Thanks, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to speak to the committee. I will just read through what I sent earlier.
I strongly support Bill C-234. As you are reviewing the impact of the carbon tax on various farm industries, I would like to point out that it challenges the very viability and sustainability of our poultry operations in the province of Alberta.
In particular, I struggle with the application and impact of the carbon tax on the natural gas we use in our farming operations as we raise broiler chickens.
It increases the cost of raising broiler chickens, and we can recover these increased costs partially with price increases, but really, most of them won't be recovered. It is a burden on our operations. It is also at cross-purposes with the intent of the carbon tax. If I understand the intent and philosophy behind the tax, it is meant to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Herein lies the conundrum for us. We need to use a certain amount of natural gas to heat our barns to a certain temperature, 30°C to 31°C, and sometimes even higher in order to raise chickens and get them into the food chain. If we follow the intent and philosophy behind the carbon tax and reduce the needed temperatures for raising chickens by cutting back on natural gas, we will have chickens that suffer. Most of them will die because of lack of proper temperatures. This in turn would leave us vulnerable to charges of animal cruelty, so we obviously will not and cannot reduce our consumption of natural gas.
As a committee filled with intelligent individuals, you all will understand that we cannot follow the full intent and spirit of the legislation.
Please change the legislation via Bill C-234, and remove the carbon tax on natural gas that we and other farmers specifically use on chicken broiler farms. We have always felt honoured to be in the position to provide Canadian consumers with quality chicken meat, and we wish to continue to do so.
As for financial viability, we face the following. Every $10 per tonne of carbon tax costs us significantly more each month, and when the cost goes to the intended level of $170 per tonne, our cost will rise to an average of approximately $40,000 per month, or approximately $480,000 per annum.
These levels of carbon tax will destroy the viability of our chicken operation and many other operations in the chicken industry. This definitely was not the intent of the architects of the carbon tax. These are the unintended consequences that can occur even with the best intentions and that must be subsequently corrected and fixed.
Hopefully this helps you in your deliberations. If necessary, I'm available in a number of different forms. I also took a page to show what we paid in the last year. We paid in the last 12 months $106,000. At the projected price of $170 per tonne, that will come to $475,000.
It's a problem for us and for many others. I think most of it speaks for itself, but we can dive into more particulars in other ways. We would love to see this removed. Always remember that no matter what we do, we still have to pay the bill for the utilities we consume. This is just an extra tax on us of $475,000 in some years to come—but right now it's at $106,000.