Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the member pointed out the flaws in Quebec's health care system. He referred to the fact that the range of services is limited, and rightly so. However, he knows very well that the main reason for that is that the federal government is committing to funding only 21% of health care costs. The provinces are responsible for 79% of health care costs. As my colleague knows, in Quebec, we w…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, you are the guardian of my parliamentary privilege, and one of those privileges is to ensure that, when I attend question period, I can hear the questions and the answers, regardless of how I may feel about them. However, during several recent question periods, the people sitting to your right have developed the bad habit of not containing their enthusiasm. They are standing up and ap…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Bourassa spoke about respect for fundamental human values. I would like to know whether he feels that taking 40 months to process an asylum claim is an example of fundamental human values. Does he believe that it is time for his government to give Quebec—which has demonstrated fundamental human values by welcoming twice its demographic weight—the $700 million it is o…
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Mr. Speaker, beyond how each side presents its arguments, there are uncomfortable questions arising from this debate. Does my colleague not find it embarrassing that it takes 40 months to process a claim and get a response? Does he not find it embarrassing that, in order to speed up these claims and responses, 25,000 asylum seekers per year have been exempted from the security process? Does he not…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague's argument is that the money should be invested elsewhere, especially at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet and the high cost of living is so high. He is talking about the electric car industry, but what about the hundreds of billions of dollars that are going to oil companies, to American companies that make hundreds of billions of dollars in profits e…
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Mr. Speaker, this government bought a pipeline that cost $34 billion. Over the past 10 years, budget after budget, it has provided funding to oil companies, most of which are American-owned. Now, it is proposing a subsidy costing a paltry $2.3 billion over five years. Does my colleague think this is enough, given that Canada used to hold itself out as a champion in the fight against climate change…
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague. I appreciate him very much. We sit together on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The arguments currently being made by the Conservatives fly in the face of the saying “What is good for the goose is good for the gander”. On the one hand, they feel strongly about financial support for the oil industry, which is primarily…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères said earlier that the average price of an EV is $63,000. That is expensive, and it is the average price. Let us not get carried away. The measure applies to vehicles that cost less than $50,000. I do not know how much my colleague's vehicle cost, but it was likely close to the average price. Why target one industry, the electric…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the program that the Conservatives are criticizing today provides for $2.3 billion over five years. This sort of incentive worked very well in Quebec and helped boost EV sales there. When I compare this amount allocated over five years to what the government is giving the oil industry, which is controlled by American companies that make billions of dollars in profit a year, it seems t…
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Mr. Speaker, the Criminal Code already includes sentencing provisions for repeat offenders who commit extortion. However, there are new measures in Bill C‑14, the bail and sentencing reform act, that would make it harder for offenders to get bail and that would impose harsher sentences for extortion-related offences. What does the member think is missing from Bill C‑14?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am always somewhat astounded to hear my Conservative colleagues defend people who are struggling to make ends meet and talk about their unfortunate reality while continuing to lobby for an oil industry that is making huge profits, but whose profits are going into the pockets of Americans. We are studying a motion that aims to restore Canada's sovereignty over the United States. Howe…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, as this is my first speech of the year, I would like to welcome my colleagues to the House and wish them an excellent parliamentary session. We are studying a motion to restore Canada's sovereignty vis-à-vis the United States. Pathways Alliance members account for 80% of oil sands production and are 73% foreign owned, 60% of which is American. These companies made $131.6 billion in …
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, in November 2023, the Standing Committee on Health tabled a unanimous report calling for a breast implant registry and the recognition of breast implant illness. Health Canada has been dragging its feet, and three years later, nothing has been done. This has been going on for 30 years. Shame on Health Canada for neglecting the health of generations of women in this way. Breast implant…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, my colleague is an MP from Quebec. He knows the extent of the crisis in Quebec's health care system. He is also very aware of the fragility of that system. Unfortunately, there is no new money in this budget. Worse still, the health transfer escalator will drop from 6% to 3%, which will once again weaken the provinces and Quebec. Does my colleague agree with me that this should not ha…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, earlier on, the Liberal member for Mount Royal tried to convince us that Quebec's Bill 2 is what weakened the health care system, when in fact years of chronic underfunding are to blame for Quebec and the provinces' struggles to meet their obligation to care for people. The budget contains absolutely nothing for health care, apart from a measly $5 billion over three years for infrastr…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the highest office in government must be transparent and beyond reproach. Doubt will remain as long as the Prime Minister is both a shareholder and decision-maker. For example, in October 2024, the Prime Minister helped to relocate Brookfield's head office from Toronto to New York. Seven months later, at the G7, he announced that U.S.-based companies would no longer have to pay the gl…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the Brookfield company assets still owned by the Prime Minister, which he placed into a blind trust. The Ethics Commissioner set up a conflict of interest screen for the Prime Minister. This screen is administered by two of his advisors, including Michael Sabia. However, Mr. Sabia also owned shares in Brookfield. He sold them to protect his Prime Minister. If Mr. Sab…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
In line with what I was saying earlier, the third amendment sought to prevent a model involving fines from being inappropriately applied to small and medium-sized businesses. We wanted to ensure the industry was safe while guaranteeing its long-term survival and preserving consumers' freedom to choose between a natural health product and a pharmaceutical product, or sometimes both. Just because He…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned the $5-billion investment in health infrastructure from coast to coast to coast over the next three years. That represents approximately $300 million per year for Quebec. At the same time, Quebec is being asked to invest the same amount. Also, in the same budget, we learned that funding for health care costs, which was supposed to be indexed at 6%, will be ind…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, it is really embarrassing. Obviously, the member has not read the natural health products regulations. The member said that Bill C-47 gives more powers, when all of that is already set out in the regulations, which are quite lengthy. I read them all so that I could introduce the amendments that I mentioned earlier. The member clearly also did not read the Food and Drugs Act or Vanes…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, no matter what the Liberals may say, this budget makes cuts to health care. It is clear even just looking at transfers. The escalator is going to drop from 6% to 3%, while system costs are 6%. Meanwhile, the Liberals are boasting. They are boasting that they are investing $5 billion in health care infrastructure to build hospitals, when in fact they are doing so over three years, an…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, rarely have I heard a speech showing such ignorance about an issue and a bill.
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, I wish I could say that Bill C-224 is basically the same as Bill C-368, which was scrapped when the election was called. The Bloc Québécois had made amendments to Bill C‑368 to strike a balance between people's concern for their safety and the need to avoid destroying an industry. Could my colleague give me a clear answer this morning about whether he will support our amendments, li…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, that is the second time that has happened to me. I know I need to calm down, but speeches like that make no sense. I worked full-time for over two weeks with legal experts to come up with three small amendments. The member for Ponoka—Didsbury made it clear that the first amendment has been incorporated into Bill C‑224, but there were two others. These two other amendments addressed …
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech, which was rather nuanced. I wonder if he agrees with his leader's statement from September when he said that Ottawa must scrap the temporary foreign worker program if it really wants to help young Canadians find jobs. Can my colleague explain his leader's comments? Or does he agree with these comments?
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I see "help wanted" signs all over my riding. I have met with business leaders, entrepreneurs and workers at various companies. Of course, I am obviously not talking here about temporary foreign workers in the agriculture sector. The people I meet are concerned about applying a 20% standard, so reducing it to 10% would be a really big deal for them. The fact is that they cannot hire e…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, youth unemployment is high. It has been said that people need to first get a job in order to gain experience. Often, that is a problem. If people do not have experience, they do not have the required qualifications and they do not get hired. The Canada summer jobs program allows young people to gain that initial work experience. How does my colleague explain the fact that the governme…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, my colleague raised an interesting point earlier, when she spoke about the costs associated with this. Let us not forget that the changes the federal government made to the Criminal Code with respect to cannabis meant that the federal government collected taxes and kept all the money for itself, while the provinces had to bear the administrative costs of these changes. In this specifi…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, thank you for calling me to order. I did actually think I could ask a question. I will continue with my speech. I doubt the member for Surrey Newton consulted the 44 members from Quebec. If he did not consult the provinces, he did not consult members from Quebec either. I would be curious to hear what those 44 members think of Bill C-239, because it does not seem to change anything in…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, it blows my mind to hear my colleague talk about shared jurisdiction even as he says there is no need to consult the provinces on his bill. What a bunch of nonsense. My colleague is concerned about accountability. In Quebec and the provinces, accountability happens every time there is a provincial election. Can my colleague recall even a single time, during a federal election, when he…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, what I am hearing from my colleague reflects my own opinion. This bill is utterly pointless. Of course all the provinces want to be able to provide appropriate care to their residents. I am not aware of any premier of Quebec or of any province who is happy with the current situation. However, accountability and transparency would also require the Liberal government to admit that it is…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech. I heard him talk about the issue of sentencing. We know that, in the judicial process, judges are responsible for sentencing. They have the flexibility they need to apply a sentence that fits the crime. Does my colleague's current emphasis on sentencing and wanting to pass legislation reflect his belief, namely that judges are not doing the…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, some people say it is because we need to encourage competent people to enter politics, as though competence has something to do with wealth or the fact that a person owns shares and interests in a number of companies. My question about the Prime Minister's conflict of interest screen is whether his chief of staff asked him to be careful when, at the G7 meeting, he took steps to exem…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, this is a clear example of the contempt toward the House of Commons that I mentioned earlier. For the Liberals, committees are just a way to keep people busy. They use them to get rid of issues they do not want to discuss in the House. However, it is important to discuss these issues in the people's place and not just in committees, whose reports just gather dust anyway, as we all kno…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, we did a lot of work during the previous Parliament on the issue of Chinese foreign interference. We debated that a lot. Today, we heard from a witness, an investigative journalist, who came to tell us about Brookfield's various ties to China back when the Prime Minister was the head of that firm. Does my colleague find that troubling?
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, the question is not so much what has changed, and this is not limited to members. It is simply that we have to review the provisions of the law every five years, and that is where we are now. It is as simple as that. We have reached the point where we need to review the law, and we have submitted a report outlining the issues we wish to examine, because the world is changing and peo…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, some witnesses told us that it was a smokescreen. Others talked about the need to work on the operational aspects of this. However, it became clear that this should not be managed by subordinates of the highest-ranking official, the highest-ranking person in the government, especially since he is the one who decides on economic policy. Also, when he first came to power, he took adva…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I commend my committee colleague who, I want to point out, is doing a very good job in the chair this afternoon. We did indeed hear from a few witnesses, including the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, who was very concerned that restricting conflict of interest rules could discourage “competent” people from entering politics. He said that we need to strike a balance: rest…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am very disappointed in my colleague's intervention. He says we should be talking something else, like Bill C‑3. He does that often. If the Liberals would stop sabotaging the work that is done in committee, we could make more progress on Bill C‑3. They need to take a look in the mirror. Today we are seeing the perfect example of the art of turning an ethical debate into a petty po…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, for me, engaging in politics is a noble pursuit. A key pillar of my work in politics is to make politics more ethical. Does my colleague realize that the other side of the House is setting a trap and trying to reopen the debate by playing petty partisan politics? Right now, I want to bring the debate back to ethics. Does my colleague agree that the Conflict of Interest Act should be e…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am surprised by what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government is telling us today, because the Liberals are always trying to teach the Conservatives a lesson, telling them to take note of the election result. The Liberals themselves should take note of the election result. The government does not have a majority. It is a minority government. As such, the Liberal…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Health studied the issue of the toxic drug crisis, and several witnesses told us that there needs to be better control of precursors, the substances used in the manufacture of drugs such as fentanyl. I would like to know what my colleague thinks about part 2 of the bill, which gives the Minister of Health additional powers with respect to precursors.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Health spent a year working on the toxic drug crisis. All the experts said that cracking down on clandestine labs was absolutely crucial. One way to do this is to take action on the precursors, in other words, the substances used to make illicit drugs. Part 2 of Bill C‑12 gives the Minister of Health the authority to better regulate these precursors. I would …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, in her speech, my colleague said that this bill would do what it needs to do and that, among other things, it would ensure the integrity of the border. Good intentions aside, a bill is only good insofar as it can be effective on the ground. We are reportedly 2,000 to 3,000 border officers short of the number we would need to keep the border secure. Will her government act now to ensur…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, according to the Customs and Immigration Union, another 2,000 to 3,000 border officers are needed to protect border security properly. Does my colleague think that there is enough personnel to meet the bill's requirements?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, as everyone knows, the debates we have here can help us develop and draft the best bill possible, but if we fail to ensure it is effective in the real world, it becomes a bad law. The Customs and Immigration Union tells us that we need somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 more border officers to keep the borders secure. Will my colleague join us in our efforts to make this happen and ens…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am sure that my colleague from Winnipeg North would agree with me that, in an organization as hierarchical as the Canadian Armed Forces, we cannot allow a code of silence to hide sexual abuse or discrimination, or allow it to exist at the highest levels of the armed forces. We cannot have a system where those responsible for judging it are part of it, and military justice clearly fa…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, looking beyond the sexual scandal and abuse of power highlighted in the 2015 Deschamps report, does my colleague not also find it scandalous that it took more than 10 years to draft legislation to address the culture of silence in the CAF?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague from Quebec Centre. He invoked the principle that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” by reminding us of everything that needs to implemented before crimes are committed. We agree on that point. Would my colleague agree with the Bloc Québécois that something needs to be done about the amount of time before an accused per…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois has also suggested ways to crack down on organized crime. Using an opposition day to focus on a private member's bill is fair game. As I understand it, Bill C‑242 is 10th on the list of private members' bills coming up for debate in the House. Why fast-track it today when we do not even know the bill's status? Is it going to be ruled in order or not on the basis of …
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