Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, when the Liberals say that they are not attacking secularism before the Supreme Court, that is incorrect. What they should be saying is that their attack is not limited to secularism. By attacking the notwithstanding clause, they are also attacking protections afforded to the French language and signage in French. They are even attacking matters of consensus, such as protecting the id…
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Madam Speaker, I thank our Green Party colleague for her speech. I know she is an expert in this field. There is one thing I would like to hear her thoughts on. We could decide to continue along the same path and abolish the cap on greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, we could decide to just sit back, stay on the same path we followed in previous years and forget about the Paris targets. If w…
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House this morning on behalf of my constituents from Rivière‑du‑Nord, who once again placed their trust in me last spring. Today, we are talking about the Conservative Party's motion, which raises an important issue, the 50% increase in violent crime. The Bloc Québécois is concerned about this issue and has raised it in the House many times in recent year…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is correct in saying that the responsibility for fighting crime and managing the justice system does not fall solely to the federal government. It is shared with the provincial governments. However, I want members to understand that if we set an example by doing what needs to be done here, it may help the provinces follow suit. If the government fills all the judicial v…
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Madam Speaker, I do not have to speak to Bill C-2 right now, so I will not bother. I will reserve the right to speak to it when the time comes. Bill C‑2 has both good and bad aspects. One of its proposals is an invasion of people's privacy, and this type of intervention strikes us as deplorable and dangerous. We will have to look at this bill and clarify some things. However, it does have some pos…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I hear his concerns about keeping our streets safe. What does he have to say about the Bloc Québécois's proposal to create a registry of criminal organizations and treat them like terrorist organizations? What does he have to say about our proposal to amend the Criminal Code to remove the two religious exemptions that permit hate speech? What does …
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Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question. There is indeed a great divide between Quebeckers' values on this religion issue and those of the rest of Canada. I am not saying that Quebeckers are better than anyone else. That is not the point. There is a difference, though. We believe that religion should remain in the home, in each individual's heart and mind. In our view, when it comes to religi…
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Mr. Speaker, the partisan appointment of Robert Leckey as a judge of the Quebec Superior Court also challenges Quebec's unique legal system. By appointing Mr. Leckey even though he does not have the necessary experience at the Quebec bar, the federal government is choosing a judge who does not have sufficient knowledge of Quebec's unique civil law system. By appointing Mr. Leckey, who is a public …
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right. Crimes involving violence against women, but also against any individual, are unacceptable in our society, and we are proposing to fight this type of crime. As for mandatory minimum sentences, yes, we should consider using them in such cases. That being said, I want to reiterate that the Bloc Québécois is generally against mandatory minimum sentences. We trust o…
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Mr. Speaker, we heard about Justice Leckey this week. This judge has donated money to the Liberal Party and criticized Quebec's laws on secularism and the French language, and we feel it is inappropriate for him to become a Quebec Superior Court justice. That is but one example. There are many others. I would be delighted to talk about them with my colleague.
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Mr. Speaker, the Judges Act is clear. Section 3 states, and I quote: 3 No person is eligible to be appointed a judge of a superior court in any province unless ... that person (a) is a barrister or advocate of at least 10 years' standing at the bar of any province However, Robert Leckey has been appointed a judge of the Superior Court of Quebec even though he has been a member of the Barreau du Qu…
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Mr. Speaker, let us talk about their robust and independent judicial appointment system. The appointment of Robert Leckey, done through that very system, violates Canada's Judges Act. We believe that he was appointed precisely because he is a Liberal. The Liberals expect him to defend Liberal positions on secularism and the French language within Quebec's courts. Quebec should get to select the ju…
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Mr. Speaker, in January, the Liberals appointed Robert Leckey as a judge on the Quebec Superior Court. However, Mr. Leckey had only seven years of experience at the Quebec bar, whereas the requirement is 10 years. He did not meet the legal criteria, but he certainly met the Liberal criteria. In addition to being a Liberal donor, Judge Leckey is a fervent activist against bills 21 and 96. He is aga…
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Mr. Speaker, when the legal challenge against Bill 96 was in full swing, Mr. Leckey was a vocal opponent during demonstrations against it. When the legal challenge against Bill 21 was in full swing, Mr. Leckey argued that the courts should prevent the provinces from using the Constitution's notwithstanding clause. He is an enemy of Quebec's laws, and yet the Liberals appointed him as a judge. In p…
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Mr. Speaker, as everyone is saying, we have spoken to this bill a number of times before. Here we are again, spending another day studying this bill even though our position on it has not changed. We took a position last year, and if the House had not been prorogued and an election called, the bill would have been passed already. Instead of doing what we are doing now and going over the same groun…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Joliette—Manawan for his excellent speech. Earlier, a Conservative colleague said that if this bill were passed, people with no connection to Canada could end up becoming citizens. However, I believe that this is addressed in the wording of Bill C-3, which states that a substantial connection is required. What I find a little more troubling is t…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank our colleague, the minister, for her bill. The Bloc Québécois has already said that we will vote in favour of this bill, so she does not have to work very hard to convince us. However, my colleague from Drummond asked her a question that we did not get an answer to. I worked with the minister on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in the last Parliament, so I kn…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech. Unfortunately, I have some concerns about what she considers to be the strengths and virtues of this bill. The Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of the bill so that it can be considered in committee, but I am not sure the Bloc Québécois will support it when it comes back to the House for third reading. We will see what happens in com…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question, and I can confirm that to be the case. We have said this many times, and I do not want to repeat myself, but we also want to fight organized crime, drug trafficking and fentanyl, which is a terrible scourge. What we are saying is that the government cannot do it any which way. Just because I am against criminals does not mean I agre…
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Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking Rosie, because I really enjoy working with her brother, who is a serious and hard-working member of Parliament. I am pleased to recognize that today. That being said, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, I think he is right to point out that we need to strike a balance between protecting our borders, protecting our streets, keeping people safe and res…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is also a man who works hard for his riding and his constituents. I am very proud to work with him as a member of the same party. That said, parallels can indeed be drawn between the problems we are seeing now with Bill C-2 and Bill C-5, the gag order and what is looming over our heads without us knowing it. We have been sitting for three weeks, not even four. We shall se…
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Madam Speaker, obviously I do not agree with my colleague's interpretation of Bill C-5. In my opinion, this is a very bad bill for all kinds of reasons. The fact that it gives the Prime Minister so much power to define what projects are of national interest bothers me a lot, but that is not what my question for him will be about. I have always seen the Conservative Party, in this Parliament and in…
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Madam Speaker, I kind of have to agree with our Liberal colleague. I too am having a hard time following. We had a Conservative official opposition that was a strong opposition with a leader. I did not always agree with him and I was quite critical of him, but that is not the issue. It seems that, not only have they lost their leader, they have also lost their direction. They are supporting the Li…
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Madam Speaker, it is always great to hear someone talk about the economy when it comes to a bill like this one. I agree with my colleague that it would have been a good idea to split it. Beyond that, I would like to address the bigger picture. Parliament has been sitting for three weeks, yet the government stubbornly refuses to table a budget while projecting astronomical deficits. As for the oppo…
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if my Conservative colleague would allow himself the same freedom to support the government on a bill like this knowing that, hypothetically, there would be an election within a year, that the next government would be formed by the Green Party and that our Green Party colleague, the leader of this new hypothetical government, would call a halt to all oil development going f…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague if he is aware of the dealings that took place between the Liberals and the Conservatives prior to the vote on Bill C‑5. What did the Conservatives have to hand over to the Liberals to convince them to adopt their game plan, their agenda? What did the Liberals give the Conservatives in exchange for their support of this gag order that is interfering wi…
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Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her election. I listened to her speech and she seems enthusiastic about this bill. However, I would like to know what she thinks about the fact that her leader decided on many of the measures without adopting a budget. The defence budget is going up, spending is going up and taxes are going down, which seems somewhat inconsistent. What is more, with Bill…
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Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his speech. He is also new to the House, and I would like to have his somewhat novice, if I may put it that way, point of view on the parliamentary debates. He says that his leader walks the talk. That suggests that what his leader is doing right now is something that he previously announced. I never saw anything in the Liberal platform about the Liberal…
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Mr. Speaker, today's debate is an odd one. We hear the government that was in power before the previous government calling it out for things that the new government claims are not its fault, because the Liberal Party of Canada has changed leaders. The whole thing is Kafkaesque. I cannot wrap my head around it. Personally, it does not bother me if the government is Conservative, Liberal, red, blue,…
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Mr. Speaker, does my colleague agree that the money must be recovered, regardless of whether the government in power is Liberal, Conservative or another party, and regardless of who is the leader of the party in power? This money does not belong to us; it belongs to all Quebeckers and all Canadians.
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Mr. Speaker, the question has already been asked of my colleague across the way, but unfortunately, I do not think he understood it. I will repeat it slowly. Will the government take steps to recover the money stolen from Quebeckers and Canadians?
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Mr. Speaker, the discussions we have heard this morning are almost unbelievable. No one seems to dispute the fact that Quebeckers and Canadians were taken in by a company called GC Strategies, and that we are owed several million dollars. This morning's motion proposes that the government take steps to recover that money. What, then, are the member from Winnipeg North, who is a member of the gover…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague talks about fairness when it comes to the carbon tax rebate. Does he agree that this money was paid on April 22 for the period of April, May and June, while the carbon tax was abolished on April 1 by his leader, the Prime Minister of Canada, by order in council? Effective April 1, there was no more carbon tax. The government supposedly reimbursed the taxes that should hav…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Mirabel for his speech, which was, as always, well founded, well articulated, very interesting and very clear. That said, I would like to ask him a question, because he has expertise that I do not. To my knowledge, the carbon tax was abolished on April 1, but the carbon exchange that applies in Quebec and British Columbia was still in effect on April 1, and c…
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Mr. Speaker, I understand what my colleague from Winnipeg North is saying. I wish I could have owned a grocery store in his riding during the pandemic. During that time, my colleague probably did not have time to go grocery shopping. However, based on his logic, he would still have given a cheque to that poor grocery store because they expected to receive one. If I have an electric vehicle instead…
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Mr. Speaker, in the early 1980s, René Lévesque, a man I greatly respect and who inspired Quebec and Quebec society as a whole, said that Canada is not a gulag. Once that was said, a number of federalists began to ask why people still wanted to separate from Canada. Why would Quebec want to become a full-fledged sovereign country if, in the end, Canada is not a gulag? Perhaps we should read the sec…
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Mr. Speaker, I also salute my colleague, who is someone I respect a great deal. I met him in 2015 and have been friendly with him ever since. That said, merely stating that someone is going to do something nonsensical and immoral does not make it acceptable. I completely agree with my colleague: The Prime Minister announced it during the election campaign and he followed through. However, I think …
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague. In fact, as I said earlier, I am one of the people who believes that the Prime Minister is smart, despite what some may think. I truly look forward to seeing him table a budget or explain how he is going to pay for all this spending and make this equitable. He must have a printer in his office that can print Canadian dollars or something. I do not have that …
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Mr. Speaker, our colleague from Winnipeg North says that it is more important to first get things right and that it would be better to wait before coming up with a budget. I fail to understand how he can say that. I respect him enough not to believe for one second that he would hand his money over to people who would announce all sorts of spending but promise to tell him how they would finance it …
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Mr. Speaker, I was listening to my colleague's speech. I agree with a lot of the things she said. I listened to what our colleague from Winnipeg North said. He seemed to be staunchly defending Pierre Poilievre for not tabling figures, for not critiquing or looking at budgets, for believing that it would be all right to spend tens or hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars without draftin…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to know what my colleague would think if I suggested that she invest her savings in a bank whose CEO spent hundreds of millions of dollars without ever making any budget forecasts, without ever checking to see whether he had the necessary funds to pay for these expenditures, even though they are nice expenditures that make people happy. If I told my colleague to invest he…
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Mr. Speaker, for nearly 15 years, we had the privilege of working alongside a man who left his mark on the history of Quebec and Canada. In the mayhem of parliamentary sparring and our political debates, where partisanship takes over and things heat up rather quickly, far too often we forget the greatness of the women and men we encounter. I am guilty of that. Here in the House, there are women an…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his bill. It addresses many of the Bloc Québécois's concerns regarding border security, organized crime and so on. However, there is one thing in this massive bill that bothers me and raises numerous questions, and that is the security of personal information. The bill would significantly expand police powers. Would it not be possible to limit the ability to c…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. We are talking about fiscal responsibility. Our Conservative colleague was right to bring up the fact that we still do not have a budget, even though the government is planning expenditures. The government is likely about to make a significant expenditure. There is talk of building pipelines across Canada. I remember Trans Mountain and th…
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with my NDP colleague that the housing crisis is a terrible thing, in Quebec and Canada alike. This is everyone's business. Just yesterday, I learned that some 17,000 people in Manitoba have been evacuated because of wildfires. That is another 17,000 people who need somewhere to live. Meanwhile, the government's response to these wildfires caused by climate change is to buy an…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to clarify something with you. When our colleague from Vancouver East took the floor earlier, she did so as an independent member. According to the order of speakers, she was 45th. She spoke and proposed an amendment. You then recognized the member for Saint-Laurent, who would therefore have been 46th in line. I just want to make sure that this…
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Mr. Speaker, thank you for ruling on the matter. However, I would submit that the rules state that when we share our time with another member, we must state that at the beginning of our speech. Our colleague from Winnipeg North announced that he was sharing his time with another member of the Liberal Party. He never mentioned the member for Vancouver East. If we stick to this interpretation, it se…
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Mr. Speaker, we know that the Conservatives support buying pipelines. However, the government is not presenting a budget or drafting estimates, yet it is proposing to buy a pipeline to the tune of billions of dollars to produce more oil, when Canadian forests are burning as we speak. Does my colleague think this is the best way to manage affairs of state? Climate change is having an impact both in…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the voters of Rivière-du-Nord for their renewed trust. I assure the House, as I assure my constituents, that I will do what it takes to be worthy of it. I would also like to congratulate my colleague on her recent election, and you on your election and appointment as Speaker of the House. I am confident that it is a wise appointment. The throne speech talks about…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, it was a stroke of genius to ask Johanne Régimbald to join the Bloc Québécois's little team on the Hill. That is how the member for Montcalm, the former member for Repentigny and I ended up securing the services of a multi-talented woman with an unparalleled sense of values and responsibilities. Every party boasts about having a rare gem on their team. I am sorry for the other politic…
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