Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, my colleague wanted to speak about employment insurance, so I must give her the opportunity to go ahead.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, we had a nice chat earlier about translation. In English, we call you the Speaker, but in French, maybe we should call you “haut parleur”, because you do make quite a good loudspeaker. We know that you are the Speaker and that you are doing a great job. You can tell your constituents that we are very proud to have you as Speaker of the House of Commons presiding over this debate. It i…
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Mr. Speaker, the national debt has reached $1.2 trillion. That is an amount, a word I never thought I would have to use here in the House. To come back to what my colleague from Winnipeg North just said, the Parliamentary Budget Officer clearly said that the additional spending that was justified by the economic recovery is no longer reasonable. The Parliamentary Budget Officer himself is saying t…
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Mr. Speaker, inflation is indeed affecting the most vulnerable in our society. This is because they are the ones whose wages are the slowest to increase. Pensions do not increase in line with inflation, far from it. On this point, I agree completely with my colleague. That is the problem. Every month that inflation continues to rise, seniors, vulnerable individuals and people living on low incomes…
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Mr. Speaker, it is impossible to give a very brief answer to a question like that, but I will try. Today, we were accused of taking a hard right. However, if being right-wing means taking care of the most vulnerable people, the people who need help, who have no money and who have to make tough choices when grocery shopping, then I am proud to be right-wing.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, we have been battling the pandemic for almost two years. Yesterday, I asked the Minister of Finance how parents were supposed to pay for groceries with inflation rocketing to a 30-year high. The only answer I was given was the following: Inflation is higher in other countries. That does not put food on the table for Canadian families. I will try again today with the Prime Minister. Ev…
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Mr. Speaker, when shoppers see that the cost of chicken and other meats, the cost of all items, has gone up by 5.7%, they are not wondering where the money is coming from or who did what. They are wondering how they will pay for it at the register. Will they be forced to put some items back because the total is more than they can afford? This is what families are worried about. Demand at food bank…
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Mr. Speaker, the only ones benefiting from runaway inflation are governments. If everything costs more, then people pay more taxes. That is the reality. If the economy is doing so well, as the Prime Minister just said, why are fathers and mothers unable to make ends meet? Why do they have to make tough choices when it comes to feeding their families? What we want to know is this: When will the Pri…
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Mr. Speaker, we have been battling a global pandemic for almost two years now. It has taken a toll on our health, our day-to-day lives and our wallets. The cost of living is skyrocketing. Everything has been costing more for the past year, and prices continue to climb, especially the price of food. Mothers and fathers are thinking hard about what they put in their carts so their credit cards do no…
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Mr. Speaker, a single mother with two children who earns $40,000 a year at a time when the annual inflation rate is 4.8% will pay about $200 a week for groceries. That is $10 more every week, which totals $520 at the end of the year. If we look at what she earns in a year, we see that she loses an entire paycheque to cover this additional cost. Comparing our situation to that of any other countrie…
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Mr. Speaker, how can they honestly rise in the House and ignore the problems currently facing mothers and fathers, who are seeing a 30% increase in the price of gas, a 4.8% inflation rate and an 8% increase in the cost of groceries? I was being generous earlier. I cut parents' bills in half. In real life, they have to pay 8% more for groceries every week. In the meantime, what are we hearing from …
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, on December 3, I asked the Minister of Health why the government was slow to act in the entire Canadian response to COVID‑19. I tried, with a great many arguments based on documents that I could not table at the time, to show that everyone felt that the Liberal government had been slow in dealing with the pandemic, slow to act in the beginning, particularly when it came to borders a…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary, my colleague from Milton. We will have the opportunity to work together on the standing committee on health and have some great discussions. At the standing committee on health we recently spoke with the Minister of Health. I asked him whether he thought the response to the pandemic should be guided by science, policy or personal intuition. He re…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to federal government statistics on labour shortages in Quebec: (a) what are the government's estimates on the percentage and number of businesses in Quebec that encountered a labour shortage in (i) 2019, (ii) 2020, (iii) 2021; (b) what is the breakdown of (a) by sector and industry; (c) what is the projected labour shortage in Quebec for (i) 2022, (ii) 2023; and (d) what is the breakd…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
With regard to government public awareness or advertising campaigns related to potential harms associated with cannabis use, excluding those focused on the dangers of drug impaired driving: what are the details of each such campaign launched by the government since January 1, 2019, including the (i) campaign title and description, (ii) date campaign was launched, (iii) start and end date of the ca…
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Madam Speaker, the student has surpassed the teacher. For the second time since the beginning of the pandemic, the Auditor General has criticized the Liberals' border management. The system lost track of 1,156 travellers who had tested positive for COVID-19. These 1,156 people who had COVID-19 came into Canada, and the Public Health Agency of Canada simply lost track of them. Over 1,000 people hav…
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Madam Speaker, considering how slow the government was to close the borders and provide vaccines, I think the minister needs to review his talking points and remember the beginning of the pandemic. Other findings by the Auditor General include the following: 30% of test results are missing or cannot be linked to anyone; and no one knows whether 75% of travellers followed quarantine orders upon arr…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague on her great speech. I think it is important to remember why we are here today. The opposition believes it is extremely important to address this cost-of-living crisis. Everything costs more, especially housing. My colleague from Edmonton Riverbend would agree with me, since he is the one who moved this very important motion for all Canad…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like the hon. member to be elected in a municipal government instead of here. Maybe he would see what the responsibilities and roles are of each and every level of government. We are in the House to talk about the Liberal government, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, who make life unaffordable for so many Canadians that they cannot dream of ever buying a new hous…
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Mr. Speaker, I can continue in the same vein. I was the mayor of a municipality. When a government starts throwing a lot of money at something, whether it is housing, construction, or infrastructure, what happens? Prices skyrocket, and then, eventually, nothing more can be done. The solution of this government, the solution of the Prime Minister and of the Minister of Finance, is to spend more mon…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to reread paragraph (a) of the motion, which states that the House calls on the government to: (a) review and consolidate all federal real estate and properties in Canada in order to make at least 15% available for residential development; I do not see anything in the motion stating that we will favour one group over another. I think that the motion is quite clear. It say…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, if the Prime Minister has learned anything, then he should quickly bring his ministers together to send a clear message to Canadians. What is happening right now is that the Minister of Health is announcing measures that the Minister of Public Safety says he is unable to implement. Meanwhile, the Minister of Transport is already announcing changes. There seems to be a lot of confusion…
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Mr. Speaker, I remember the beginning of the pandemic. The Liberals were slow to close the borders and bring in vaccines, and the N95 masks in the national stockpile were expired. All of that contributed to the first wave of closures and to the severe health measures we all faced. On top of that, there were the instances of sexual violence in the quarantine hotels. The Prime Minister has learned a…
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Mr. Speaker, how the heck could the Prime Minister let his government repeat the mistakes of the past? Canadians went through hell in the quarantine hotels, and the ordeal is still going on, with no cleaning services, no milk for infants, mothers unable to get diapers for their children, and horrible meals. Is this ringing any bells for the Prime Minister? How can he allow Canadians to be treated …
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Mr. Speaker, we need the right measures. It is not just the airports that are a mess. Liberal ministers have once again lost control. The Minister of Health keeps saying that the measures will take a few days to implement. The Minister of Transport says that the measures may still change. The Minister of Public Safety is doing nothing. The conditions at the quarantine hotels are appalling. Who is …
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Mr. Speaker, this being December 6, I will take a few moments to acknowledge the anniversary of the awful tragedy at Polytechnique Montréal where 14 young women lost their lives. It is important to always take a few minutes on this day to reflect on what happened at the time and what continues to happen in our society. Violence against women still exists, now more than ever. Taking the time to com…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate that, for the benefit of all health care workers, this bill must be passed, yes. The government also wanted to include in this bill 10 days of sick leave for federally regulated workers. During a pandemic like the one we are going through, all workers, not just those under federal jurisdiction, should have access to sick leave and whatever else they need to h…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government seems to have learned nothing during the 20-month pandemic. It is not enough just to announce border restrictions to protect Canadians. We need to make sure they work. Let us talk about the ArriveCAN app that is supposed to protect Canadians but is actually making things worse at the border. People are being misinformed. No one is answering the telephone to help…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. However, I would need more than 30 seconds to try and analyze our current society. I will therefore go back to what I was talking about at the very beginning of my speech, namely, violence against women, which is still happening in our society today. Despite tragedies like the one at the Polytechnique and the fact people are talking more and more…
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Mr. Speaker, that is a very important question. They are counting on us to do the right thing, to protect them from the bad attitudes we see in public sometimes. If we are not there for them, how can we count on them to protect us and take care of us? I totally agree with my colleague that we need to do what we can to achieve the goal of protecting them from the bad behaviour that we see are seein…
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Madam Speaker, let us talk about the government's foot-dragging. Everyone knows that, at the beginning of the pandemic, the Liberal government was slow to take action at the border and with regard to vaccines. Even today, nobody seems to know who will be administering screening tests to the passengers arriving at our airports. On Wednesday, the health minister said that of course that will take ti…
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Madam Speaker, last week, the Liberal government announced stricter border measures to combat the omicron variant, as the Conservative opposition was calling for. A week later, it has become clear that there is a huge gap between what the Minister of Health said and what is actually happening on the ground. There was no consultation with airports and very little with the provinces. It has been a w…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, after hearing the throne speech drafted by the Prime Minister's Office and read by the Governor General, my reply will be as short as its content. Was it really worth putting Canadians through an election that cost $600 million, in the middle of a pandemic when inflation is at an all-time high and Quebec businesses are desperately short of workers? The answer, obviously, is no. The …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, the Liberals like to pretend that they are more green than green. For 100 years there were miners in Thetford Mines in my region who worked hard to extract asbestos from underground, but the tailings are still there. They fight us. They banned asbestos, but they left all the tailings and all the residue there. We just ask for help to bring that back where they were and to give back …
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, it is simple. This government believes that it must and can do absolutely everything in Canada. It has no respect for provincial jurisdictions and believes it is the best at everything. It believes that its money will solve every single problem across Canada. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I believe that there are experts in Quebec, particularly in the health sector, who are c…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I would ask my colleague to listen carefully. We are not asking that asbestos be reintroduced. We are asking that the government, which benefited from the taxes paid by the miners of Thetford Mines, Asbestos and all the other municipalities that operated asbestos mines for 100 years, give them fair compensation. I invite my colleague to take a tour of Thetford Mines. Thetford Mines …
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Mr. Speaker, lessons learned from the past must guide our actions now, not tomorrow or next week. In February, the government allocated $53 million to the Public Health Agency of Canada to conduct research on the variants. Today, there is no recommendation of any sort about this variant on the agency's website. The Minister of Health is shockingly silent while more and more people are calling for …
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Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your appointment to the Chair. COVID‑19 cases are on the rise in Quebec and Canada. Many countries have started to administer third vaccine doses to all adults. A new variant out of Africa is generating enough concern for the WHO to hold an emergency meeting today. Israel and the United Kingdom have closed their borders to six countries. We have gotten used to the L…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, today, I would like to share with the House my grief at the recent death of a wonderful person. I would like us all to take a moment to remember the Hon. Raymond Setlakwe, a former senator, husband to Yvette and a descendant of Aziz, the first immigrant to flee the Armenian genocide and move to Canada to raise his family and help them prosper. Mr. Raymond, as many people liked to call…
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Mr. Speaker, that response gives Canadians cause for concern. Our economy has been devastated. Thousands of businesses have closed. We have record unemployment. You will recall that the Liberal government was slow to warn Canadians, close borders and provide vaccines. Today, we still have to protect Canadians, who are fed up with lockdowns and closures. What is the government's plan to prevent a f…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to say that my colleagues were there at every session we had the opportunity to attend in the House, whether they were from British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec or Ontario. When we had the chance to be in the House to speak on behalf of our constituents, we flew or drove so that we could come and do our work where it should be done, in the House of Commons.
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Mr. Speaker, it is moments like these that make the House so dynamic: seeing colleagues debate back and forth, since we each have different interests to defend. I certainly do not share my colleague's desire for independence. However, I too can see that there is a coalition. I would not go so far as to call the New Democrats “midgets”, but there is a fairly obvious coalition between them and the L…
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman. As this is my first opportunity to rise in the House, I will take a moment to thank the constituents of Mégantic—L'Érable for their support, the volunteers, and everyone who worked on the last election campaign. I am very proud to represent them in the House, in this chamber where so many things have happened ove…
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Mr. Speaker, in response to this point of order, I was not referring to any one member in particular but to all of the empty seats on the other side of the House. There is only one seat that was not empty and has not been for a long time, and I was happy to see that. I did the same thing with the ministers, but I will not repeat what I said to avoid another point of order. However, I can say that …
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Mr. Speaker, I would just like to reiterate that, much like we cannot talk about members being absent from the House, we also cannot talk about members being present. I want to point that out to my hon. colleague. If the Liberals are going to feed us that line, two can play at that game. The most important thing to remember is that we have a unique opportunity right now to be here in the House to …
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Mr. Speaker, the rules are clear. We are not allowed to talk about a member's presence or absence in the House, but that member has done so several times.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, he said the member was unable to be in the House to vote. In other words, he referred to the member's presence or absence in the House. I would ask that he pay attention to what he is saying and take care to avoid making such statements about my colleague.
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