- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Mirabel
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 62%
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- Oct/17/23 12:39:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have all kinds of things to teach us on this opposition day. However, they need to be reminded that the last Conservative government ran deficits for seven years straight.
I would sure like to know what today's Conservatives, whose leader was part of the Harper government, would do differently from what they always did in the past—should they come to power—so they can finally stop being a party that habitually runs deficits.
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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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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased today to share my time with my hon. colleague from Longueuil—Saint‑Hubert.
When I was asked to come to the House today to talk about Quebec's political weight, I wondered if I would be here for 10 minutes, because it is so simple; we take Quebec's weight and we maintain it. On reflection, though, I thought that if it had not been understood by now, I might have more to say than I thought in the end.
I thought I would use a bit of an educational approach. Let us go back in time to 2006. That year, the Harper government recognized Quebec as a nation in the House. After that, however, not much happened until 2021, except for the decrease in health transfers.
Last June, the House passed a motion that gave Quebec the right to amend its constitution to enshrine in it that Quebec is a nation and that its only official language is French. This meant that the Quebec nation, as well as its history and specificity, were once again recognized.
However, recognizing a nation means recognizing that it has the right to express itself in the House of Commons. It means walking the talk. The House cannot recognize a nation the way it recognizes that it is a nice day outside, that it is a beautiful Monday and that it is humid. When the House recognizes a nation, it has to act accordingly.
Now the government has introduced Bill C-14. At first, I thought that there was hope and that this bill seemed to be a step in the right direction. Still, it is a bill seeking to protect Quebec that was introduced by the Liberals and that may be supported by the NDP, so based on my experience, I had some doubts.
I opened Bill C‑14, and I read that it would guarantee Quebec a certain number of seats, specifically 78, compared to the 77 seats provided for in the last electoral boundary readjustment, which reduced the number of seats for Quebec.
I would like to mention that, without the repeated interventions of the Bloc Québécois, we would not be debating this in the House today. The Liberal government would not have woken up one morning and decided that it was going to protect Quebec's weight. It took the Bloc Québécois to convince it to take a step in that direction.
The problem with Bill C‑14 is that it states an intention, but does nothing to accomplish it. It does not meet its own objective.
Let us continue the lesson. March 2 was a Bloc opposition day. The government knows we use these days wisely. That day, by a vote of 261 to 66, which is decidedly not a close result, since almost everyone voted in favour, apart from a certain pocket of resistance, the House adopted a motion saying the following:
That, in the opinion of the House:
(a) any scenario for redrawing the federal electoral map that would result in Quebec losing one or more electoral districts or that would reduce Quebec's political weight in the House of Commons must be rejected;
I want to point out that number of seats and political weight are not the same thing. The motion also states that the formula for apportioning seats in the House must be amended in accordance with the spirit of the motion, which was adopted by the vast majority of duly elected members.
However, we have before us a bill that does not achieve this goal. The bill does not protect Quebec's political weight because it protects the number of seats, not the proportion of seats reserved for Quebec.
I figured that either the government was acting in bad faith or it did not understand what the word “proportion” meant. My colleague from Beauport—Limoilou used to be an elementary school teacher, so I called her to ask what grade kids start learning fractions and division. She told me that it was usually in grade 3, but if the members of Parliament went to a good school, they might have learned about fractions in grade 2. I do not know whether the government is acting in bad faith or whether it does not understand.
I began listening to the Minister of Finance, thinking she must understand, because she has talked about the debt-to-GDP ratio, saying that she does not want to reduce debt, but rather the debt-to-GDP ratio. She understands that there are two components to a ratio. The Minister of Finance understands that. The same applies to per capita GDP: The ratio of per capita wealth can differ based on wealth and the number of people.
It is the same when the NDP talks about fuel-efficient vehicles. What they care about is how much fuel a vehicle uses to travel 100 kilometres, which provides its fuel efficiency. The NDP understands that concept when it comes to winning votes in their riding and for their base, but not when it comes to the issue of Quebec's weight.
When they are talking about hourly wages, the NDP does not tell people to earn $5 an hour and work 70 hours a week. They say that what is important is the wages that a person earns for each hour worked. The NDP understands ratios, logic, elementary school concepts. With this bill, however, all of a sudden, the NDP members have forgotten what they learned in elementary school. They say that Quebec's political weight is not calculated as a given number of seats divided by a total number of seats, but simply as the numerator, the number of seats. I have trouble understanding that.
I see the hon. member for Winnipeg North. The Liberals know how much I appreciate them and their intelligence. Since I cannot believe that they do not understand, I figure they may just be doing half a job. I will give them an even more concrete example.
The number of seats for Quebec rose from 65 in 1867 to 73 in 1947, to 75 in 1976, to 78 in 2015. The number of seats increased, which is a good thing. During that time, however, the size of the House of Commons also increased, and the percentage of seats belonging to Quebec dropped from 36% to 28.6% to 26.6% to 24.9% to 23.1%.
My colleagues can surely see that the number of seats is irrelevant if the size of the House of Commons is increasing. This shows that the bill does not achieve its goal and that it does not live up to its title.
There are special clauses that provide some protection for the weight of the provinces. I have here the Canada Elections Act, and I see that New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have a senatorial clause. Nova Scotia also has a grandfather clause, as does Manitoba. Even Newfoundland and Labrador has a grandfather clause, after deciding very late in the game to become a member of the federation, and after three referendums that yielded three different answers to the question.
It is therefore not unheard of for the government to protect the political weight of a nation. Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and Yukon have constitutional protection. We are not reinventing the wheel.
This is the government's idea of protecting Quebec. The same thing always happens, and the Liberal members say nothing. Maybe they are too busy protesting Bill 96 to have time to think about this bill.
The federal government's idea of protecting Quebec is to introduce a law on bilingualism that gives equal weight to English and French in Quebec. We know that when given the option, companies choose English. It is the same thing with Roxham Road. Quebec is told no. It is the same thing for health transfers. The federal government is unreliable. We cannot depend on it.
Our seniors needed money before the election. They got a $500 cheque before the election. However, when it comes time to protect our seniors after the election, what do they get? They get zero, zip, nada, just a pretty graph in the budget that shows that they are not doing so bad. They are drowning in inflation, but all the government will say is that it hopes they know how to swim. The Liberals are unreliable when it comes time to protect Quebec in any way whatsoever.
It is the same story with the Synergie Mirabel seniors' home project in my riding. Sixty people with diminishing abilities are waiting for the Minister of Transport to give them the right to housing. We are still awaiting an answer. The Liberals are still mucking about.
When it comes time to protect Quebec, the federal government is always unreliable. The Liberals' and the federal government's efforts to protect Quebec make me think of a saying: Put a fox in charge of the henhouse and you'll have chicken for dinner every time.
Well, we will not allow ourselves to end up on the dinner table. Quebec's history in the federation is a history of declining political power. That is enshrined in this bill, which is incomplete and does not do what it is supposed to. Quebec needs 25% of the seats in the House, but that is only a temporary measure.
What we ultimately want is for Quebec, as a nation, to have the right to all the tools that a nation should have. Once Quebec is independent, it will have 100% of the seats and will not be reduced to crossing the border to beg Ottawa for scraps.
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Madam Speaker, earlier today the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands was bragging about the parliamentary system, about the debate and other debates that would take place in committee.
What does not help, as we know, with the implementation bill is to have a 500‑page bill that amends 37 acts and includes three bills that have already been introduced. If ever anyone wants to kill debate, that is exactly how to do it.
I would like my colleague to tell me whether he thinks the Liberals are using their deal with the NDP to ram all this down our throats. I would also like him to tell me whether the Conservatives are happy with the fact that this new coalition is using the Harper method to get everything they want through us.
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