- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $115,195.70
- Government Page
- May/23/24 11:36:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. She confirms precisely what we have been saying: the Bloc Québécois voted for these budget appropriations, while there is an official agreement between the NDP and the Liberals. In the circumstances, it is impossible to defeat a budgetary vote.
The Bloc Québécois could have taken the time to work, study the credits and say they would not vote for them for such and such a reason, but no. These MPs voted as a bloc for each of the $500-billion items. Let them stop trying to be the adult in the room again. There was an agreement on the other side. The government could not fall, even if we voted against it. The Bloc Québécois could have stood with us and said it was against the current government's extravagant spending.
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- May/6/24 2:37:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party has a great vision, a common-sense vision. This government left all that behind nine years ago. On the other side, we have the Bloc Québécois, which is no better than the Liberals. The Bloc Québécois supported $500 billion in additional spending. It always says it is going to vote against the budget, yet it always votes for specific budget allocations, which has led to the struggle that Quebeckers and Canadians face today.
Can the government ask the Bloc Québécois why it always goes along with the government's schemes, that lack all common sense?
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- May/2/24 2:55:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would remind the Minister of Finance that 48% of Liberal voters think that their government is mismanaging public finances. That was in a Leger poll that came out recently. Worse still, the Bloc Québécois is pretending to be critical and to defend the interests of Quebec. It voted for $500 billion in additional budgetary allocations. Voting for the Bloc Québécois is certainly costly. It is the party that is propping up this country's fiscal disaster.
When will the Prime Minister, supported by the Bloc Québécois, stop his out-of-control spending and give Quebeckers a break?
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- Apr/29/24 2:53:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, meanwhile, what are we to make of the $54.1 billion that Canadians and Quebeckers have to pay in interest to banks in London and New York because of this government's out-of-control spending supported by the Bloc Québécois, which has voted in favour of all budget allocations for the past nine years?
Let us think about it: The Bloc Québécois voted for every budget allocation, which means that today we are stuck paying interest equivalent to all the health transfers for all the provinces. We could do so much more with that money.
Will the government stop its out-of-control spending and will the Bloc Québécois stop supporting it?
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- Apr/16/24 2:38:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are calling for three things today. It is not complicated.
One of the three things the Conservative Party is calling for is to build homes, not bureaucracy. The government insists on announcing inflationary measures that are costing Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars and only serve to increase inflation and the cost of living. Even David Dodge, the former Liberal governor of the Bank of Canada, has predicted that this will be the worst budget since 1982.
Will the Prime Minister commit to heeding the calls of the Leader of the Opposition and building homes, not bureaucracy?
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- Apr/16/24 2:36:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if we want to lower inflation and enable the Bank of Canada to reduce interest rates, we have limited options.
We need to cap spending by applying the dollar-for-dollar rule. If we spend a dollar, we have to find a way to save a dollar. It is simple. That is how ordinary Canadians manage their household budgets. That is how every minister in this government should run their department.
Will the Prime Minister cap spending in his upcoming budget to bring down inflation and interest rates?
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- Feb/27/24 10:37:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today we are introducing a motion for debate in the House. This motion invites all sitting members from all parties, the 338 members of the House of Commons, to do some serious soul-searching.
Let us think back to the pandemic. Let us think back to the report that the Parliamentary Budget Officer released after the pandemic. He said that there had been $500 billion in COVID-specific spending, but he could not explain where $200 billion of it had gone. In the report, he says that, although spending was needed during the pandemic, there were amazingly few controls. This first report highlighted something very important. He was unable to explain $200 billion in spending. We may now even be able to see that some of the remaining $300 billion in spending was a bit fishy.
Another very important person involved in scrutinizing what happens to public funds is the Auditor General of Canada. Last year, the Conservative Party asked the House to vote. In November 2022, the Auditor General was asked to investigate ArriveCAN. ArriveCAN seemed a little strange from the start. It is a tool intended to track people's movements and obtain information on their vaccination status. In theory, it should not have cost much. However, we eventually became aware that something was wrong. It was costing a lot of money to create something that should not have been all that complicated. When certain information was brought to light, particularly concerning contracts with some odd people, it was decided that an investigation was in order.
The Auditor General did her job. She spent almost a year and a half trying to get answers. Let us put ourselves in the shoes of Canada’s Auditor General, who is appointed to work independently to verify and examine everything concerning the administration of public funds in relation to a particular file. She released her report two weeks ago, saying she was discouraged and was unable to carry out her work. From what she could see, at least $60 million was spent on this app, but it could have been more, because she could not find the supporting documentation. She could not find the contracts. When she did find an invoice, there were no details. It simply listed an amount of a few million dollars, and the cheque was sent out. She was really depressed to see how public funds were handled in this file.
In addition to the Auditor General, the procurement ombud did his own analysis, and our motion today mentions that too. He released a report a week or two ago, stating that 76% of the companies involved in the ArriveCAN file had performed no work. That means that $45 million was paid to people who did not even do any work. It is one scandal after another. When the Auditor General's report was released, I said it was the tip of the iceberg. I was sure more would be found and that this was not over.
Today, we want to shed light specifically on ArriveCAN. We have a great deal of information showing that there was outright corruption. At what level was the corruption happening? Who did it? How did they do it? We do not know, but we want to know. That is why we need to get to the bottom of this matter. I expect everyone in the House to support the motion that the Conservative Party is putting forward today. There is nothing remotely political about the Conservative Party's motion. It is a motion containing three specific points with specific queries about documents. This is simply an effort to shed light on the matter, so that the House can get the documents and information necessary to understand what went on in with ArriveCAN.
Last week, I sat on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The Auditor General was there. The deputy minister of procurement and the assistant deputy minister of departmental oversight also attended. I asked the latter, whose office is in charge of oversight, a question concerning ArriveCAN, and she did not know what to say. She started giving me a vague answer. I told her that I did not want a written answer that did not mean anything. I wanted a real answer. I asked a question, which appears in the record of the meeting. I asked her if, when she heard about this issue a year and a half ago, everyone in her office started banging their heads against the wall wondering what was going on.
We could see that no one really knew what was going on. Another thing to take into account is that there are people in offices who have specific oversight functions, but still do not know what is going on or, in any case, do not appear to know or do not want to know. I do not know what to make of all this. The point is that the federal government’s overall management of public funds is troubling. As I mentioned earlier, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Let us keep in mind that the Parliamentary Budget Officer did not even know where $200 billion of the budget deficit had gone. We are now dealing with the ArriveCAN scandal, an app that cost $60 million when it should have cost $80,000. There are a lot of questions about government spending in general.
We also learned other very important facts. Minh Doan, the Prime Minister’s chief information officer at the Information, Science and Technology Branch, apparently deleted tens of thousands of emails concerning ArriveCAN. Why would he have deleted tens of thousands of emails documenting discussions between the people who were managing ArriveCAN if there was nothing to hide? That is another problem we have to solve. That is one of the reasons why the House of Commons needs to examine this issue in depth.
This morning we learned something else about the member for Québec, the current Minister of Public Services and Procurement. During COVID-19, he was the president of the Treasury Board and therefore responsible for issuing contract management directives. I even asked him some questions at the time at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates about contract management. The minister did not seem to know how to answer. He often offloaded questions to his deputy minister. Since last summer's cabinet shuffle, he is now the Minister of Public Services and Procurement. According to La Presse, the minister's briefing book contained some sensitive items. The minister was told to pay attention to the shipbuilding strategy with Davie, the F-35 file and other issues. However, there were no notes about ArriveCAN. At the time, the Auditor General was conducting an investigation into a matter related to the procurement of federal government contracts. The ArriveCAN file was not even part of the minister's briefing. He was not even told to pay attention to it or that it was a sensitive issue. That is another question that needs to be explored. Why is it that when someone leads a department, they do not get any notes on a file that is being investigated by the Auditor General? There are so many questions, which is why our motion is very clear.
I will close by referring to the mandate letter issued to the member for Québec when he was president of the Treasury Board. In the mandate letter, the Prime Minister clearly states:
I also expect us to continue to raise the bar on openness, effectiveness and transparency in government. This means a government that is open by default. It means better digital capacity and services for Canadians. It means a strong and resilient public service. It also means humility and continuing to acknowledge mistakes when we make them.
That last sentence is what I would like to hear from the government. I would like it to acknowledge that it made mistakes. Since the tabling of the Auditor General's report, we have yet to hear the government express a modicum of regret. On the contrary, it tries to put it off, saying it will do better in the future. These mandate letters are useless because all we see is scandals and the government does not seem to want acknowledge the truth.
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- Nov/20/23 2:41:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the first thing we are going to cut is wasteful spending, like the $54 million for ArriveCAN, the $200 billion in COVID-19 spending, since the Parliamentary Budget Officer cannot even tell what that money was used for, and the $135 million that Frank Baylis got for nothing.
The government has done a lot of spending over the past eight years. There is a long list of things it has spent money on. If we start by cutting that, we will get back to a balanced budget and Canadians will be much better off.
Does the minister plan to return to a balanced budget in tomorrow's economic update, yes or no?
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- Nov/20/23 2:40:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, all we have been seeing for the past eight years is out-of-control spending by the NDP-Liberal government, with the help of its Bloc Québécois friends. That has created the following problem: Experts at Scotiabank have calculated that the government's excessive spending has added two percentage points to Canada's interest rate. That represents more than $8,400 a year in interest on the average mortgage. The government can help Quebeckers deal with the cost of living by getting its spending under control.
Will the government listen to the experts? Will it stop spending? Will it announce a plan to balance the budget in tomorrow's budget?
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- Oct/16/23 2:42:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer expects the federal deficit to reach $46.5 billion next year. That is 16% more than the Liberal government had initially projected.
That being the case, he does not expect interest rates to drop until April 2024. Given the ongoing housing crisis, that is truly a disaster.
Will the Minister of Finance confirm that the deficit will really be $6 billion higher next year?
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- Sep/20/23 2:35:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to know what the minister thinks of a former Liberal finance minister, John Manley, who said that the Prime Minister's deficits are like stepping on the gas when it comes to inflation. This forces the Bank of Canada to step harder on the brakes by increasing interest rates.
Here is an example of completely ridiculous spending. The government spent $284 million to redo Canadian passports. That is a third of a billion dollars, and it was $123 million over budget. That is an outrageous waste.
Will the Prime Minister promise to stop burning Canadians' money?
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- Jun/5/23 2:35:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Stephen McNeil, the former Liberal premier of Nova Scotia, stated that if provinces continue to spend beyond their means, inflation will persist and continue to put pressure on household budgets.
Former Liberal minister John Manly also stated that it is like driving with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. It is not a good plan for controlling the direction of the economy.
The Prime Minister is not listening to the opposition or to his Liberal friends. We have been clear: The government must balance the budget now.
Will the Prime Minister act in the interest of future generations?
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- May/29/23 2:49:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we do have a plan. Our plan is to leave money in the pockets of Quebeckers and Canadians, something this government cannot seem to grasp.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer was clear. This will cost Quebeckers and Canadians an extra $436. Is this a plan to help the environment? No, it is a plan that makes everyone poorer.
Does the single mom who has to put gas in her car to take her kids to soccer understand that this new tax is going to cost her an extra $436 a year, while the government tries to make everyone believe the opposite?
Who is telling the truth? Is it the Parliamentary Budget Officer or this government?
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- Apr/18/23 4:41:45 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the reckless budget brought down by the Liberals and supported unreservedly and unsurprisingly by the NDP.
In fact, the budget is truly a product of the office of the Leader of the NDP. I think it is fair to say that people underestimate him. Canadians now know that he is the one truly responsible for the government's budgetary decisions. We might even call him the right hon. member for Burnaby South.
It has to be a bit embarrassing for the Liberal members to sit in the House day after day and see their party being completely controlled by the NDP leader. They should not be surprised because since 2015, the Prime Minister and his ministers have demonstrated through their behaviour that their level of incompetence should have served as a warning.
For example, in 2013, the Prime Minister told anyone who would listen that he was not worried about budgets because, as he explained, budgets balance themselves. We know how that turned out.
After such a comment, we might have expected that many Liberal candidates would be reluctant to run under his leadership. No, on the contrary, they all took the same stance and eagerly repeated whatever he said.
That was certainly not the first time that the Prime Minister made odd and dangerous comments, but, for Canadians, that was certainly the most memorable one.
Some believed that although the Prime Minister was incompetent and did not have the experience required to steer the ship, at least he was surrounded by ministers and wise advisers who could tell him how to be sensible and would control his impulses. This hope quickly evaporated when his Minister of Finance increased our country's national debt to unprecedented levels. Yes, the Minister of Finance defended the federal government's record deficit of more than $381 billion arguing it was affordable, given the low interest rates.
I would like to say more about that, but I want to speak about what would be important to address in a budget, and that is my Bill C-325, which I recently introduced.
Bill C-325 would strengthen the conditional release system by creating a new offence for the breach of conditions, requiring parole officers to report breaches of conditions and restoring the former version of section 742.1 of the Criminal Code, which was repealed in 2022 by the Prime Minister's Bill C‑5.
The government's Bill C-5, which has passed, allows criminals convicted of aggravated sexual assault, for example, to serve their sentences in the community. I hope that this monumental error will be corrected, and that the Bloc Québécois and NDP members will support my bill.
These violent criminals should not be serving their sentences at home watching Netflix. They should be behind bars. The Bloc Québécois did support Bill C-5. They voted in favour of it, but after seeing what happened next, they realized that there were problems. Consider the case of Jonathan Gravel, a 42-year-old man who managed to avoid prison after committing a violent sexual assault. The Bloc Québécois now realizes that this needs to be reversed, because it just does not work.
Even a Crown prosecutor in Quebec, Alexis Dinelle, slammed the government for reopening the door to sentences served in the community for this type of crime. He said, and I quote, “Right now, [the Prime Minister] and [the Minister of Justice] probably have some explaining to do to victims of sexual assault. I cannot stay silent in the face of this regressive situation”.
What this federal law does is give men who have been convicted of aggravated sexual assault the possibility of serving their sentences at home. For example, according to La Presse, Sobhi Akra wants to be able to serve his sentence from home after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting eight women. That is outrageous.
My bill also proposes to create an offence for breach of conditions of conditional release by criminals who have been convicted of crimes such as sexual assault, murder or assaulting children, for example, and who fail to meet their parole conditions when they are on parole. Right now, it is not an offence for such criminals to violate the conditions of their parole.
For example, I am sure everyone remembers Eustachio Gallese, who murdered Marylène Levesque three years ago. One of his parole conditions involved being treated by a psychologist. However, he was not reincarcerated when the Parole Board learned that he was seeing prostitutes and violating the conditions of his parole. His release was not revoked and nowhere in his record does it indicate that he was failing to meet his parole conditions.
With my bill, people like Eustachio Gallese, who are out on parole, will no longer be able to make a mockery of our justice system and will have to take the conditions of their parole seriously. It will help save the lives of people like Marylène Levesque.
As we know, the main role of parliamentarians is to ensure the highest level of public safety for Canadians. We must correct the monumental error in the law stemming from Bill C‑5 and strengthen management of the parole system.
Let us get back to the budget.
Canada's finances and public funds are not toys for the Prime Minister and his rich friends to play with. Canadians have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to allow these people to destroy the quality of life of our future generations.
We know that the Minister of Finance studied at Harvard. We also know that this university does not teach these kinds of financial strategies to its students. Like the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance clearly missed a lot of classes at university.
When the budget was tabled by the government, we heard different reactions. One came from Mario Dumont, a well-known commentator and former Quebec politician who hosts several shows in Quebec, on TVA. This was his initial reaction upon seeing the budget:
What is most shocking is that, during those months when the Canadian public service was growing by leaps and bounds, service delivery was the least efficient it had ever been. Need I remind anyone of the passport crisis? ...When you read the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report and compare it to what is happening on the ground, one conclusion is obvious. Canada is bloody badly managed. A private company that is so poorly managed would be sent to the slaughterhouse.
From what we can see, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have no idea what sound financial practices are, and, with the support of the NDP leader, they are dragging this country into financial chaos. While the Prime Minister is destroying the country's finances, Liberal members on the other side of the House are sitting back and watching our children's future slip away. That is the Liberal legacy under this Prime Minister: a total failure to manage our country's finances that puts Canada's future in a very precarious position.
Our legacy will be to clean up this mess and restore sound fiscal policies for the good of our citizens, because when we talk about the future, we are talking about our children and grandchildren. We may tell ourselves that everything is fine right now, but when we look at the interest on the current debt, when we do the projections and calculations, we can see that we are talking about $21 billion in additional interest payments. It is not hard to see that this will become unsustainable over the next few years and the funds available for government operations will be subject to that interest. That means there will be less money and we cannot just keep borrowing, which will only make things worse.
That is why we on this side of the House will always seek to work in a reasonable way in order to maximize the public purse and strike a balance to ensure we do not end up in a situation where our grandchildren will pay the price later on.
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- Mar/27/23 2:39:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the parliamentary secretary was in the same twilight zone as the Prime Minister when he said that budgets balance themselves. What we must recognize is that this attitude is why the number of personal bankruptcies in Canada increased by 13.5% in January 2023 and why business bankruptcies rose by 39.1% in 2022.
Canadians are suffering financially. Will the Prime Minister commit to not imposing any new taxes in tomorrow's budget?
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- Mar/27/23 2:38:41 p.m.
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As you know, Mr. Speaker, a new era was ushered in eight years ago, one where government budgets balance themselves. However, the reality is that, thanks to this Prime Minister's mismanagement of public funds, the cost of a mortgage has doubled since 2015, food has never been more expensive and Canadians have record credit card debt.
Canadians know full well that they need to pinch pennies to pay their bills. Will the Prime Minister commit to no new taxes?
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- Feb/6/23 2:23:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the pandemic.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that $200 billion of the additional $500 billion spent during the two years of the pandemic had nothing to do with the pandemic.
Another expenditure was a $173-million investment in a company called Medicago. On Friday we learned that Japan's Mitsubishi Chemical Group was closing Medicago completely. The federal government put in $173 million without first checking whether the vaccines developed by this company could be used.
Why is the Prime Minister spending Canadians' money recklessly, without checking things first?
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- May/19/22 7:00:27 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who we are lucky to have, by the way, estimates that the polar icebreakers announced by the government will cost $7 billion, or $3.5 billion each.
However, the Government of Canada only announced the purchase of two polar icebreakers, not how much they will cost. Does the Parliamentary Budget Officer have the right figures? If not, what should we expect?
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- May/19/22 6:58:04 p.m.
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Madam Chair, let us talk about transparency. I will give the minister an opportunity to say more.
The committee recently heard from representatives of Irving Shipbuilding. For the contract to build the 15 new frigates, the president mentioned that Irving's bid was under $60 billion and added that the government had announced that it would cost $60 billion. However, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the frigates would cost $77.3 billion to build.
Given that Irving's figure was less than $60 billion, the government's figure was $60 billion, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer's figure was more than $77 billion, could the minister, in the name of transparency, tell us the projected cost of building these frigates?
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- May/19/22 6:48:27 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I would like to salute and welcome the minister. Now, on to the first question.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer said the following at the February 4 meeting of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates: “The pattern is that whenever we look at major procurement issues, for example, combat ships, supply ships, and now polar icebreakers, there is one constant: the costs are always higher when an independent office estimates them rather than the government.”
Why is that?
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