Poilievre calls out Trudeau's 'wacko and unhinged claim' that carbon taxes will stop forest fires

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre took aim during Wednesday's Question Period at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim that the carbon tax is fighting climate change and stopping forest fires by asking, “How high would his tax have to go for forest fires to stop?”

Trudeau said he knows that “in Conservative ridings right across the country, people are worried about droughts, people are worried about floods, people are worried about wildfires that are more and more severe. Canadians need a clean plan to fight climate change, which is something [the Conservative leader] hasn't put forward while we are fighting climate change and putting money in people's pockets.”

Poilievre said the carbon tax has nothing to do with either fighting climate change or forest fires. “His claim was that it was going to stop forest fires. It's him that made the link, not me. Obviously. I think the link between the two is absolutely ridiculous because his tax is not an environmental plan,” he said.

“It's a money-collecting plan. It's a plan of government greed. So I'll ask the question again. He wants to hike the tax to 61 cents a litre. If it gets to that high and people are all starving in the streets. Will that stop the forest fires?”

The Conservative leader said farmers across Canada are worried about ”the prime minister's carbon tax [that] applies on barns, on grain drying, on fertilizers, on off-farm vehicles, it costs literally tens of thousands dollars for many individual farmers, all of which gets passed on.“

Poilievere said Trudeau would rather defend his carbon tax than defend farmers so he has “resorted to a really wacko and unhinged claim” that with more taxes “there would be suddenly less fires. I thought that water and not taxes put out fires. Can the prime minister clarify how high his tax would have to go for forest fires to stop?”