Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
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…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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 …
Read full speech →Government Orders
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 …
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to share my speaking time with the member for Shefford.
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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 …
Read full speech →Government Orders
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 …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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 …
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member for La Pointe-de-l'Île, who gave an excellent speech, is very familiar with the Official Languages Act. He knows that the effect of the Official Languages Act in Quebec is to treat the anglophone community as a minority on the verge of extinction. This means that Quebeckers' tax dollars end up funding English in Quebec and the integration of immigrants into the anglophone c…
Read full speech →Government Orders
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…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance is taking every opportunity to tell us that the budget invests $115 billion in infrastructure. When we actually look at the new funding, the budget lines indicate $9 billion, not $115 billion. The Quebec finance department, which is assessing the new amounts, estimated that to be $22 billion over 10 years. Of the $9 billion over five years that we calculated, $…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order. I have been interrupted several times.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, as we saw in the budget, health transfers will be indexed at a rate that is lower than the increase in system costs. This means that, at the end of the day, Quebec taxpayers will either have to pay more taxes or receive poorer quality services. The other alternative is that Quebec will have to take on more debt to finance health care services. The government, through the Parliamentary…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois voted against the budget speech. In fact, 22 Bloc members stood up and remained true to their values and their word. A month before the budget, we made it clear to the government what our expectations were. The government refused to discuss anything, negotiate or speak with us. It refused to listen to Quebeckers' concerns. The day we voted against the budget, the Le…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I think that Quebeckers need quality health care. I also think that the most vulnerable Quebeckers, who are seeing bungalows in Mirabel going for $800,000 or $900,000, need housing. What I am also seeing is that Quebeckers were robbed by the federal government of $814 million, which could have helped them get through the crisis on a daily basis. What I am seeing is that the Bloc Québé…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, during question period these past few days, the Minister of Industry has been rising in the House and attacking me, saying that there was money for defence and that I was working against my riding. However, the Liberal government is causing the loss of 500 defence jobs in Mirabel because it is incapable of making any kind of decision regarding which fighter jet it is going to purchase…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the vote-buying scheme during the election campaign cost billions of dollars, between $4 billion and $5 billion. Quebeckers paid for 22% of this total with their own taxes. That amount did not come from carbon tax revenues; it came from the consolidated revenue fund. I know it is strange to say it that way, but the tax was rebated in advance. That is how the program was designed in or…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the passionate member for Bourassa for his very interesting speech. He spoke about innovation, and he is right: We may disagree on how to go about it, but innovation is important. Speaking of innovation, the budget implementation bill includes a provision hidden deep in the bill, on page 301, under clause 208. The bill would give a minister absolute power to susp…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North, who is more interested in chatting and fooling around than he is in listening to the debate, did not include the provinces in the debt-to-GDP ratio he gave us for Canada. That omission obscures the fact that, if provincial debt is included, Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio is 10% higher than Germany's. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Governmen…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, in my region, the now Liberal riding of Thérèse-De Blainville has lost 300 jobs at Paccar. What was the Liberal member's response? On October 23, at 7:36 a.m., on Mario Dumont's show, she suggested that these workers call community organizations and food banks, that they come up with a plan A, B or C, that they not take it personally, that they find another job, that they go back to s…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North does not know what he is talking about. He is talking about the transfer levels, while we are taking about the discrepancy in the transfers. We are not talking about the level once tax points are taken into account; we are talking about the discrepancy. What we want the government to understand is that, if system costs increase by 6% but transfers only in…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we are all in opposition and usually, we rarely attack each other. My colleague is right on the first point. Ultimately, there is only one taxpayer. At the end of the day, the taxpayer gets all the tax bills. That is why we are calling for health transfers. That is why we think that the government should stop disengaging from health care funding and stop keeping the health transfer es…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it is because the Liberals became conservative to steal votes from the Conservative Party. It is true and it has been proven that the Liberal Party of Canada, which currently forms the government, stole $814 million from Quebeckers. It stole that money. When the 42 Liberal members from Quebec tell us that they are standing up for Quebec, that is utterly false. They were not elected by…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I think the federal government is borrowing money at Quebeckers' expense. If we look at the public debt of the average Quebecker, we see that the average Quebecker owes nearly twice as much in federal debt as in Quebec debt. That is Canada's legacy to Quebeckers. Now, will it be $78 billion or $79 billion? I think it could be more, because the government told us that it would find a w…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, in a way, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-4 at third reading today. This bill was introduced at the beginning of this Parliament and was left untouched all summer. When we returned in the fall, we spent a lot of time reworking the bill in committee. I will explain later, but this is one of the bills where the fact that the Bloc Québécois holds the balance of power in committee was…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, members often say "esteemed colleague", but in this case, it is really true. I think my colleague misunderstood what I said. The Prime Minister is an economist who has done great things. I have read his book Values. I have it at home. I even made notes in it. It is because of all the wonderful things he has said and written in the past that I am disappointed in his behaviour today. Th…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer did not drink the Liberal generational Kool-Aid. There is no surprise there: His mandate is to conduct non-partisan analyses. That is exactly why the Liberals want to replace him. They posted a job listing for a permanent replacement with “tact and discretion”. They want a low-key parliamentary budget officer who apologizes before he speaks. A little m…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, earlier in the debate, my colleague from Montcalm explained that this budget represents a disengagement from health care funding because the health transfer could potentially increase more slowly than the costs of the system. In response, the member for Bourassa, the great intellectual, and the member for Trois‑Rivières, the great diplomat, shouted names at the member for Montcalm, sa…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we will soon be called upon to vote on a budget in which the government has decided to redefine what constitutes an investment. It turns out that the government's definition of investment does not exist anywhere else. The budget says so itself. It does not exist in Singapore and it does not exist in the United Kingdom. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we are not talkin…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North and his colleagues from the governing party go around telling everyone that it is important to invest in infrastructure. They talk about hospital infrastructure. However, the budget lays out $5 billion over three years to build hospitals in all the provinces. That comes out to about $1.7 billion a year. For Quebec, this means $300 million a year over th…
Read full speech →