Parliamentary Speeches
701 speeches by Xavier Barsalou-Duval — Page 2 of 15
Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I must say that I was rather impressed by the intensity of my colleague's speech. It was very substantial. There was so much to it that I could not take it all in. I would like to hear more about the merits of creating a so-called sovereign wealth fund to fund major projects, when apparently the Canada Infrastructure Bank is already being used for that purpose. Why launch a new fund w…
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Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the member opposite. The government talks about a sovereign wealth fund, but we know perfectly well that this fund is only masquerading as one. Sovereign wealth funds exist in almost every country of the world. They are based on savings and what people decide to put away for future needs. In this case, however, the fund is based on debt, not savings. My qu…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is a good one because it gives me an opportunity to address some points I did not have a chance to discuss in my speech. The government is introducing a new gimmick, the sovereign wealth fund, even though we already have the Canada Infrastructure Bank. The Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, on which I serve, did indeed recommend ab…
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Madam Speaker, I am not entirely convinced. I need to have all the information before I can answer that, but if the past is any indication, it does not look good. We know that we have a government that likes to do things behind closed doors. To me, what matters is ensuring the highest possible level of accountability and transparency. I am hopeful that, during the committee review stage, amendment…
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Madam Speaker, to answer my colleague's question, yes, as we said, we welcome Bill C‑28. In Quebec, the aerospace industry accounts for more than 40,000 jobs—nearly 42,000 according to 2023 data. A lot of people work in this sector. I do not think Manitoba has 42,000 jobs in this sector. I am not saying there are no skilled people or people working on interesting things in Manitoba, but I do think…
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Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague for asking her questions in French. We always appreciate it when people make the effort to speak French in the House. We do not hear that very often. The presence of French is often forgotten in Canada, if not denigrated and repressed. My colleague's question is like a burst of fresh air. As for her questions, I would say that the matter is fairly broad. That …
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Madam Speaker, this morning we are talking about Bill C‑28, an act to amend the Aeronautics Act and other acts. Essentially, we are talking about this because the government wants to establish a legislative framework for satellite launches and space launches. Canada does not have a legislative framework for this type of activity. In addition, Canada is currently fully dependent on the Americans. T…
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Madam Speaker, I have absolutely no reason to trust Ottawa on this issue because history has shown that Ottawa does not serve Quebec well in any regard. Let us look at a recent example, when relations with the U.S. were already strained and President Trump was already in office. Bombardier makes air surveillance aircraft that could have served our armed forces very well, and yet Canada decided to …
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the minister on his speech and on introducing this bill. I do not know whether he drafted it himself, but in any case, I believe it was something that needed to be done. As we know, humans have been exploring space for 60 years now, yet Canada still did not have any framework legislation on this matter. Now that gap will be filled. With this bill, the mini…
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Madam Speaker, in response to my colleague's question about how I see this moving forward, I would say that I hope it will progress fairly quickly in the House. We often focus on the big picture in the House. We tend to pay less attention to the details and concentrate more, shall we say, on the broader issues. As for how things will proceed at the committee stage, that will depend on the witnesse…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to mark the 50th anniversary of an organization in my constituency, the Association de Chasse et Pêche de Contrecoeur. The organization, which mainly brings together duck hunting and ice fishing enthusiasts, is renowned for its famous Festival de la Brimbale, where a temporary village is set up on the river during the brief period when the St. Law…
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Mr. Speaker, I note that the member opposite is an MP for Nova Scotia and that he is also the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport for the Liberal government. I am stating that information because the bill we are currently debating, Bill C-28, addresses the need for Canada to develop its satellite launch and aerospace capabilities, among other things. I think this is a laudable obj…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Liberal chair of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, the member for Vaudreuil. Two days ago, he posted on social media that he was the guest of honour at an event organized by a group that promotes Driver Inc., namely the CTOA. The committee just completed a study on the loss of life. It just heard testimony from victims. It just…
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Madam Speaker, that would be helpful because we are kind of in the dark at the moment. We are being told that regulations will be forthcoming. Do government members already know what will be in the regulations? If they know, why not put that in Bill C‑28? If they think the regulations are not fit to be included in the bill, why not tell us more so we have a sense of the government's plans? My conc…
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Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working on the bill with my colleague when we get to committee stage. My question for him is the following. We have a bill that is about 10 pages long and has almost no details on the government's real intentions. We are being told that everything will come through regulations. Does my colleague find that reassuring and does he think that is enough to turn this bill …
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Mr. Speaker, I must congratulate the member from British Columbia on her insightful and interesting speech. It is clear at times like these that all political parties have different perspectives to offer on the issues we are debating. I found the Green Party's perspective relevant and interesting. Under the circumstances, I was wondering about something. In her speeches in the House, the member of…
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Mr. Speaker, the motion before us is a gag order designed to limit speaking time on a fundamental issue, namely defining how Parliament and its committees operate. Normally, this is done in consultation with all the parties, out of basic respect for the principle of representation in the House. Representation is already questionable because the government does not have a true majority. Its majorit…
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Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague on her speech. I also commend her on remaining, at least so far, true to her convictions and not crossing the floor, unlike many other members of Parliament. As far as today's motion is concerned, I have noticed in committee that the Liberals have been blocking our work for the past two weeks. They have been filibustering. That is the term that is often used. Th…
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are filibustering on a number of committees right now to prevent opposition members who have the majority from holding the government to account, from obtaining information, from calling witnesses and from receiving documents, essentially, to prevent them from doing their job, which is to determine what is going on and to ensure accountability for the government's adminis…
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Mr. Speaker, as my colleague has rightly pointed out, there has been a shift in the balance of power in Parliament, which is simply the result of a wave of defections. People have been lured by the prospect of power. We do not know what was promised to them, but I know there have been specific discussions regarding one MP who left the Conservatives to join the Liberals. Does my colleague have any …
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Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his speech. It is important to take an interest in what we are debating here in the House. While my colleague may take an interest in the debates here in the House, he is not, to my knowledge, a member of the committee that studied this bill. He can correct me if I am wrong. The committee members worked very hard on this. Bloc Québécois and Conservative …
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Mr. Speaker, earlier, I put a question to a member who I believe is sitting right next to my Liberal colleague. Since I did not get a complete answer, I will try asking her that same question. Members from my party, the Bloc Québécois, and members of the official opposition, the Conservatives, have worked hard on bills in committee on several occasions. We proposed amendments, worked in good faith…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation for acknowledging in his speech that there is sometimes a risk of influence peddling in the political fundraising process that could be problematic and that it could even go so far as to threaten the integrity of government decisions or, at the very least, the electoral process. In that context, I want to menti…
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Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member opposite on his speech. There is one issue that this bill does not address but that keeps coming up in the House election after election, at least since Stephen Harper's time. I believe that my colleague was a member of Parliament himself then. In any case, I am sure he is familiar with that time. I am talking about the system of political financing that was …
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Mr. Speaker, I have a quick question for my colleague. The bill before us seeks to amend the Canada Elections Act. Over the past few months and weeks, we have seen a significant number of MPs change their political allegiance, despite having been elected under a different banner. Does my colleague think that this might be an opportunity to address the issue of floor crossing, given that we are cur…
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Mr. Speaker, since the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith was the one who was speaking, I would like to take this opportunity to note that they were serving Nanaimo bars in the lobby today. I do not know whether this is a coincidence or a personal request. All joking aside, I have a question for my colleague. We are talking about democracy today, which is important. We are all here to represent our cons…
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Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague opposite on her speech. When she spoke earlier, the Bloc Québécois House leader, the member for Saint-Jean, addressed the issue of political party funding. She said that there is a zero-cost solution to improve democratic rules. She also talked about the possibility of making funding more equitable, particularly by eliminating the political contributions tax cre…
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Mr. Speaker, as my colleague accurately pointed out, this morning's Liberal announcement will not necessarily benefit the most vulnerable people specifically. It will also run up the deficit. Can my colleague expand on this and talk about how increasing the deficit could affect the most vulnerable because of inflation and other factors?
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Mr. Speaker, I am a little surprised by what the Conservatives are proposing today. I am not surprised that it is yet another pro-oil proposal, as we are used to that, but I am surprised that they are proposing to increase the deficit by more than $7 billion with all these tax exemptions. Meanwhile, every time the government delivers a deficit budget, they get all worked up about it, although perh…
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Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my Bloc Québécois colleague, who gave an excellent speech, in my view. We have a very good MP representing the riding of Joliette—Manawan, and we need more contributions from members like him. There is a lot of drama on the Conservative side. It almost seems as though they are blaming the government for the rise in gas prices, when in reality, if we look at the f…
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Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague across the way. He is boasting about his government's new policy, which was inspired by the Conservatives. It is, in fact, a direct response to what the Conservatives were calling for. It appears that some Conservatives are quite inspired by the Liberals too, as more and more of them are switching to the Liberal Party. That being said, the government…
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Mr. Speaker, I found the speech by my colleague opposite very interesting. My colleague laughed a bit about the Conservatives getting all worked up about floor crossers. He said that the Conservatives seem to have fairly flexible principles when it comes to floor crossers. I think he made a good point. This brought up another thought, and I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about it.…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Mr. Speaker, I hereby table petition e-6836, which has been duly certified by the clerk of petitions. The petition, signed by 810 people, responds to the House of Commons vote on October 8, 2024, in support of the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, entitled “Reducing the Impact of Commercial Shipping on Shoreline Erosion in the Great Lakes-St. Lawre…
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Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary made a compelling case for electric vehicles. I must commend him for that, but I still cannot help but point out that his government basically gutted the transportation electrification industry over the past year, with disastrous results for the industry. Now, the government is trying to patch things up, but it is going to be difficult to turn this situatio…
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Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague opposite on his speech. His argument in favour of transportation electrification and electric vehicles was certainly music to my ears. I could not agree more. However, over the past year, the sector has experienced a significant funding shortfall. The government unilaterally ended the EV funding program, and that caused a drop in demand. What does my collea…
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Mr. Speaker, when I opened the newspaper last week, I was surprised to see that Ontario premier Doug Ford, a Conservative, had the audacity to ask Quebec to abandon its electric vehicle sales targets. Today, the Conservatives have put forward a motion that seeks to do pretty much the same thing. It uses different words, but the message is the same: There will be no more support for the transportat…
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Madam Speaker, I have been listening to the speech by the member opposite from the beginning. I am rising because we are supposed to be discussing Bill C-13, which deals with the United Kingdom's accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. However, most of the member opposite's speech has been focused on relations with the United States, the Philippines—
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Madam Speaker, I am going to dig a little deeper into the subject I touched on in my point of order earlier. The Chair did not consider it a point of order, so I imagine this will be fine as a point of debate. In his speech, the member talked almost exclusively about our relationship with the United States and with the Philippines. He actually had a lot to say about the Philippines. I think it was…
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Mr. Speaker, since the start of the discussion on this subject and throughout today's debate, all the Conservatives have been loudly proclaiming that they are against hatred. What they are ultimately against, however, is the elimination of the religious exemption. I am trying to understand why there should be an exemption saying hatred is okay if it is for religious reasons. No one should make hat…
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Mr. Speaker, so far, several members of my caucus have asked Conservative members the same question, but we have not received an answer. The Conservatives are saying that existing laws are already sufficient to address these issues. However, here is a specific example. In October 2024, Adil Charkaoui called for the death of Jews in a prayer during a protest. It was an invitation to kill. The direc…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have cut $5 billion from public transit. That means $5 billion less in a fund that has yet to provide a single penny to Quebec, while Ontario and the western provinces are stuffing their pockets. Strangely enough, $5 billion is the same amount as the Cúram cost overrun. That means $5 billion more for companies that are blowing the budget on underperforming software, and $…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the 70th anniversary of the Symphonie vocale de la Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal, the Montreal police choir. Since 1956, this unique choir, made up exclusively of active and retired police officers, has been touching hearts with the power of its voices and the depth of its commitment. For seven decades, it has used music as a language o…
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Madam Speaker, I have a question for my Conservative colleague. Right now, I am working on the Driver Inc. issue, which involves dangerous truckers on our roads. It seems that some of these truckers do not necessarily have legal status in the country. Some do, but others do not. In one case, a driver killed someone on the road, fled and was brought back here to face justice. He will likely have to…
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Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague's very impassioned speech and I get the sense that there is a topic he failed to cover. In fact, my colleague from Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, the Bloc Québécois immigration critic, raised this point yesterday during question period. The government reportedly accepted thousands of asylum claims without conducting any checks or holding any i…
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Mr. Speaker, the leader of the Bloc Québécois met with the Prime Minister yesterday. He emphasized the need to put an end to Driver Inc. scheme. However, the battle is far from over. Not only is the federal government not doing much about this issue, but it is, in fact, part of the problem. Canada Post has contracted no fewer than 25 companies that do business with Driver Inc. drivers. The federal…
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Mr. Speaker, in order to solve the problem, the Liberals should start by acknowledging that it exists and stop making it worse. Canada Post is doing business with at least 25 companies that hire Driver Inc. drivers. We gave the Liberals 10 solutions to get these dangerous drivers off our streets, but the problem persists. Not only are the Liberals not using our solutions, but the federal governmen…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, since this is the first time I have had the opportunity to speak in the House today, and since it is the last time before the big day tomorrow, February 14, I would like to take a moment to talk about Valentine's Day. I think it is an important day for many people. Obviously, it is very important to me. I would like to take this opportunity to send my love to my partner, to whom I am …
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Mr. Speaker, I rarely do this, but I really want to congratulate the member opposite on his speech. He is generally not my favourite member because I find his speeches overly partisan. However, today, I am truly impressed because he really dotted the i's and crossed the t's and told the truth about electric vehicles. Since he is now such a straight talker, today, I would like to know if he is will…
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Madam Speaker, today we are debating a motion on this Conservative opposition day. On Tuesday, we also had another Conservative opposition day. I wanted to mention this because on Tuesday, when I saw the topic of the opposition day, I thought that for the first time, the Conservatives had chosen a topic that had nothing to do with promoting oil or abandoning the fight against climate change. It se…
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Mr. Speaker, I note that in the last point of the motion, point (c), the Leader of the Opposition is calling for a tax cut for GM factory workers who have lost their jobs. That is very generous of him, but how could someone who claims to advocate for Canada and work for everyone not think of the Paccar workers, who also lost their jobs? Why did he not include them in his motion? In Sainte-Thérèse,…
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