Bill 21 - Heating Oil and Propane Rebate Act
October 21, 2008 - Third Reading
Ms Blakeman: Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker. You know, if there’s one thing you shouldn’t say to me, it’s that this is a housekeeping bill because then I start digging. But in this case it actually is a housekeeping bill. [interjection] Yeah. It’s always worth my digging. It’s always interesting what I come up with. Seriously, this is replacing an out-of-date bill.
The one thing that I had done with it was to try to bring in an amendment, which would strike out section 3(c), which was the Gary Dickson memorial. Well, actually, it was worse than that because it’s bad enough to have the Gary Dickson memorial amendment about not putting things in regulations which should be in legislation. This was worse because it’s that new clause the government started to use that says, “any terms and conditions the Minister considers appropriate.” So if they want to paint everyone in candy stripe, they can do so, and the legislation allows them to do that. But, no, I couldn’t convince my hon. colleagues in the House to remove that section.
What we do have are some fairly specific sections in here. Sorry. Just let me go back very briefly one more time. Providing rebates is not good economics, and it’s not good conservation. I just have to say that one more time. I recognize that the Member for Battle River-Wainwright, someplace out in the country, spoke very passionately about how much this was needed and how important this was to people in rural areas. I understand that. For anybody that’s in a remote enough rural area that you’re using propane for heat or you’re using some kind of heating oil, it’s important. I understand that. You know, at 30 below, it’s important that you have that.
It’s still not moving us away from the situation where we are in effect held hostage by this. Providing rebates for it does not change people, the way they are operating. It doesn’t have them move to solar or wind or any other possible, more energy-efficient forms of energy. Any economist will tell you that rebates are really bad economics. I just had to put that on the record one more time so we see this in context. Okay.
Having said that, we’ve now got a rebate act for natural gas, we’ve got a rebate for electricity, we’ve got rebates for all kinds of things, so this is to be fair and square to especially those in rural areas, so they’re now going to get rebates on their propane and their heating oil. Fair enough. I guess that if you’re going to have a bad idea for most of the people, you have to extend it to everybody. I have no wish to penalize people that are in remote enough areas that they can’t get access to this stuff. But, man, is this bad economics.
I wish the government would look for a better way of doing this. We will support the bill because we don’t want to see people truly left out. But please, please, please, with all the brains that the government has tucked away in all those researchers and all those scientists on the payroll, surely to God we could come up with a better way of doing this and other ways of incentives to get people to switch to different kinds of energy consumption than just helping people pay their bills.
You know what? It doesn’t change the individual’s approach at all, and all it does is continue to give a whole whack of money to an energy company.
Dr. Taft: Public money.
Ms Blakeman: Public money. That’s right. They give a whole bunch of public money to private companies.
Now I’m going to get a whole bunch of nasty letters from private companies saying: how dare you pick on us? But, honestly, you know, if they’re in private business, they shouldn’t need our help to do this. They should be able to compete in that wonderful marketplace everybody talks about. So okay. Fine. That’s it. Thank you.
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