Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to speak to the merits of the government's carbon pricing scheme that will be enabled through the passage of Bill 42. Mr. Speaker, I want to set for the record very clearly that I believe in carbon pricing for Canada. I believe in carbon pricing for the world. A mechanism for carbon, either through market measures or through taxation, are good things.
In the December 14, 2018, meetings of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as COP 24, they reported that, as of April of last year, carbon pricing initiatives implemented or scheduled for implementation were expected to cover 20 percent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. That is representative that things are changing. This is no longer an initiative of fringe political parties or political actors who are passionate about one issue; this is good economic sense. It has been endorsed by leading economists. It has been endorsed by the World Bank. This is not an alien proposal to how the economy works.
In fact, China, which is one of the major stumbling blocks in ensuring a global response to climate change action through economic measures, has signed on. They are building on some seven municipal and provincial cap-and-trade markets within the country to what will become the world's largest carbon market.
Mr. Speaker, here in Canada, British Columbia has had a successful revenue-neutral carbon pricing regime since 2008, and since implementation, they have posted the strongest economic growth in Canada. It is very clear that, in the British Columbia model, they recognize the need to protect economic competitiveness while implementing carbon pricing and the need for effective collaboration by providing incentives for people to invest, for example, in home energy and zero-emission vehicles. The government has also further committed to all of its government operations will be completely carbon-neutral. It is those kind of leadership statements that provincial governments, federal governments, and world governments can take to show that they are committed to protecting and preserving the future of our planet, our environment, and the health of our citizens.
Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has come out in support of carbon pricing. The chamber's view is that it is the only effective way to reduce carbon emissions, but it requires collaboration, again, with stakeholders, with businesses, to ensure that the regulatory burden on businesses in our jurisdictions is lessened, is not further increased with a new scheme, and that the revenues are returned to them in the form of incentives to help them lower their costs.
The Canadian Mining Association supports carbon pricing, which is a key actor for our economy here in the Northwest Territories. Their president has said that carbon tax is the most effective and efficient means of driving emissions reductions and making real progress in the fight against climate change.
Mr. Speaker, I am not opposed to carbon taxing. I don't think that the world is opposed to carbon taxing or carbon pricing. I think that the world has embraced this. Many Members in this House have been encouraging this government to be proactive on this, to not wait until the eleventh hour to put forward a carbon pricing solution that will allow us to meet our national and international obligations. Yet, here we are, in the last year of our term, with something that has become very controversial and something that Members on this side of the House have just spoken against. I think that is because this bill did not go through the same level of collaboration and partnership that we have seen on other pieces of legislation.
The Standing Committee on Government Operations has been working on carbon pricing for quite some time now. I think that my honourable friend, the Member for Frame Lake, put this very clearly. Our efforts to collaborate, to propose new ideas and solutions, have fallen on deaf ears, and I have come to believe that the honourable Minister of Finance would simply prefer this issue to go away. Perhaps the provincial governments who are opposing this in court will be successful, and we can drop it if a few federal government comes into place.
This is not leadership. That belief can be backed up with actions, statements, words, and a lack of action behind the scenes here at the committee level and in the business planning stages, that there isn't clear leadership coming from this government on this very important issue to the economic health and well-being of Northerners and to our goals to preserve and protect our environment and the health of our citizens.
The Auditor General report on climate change revealed a serious lack of leadership on GNWT actions to fight climate change. The standing committee worked collaboratively and provided clear and concise recommendations on how that can improve. None of those recommendations have been fully implemented, including the most important ones around leadership, about giving a very clear message as a whole-of-government approach that is binding on other departments so that there is a very clear sense in the public and within the bureaucracy that this is a top priority and that we need to continue to work on it. I agree that adaptation needs to be our priority, but the global economy is adapting to carbon pricing, and we need to be a part of that if we are going to protect our businesses and protect our industries.
Mr. Speaker, this bill places the burden of the pricing scheme through a carbon tax onto the pocketbooks of Northerners and small businesses, while carving out extensive breaks for large emitters that are responsible for nearly 50 percent of total emissions. The taxes applied to large industry are largely returned by the rebates, and the funds that are held by government can be accessed by those same emitters in personalized funds, rather than building a globally competitive fund in which all emitters can compete for resources as an incentive to help bring clean growth solutions to their industrial operations.
The vital rebate programs in this bill, which are the crux of any successful pricing regime, are governed solely through regulation, which means that this House will lack the necessary oversight tools to effect these programs and cements total control in the hands of the Minister. While this would not be such a major issue for me, the current Minister, again, has not demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with Regular Members and members of the public and members of industry on building a regime that works for everyone.
This House cannot speak for future governments and the Ministers of those governments, but I think that we must ensure that it is the House and its Members who decide these issues, such as the rebates and other important issues of climate change public policy and that those powers and discretion are not solely in the hands of the Minister and government bureaucracy. The people need to be able to speak to their representatives on these issues.
Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that we need to do a better job of building a scheme that works. I have implored the government to look at other options. Again, I refer to the Chinese model where they have moved to a cap-and-trade system. We didn't even consider that. At the time, the provinces of Ontario and Quebec had a very successful cap-and-trade program in partnership with California. There are no reasons we couldn't have collaborated with Yukon and Nunavut to build a northern carbon market and to keep the burden on industry and off of everyday Northerners and to find more competitive ways to incentivize clean growth solutions to business.
The Taltson expansion is something I do, in fact, support. I think it is a key component of building the economy of the North. Again, it is very far off. For this government to pin 33 percent of its reductions on something that is a policy proposal that has pennies for the big picture invested in it currently, we cannot afford to pin all of our hopes on that. We need to have a better mechanism. The mechanism that is being proposed today, again, it puts the burden onto the pocketbooks of Northerners in such a way that I cannot support.
I hope that we are able to improve the bill if it does go forward. At this time, I encourage all honourable Members of this House to carefully consider what is being proposed, the lack of collaboration, the lack of consultation. Whether or not the proposed federal backstop that Yukon and Nunavut are both agreeing to implement in their jurisdictions, now that we know the details of that, is a more generous rebate for individuals, and individual Northerners will receive more from the federal backstop than they will from this carbon-pricing scheme.
I think we must carefully consider if this is the direction we want to go, if this is the direction we want to bind future governments for, or if we should leave the administrative burden of the new tax in the hands of the federal government that this Minister has said is imposing this tax on the people of the North. Let them impose it, then. Let them give a more generous rebate. Let's work with our partners to build a more robust carbon-pricing system that targets the people who are actually causing the emissions and that ensures we can keep the cost of living as low as possible in the Northwest Territories.
It is possible to get carbon pricing right, but this bill gets it wrong. I encourage Members to vote against it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.