizer,

00:15:01.620 any more herbicide or fungicide or insecticide that's necessary to limit his footprint. But what

00:15:07.040 farmers need to do is they need to be able to invest. And if the government takes all of their

00:15:11.840 capital, they have the inability. And so the idea that by putting in the carbon tax, we would,

00:15:17.600 we make farmers more environmentally is exactly the opposite. We're taking money away from them

00:15:22.440 that they can't invest in new GPS technology, that they can't invest in new, more environmentally

00:15:27.620 sustainable technology. We need to make sure that farmers are profitable, that they have capital

00:15:32.740 to re to reinvest in their operations because it's thin, thin margins. And if we're taking all

00:15:38.460 of their capital, they simply can't reinvest in environmental technologies.

00:15:42.260 Sounds like what most small businesses across Canada are talking about right now, their lack of

00:15:47.520 ability to be competitive in not only domestic markets, but international markets. And it's hard

00:15:52.640 to invest in those things. It's hard to give raises to their employees when, when, when they're having

00:15:57.680 trouble coming up with the next great product or service that people want to buy and continuing to

00:16:02.040 innovate. So yes, I think that's a general statement across the, the small business,

00:16:07.340 all the small business atmosphere as it stands right now in this country. So Philip, I always give

00:16:13.220 the guests the last word. So maybe I'll turn it over to you and you can take it away just to give

00:16:19.820 your final thoughts and comments on, on the bill or whatever's on your mind. Let's, let's hear what's

00:16:24.400 on the mind. Well, maybe we don't want to hear what's on the mind of Philip Lawrence.

00:16:29.600 Thanks very much, Jamie. And I'll start out by saying thank you very much, Jamie, for all the

00:16:33.920 support you've given to me. I'll say that publicly as a new MP, you've been a great mentor and

00:16:39.400 appreciate all the support. And then that, and then I guess I'd finish up by saying thank you to

00:16:45.320 the farmers and all of my constituents for being incredibly supportive through the very difficult

00:16:50.340 pandemic. We'll continue to advocate for you. I want to make sure that rural Ontario gets a fair

00:16:56.020 shake and we'll work hard every day for the people of Northumberland, Peterborough South. Thanks very

00:17:00.860 much. He is very smooth. Ladies and gentlemen, Philip Lawrence, the member of parliament for

00:17:05.340 Northumberland, Peterborough South. Although when he was in the chair, very temporarily,

00:17:10.160 he got my writing name wrong. I will make sure I get his name and his writing right. He's also

00:17:15.060 the shadow minister for revenue. We do appreciate his time, his energy, his enthusiasm, and his

00:17:19.860 dedication to helping ensure that our agriculture community remains strong and vibrant for this

00:17:24.920 generation and the next. Again, new content every single Tuesday, 1 30 PM Eastern time. We are not

00:17:30.800 stopping. We are not slowing down. We are going to keep pushing back against the ever-moving

00:17:35.280 liberal agenda, but we need your help to do that as well. We need you to like, comment, subscribe,

00:17:39.760 share this program. If you can't watch it all now, you can listen to it, download it on platforms like

00:17:44.340 CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it. It is out there. Thank you so much for joining us.

00:17:49.840 And remember, low taxes, less government, for freedom. That is the Woodworks.

00:18:01.280 Outro Music

00:18:02.280 Outro Music

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - July 17, 2021

Exempting Farmers from the Liberal Carbon Tax

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript