44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 2, 2022 11:00AM
- May/2/22 5:34:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member made reference to the fact that this is a minority government and it is what Canadians elected. Part of being under an elected minority government means there is an onus of responsibility on opposition parties. At times, they have to work with the governing party to get things through the House of Commons.
I understand the Conservatives. They just want to frustrate the legislative process. They do not want things to pass. The Bloc, on the other hand, seems to have bought into the Conservative Party.
As much as the Bloc and the Conservatives come together and criticize us for working with the NDP, what about the unholy alliance between the double blue, the Bloc and the Conservatives, who want to prevent things from going through the House? Is that not a reality also?
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- May/2/22 5:37:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the excellent and eloquent member for Elmwood—Transcona.
I am truly saddened by what I just heard from the Bloc Québécois. For months, the Bloc Québécois have watched the Conservatives block everything. Instead of intervening to help the people of Quebec, who need these bills to be passed, the Bloc decided to just stay on the sidelines and let things slide. The Bloc wants to let things keep sliding for the next few months. That saddens me because the Bloc was not elected in Quebec simply to let Parliament go around in circles and to allow one party to block everything. I think the Bloc is really here to make things happens, but it decided not to. That is sad, but I am happy to hear that it will be voting in favour of some aspects of Motion No. 11. That is a positive thing.
Personally, I will be voting in favour of the motion. I will explain why I am voting in favour of the motion by recapping the history of this Parliament.
When we came out of the unnecessary election last fall that Canadians did not want, Canadians rightfully said they were going to have the same Parliament that they had in 2019. They basically adopted the same numbers, but the message that they were sending to all of us was to work together.
We had a shining moment in Parliamentary history when every single member working together unanimously adopted the ban on conversion therapy. That point is worth applauding. That was a shining moment in this Parliament. Conservatives actually proposed the adoption unanimously of that important bill, and members from all parties voted together.
We know what happened after that. The leader of the Conservatives at the time was deposed. The Conservatives broke into various factions. Subsequent to that, we have seen a rogue element within the Conservative Party decide that it was going to block every piece of legislation coming forward: every single piece. “Nothing will pass” is the motto of the Conservative Party today.
I know that there are Conservative members who are uncomfortable and in fact do not believe that this is appropriate, particularly in a time of pandemic and particularly at a time when we need to get legislation through the House, but that is not where the interim leadership has decided to go. They have decided to block absolutely everything, and that is why we have this motion before us.
Bill C-8 was put forward last year and has provisions that every single member of Parliament is aware have a profound impact on teachers and farmers. It has an impact on how we, as Canadians, can respond to the continuing pandemic. For no other reason than this radicalization of the Conservative leadership, Bill C-8 has been blocked systematically now for months. I am saddened by this.
There are good members of Parliament in the Conservative Party who understand that this is the wrong thing to do, but the leadership that is in place in the Conservative Party wants to block everything, come hell or high water. It does not matter if teachers or farmers, or Canadians generally, are suffering as a result. Conservatives simply refuse any legislation, and that is why we have to take extraordinary measures. What the NDP has proposed and pushed the government on, and what the government has accepted, is the condition that we now increase our working time in order to get legislation through. We will be sitting until midnight when it is appropriate to do so. That is extremely important because it allows us to move legislation through the House.
The official opposition House leader has raised the point, and so has the House leader for the Bloc Québécois, that we need to ensure and enhance our translation services over this period. I certainly agree, and the NDP agrees. We have been pushing for more resources to be provided to translation. Our interpreters have not had the resources allocated to them that need to be allocated. I sincerely hope that we will have all parties coming together in order to achieve that.
We sit longer. We will be sitting evenings, and that is important. The question then is what the results of that are, if we can eliminate this impasse and start getting legislation through the House.
Immediately, of course, there is Bill C-8 and those provisions. I know that will make a difference to the teachers, farmers and health care professionals I have mentioned who have been waiting now for months to get a simple bill through that comes out of the fall economic update.
I know that my colleague for Elmwood—Transcona is going to speak to the issue of what many people are calling the NDP budget. The budget implementation act would put in place, for the first time in Canadian history, national dental care. It would start first for children and would move, over the course of the next year, to people with disabilities, seniors and teenagers. Canadians right across this country who have never had access to dental care would finally have access to it.
Also, there is the most significant investment in housing that we have seen in decades. The NDP has been very critical of the former Liberal government under Paul Martin that destroyed, gutted and ended the national housing program, and we have seen how housing has been in a crisis ever since. We need supply. We need to have affordable housing built, and that is co-operative housing, social housing and indigenous-led housing projects.
These components of what is coming forward need to be adopted swiftly, with the appropriate scrutiny, of course, and not held up, as we have seen with the legislation coming out of the fall economic statement, for months and months purely at the whim of a Conservative Party that is fractured now into so many different factions that none of them knows which way they are going. Their only reaction is: “Well, let us hold up everything”. That is simply not appropriate in a time of pandemic when so many Canadians are suffering.
We need to have these extended hours so that we can get through the important components of what the NDP, and the member for Burnaby South, our national leader, pushed the government to put into place for this budget. It is the first time under this Liberal government that I can actually see a budget that Canadians can have some hope for, with national dental care and a national housing investment that seeks to meet the gravity of the affordable housing crisis that we are seeing right across the length and breadth of this country, including in my communities of New Westminster and Burnaby.
To do the scrutiny, it means that all parties should be working together, but that has not been the case. We have seen, over the past few months, that the Conservatives have blocked everything they can at all times without explanation, and without really trying to even justify their actions. We saw it today when they presented the same motion that they presented last week, even though the Standing Orders require that discussion next week. They just wanted to hold up the House for the purpose of holding up the House.
Who suffers? It is Canadian families who suffer. It is Canadians who are waiting for those affordable housing investments that the NDP has pushed for who will suffer. It is Canadians who cannot afford dental care for their children who will suffer if we continue to allow the Conservatives to block everything in the House at all times.
What this is, is a common-sense approach when it is obviously not working, and when everything is being blocked by the Conservative opposition for internal reasons, I guess, that only they can explain. They have not really attempted to explain it either. We need to put in place extended hours, work harder and longer, but make sure that we get those tax credits in the hands of teachers and in the hands of farmers immediately. We need to make sure that we actually provide the health care professionals with those COVID supports. We need to make sure that we start to put in place that national dental program that the member for Burnaby South has been such a strong advocate for, and put in place that national housing strategy that will finally produce affordable housing from coast to to coast to coast. That is why I am voting yes.
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- May/2/22 5:52:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to explain.
I find it unbelievable that the Bloc Québécois is not helping Quebeckers and that it refuses to say that Quebec's teachers and farmers are affected by the fact that Bill C‑8 has not been passed. Dental care and affordable housing are issues that also affect Quebeckers. I find it unbelievable that the Bloc refuses to do whatever it can to get this bill adopted and ensure that these people—
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- May/2/22 6:07:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I remember back in December when the Bloc Québécois decided to support Bill C-2 and fast-track it to committee. It negotiated with the government. We could have said that the Bloc had sold its soul, but we understood that even if we did not agree with its position on Bill C‑2, the Bloc had negotiated for something it felt was important.
We did the same. We negotiated for our priorities. We were unable to have all of our priorities adopted by the government because it is a negotiation, not something that we could do unilaterally. I therefore do not see how the expression “sell one's soul” applies in our case, given that the Bloc is prepared to do the same thing when the opportunity presents itself.
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- May/2/22 6:14:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think I hit a nerve. The truth hurts; I know it does. I guess they can call me out on it come September, after the results of their leadership race. We will see what happens if Jean Charest wins or if the member for Carleton wins. We will see what happens.
To get back to my point, I think the Bloc is banking on it. Bloc members are hedging their bets right now on who they could pick off from the Conservatives when that time comes. That is just my hypothesis. Perhaps I can be accused of being a conspiracy theorist, but that is what I think is happening.
I will get back to the core issue here.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, they keep heckling me. I think I really hit a nerve. The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan literally will not stop heckling me right now. I have a feeling I hit a nerve there. I understand. I think we all know which side of the Conservative spectrum he is on. In any event, I think I hit a nerve. He is clapping. He likes being part of the alt-right side. That is fine, but there are also some progressives. This is my concern—
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