44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 17, 2023 10:00AM
- Oct/17/23 10:57:37 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let me start by providing a comment reflecting on what is happening in our communities from coast to coast to coast.
We do not necessarily need to be lectured by Conservatives on the issues of inflation and interest rates. We understand, as we are often told by the Prime Minister and others, that when we look at what is happening in our constituencies, it is important that we bring those concerns to Ottawa, as opposed to trying to tell our constituents what Ottawa is doing for them.
If we look at the most recent budget that was passed by the House, we will find that it is very much a reflection of what is happening in communities from coast to coast to coast. People need to understand that, yes, we are very much concerned about the interest rates and the impact they are having on Canadians in a very real and tangible way.
Last weekend, the President of the Treasury Board came to Winnipeg to meet with some of my constituents who are primarily entrepreneurs. We talked about the impact of interest rates. We talked about homeowners, and so forth. We also talked about the rates of inflation. We are all concerned about that. That is one of the reasons why we brought forward legislation, such as Bill C-56. That is one of the reasons we brought in the inflation or grocery rebate, affecting 11 million Canadians, last spring, which came into effect in the summertime.
The budget and the type of legislation we are bringing forward are a reflection of what we are hearing from our communities. Therefore, one needs not lecture us on what is happening in and outside of the Ottawa bubble. We are very much aware of it.
At the end of the day, we look at not only what is happening around us, but what the Conservative Party is saying, particularly in the motion it presented today. Today, it wants to give the impression that there is this huge debt that has been acquired over the last number of years, and there is a huge debt. It is a huge debt that, in good part, was supported by the Conservative Party when we were borrowing money to help Canadians through the worldwide pandemic, and I underline the word “worldwide”.
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- Oct/17/23 11:28:32 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my speech may not appeal as much to the member for Calgary-Centre. We shall see. First, let us talk about the text of the motion.
I would like to thank the Conservatives. For once, they made our job easier. Entertaining a Conservative opposition day motion is usually quite difficult. We have to separate truth from fiction, sense from nonsense, and populism from statecraft. This happened with their carbon tax motion. The Conservatives force us to vote against their motions sometimes when they fill them with too much nonsense. We cannot support a motion that is 90% nonsense and 10% good sense. This motion, however, is about 70% nonsense and 30% good sense, and we will support it. I congratulate them.
Mr. Speaker, in the most substantive part of its text, the motion essentially states that the government should submit a plan to achieve a balanced budget. We are not told, however, the number of years it will take. We ask that positive signals be sent to Quebeckers, Canadians and the markets, along with steps showing everyone that government management is not haphazard, despite current appearances to the contrary.
There is obviously the date, October 25, which I will come back to later. It is yet another thing the Conservatives pulled out of thin air. Members may recall that we supported a similar motion in June. The Conservatives moved the motion when there was no upcoming economic statement. This illustrates their ability to manage their time and resources in the House well. Now they are moving the same thing a second time before an upcoming economic statement.
I would like to talk about context. I have been listening to the Conservative leader make populist, misleading statements for months. We see that in ads on TV. I would like to remind him that the federal government has always churned out deficits and mismanaged public funds. The Conservative leader was a minor minister—which was a very good thing—in Stephen Harper's government. That government churned out one deficit after another—seven in a row, in fact. Back then, the Harper Conservatives set the record for deficits, but the current Conservative leader never said boo. None of the people who were here then and are still here now said boo. Nobody thought it was a problem.
The Conservatives did well one year thanks to the financial crisis fallout when interest rates plummeted and, like a gift from on high, interest payments on the debt shrank. Interestingly, as the Conservatives went from one deficit to the next, the member for Lévis—Lotbinière, who I appreciate and whose office is next to mine, never rose to cry “scandal”. It is easier to criticize others than oneself. Still, I congratulate them on taking an interest in the management of public funds.
The Liberals have the same problem. As my colleague from La Prairie pointed out earlier, the current Prime Minister came on the scene in 2014-2015. Essentially, the Prime Minister figured that he had a credit card. People who manage their personal finances will understand what I am about to say. The Prime Minister figured that it did not matter if he maxed out the credit card and paid the minimum balance each month, because everything would work out fine. He would not lose his job, his car would not break down and he would not have any bad luck. He would just always have to walk a financial tightrope.
Then, in 2020, the car broke down. The pandemic hit, along with a lot of bad luck, and the government was unprepared. The country found itself in a situation where we had to borrow heavily. This pandemic spending was supported by the Conservatives, for one. It is high time these people wake up and realize that being unable to properly manage the public purse—which comes out of the pockets of taxpayers, who are having a hard time paying for groceries these days—is a deep-rooted issue here in Ottawa.
Let us come back to the October 25 deadline. It took seven years for the Harper government to learn how to balance the books, sort of. The Liberals have been at it for eight years and they still have not gotten the hang of it. That is 15 years total. The Liberals could not do it in eight years, and the Conservatives, allegedly acting in good faith, are giving them eight days. They are telling them to come up with a sensible plan in eight days. That is the Conservatives' new turkey. I listened to the Conservative leader this fall. I do not know what he does with turkeys and I am not sure I want to know, but it was all about turkeys with him this fall. I do not want to assume anything.
What did he do? He spent two or three weeks talking about the price of turkey and asking what the price of turkey would be at Thanksgiving. He wanted the government to promise to lower the price of turkey. Thanksgiving is over now, and the Conservative leader can no longer use turkey as a pretext for annoying the Liberals and trying to appeal to the public. Incidentally, he forgot to mention that the price of gas went down 18¢ at Thanksgiving. He was not interested in telling us that.
What did he do then? He found a new turkey. His new turkey is October 25. Now, we are going to hear him talk about the plan that was not introduced until he can talk about the price of Christmas trees in December. Then, he will tell us all about Christmas trees until he can come up with something new to talk about. In reality, the Conservative leader is not interested in having a good plan. The mature thing to do, the thing that would make sense, would be to tell the government to do its job, to come up with an intelligent plan, to take more than eight days to think about this and to table the plan in the upcoming economic statement.
What could that plan include? The Bloc Québécois and I have all kinds of ideas that we have been thinking about and repeating for years, while they are just now starting to wake up. For example, there is a basic principle for properly managing taxpayer money and the public treasury: Stop giving money to those who do not need it, including the oil companies. Why will the government not stop giving money to those who do not need it?
From now until 2035, despite all the planned tax benefits and carbon capture subsidies, the government is going take money from people who are having a hard time paying for fuel, groceries and home ownership and give it to the oil companies. The amount of subsidies oil companies will be getting by 2035 is equivalent to what they would get if we lined up 40 million Canadians every year and asked them each to give these same companies $20. It is exactly that. The numbers show it.
I did the math on what could be done with the money the government will be giving to oil companies, money that has already been promised and committed until 2035. For Thanksgiving, with the Conservatives' subsidies to the oil companies, we could have bought 21,789,473.7 turkeys for Canadian families. We could have paid for 1,815,789.47 turkeys for Canadians every year for Thanksgiving.
That does not bother the Conservatives, because they do not care about food prices. That is the least of their worries. The cost of living is the least of their worries. Home ownership, the $900 million for Quebec that my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert is fighting for, that is the least of their worries.
I can think of something else the federal government should do. It should stop behaving badly. How does it do that? It has to stop doing what it is not allowed to do, what the Constitution says it cannot do, something it has never been good at. It needs to focus on what matters.
The government is unable to issue a passport, unable to take care of veterans and unable to take care of immigrants. We are the ones who deal with all this in our offices. I have files from Liberal ridings piled on my desk in Mirabel. Some ministers, whom I will not name because of the little self-respect they have left, are incapable of doing what little they have to do themselves. They are unable to order planes, to repair the Prime Minister's plane, to order ships, or to look after shipyards. I was going to say “shipwrecks” here, given their track record.
We can imagine what their dental care is going to look like. I care about my teeth. I want to keep them. I would like them to keep their hands off dental care. We can also imagine what their pharmacare will look like. There is no doubt that it will cost more than $10 billion.
They need to focus on the basics, stop subsidizing the oil companies, put the money where Quebeckers need it and focus on the little they have to do because, historically, they have never been able to manage well, much like the Conservatives. I think they should go back to the bare minimum, because the minimum for a Liberal is already a lot.
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- Oct/17/23 2:20:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada's Jewish community has been here since 1760. We have had high and low points in our history, but never in my lifetime has the 400,000 strong Jewish community in Canada felt so vulnerable.
The dramatic rise in anti-Semitism over the last decade has been compounded by Hamas terrorists brutally attacking our friend and ally Israel.
This week, hundreds of Jewish community leaders from across Canada are in Ottawa for a conference presented by CIJA, JFC-UIA and Canada's Jewish federations.
They are here to speak directly to parliamentarians about the anti-Semitism that they face both online and in their communities, and to make important recommendations for action.
Tonight there is a reception at the Shaw Centre. I encourage each and every member of the House to join me there so we can show solidarity with the Jewish community at this difficult and emotional time.
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- Oct/17/23 4:19:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will tell the member exactly where that money is going: It is going here, to Ottawa. That is where the money is getting burned. It is not a crisis of capitalism.
By the way, I enjoy the debates with the great member as well, and I get passionate about them, so my apologies.
The money is being burned in Ottawa. We have far too many resources going to unproductive government, away from the productive cycle of the private sector. Wealth is only created in one place, and that is with the workers of Canada. I could not agree with the member more. The workers are getting cheated and ripped off by the government. We need the next prime minister, the member for Carleton, to fix this and bring prosperity back to our land.
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