SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 160 - Feb/14/23

Mr. Luc Desilets (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)

Feb/14/23 4:56:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that the Liberal government has introduced very few budgetary or legislative measures to try to fight inflation. We all agree on that. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Bank of Canada has had to use the monetary tool at its disposal, that is, increasing interest rates, to try to check this inflationary spiral. Does my colleague agree that, ultimately, increasing mortgage rates was still the right thing to do?

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Hon. Tim Uppal

Feb/14/23 4:56:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague makes a very good point, that it was actually the actions of the Liberal government, its inflationary policies and the fact that it spent so much money it really did not have, that caused the inflation we have. The Bank of Canada had no choice and was forced to increase the rates to what we see today. The result of that is that Canadians are paying for it. Mortgage payments have doubled for many Canadians. This is forcing Canadians to consider selling their house. Many Canadians are now saying they will have to sell their house within the next nine months because of how high these rates have gone. These rates are that high today, at record levels today, because of the 40-year inflation the Liberal government has caused. Its inflationary policies have put Canadians in the position they are in today.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Feb/14/23 4:57:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the motion today talks a lot about expenses and what the government is spending money on. I know the member and I disagree quite a bit on what the government should be spending money on, but there is another side of that: revenue. The Liberal government has spent lots of money in Alberta to clean up oil and gas wells. The New Democrats asked for strings to be attached and they were not put in place. Now Premier Smith is giving $20 billion of Alberta money as a gift to her friends in the oil and gas industry. I am wondering whether the member agrees with her decision and whether he thinks the federal government should put more strings on the provincial government to make sure that oil and gas well money is used to clean up oil and gas wells.

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Hon. Tim Uppal

Feb/14/23 4:58:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the answer to more revenue, especially in the energy sector, is not always more money. The government does not necessarily need to be spending more money in the energy sector. What the government needs to do is have good, proper regulation and have an environment where the industry can produce and do what it does best, which is create energy. It is environmentally friendly energy, much more so than that of many other countries. It is ethical energy and is much better than that of many other countries. I would suggest to the government that it should be creating an environment where our energy sector can grow and where it can hire more Canadians and Albertans to do the job they do best. That is the best way not only to support Alberta jobs, but to help support Canadians right across the country. Sometimes the best thing is for the government to back off and allow business to do what it does best.

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Mr. Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, NDP)

Feb/14/23 4:59:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, like my colleagues, one of the issues I have with this motion is that it does not place any emphasis at all on the role that corporate profits have in driving up the cost of living in this country. It is quite clear that this is the case. Another issue I have is with the Conservative orthodox economic thinking that deficits invariably cause inflation. If that were the case, we would have had rampant inflation in this place when the Conservative government of Stephen Harper ran seven consecutive deficits from 2008 to 2015, which did not happen. I have heard the Conservatives say it is inflationary to spend money on dental care, yet the leader of the Conservative Party has said he would adopt the recently announced health care accord for the next 10 years, which injects an additional $46 billion into the economy. Can my hon. colleague explain how that is not inflationary if other government spending is?

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Hon. Tim Uppal

Feb/14/23 5:00:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a government, it is important to support Canadians, and the Conservatives will be there for Canadians to ensure that health care is funded properly and that Canadians have that support. What we will also do is save money in other places where there is wasteful spending. That is what we are asking for the government to do. We did not say to cut all spending. What we said was to cut wasteful spending. The Infrastructure Bank was not something we needed. Contracts for Liberal insiders should be cut and consultants should be fired. The government's gun buyback program is not needed. The Liberals are going after law-abiding Canadian citizens when they could be spending that money at the border where the real problems are. There is also the ArriveCAN app. There are so many examples of where the government could be cutting funding. That is what the Conservatives would do.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

Feb/14/23 5:01:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will take a few seconds to remind or inform my colleagues that this is the first St. Valentine's Day that the NDP and the Liberals have spent together since they struck their alliance. I wish them a happy Valentine's Day. We, in the Bloc Québécois, are sovereignists, and we want Quebec to be its own country. We would like Quebec to make its own decisions and choices. There are many reasons for that, historical and institutional reasons, but we also want to be efficient. In Quebec, we are against duplication. We believe that doing the same work twice, once in Quebec City and once in Ottawa, is not a good thing. It is not a good use of resources. I can see my Conservative colleagues nodding. That is a good thing because today we are faced with the duplication of previous motions. This is the fifth or sixth identical motion. This unnecessary duplication, this waste of energy, is something we have seen before in the House of Commons. It is the same thing every Conservative opposition day. Economists call this looking for economies of scale. An economy of scale means trying to always produce the same thing with less and less effort. Lucky for us, it takes less and less effort to give them the same answers. Obviously they get paid big money just to copy and paste, in other words, to hit “control c” and “control v”. We already voted against a virtually identical motion last week. I would say that I am throwing their motion in the garbage bin, but even the garbage bin might vote against that. We will talk about the motion for a few minutes. The diagnosis within the motion is not entirely false. It is true that there is inflation. It is true that Canadian families are facing a crisis. It is true that times are hard because many people are struggling. We have to think about those people. It is true that the inflation rate is at its highest since 1982. It was over 10% in 1982. It is roughly 6% today. The motion is a little overblown, but there we are. However, what the Conservatives forgot to say is that if we do not consider energy and food, which are important components, the core inflation rate used by the Bank of Canada is 5.5%. The price of fossil fuel energy has increased by 28%. Once again, the Conservatives think that attacking the carbon tax, which does not even apply in Quebec, is the solution to all our woes. Instead, we need to take measures to start an energy transition, so that the next time there is a crisis, we do not end up with a 22nd, 23rd and 24th identical motion. Surely it is clear why we are uncomfortable. The reason the Conservatives can afford to keep tabling the same motion over and over is because the Liberals did little to help families during the crisis. True, there were some measures. They increased the Canada child benefit and so on. However, those measures were planned before the crisis. Very little was done. They did double the GST credit, something the Bloc had been asking for for months. We also asked that cheques be sent out more frequently, but that has not been done. The Liberals are complacent. They spend too much time talking and not enough time helping people. That is why the Conservatives' populism, as expressed in yet another of these motions, is unfortunately beginning to gain credence among groups of people who are not always well informed. One good thing about the Conservatives' motion is that at least we get an opportunity to talk about the federal government's efficiency in delivering services. We get to talk about the efficiency of the machinery of government and McKinsey. We will discuss that later. I just want to say that inefficiency, especially in the form of duplication, is rampant in Ottawa. I would like the government to explain to me why it costs two and a half times more to process an EI claim than it does to process a social assistance application in Quebec, and that is the truth. That is a 250% markup on processing. Why does it cost four times more to handle and process a passport application in the federal bureaucracy than it does for the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec to deliver a driver's licence? Of course, a driver's licence is not a passport, but that is 400% more. These are not unreasonable comparisons. This is a major problem. Members talked about duplication, and I want to talk about federal government costs that have doubled or even tripled. We know that Ottawa duplicates some things that Quebec already does. That management could be decentralized. There will be further discussion on the single income tax statement and the duplication of taxation centres. That is one thing. Yesterday, the procurement ombudsman appeared before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. Based on what we heard, ministers can indeed subcontract work, even if the public service is available and has the skills needed to do the work. The work can be subcontracted to companies such as McKinsey. I asked him if, during his audits, he identified whether work that public servants could have done had been subcontracted. Quebeckers and Canadians will not pay just once or twice, but three times. He responded that his work was rather to ensure that, when taxpayers get ripped off and pay twice, pre-established rules are followed. In other words, we will be ripped off in accordance with the rules. That is exactly how it works. I invite people to listen to the ombudsman's testimony yesterday. There are ways to ensure that the machinery of government operates more efficiently. Are these solutions contained in the Conservative motion? I read it three times. It was quite painful but I did it, and I noted that it does not contain any solutions, so we will be voting against this motion. There is another thing that is niggling at me. It bothers me, and I feel uncomfortable. The Conservatives and the Liberals both know that not all inflation is created equal. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom the Conservatives love to quote every 15 minutes, said and showed that the trajectory of the federal government's debt-to-GDP ratio would drop over the coming years. It could actually reach 10% of GDP, maybe even 0% of GDP, depending on the budget, in a few decades. The federal government's long-term public finances are healthy, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer showed that the provinces' finances, which cover health, are going to be in bigger and bigger trouble. They are in trouble because the cost of the system, even before the inflationary crisis, was increasing at a rate of 5.5% to 6% per year. That is before any increase in the cost of nurses, orderlies and all the other inputs involved in health care systems. Now there is a new agreement being imposed. I do not know of many marriages that are entered into legally and with mutual consent with this type of agreement. It is an agreement imposed by one side only. It is so stingy that the Conservatives have decided to support it. When inflation affects the sick people who are waiting in hospital corridors, people whose cancer diagnosis or treatment is pushed back a month, two months or three months, or families who will lose loved ones, inflation is the least of their concerns. All they want is to adopt austerity policies. What will the Conservatives cut? Will they cut help for seniors, like the Liberals did for seniors aged 65 to 74? They will make cuts to the energy transition, obviously. As far as employment insurance is concerned, they are not proposing anything for people who have to deal with the spring gap. They are even proposing that pensions be reduced because they want to offer premium holidays. The Conservatives are going to force future retirees into poverty, and when they turn to Ottawa for help in 20 or 30 years' time, they will be told that the government needs to make cuts and will not help them. With the Conservatives, it is two layers of trouble, not one. Workable solutions exist. The Bloc Québécois has put forward proposals. We have been doing so for a year and a half. We proposed GST and QST cheques. In cases such as the McKinsey affair, we are always there to ensure that we do not pay double or triple and that taxpayers get their money's worth. When it is time to defend the competence of our public service, the Bloc Québécois is always there. When it is the Bloc opposition day, we are always accused of raising useless subjects. We are told that people are not interested in what we want to discuss. In conclusion, I will explain why we are capable of talking about other things. It is because we do not move the same motion seven times. We understand things right away, and it gives us the time to think about other things. The Conservatives want to be in government. The people sitting in this place want to be ministers, but they are not even able to walk and chew gum at the same time. What will they do? Will there be 2,000 seats in the House and 22 parliamentary secretaries for each minister so they can think about two things at once? No, thank you. For their next opposition day, I invite them to think about their motion, to speak to the other opposition parties and to ensure that the door is not slammed in their face for the eighth or ninth time. That way, they will stop crying and blaming the other parties.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Feb/14/23 5:12:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have had Bloc and Conservative members and next we would get an NDP member. If I were in opposition, the kind of motion I would like to see is one on health care. I think all of us here and Canadians have a big interest in health care. It is more than just the cost factor in terms of how much money is going to Ottawa or how much money is raised at the provincial level. It is about managing change. I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts on the issue of health care management of change and the importance of transparency and accountability.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Feb/14/23 5:12:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I feel like I am in a Kafka novel. An important figure in the Liberal Party is telling me that if he had the chance to be in the opposition—and we hope he does, because perhaps he needs it—he would move such a motion. He tells me this after the Liberals refused to hear from the provinces and meet with the premiers for 28 months, and after they had the nerve to call something that will give all the provinces $4.4 billion a year over 10 years, at a time of inflation, a “deal”. The Liberals are not interested in health. In 2017, they began consulting on children's health and the marketing of foods that are unhealthy for children. They did the consultations and got the results, but they never introduced a bill. The Minister of Health never did a thing on that, and they even let two bills from their own MPs die on the Order Paper. When my colleague is in opposition, I will be pleased to discuss the motions he brings forward.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Feb/14/23 5:13:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member talked at length. We have had a similar theme for our opposition day motions over and over again. After listening to the member's entire speech, we are going to have to continue to do motions on the same theme, because he mentioned nothing about the fact that after eight years we have seen that this country has fallen apart. We have been mentioning that over and over again and he did not mention it once in his speech. The other thing the member never talked about in his speech was the tripling of the carbon tax. Therefore, we will have to continue to push this message out so that even the Bloc will get on board with some of these things. I just wonder if the member has heard those things said by the Conservatives before, and whether he will say that we have said them enough.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Feb/14/23 5:14:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague keeps doing the same thing while hoping for different results. He did not listen to my speech. When we say that we need solutions to permanently increase the incomes of Quebeckers and Canadians, and when we say that, during a crisis, we need to offer people temporary assistance to get through the crisis—

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/14/23 5:15:09 p.m.
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I am told that interpretation is not coming through online. It is working in the chamber, but not online. We will try again. The hon. member for Mirabel.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Feb/14/23 5:16:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will start again because I was responding to my colleague and it is important that he hear the interpretation. I was saying that if the Conservatives keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results—

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/14/23 5:16:15 p.m.
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There is no interpretation. Let us just take a minute and a half to figure out what is going on.

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/14/23 5:21:20 p.m.
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Now that it is working, I will give the hon. member for Mirabel 30 seconds to finish his answer.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

Feb/14/23 5:21:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if my colleague thinks he can keep doing the same thing over and over with different results, he is clearly not listening to our proposals to permanently increase the incomes of Quebeckers and Canadians. We must give temporary help to those who are going through this crisis, and we must undertake an energy transition. I wish the Conservatives good luck with the eighth, ninth and tenth motions. I will be happy to debate them.

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/14/23 5:22:02 p.m.
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It being 5:22 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings to put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply. The question is on the motion. If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

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Mr. Alex Ruff

Feb/14/23 5:22:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded division.

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The Deputy Speaker

Feb/14/23 5:22:43 p.m.
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Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the recorded division stands deferred until Wednesday, February 15, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Feb/14/23 5:23:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I suspect that, if you were to canvass the House, you would find unanimous consent to see the clock at 5:30 p.m.

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