44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 23, 2024 10:00AM
- May/23/24 10:51:46 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois always says it is in favour of what is good for Quebec. Sometimes, it would be nice if it also looked at what is good for Quebeckers, for ordinary people who do not have dental insurance.
The NDP campaigned on a promise to come to Ottawa and secure this for people, and we did it. We are keeping our promises for the four million Quebeckers who have neither private nor public dental coverage. We have secured $13 billion over five years.
That is about $4 billion for Quebec that will be directly invested to help Quebeckers who could not afford dental care save money. Quebec has no program for seniors. Quebec has no program for teenagers. We are going to directly help people in need.
I was in my riding last week, and people were coming up to me and saying, “Thank you, Mr. Boulerice, for your work in Ottawa.”
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- May/23/24 10:52:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would just like to point out to my colleague that what Quebeckers want is a health care system worthy of the name. The federal government is creating new programs after chronically underfunding the health care system. In a few years' time, it will slowly withdraw and put pressure on Quebec.
The dental insurance and pharmacare measures exist on paper only. The Government of Quebec candidly admits that it has no idea when they will materialize, because Ottawa did not consult with Quebec City. The only reason that pharmacare and dental insurance were introduced was to raise the Liberal Party and the NDP out of the polling basement. That is all.
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- May/23/24 11:04:06 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague opposite. On the subject of aerospace and this week's announcement, I think he is missing a few small details.
First, there were two announcements in one. The good thing is that we have an innovation zone, and that is Quebec City's doing. Ottawa has nothing to do with it.
The other announcement made at the same time, which is no doubt confusing, was a Boeing announcement that the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry took part in. All he said in this announcement was that they were working on the plane of the future. He said it earlier this week. However, I would remind the House that this plane of the future was built without a bidding process, excluding a Quebec giant in favour of a U.S. company announced late last fall. Things could have been done differently. The minister is rehashing old news when he says he is going to have a trickle-down policy, because he already announced that to sugar-coat the issue last fall.
I have a very simple question for my colleague. Just this week, in the so-called announcement made by Ottawa, exactly how much money will be invested in Boeing for that research?
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- May/23/24 11:52:10 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, if the government does have more of a role, then that role has been to extend wait times and make emergency rooms even more full of people. Since the Prime Minister said he was going to get more involved in health care, wait times have doubled, so if he wants the power, he has to take the responsibility and explain why he has failed so badly.
Then he talks about other grand federal programs, which is interesting, such as a dental program that has not cleaned a single tooth. There is a housing program that has doubled the cost of housing and increased severe homelessness by 88%. Then there is the pharmacare program, which has not delivered a single jar of medicine and which, if actually implemented, would ban Canadians from having their private drug plans.
The Prime Minister and the NDP want to roll back the rights that unions have fought so hard and so long to secure. Our labour movement fought too hard to secure private drug plans, and we will never let a big, centralizing, bureaucratic government in Ottawa take those rights away from workers.
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- May/23/24 12:26:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague. However, I want to come back to the fact that the programs managed by Ottawa are completely ineffective.
There are many examples. From what I am hearing, the member wants us believe that everything is fine and that the federal government's programs will solve seniors' dental care problems. It is a mirage. That is what I believe and what I see, because the seniors who come to my office are more likely to complain about the fact that this is not working. That is why we are saying, let us simplify things and transfer the money to Quebec, which will make its own choices and help people.
Clearly, it is not working. Attempts to interfere result in duplication of services and additional delays. In the end, people do not get better services. They do not have that service and they have to wait. It is sad to see people continuing to suffer.
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- May/23/24 12:54:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to put a question to my colleague, who lives just across the water from me, on the other side of the St. Lawrence River. We live in an absolutely extraordinary and exceptionally beautiful province. Isle-aux-Coudres, where my colleague lives, is a phenomenal place. It is right across from where I live. In fact, I jokingly tell her that I watch her with my telescope. I do not, of course.
I have a very simple question for my colleague, for whom I have the utmost respect and who has an extraordinary voice. Quebec sovereignty, if it ever happens, will happen in Quebec City, not in Ottawa. For more than 30 years now, the Bloc Québécois has been complaining about what the federal government does or does not do with regard to Quebec's needs, even though it knows that the work is going to be done in Quebec City.
Why does she come sit here in the House and see herself as being in another country? Her salary is paid by all Canadians, but she says she lives in another country. I would like her to just answer my question. Why is she here?
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- May/23/24 2:35:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, Canadians are hungry and homeless. It is becoming more clear: The more inflationary spending the Liberals do, the worse it gets for Canadians. We need look no further than the Ottawa Food Bank report that came out this week, which said that half a million visits were made to the food bank in our nation's capital last year. That is a 95% increase in the last five years and a 22% increase in the last year alone, and 36% of them were children. How many more times are the Liberals going to hike the carbon tax before they realize it is driving millions more people to food banks?
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- May/23/24 2:57:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today we are debating federal interference in the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces. One striking example concerns research chairs. The federal government is meddling in higher education and dictating which fields of study our universities must prioritize if they want to receive their share of funding.
Worse still, with its equity, diversity and inclusion, or EDI, criteria, Ottawa is deciding not only what people will study, but also who will teach it. Ottawa is literally taking over our universities.
Why does the government not let universities decide who to hire, based on their qualifications and nothing else?
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- May/23/24 3:55:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not think that the leader of the Bloc Québécois has any designs on leading Quebec, but we shall see. I will leave it to him to respond to that.
We do not want to further tax people in order to provide them services. We want efficiency. We want every penny paid by Quebeckers in taxes, whether to Quebec City or Ottawa, to be used 100% efficiently. There is a captain of health and that is Quebec's health minister. Transfer money to him and let him manage it. If he does not manage it properly, then I can guarantee that Quebeckers will be there to tell him, to call him out and to get rid of him in the next election.
That is how it is done. We must not get involved in what is happening in other people's sandboxes.
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- May/23/24 4:06:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is the centralizing, Ottawa-knows-best attitude of telling the provinces what to do and how to act. First, Ottawa cuts health transfers and underfunds health care. Then it tells the provinces that they are mismanaging their affairs because health care is underfunded due to the fiscal imbalance, so it creates its own parallel programs.
When Quebec's health transfers were cut, the province managed to create a partial pharmacare program for the less fortunate who were not covered. It is really limited, but with limited resources, it has had an exceptional impact not seen anywhere else in Canada. Now Ottawa has decided to create its own program. It did not sit down with Quebec to recognize that the province has its own program under its jurisdiction and tell Quebec that it will respect that and help improve its program. It did not ask what it could do to improve it. It did not ask if it could transfer the money to Quebec.
No, it did none of that. It just worked in isolation. The government is encroaching on provincial jurisdictions, it is developing a new program that overlaps with the existing one, and there is no harmonization. That is how Ottawa works. The king does not listen to his subjects. It is appalling.
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- May/23/24 4:10:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was not aware of this proposed amendment, so I am not in a position to fully criticize or justify the proposed amendment that was just raised.
I would say that, in general, these elements are included in the spirit of our motion. As far as the dental care and pharmacare programs are concerned, the Bloc Québécois's position is that jurisdictions must be respected. Why did Ottawa not give Quebec the right to opt out with full compensation so that it could take care of the programs?
I would remind the House that the dental care program will be administered by Sun Life, a multinational insurance company that charges $2 billion in administration fees. In Quebec, the existing program for children is administered by the public sector.
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- May/23/24 4:56:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, it was not about the substance of what was said, but it was really about the heckling. I am sitting next to the member for Mirabel, and I could not hear him respond.
My question is this. In the last budget, the government told Quebec that it has until January 1 to sign an agreement or it will negotiate with the cities on housing. That is illegal in Quebec. The Conservative housing plan does the same thing. It is forcing cities to increase construction by 15% or else it will cut its support in other areas. That is illegal in Quebec. We saw this during the Harper years. The federal government has continued to grow its tentacles and its size.
Basically, in Ottawa, between the Liberals and the Conservatives, is it not six of one and half a dozen of the other?
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- May/23/24 4:57:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the problem goes deeper than that. When a party comes to power in Ottawa, it has few responsibilities while running a modern state but very deep pockets. Generally speaking, Conservative governments start abusing Ottawa's spending power when they take office. In this case, the Conservatives jumped the gun a bit by saying that they would simply be infringing on the jurisdictions of cities, such as Quebec City. A condition is a condition, whether it comes with a penalty or a reward.
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- May/23/24 8:26:19 p.m.
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Madam Chair, has he visited any courthouse here in Ottawa to observe the broken bail system that he and his Liberals have caused? Yes or no.
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