Parliamentary Speeches
1,041 speeches by Alexandre Boulerice — Page 19 of 21
Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. My colleague will share his opinion on the important motion that my party moved today. The motion has to do with a tragic event in history, and we hope that this grim discovery will mark the last chapter in this tragedy. The remains of 215 children were discovered in Kamloops, nea…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Joliette for his excellent speech. Is he hopeful that this week's disturbing tragedy, or revelation, could speed things up? He spoke about the contradiction in fighting residential school victims' claims for compensation and failing to make much progress on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action. Does he think that there will be a “before…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his well-researched speech. He is obviously extremely familiar with the matter and genuinely concerned about the key issue raised by the discovery that shocked us all this week. He touched on several important points, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action and the amounts needed to investigate in order to learn more…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her excellent question. The vast system of residential schools and kidnappings constituted cultural genocide. The purpose was to separate these children from their world view and from their way of living in harmony with nature. The purpose was to destroy and eliminate indigenous spirituality in favour of a European world view and religious standard. These woun…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. The federal government has an enormous responsibility. It was the federal government that imposed the Indian Act, which is a racist act. As her colleague from Joliette said, the act's very title is racist. The government does indeed have a financial responsibility. Hardly any of the money earmarked two years ago for carrying out investigations …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question. Given the tragic circumstances and the grim discovery in Kamloops, I certainly expect all members of the House to vote in favour of this motion before us. The motion makes sense. It is coherent and logical, and it is in keeping with real reconciliation and the meaningful action that will enable us to reach out and have the dialogue th…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals just promised $5 million for Laurentian University, but the university needs $100 million. Does the minister understand that is nowhere near enough? Does she really expect Ontario to come up with the missing $95 million? When will the minister show leadership and finally protect French across the country? When will the minister introduce a bill to modernize the Official L…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from St. John's East. I find today's debate very interesting. I would like to hear more from my colleague about transparency and openness and about the possibility of getting access to the documents. The Liberals have often spoken about an open and transparent government, yet we are obliged to force them to hand over documents they wish to keep secre…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and the motion he has put before the House today. I would simply like him to tell us more specifically what criteria he thinks should be used for the disclosure or publication of official documents concerning public health or public safety. What criteria does he want to put forward to ensure that these documents are published, made public and acce…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I also thank him for his shout-out to Dr. Bethune. It is not every day that he gets a mention in the Parliament of Canada. The government lacks transparency and refuses to disclose certain documents because it has something to hide. I would like to hear a little bit more from my colleague about that. What does he think the government is trying to…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, Facebook just made a deal with 14 media outlets to pay for online journalistic content. We can all agree that is a good thing and a step in the right direction. However, we do not want piecemeal solutions that depend on the wishes of web giants. The real question here is why the heritage minister is dragging his feet and has not yet introduced a bill to protect our news media. What …
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, at this very moment, thousands of people who want to come live here are in distress because of unacceptable delays at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Here are three people in my riding who want to share their story so they will no longer be invisible to the Liberal government. Othniel Bernardin is a Haitian refugee who cannot wait 39 months to be reunited with his childr…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. At one point, I noticed that, contrary to the standing order that allows members to wear flowers or small pins to recognize special days in our country, my colleague was wearing a button with a slogan on it. I would like to know whether the Standing Orders of the House of Commons have changed because I, too, have some buttons that I cou…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, Hydro-Québec is a renewable energy pioneer and it thinks big. It intends to provide electricity to Boston and New York City, and Quebec is very proud of that. However, we have learned that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is getting in Hydro-Québec's way by funding a gas company in Texas that is challenging Hydro-Québec's new transmission lines. Will the government commit to…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me to rise in the House today to take part in this very important debate, one that affects us all. The NDP has been raising concerns about plastic waste for several years now. We are talking about the export of plastic waste, and there is a lot to say on the subject. I am also going to talk about reducing the use of plastics in general and especially singl…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and his initiative. The NDP and many people in my riding, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, have been concerned about plastic pollution for years. His bill on exporting plastic waste is quite good. However, I would like his thoughts on reducing our use of plastic and increasing our capacity to recycle it, which we are doing very little of in Canada, and …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. I would like her to tell us what more should be added to a federal legislative measure to better respect the rights of first nations and indigenous people and to lead us toward meaningful reconciliation in Quebec and Canada.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we are debating this bill today because we have to resume the work done by my friend and former colleague Romeo Saganash seeking to enshrine the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into federal law. This would be a great thing to do, and it would put us in a good position to move forward on reconciliation with first nations. Unfortunately, despite the expr…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. This issue is obviously a priority for the country. I must point out that Bill C-262 was introduced by our former colleague, Romeo Saganash, as an NDP initiative. Therefore, we are in agreement with the substance of Bill C-15. However, if this bill were truly a priority for the government, why was it incapable of managing its legislative agenda and the activiti…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé. I am going to ask him a very simple, factual and non-partisan question. Today, the Bloc Québécois is telling us that it would be irresponsible to trigger an election during a pandemic, that is, in the middle of the third wave. Last August, the same party said that it was fine to trigger an election and that it was not irresponsible. Why w…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. Over the past several months, the NDP has been saying that holding an election in the middle of a pandemic is really absurd and dangerous for people's safety. We are therefore in favour of this motion. However, I would like to ask my colleague what he thinks of the attitude of the Bloc Québécois, which threatened to call an election a few months …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in today's discussion on the Bloc Québécois's opposition motion. It gives me an opportunity to comment on something that New Democrats care a lot about, and that is the ability to stay the course and be consistent. Not every political party has that ability, and I find myself in a rather unusual position in that I support the motion but am struggling to und…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I think we would all agree that a political party must be prepared for an election. However, that is not the same as threatening to trigger an election. As the leader of the Bloc Québécois said, if you look at the reasoning from another perspective, it would mean that we are living in a dictatorship until the pandemic is over. Logically speaking, then, does this mean that the Bloc Qué…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comment and question. Just as there are people who are suffering in Winnipeg, there are also people who are suffering in Montreal. We are experiencing a completely untenable housing crisis. The restaurant, tourism and cultural industries are in shambles. People are desperate. They are not happy to see that the Liberals' assistance measures will decrease th…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for his question. That is why I spoke of inconsistencies and flip-flopping. It is dangerous to threaten to hold an election in the middle of a pandemic. It was not a responsible thing to say. The Bloc Québécois members finally realized how ill-advised it was. I imagine they listened to people on the ground, in their ridings, who told them they …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, what we have seen repeatedly from the Liberal troops today is that they have a real conflict of interest culture. This is the fifth time that the commissioner has found that the Liberals had a conflict of interest. It is not the first, second, or third time, but the fifth time. Even though the Prime Minister was not personally found to be in the wrong, the entire Liberal government is…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, with your permission, I would like to take a few seconds in the House to commemorate the work of anthropologist, radio host and distinguished author Serge Bouchard. For years, he filled our evenings with his reassuring voice and his profound vision of Quebec and our relations with the first nations. We have lost a great Quebecker. We will all miss him. I would like to address several …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his kind words. Yes, any support for community groups in our constituencies is a good thing in and of itself, because they have difficult working conditions and extremely limited resources. These groups are often the ones keeping the social fabric intact and holding our communities together, so any additional assistance is good. We know that public services ar…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond for his question. We are talking about fairness and about the resources we need to give ourselves to support our cultural sector and our artists so they can contribute to the production of original Quebec and Canadian content. How is it that the corner store near my office is forced to pay taxes while the Googles, Facebooks and Netflixes of the world…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question and his comments. I only touched on the subject, but we could talk about it at length. We could also talk about the capital gains tax and the tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest Canadians and Bay Street bankers to profit from the sale of certain shares. That money could help fund social housing, public transit, our health care system…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her interventions and for her ardent defence of the interests of seniors and the elderly. The housing crisis is severe in Quebec, as it is pretty much everywhere. After years of neglect by the Liberals and the Conservatives, who cut investments in social housing, people are finding themselves in situations where they could end up out on the street, unable to a…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. If we want to be able to have good public services for the long term, whether in health or to help the most vulnerable, like our seniors, we need to have the necessary revenues. In that sense, there is nothing in the Liberal budget for collecting money from those who have it, in other words, companies such as Amazon, with its billions of dollars …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville for her speech. This is the first federal government budget in two years. We were all collectively hit by the pandemic. We have seen how much we rely on a robust and effective public health care system that treats its workers and professionals well. The Liberal government says that it transferred a lot of money to the provinces for hea…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. In the last budget, the Liberals presented child care services as a key measure for economic recovery. Obviously, as Quebeckers, we have seen the success of the network of child care centres and know that it is a good idea. Given that the Liberals first made this promise in 1993, does my colleague believe it?
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, on Friday, the Prime Minister's chief of staff asked what more she could have done to help the victims of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. What more could the Liberals have done? Is she serious? The Deschamps report, which describes the unhealthy, toxic culture in the military, has been available since 2015. What have the Liberals done since 2015? They have done nothing…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, to everyone's surprise, the government supported our motion requiring Netflix to also pay tax on its staggering revenues. Congratulations to the Liberals for this moment of clarity, but will they follow through? Yesterday, together with my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby, I sent a letter to the Minister of Finance asking her to apply the digital tax to all web giants…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, I think you will find the unanimous consent of the House for the following motion: That the House: (a) recognize that tax giveaways to Netflix represent an injustice to local broadcasters; and (b) call on the government to make all webs giants pay their fair share, by including Netflix in its proposed 3% tax on digital services.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, former justice Louise Arbour's competence is not at issue here. This is about the Liberal government's ability to appropriately manage the crisis of sexual misconduct in the army. This is starting to look bad. The only thing they could think of was to redo an external investigation, even though Justice Deschamps did a similar review six years ago. The Liberals have done nothing in tho…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, once again, the Liberals gave in to a web giant, and once again, it is Netflix. In reading the budget, we discovered that Netflix will not have to pay the so-called digital services tax of 3%. We thought it was a mistake or another blunder, so we asked the finance minister about it and, no, the Liberals did it on purpose. It was deliberate. In 2020, Netflix generated $25 billion in re…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, my riding also neighbours that of the member for Hochelaga. I find it appalling that, during their six years in power, the Liberals let a really dangerous situation fester while women in Canada's military had to endure difficult work environments and some were victims of sexual misconduct. The Minister of National Defence misled a parliamentary committee, a former ombudsman contradict…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I think he provided a complete picture of the situation. The defence minister misled a parliamentary committee and then tried to cover it up. He then blamed someone else and said that it was not his fault. Now, he is hiding and being contradicted by the former ombudsman. When we asked him to take action, the only thing he did was to launch a new …
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Montarville, for his initiative. We sometimes have differences of opinion on certain issues, but I believe that we will fully agree on this one. The NDP has also been fighting against tax havens for years. My thoughts are similar to those of the member for Saint-Jean. As the title of Alain Deneault's book Legalizing Theft implies, a good part of th…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, I hope you did not pay too much attention to the last two speeches we just heard, because they were rather hypocritical. These people say one thing and do the opposite. They are grasping at straws, looking for excuses. When they find things that do not suit their narrative, they say it is too complicated, it would be hard to do, or we have to wait for the OECD. These people have incre…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals love to make themselves out to be champions of the French language, but in real life, federal organizations do not even submit the progress reports required under the Official Languages Act. The minister promised to reform that act, but she still has not done so. The Liberals have been in office for six years and they still have not done anything, nothing at all. The righ…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for his involvement in this issue. Since this is a global crisis and we will not be safe until all other countries are safe, does the member think that, under these circumstances, the intellectual property rules could be waived so that the vaccines could be considered a global public good?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. The health and safety of all Quebeckers and Canadians depends on the percentage of our population that is vaccinated. We all have to work together to make that happen as soon as possible. Our collective safety also depends on vaccination rates in other countries because we are fighting a global pandemic. To make sure the world's poorest countries…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. Does he not recognize that, since the right to strike has been recognized as a fundamental right by the Supreme Court of Canada, it is not possible to simply decide that it does not exist anymore, just because it is bothersome and has consequences for society? If it is indeed a fundamental right and if that right allows workers to use job action to…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his passionate speech. He made some good points, and I applaud his unwavering and immutable defence of workers' rights. I would like to ask him about something a little more specific. The longshoremen's union had said that if the employer would stop playing games with the employees' schedules and punishing them, there would not be an open-ended general strike …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech and for her solidarity with workers at the Port of Montreal. In terms of federal labour relations, does my colleague agree that back-to-work legislation should be avoided because it violates workers' fundamental rights, and does she agree that we should pass legislation prohibiting the use of scabs, also known as replacement workers?
Read full speech →Government Orders
It is a hallmark of governments, whether they are Liberal or Conservative. When I arrived in the House almost 10 years ago, we debated special legislation to force Canada Post workers to go back to work. At the time, the Liberals were in opposition and they were outraged. Since coming to power, they have taken similar action many times, as we are seeing this evening with the Port of Montreal dockw…
Read full speech →