Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, I would like to give my regard to my colleagues on this Monday morning. I am pleased to rise on behalf of the Bloc Québécois to speak to Bill C-242 regarding interim release. I read the bill and examined it very closely. In short, this bill seeks to do 12 different things. Let us start with the first one. First, it is important to remember that the bill seeks to replace the principle …
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Mr. Speaker, in an article in La Presse this weekend, Éric Ouellet, a member of the Barreau du Québec, wrote:The fact that hate speech may be perceived as enjoying greater protection because of its religious nature undermines the credibility of the legal system. He goes on to say:The real systemic risk is not an overuse of prosecution, but rather the normalization of rhetoric that targets protecte…
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill S-227, an act respecting Arab heritage month. I know there is suspense in the air again, and I know you are on the edge of your seat, because I can see you. I do not want you to fall, Madam Speaker. I want to tell you right away that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of this bill. I see my friend from Bourassa reacting. First of a…
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Madam Speaker, it has become second nature for me to remain focused in the House when no one is listening and when others are talking, but I know you are listening to me so that is my first win for the day. As I was saying, we are talking about $166 million under the Old Age Security Act. That is a lot a money. Again, we do not want this to become a way to invade people's privacy either, people wh…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is quite right when he says that the government often fails first nations. I represent the Mohawk community of Kanesatake in the House. I know that there have been problems with water pollution caused by criminal groups, among others. I have been hounding the government about this for years, but I cannot even get a call back. The government has shown real indifference t…
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Madam Speaker, it is always good to see you on Mondays, although, as you know, the same is also true for Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I will not keep anyone in suspense today. We support this bill, which promotes transparency in the administration of the public finances. As members know, the government is a huge machine with many departments, agencies and Crown corporations. Take, for examp…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the minister, who I am sure will be pleased to know that I grew up in her riding. I would like to know how the government will ensure that the role of commissioner is not politicized. I will give the example of another independent officer of Parliament, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is appointed for seven years through a process similar to the one in Bill C-10. When …
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Madam Speaker, let us suppose that what my colleague is saying is true, that the government lacks leadership, that it has not implemented or signed enough treaties and that it has not made enough progress. That may be true. That said, I am having a hard time following the logic of the member's argument because the government is saying that it wants to have oversight. It wants to have a commissione…
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Madam Speaker, in the spirit of reconciliation, the Bloc Québécois supported Bill C‑77 in the last Parliament and we will support Bill C‑10 as well. From what I understand, my colleague is telling us that having more transparency in the implementation of treaties would create more awful bureaucracy. A few days ago, we voted on Bill C‑228, introduced by the Bloc Québécois, which called for free tra…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague says that, ultimately, a commissioner would just table reports that nobody reads. What about the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, among others? Can my colleague tell us which other commissioners who report directly to Parliament are useless and why their work is useless?
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Calgary Nose Hill for sharing her perspective with us, although it is not one that I share. The Bloc Québécois supports Bill C‑10. We think it is a good idea to have a commissioner. However, if the bill is passed and a commissioner is appointed, I am concerned about the appointment process. Earlier, I gave the example of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who i…
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Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the debate and I can see that people here are getting worked up. The Liberals and the Conservatives are shouting at each other. I am surprised by that, because this motion was adopted unanimously. We adopted it at first and second readings of the bill, which was sent to committee. We are now at third reading. I think that we can offer legitimate criticisms of …
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Mr. Speaker, very quickly, at the height of the inflation crisis in 2022, when inflation was at 6%, 7%, 8%, the Bloc Québécois had called for that. We also called for the frequency of the cheques to be increased. At the time, the minister said that was inappropriate. All of a sudden, for the same reasons, it became appropriate. As the saying goes, it helps to sleep on it. The minister needed sever…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for unanimous consent to split my time with my colleague from Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan.
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Mr. Speaker, that is quite the question. My colleague is referring to the bill introduced by the member for Terrebonne, which did not amend any section of any act. The purpose of the bill was to have Ottawa do what it is already doing. In my riding, the people of Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac have experienced flooding. The Liberals wanted the people of Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac to have a nice app to let…
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Mr. Speaker, we know that no one can be asked to do the impossible. We cannot ask the minister to move mountains, although the minister has an unfortunate tendency to create expectations that are impossible to fulfill. It is true that the Conservatives questioned him about this in committee yesterday. I say this in a non-partisan way. It is a fact that tensions sometimes rise in committees. It is …
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Madam Speaker, my colleague's answers are interesting because, when we asked him whether he was in favour of increasing OAS benefits for seniors aged 65 to 74, who are facing discrimination, he told us that the government is focusing on what would have an impact. He thinks that helping seniors has no impact. Those are his words. I would like him to explain why, in his opinion, helping seniors aged…
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Mr. Speaker, we probably have the highest food inflation in the G7. Between 1984 and today, the number of grocery chains in Canada dropped from 13 to five, including Walmart and Costco, so the Liberals have had plenty of time to increase competition in the retail grocery sector. What does my colleague think Ottawa should do to increase competition as quickly as possible, not only in the grocery se…
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Mr. Speaker, this measure will cost just over $4 billion in the first year alone. For several years now, the Bloc Québécois has been calling for a 10% increase in OAS benefits for seniors aged 65 to 74 to put an end to the discrimination that the Liberals instituted between two classes of seniors. Our request costs exactly, or almost exactly, the same amount as the benefit being announced today. T…
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Mr. Speaker, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to share my speaking time with the member for Shefford.
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Mr. Speaker, it goes without saying that the two main items in the market basket of individuals and families are housing and groceries. In terms of housing, we have a government that has implemented immigration policies and thresholds that they themselves recognize are inappropriate and are, in fact, impediments to successful immigration, which involves people coming here and having all the tools …
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Mr. Speaker, for your sake, I will only take five minutes and 25 seconds. As I said earlier, we support the bill because times are hard and food inflation is real. Prices have gone up faster than inflation. Even when price increases do slow down, prices will remain high. It is often children who are affected, and this credit has been designed to support families in particular. As I said, I have a …
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is asking an interesting question on the short term versus the long term. Obviously, we have a permanent problem. The price increases are here to stay. Sending out one-time cheques to address a permanent problem may seem like an attempt to curry favour with voters. Now, members need to understand that the government finally, after 10 years in power, took a few little step…
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Mr. Speaker, I do not agree with the parliamentary secretary. With all due respect, I think that implying that no real dialogue happens in the House of Commons is, once again, a bit of a slap in the face to democracy and ultimately sends the message that the House of Commons is just for show and there is no point in going to committee. I believe in democracy. Sometimes people need to meet one anot…
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Mr. Speaker, the residents of Mirabel are once again being threatened with expropriation by the federal government. First it was the white elephant that is the airport and now it is the high-speed train. A new rail corridor was announced for the train at the last minute, and it is going right through my community. There were zero consultations with elected officials, farmers or the residents of Mi…
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Mr. Speaker, it is true that Ottawa writes the Criminal Code, but the provinces are the ones that administer justice. If we really want justice for victims, then we need a justice system that works. That takes courthouses, courtrooms, stenographers and bailiffs. It takes resources. Does my colleague agree that the federal government is not doing enough to fund the justice system and to help the pr…
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Mr. Speaker, ever since the Jordan decision, when the Supreme Court determined what constituted a reasonable time frame in which to try an accused, criminals who have committed serious crimes have been released into the community due to a lack of judicial resources. This is unacceptable. Under the bill, relaxed criteria would allow judges to reassess the reasonable time frame issue. Ultimately, we…
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Mr. Speaker, I will try to make the most of the five minutes I have before question period. The situation with Bill C‑19 is a bit like Groundhog Day. The Liberals have decided to send out cheques and this is not the first time they have done so. This time, we have to give the government credit. In the midst of a purchasing power and cost of living crisis where people know that, even if inflation i…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals say they will discuss matters directly with citizens, but in their Bill C-15, they put a gun to their heads. People back home are not excited to know that they may be sent an expropriation notice via email. They are not excited to know that they will not be able to dispute these notices for 30 days. The Liberals want to get rid of the requirement to hold public hearings a…
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Mr. Speaker, this is a somewhat unexpected turn of events, but since some members did not use all of their speaking time, I will take the liberty of adding a few remarks. Let me begin with a story. I grew up just north of the riding of Abitibi—Témiscamingue in a village called Lebel-sur-Quévillon. The population of the village was about 4,000 at the time. An older gentleman named Mr. Tremblay live…
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Madam Speaker, in the Jordan decision, the Supreme Court established reasonable time limits in which trials must be held. I understand that, in the bill, the minister is expanding the criteria that the court will have to consider when it redefines what constitutes reasonable time limits. I am wondering about the possibility that, ultimately, at the end of the exercise, with these new criteria, the…
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Madam Speaker, since this is the first time I am rising to speak in 2026, I want to start by wishing you a happy new year. I wish you all the best. May you have good health and may it continue. You know you have my best wishes. I also want to take this opportunity to wish a happy new year to everyone in the beautiful riding of Mirabel, to our local businesses, some of which are going through tough…
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Madam Speaker, we know that the minister has often been slow to appoint judges, even though there is no shortage of Liberal donors who are willing to take those jobs. As a result, with the Jordan decision, some criminals have been released. We know the story behind the Jordan decision. Did the minister ever consider using the notwithstanding clause to get around the Jordan decision in order to get…
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Mr. Speaker, we know that this budget was put together in a hurry and that the Minister of Finance was not ready. The deficit will reach almost $80 billion this year alone. Now, to meet their deficit targets, the Liberals must find $50 billion in budget cuts over five years. Of the $50 billion in budget cuts, they have identified only $10 billion, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer and other obs…
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Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Finance heard from the governor of the central bank, Mr. Macklem. The Conservatives asked him whether he thought that the industrial carbon tax was contributing to inflation. The Governor of the Bank of Canada confirmed that, unlike the consumer carbon tax, the carbon tax for large emitters did not generate any form of inflation, as this involves commodities …
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague quite rightly referred to the report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, an independent officer of Parliament, which says that the federal government's programs will enable it to meet only 2% to 3% of its targets. Last week, during a Standing Committee on Finance hearing, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and member for Whitby decided to filibuster…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very informative speech. What he forgot to mention is that, when it came time to vote on the budget, the Conservatives wanted to avoid an election so badly that they hid some members, including their House leader, behind the curtains. On voting day, they were hiding behind the curtains and in the washrooms to abstain from voting and ensure that the budget …
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Mr. Speaker, at the Standing Committee on Finance, when the Parliamentary Budget Officer, an independent official appointed by consensus by Parliament, issued reservations about the budget, the response from the Minister of Finance, who was in front of me, was simply to undermine the credibility of the institution, to say that the Parliamentary Budget Officer was entitled to his opinion, that it w…
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Mr. Speaker, in the budget, the government uses a definition of investment that does not exist anywhere else in the world. In committee, we pointed out that aspect of Bill C-15. The member for Whitby, who is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, was unable to say where else in the world that definition is used. In the middle of the committee meeting, he consulted ChatGPT. He aske…
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Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance was bragging about investing $115 billion over five years in his budget. However, if we take a close look at the numbers, we realize that, in fact, there will be only $9 billion in new funding over five years for all of the provinces from coast to coast to coast, including $5 billion earmarked to build hospitals and clinics. That means that the 10 provinces and…
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Mr. Speaker, Bill C-4 sets out a GST rebate for first-time buyers of new homes. The Prime Minister promised this rebate in March, when he was Prime Minister. We went on the campaign trail, then we came back. The Prime Minister finally tabled the notice of ways and means and the bill. Everyone who bought a home between the time the Prime Minister promised this rebate in March and the time of the el…
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Mr. Speaker, Bill C-4 is the story of a Prime Minister who runs in an election, promises everything but the kitchen sink, comes to sit in Parliament and then introduces a bill too quickly. The bill is poorly crafted and poorly thought out. For example, for the tax cut where the first bracket is reduced by 1%, the government failed to consider all of the potential effects because it worked too quic…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very articulate speech in which he criticized the inappropriate comments that some Conservatives allegedly made about the national school food program. I would like him to know that, when Paccar, a truck manufacturing company in Sainte-Thérèse in my region, recently laid off 300 people, his Liberal colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville told these workers …
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives rise to say that all Canadians voted in the last election to get rid of the carbon tax. However, the political reality is that people voted for the current Prime Minister because they were afraid of the Leader of the Opposition. They believed that getting rid of the carbon tax was a temporary compromise, even though they still supported the fight against climate chan…
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Madam Speaker, there are some good things in Bill C-4, but basically it is a collection of election promises, including the tax cut. My colleague must know that the amounts of many of the tax credits received by the most vulnerable members of our society, including the disability tax credit, are calculated based on the tax rate for the lowest tax bracket. That means that, under Bill C-4, people wh…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Edmonton West for his speech. I very much enjoy working with him. Bill C-4 demonstrates the fact that the Prime Minister was willing to promise anything during the election campaign, without having done the math, without knowing how to go about it. This bill was introduced without any attention to detail. My colleague gave a very good example of that. In March…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised in March to provide first-time homebuyers with a GST rebate on new homes. When we came back to Parliament after he was elected, he made the GST rebate effective only as of May in the original version of Bill C-4, which meant that thousands of homebuyers who believed what the Prime Minister said were ineligible for the GST rebate. The Bloc Québécois proposed…
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Mr. Speaker, it is with great sadness that I rise today to mark the passing of a remarkable woman from Sainte-Scholastique and an important figure in the history of Quebec, Rita Léonard-Lafond. She was a woman of conviction and courage, who dedicated her entire life to defending her community at the height of the Mirabel expropriation saga. Through her efforts to support the public battles that le…
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals have gotten into the habit of using the words “tax cuts for the middle class” for things that are not tax cuts for the middle class. In 2015, Justin Trudeau promised to lower the tax rate for the second income tax bracket. Those who benefited the most were the people earning more than $200,000 a year, because it is the wealthy taxpayers who go through all the tax bracke…
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Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that chances of the government meeting its spending reduction targets are roughly 7%. I will give an example. At the Canada Revenue Agency, the software that is currently being used to process our taxes dates back to the 1980s. Apparently, it is on a black screen with purple text. After not doing any modernization for decades, now the governm…
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