44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 6, 2024 11:00AM
- May/6/24 2:38:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us come back to immigration. On February 12, the House supported a motion giving the government 100 days to convene a meeting of all first ministers to discuss integration capacity. It had 100 days to table a plan for revising federal immigration targets in 2024, 100 days to produce a report on the gap between federal targets and capacity, and 100 days to determine how to financially close that gap to successfully integrate newcomers.
One hundred days goes by fast. There are now only two weeks left. Have the first ministers received the invitation? Is it in the mail?
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- May/6/24 2:39:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in November, the House voted unanimously for the federal government to review its immigration targets in 2024, after consulting Quebec and the provinces about their integration capacity. Even the Liberals recognized that the targets should correspond with housing, health, education, French language training and infrastructure needs.
Even so, Ottawa intends to continue to increase immigration in 2024 and even in 2025. When will the government listen to the reasonable demands of the House and stop blindly increasing immigration?
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- May/6/24 2:40:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are going to go far like that.
The federal government is blindly increasing its targets despite the House's calls to adjust the targets in line with integration capacity, despite the House's calls to begin this process within 100 days of meeting with the premiers, despite the negative feedback of the public service, despite the warnings from economists and despite the CMHC figures proving that the housing crisis is getting worse. Despite all of that, the government will not listen.
Why do the Liberals refuse at all costs to find out how many people can be integrated without depriving them of services or ignoring their basic needs?
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- May/6/24 6:35:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Berthier—Maskinongé, for whom I have a great deal of respect. I hope I do not embarrass him over the next ten minutes.
I am not sure if my colleagues heard the Prime Minister when he said that people, and I am quoting him because I do not speak this way, could not care less about jurisdictional bickering. That is what the Prime Minister said when asked about pharmacare and dental insurance. A recent Leger poll shows the opposite, that 82% of Quebeckers hope that the federal government will respect provincial jurisdictions. What is more, 74% of Quebeckers believe that Ottawa should get approval from the Government of Quebec before implementing programs like pharmacare and dental insurance.
Let us settle this right now: People do care about jurisdictions. They care because they know full well that the federal government falls short when it comes to supporting social programs that fall outside its jurisdiction. Let us set that aside. I would like to come back to something that seems rather important: Does Quebec society need the federal government to implement social programs? Is Quebec society lagging behind the NDP and the Liberal Party in social democratic matters? I have to say no, it is not.
The best family policy in North America is in Quebec. The most generous family policy is in Quebec, with parental leave and child care, which the federal government tried to copy 20 years later. Quebec is the least expensive place in North America to get a post-secondary education. Quebec is the most generous in terms of loans and grants for post-secondary education. Quebec also has the most progressive tax system. Quebec's inequality index is 0.31, as measured by the Gini coefficient. This compares favourably with Sweden's index of 0.29. If we look at Canada, we see that Canada has an index of 0.37. This is pretty close to the United States, at 0.42, which is one of the worst in the G7.
Quebec no longer needs to demonstrate that it is a very generous society when it comes to social programs. I am going to say it again, although I am certain my colleagues have been saying it all day: We already have pharmacare in Quebec, and while it is not perfect, it does exist. Furthermore, Quebec is in the process of trying to make the program meet Quebeckers' needs more efficiently. Why are we studying a federal bill to introduce pharmacare? Is it so the Liberals can maintain their coalition with the NDP? Of course it is. My colleague from Mirabel, who is a bit of a rascal, frequently says that dental insurance was put in place because the NDP is kissing the Liberals' feet—
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- May/6/24 6:39:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I apologize.
I was saying that the member for Mirabel, who is a bit of a rascal will go so far as to say that the NDP wanted to bring in dental insurance because they are spending so much time kissing the Liberals' feet that they are going to get a fungal disease. I would not say something so asinine. I think it is disrespectful, but it is one way to see who might be interesting.
When it comes to pharmacare, Quebec has been well ahead of the rest of Canada since 1996. No other province has really expressed a desire to have such a program. By all accounts, with the exception of Quebec, the rest of the Canadian provinces are ambivalent about having pharmacare.
The thing that upsets me most about this is that it is a prime example. The Liberal-NDP coalition is a prime example of “Ottawa knows best”.
Take the leader of the NDP, for example. A while ago, he drafted a letter to Quebec's minister of health. While he was writing his letter to Quebec's minister of health, he decided he would also contact Québec solidaire, the NDP's sister party in Quebec City. He therefore sent the same letter to Vincent Marissal, a Québec Solidaire MNA.
In his letter, the NDP leader told them that he was writing to explain why pharmacare was necessary. Talk about blatant paternalism. As I was saying, he wanted to explain why pharmacare was necessary. In Quebec, however, we have pharmacare already, of course, and we have made more progress on social issues than they have. Unfortunately for the NDP leader, he seemed to have forgotten at the time that Quebec already had pharmacare. Had he been a little more on the ball, the NDP leader could have asked his member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie to contact the Québec solidaire MNA for the provincial riding of Gouin. Both of them are in the same office and in the same building. The member for Gouin could have explained to the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie the finer details of this issue and the fact that Quebec already has pharmacare.
This is a prime example of centralizing federalism, or even what I call predatory federalism, which indiscriminately interferes in provincial jurisdictions.
As Quebeckers, we know that entrusting the development of our social programs to a neighbouring nation that does not have comparable coverage is out of the question. That would make no sense. Why would we entrust the development of our social programs to a government that cannot even manage its own jurisdictions? The French word for area of jurisdiction, “champ de compétence”, includes the word “competence”. When I think of the federal government, what immediately comes to mind is Phoenix, the passport crisis, its chaotic management of the border, immigration management without any real indication of acceptable integration thresholds, and ArriveCAN. The federal government is not doing a competent job of managing its own jurisdictions.
Despite that, the feds want to tell us how to manage our social assistance coverage in Quebec. Quite frankly, it is a bit insulting. Asking Quebeckers to let Canadians manage their social programs is like asking Canadians to let Americans manage their drug coverage. It would make absolutely no sense.
I want to point out something else that is rather important: Historically, the federal government has been unreliable when it comes to social intervention. A case in point is the occasion that members know I love to talk about, when Jean Chrétien, in a moment of clarity, admitted at the G7 that he could balance his budget by cutting transfer payments without ever having to pay a political price. The provinces are the ones who paid the price at that time. Let us all remember the drastic cuts that the Liberals made to health care after 1996-97, namely, $2.5 billion ongoing in 1996 and $2.5 billion in 1997.
Thus was born and introduced the fiscal imbalance. Who paid the price? Lucien Bouchard. Everyone said that the birth of neo-liberalism in Quebec began with Lucien Bouchard and the shift to ambulatory care, but that was certainly not the case.
I will conclude by reading the motion that was passed unanimously by the National Assembly. It was tabled in 2019, when pharmacare was first being proposed.
THAT the National Assembly acknowledge the federal report recommending the establishment of a pan-Canadian pharmacare plan;
THAT it reaffirm the Government of Québec's exclusive jurisdiction over health;
THAT it also reaffirm that Québec has had its own general prescription insurance plan for 20 years;
THAT it indicate to the federal government that Québec refuses to adhere to a pan-Canadian pharmacare plan;
THAT it ask the Government of Québec to maintain its prescription drug insurance plan and that it demand full financial compensation from the federal government if a project for a pan-Canadian pharmacare plan is officially tabled.
All parties agreed to sign the motion, including the Quebec Liberals for the Liberal Party. For our NDP colleagues, the Québec solidaire people also signed.
That explains why we will be voting against this bill.
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- May/6/24 6:47:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is rather remarkable when you think of it. When the parliamentary secretary was asked whether he acknowledged that the federal government had a role to play in health, he said yes. In the same sentence, he said that its role was not limited to transfers of funds. However, the federal government does not manage any hospitals or any doctors. It wants to have a role in health but has no health-related expertise.
In the beginning, the health system was a 50-50 proposition. For every dollar invested in health, 50¢ was provided by the federal government and 50¢ by the provincial government. Today, the federal government provides barely 22¢. If the federal government was serious, it would invest more in health care than it offered, and it would address the criticisms of the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Conference Board, who have stated that provincial finances will eventually become unsustainable because of skyrocketing health costs.
That is your role. It is not your role to meddle in jurisdictions that are not yours.
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- May/6/24 6:48:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if we want a robust system, then the simplest thing to do would be for the federal government to stay out of what is happening in Quebec, which is in negotiations with the large pharmaceutical companies.
What the federal government managed to do was to negotiate prices that are worse than what Quebec already had. That is one sign that the federal government does more harm than good when it interferes in areas that are not under its jurisdiction and puts together a poorly thought-out piecemeal program to score election points. That is what is happening here.
If the federal government wants to implement this program, then it needs to come to an agreement with the provinces first. That will help the government to avoid many pitfalls, to avoid wasting public money for absolutely nothing and to respect provincial jurisdictions, which is what we are asking it to do.
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- May/6/24 6:50:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what a valid and interesting question. My colleague is absolutely right. The Séguin report demonstrated that best. Mr. Séguin, who was Quebec's finance minister, was not a sovereignist, but a federalist. In his report, he clearly demonstrated that the federal government's revenues are much higher and that its expenses are smaller, which means it is constantly putting pressure on the provinces. In the next few years, when there is a Conservative government, we are going to see transfer payments reduced, and it is the provinces that are going to be blamed. Such is the Canadian federation.
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