- May/8/24 2:17:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, can anyone here imagine a country where young couples, 24 and 26 years old, are forced to leave their apartment and move back in with their parents in the hope of one day becoming homeowners? Can anyone here imagine a country where the housing crisis has become one of the main causes of stress among psychiatric patients? Can anyone here imagine a country where a woman is thinking about living in a minivan because she cannot find an affordable place to live? Can anyone here imagine a country where renters are contacting housing advocacy groups and expressing serious suicidal thoughts because they are not only desperate, but they see no way out and want to give up?
Unfortunately, that country is Canada, as described in the papers day after day, after nine years of this Liberal Prime Minister. With $500 billion in inflationary spending, supported by the Bloc Québécois, this Prime Minister has created the worst inflation crisis in 40 years. The crisis caused the interest rates to go up, made home ownership an unattainable dream, doubled the cost of housing and will force thousands of people out into the street. Canada was not like that before this Prime Minister, who is not worth the cost, and, fortunately, it will not be like that anymore once the next Conservative government brings back common sense.
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- May/7/24 4:51:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I share my colleague's concerns regarding the first nations. Even though my riding does not have all that many first nations representatives, I am very proud to see that Chief Billy Morin has just joined the Conservative Party. He will be a candidate for us in the next election. We are very proud to have people of that calibre working with us to improve everyday life for first nations across Canada.
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- May/7/24 4:50:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, hypocrisy abounds. It was the Bloc Québécois that voted for this government's $500 billion in additional spending. As a result, everything costs more now. It was the Bloc Québécois that voted for additional funding to build a pipeline. They are not about to shout it from the rooftops, but they voted in favour of additional funds to build the pipeline. The Bloc Québécois members are the ones telling Canadians and Quebeckers who use their cars to get around every day that they still do not pay enough taxes. The Bloc Québécois would like to see gasoline taxes radically increased in order to encourage people to use less gas, since it costs more. Once again, they are making citizens pay for ideologies.
That is what I call the hypocrisy of the Bloc Québécois.
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- May/7/24 4:48:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is the leftist party or, pardon me, the Liberal Party of Canada.
I will take no lessons from the Liberal Party. Why? It is because every day when we pick up the newspapers and turn on the television, we see moving accounts of mothers who cannot find housing for July 1. In Quebec, July 1 is an extremely important date. Those mothers will have to find a place to live and are resigned to the idea of having to live in their minivans.
Business owners are going bankrupt because the cost of paying down their debt and input costs is now more than they can afford. Quebec has seen a 130% increase in small business bankruptcies over the past three years. That is unacceptable.
I always wonder why the Liberals avoid talking about these issues that affect Canadians and Quebeckers every day.
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- May/7/24 4:37:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague, the member for Barrie-Innisfil.
After nine years, the Prime Minister still does not get it. There are many things he does not understood. He does not understand that budgets do not balance themselves. He does not understand that Canadians cannot live on their credit cards forever. He does not understand that leading a country means much more than just smiling for the cameras.
After nine years, he clearly does not understand that Canadians are tired of paying for his and his government's incompetence. I say incompetence because, after nine years, too many families have seen their quality of life go down as a result of his inflationary policies. Everything costs more, including food, rent, gas, taxes, mortgage payments, everything people have to buy on credit, restaurant meals and recreational activities. The list goes on. Absolutely everything costs more.
The Liberal Prime Minister has made the public service so big it is literally bursting at the seams, which leads me to say that the government, too, costs a lot more after nine years of this Prime Minister.
The Liberal government hired no less than an additional 100,000 public servants. With so many new government employees, one would expect services to improve, at least proportionately. One might think that waiting for a passport was a thing of the past, that immigrants who are waiting for a family member are now all very happy with the family reunification and immigration processes, and that it is now easy to talk to a CRA or an EI agent. One hundred thousand more public servants means 200,000 more hands to work on finding solutions to people's problems. That would make sense, but no. That is not what happened, despite the additional billions of dollars that this government spent on expanding the public service.
The Prime Minister and this government's ministers created so much chaos that even 100,000 more public servants have been unable to correct nine years of complacency. Take, for example, passports, the people who are waiting for EI payments and the thousands of Canadians who have to pay back billions of dollars to the government because the Liberals' pandemic measures were a failure.
Let us talk about immigration and the former immigration minister, who not only created the worst management crisis ever at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, but also lost track of one million people. That minister is now in charge of fixing the country's housing crisis. I wonder what that minister has to say to Cédric Dussault, the spokesperson for the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec, a renters' rights group, who said, “We hear from tenants who intend to commit suicide. This is more than just despair. They do not see a way out, and they want it to be over. That is what it has come to”. That is what it has come to in Canada after nine years of this Prime Minister.
This is just a glimpse of Liberal incompetence. In addition to hiring tens of thousands of public servants, this Liberal government has literally doubled the cost of hiring outside consultants. Many of those expenses were unjustified. Here is just one example: ArriveCAN. The government spent $60 million of taxpayers' money on an app developed in a basement by two people with no computer skills. That app was supposed to cost $80,000. Let us do the math. The cost ballooned from $80,000 to $60 million. That is how this government manages public finances.
As I said earlier, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost of his government, which has skyrocketed over the past nine years. Let us look back at 2015, when this same Prime Minister promised Canadians that he would run small deficits of $10 billion and balance the budget in four years. Since then, he has not only failed to keep his promise, but he has also become the spendiest prime minister in Canadian history. He single-handedly put Canada further into debt than all previous prime ministers.
I am not talking about him spending more than any previous prime minister. I am talking about the debts of all prime ministers combined. This Prime Minister has managed to spend more than all the previous prime ministers combined. He has increased Canadians' debt from $700 billion to $1.3 trillion in just nine years. I never thought I would use the word “trillion” in the House, but that just shows how out of control this government's spending is.
That means that today, just to pay the interest on this massive debt, Canadians have to fork over more than $57 billion a year. How much is $57 billion? People wonder, because it is impossible to grasp the scale of a number that big. It is more than what the federal government transfers to the provinces for health care every year. It is the equivalent of all the goods and services tax, or GST, that is collected when people buy goods and services. In other words, every time we pay GST somewhere, it does not go toward improving the environment, national defence or social housing; it goes to pay the interest on this Prime Minister's debt.
This Prime Minister has inflated the debt to the point that he no longer sees what effect this spending is having on Canadians. It is contributing to inflation, driving up the price of everything and forcing the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates high. That is what nine budgets from this Prime Minister has done. This ninth budget is no exception. Time and again, we see new spending, stagnating services, rising prices and daily revelations of corruption. This is the perfect example of an incompetent Prime Minister who is not worth the cost.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to talk about something that has been a concern of mine for the 25 years that I have been in politics. This theme has only reinforced my decision to be a Conservative in Quebec over the years. I want to talk about the mindset that, no matter what the Liberals do, no matter what the left proposes, whether it is the NDP, the Bloc Québécois or the Liberal Party, just one group suffers as a result of all their good ideas. That group is average Canadians. It is the Quebecker who works hard to support his family. It is the Quebecker who struggles to pay rent, to give her children a decent education, to be a good citizen by volunteering to help those in need. That is a fact. I talk to people in their homes. The only people paying for all this spending are not the Prime Minister, nor his ministers, nor the Liberal government, but the hard-working people at home.
Who pays more for gas when someone decides one day that it would be a good idea for gas to be more expensive so that people will use less? Who pays more for electricity because it is bad to waste electricity and because, if the price is raised, people will realize that it is too expensive and then use less? If they need it, they will have to pay either way. The Prime Minister said so himself when he was invited to comment on the rising price of gas before the carbon tax even came into effect. He said that that was exactly what they wanted, for Canadians to pay more. Worse yet, left-wing parties like the Bloc Québécois are not shy about saying that it is not enough. The Bloc says that the carbon tax — they probably also want to talk about the carbon pricing that applies in Quebec — should be radically increased. It is the public that pays every time these people say that they have a good idea.
Who pays for these taxes, these bags, these services, these user fees, this big government that is supposed to solve all the problems? It is Canadians. It was Canadians before, it is Canadians now, and it will be Canadians as long as we have a Liberal government. That is why the Conservatives have a common-sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. The “Liberal Bloc” does not want us to keep saying it, but it is a common-sense plan that will ensure that we can give Canadians back a little pride, so that Canadians realize that things were not like this before the Liberals took office and that it will certainly not be like this once they are no longer in power.
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- May/6/24 3:35:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, has the question and answer period on the time allocation motion started yet?
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- May/6/24 3:33:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while you were reading the motion, I was unfortunately distracted by the Liberal government House leader when you were specifying the number of hours allotted for debate on this issue.
Could you please remind the House of the number of hours specified in this time allocation motion to discuss the bill? This will illustrate the lengths to which the government is going to prevent us from talking about it any longer and debating it as much we would have liked.
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- May/6/24 3:28:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of 30 people who have chosen to present a petition to the House of Commons. This petition concerns access to natural health products, which has come under threat from new legislation and rules introduced by this Liberal government.
The new provisions, which are called “Natural health product cost recovery”, so that everyone understands, are going to impose massive costs on all consumers of natural health products, obviously undermining access for Canadians who rely on these products.
On behalf of these 30 petitioners, who speak for many people in many regions of Canada, I am honoured to table this petition calling on the government to reverse the changes made in the latest Liberal budget regarding natural health products.
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- May/6/24 2:43:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Quebeckers are already experiencing the austerity imposed by this government. They can no longer afford housing. They can no longer afford food. That is the reality facing Quebeckers every single day.
After nine years, this Prime Minister seems to have found a partner to help him spend and create even more inflation at the expense of families. He knows that the Bloc Québécois will not vote against his spending because the Bloc Québécois likes this Liberal government.
What does the Bloc Québécois get out of voting for $500 billion in centralizing Liberal spending?
When will the Prime Minister, with the Bloc Québécois's support, stop impoverishing Quebeckers?
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- May/6/24 2:41:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years, this Prime Minister, backed by the Bloc Québécois, is not worth the cost that Quebeckers are paying for their mortgages, rent, food, gas and taxes.
Every day, there are moving stories of Quebeckers who have to live in their cars and go without food, or of food banks that can no longer feed the people knocking on their doors. It is all because of this Prime Minister's $500 billion in inflationary spending, which the Bloc Québécois supports.
When will the Prime Minister stop this wasteful spending so that, despite the Bloc Québécois, people can have enough to eat?
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- May/3/24 11:23:51 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's hesitation is worrisome.
He just has to say the word to end this deadly experiment because, essentially, he is the one responsible for criminal law in Canada. That is where it ends. It is as simple as that. It is worrisome to see him insist on keeping this extreme policy in place with the support of the Bloc Québécois.
This morning, the Journal de Montréal said, “Crack, heroin, feces: the early childhood centre in Montreal's Chinatown at the centre of escalating violence.”
Yesterday, the Bloc Québécois critic for health reiterated his support for decriminalization.
Will the Prime Minister say no today to the legalization of hard drugs in Montreal and across the country?
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- May/3/24 11:22:28 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this Prime Minister should be ashamed of himself for waiting seven days and still not announcing the end of this program, which is costing lives. Six lives a day are being lost in British Columbia, and what are the Liberals doing in the meantime? They are waiting and studying the issue.
Dirty needles are being found on soccer fields. Nurses are having to stop breastfeeding because they fear for their health given they are exposed to fumes from drugs being consumed in hospitals. Crime is on the rise. People are afraid. Quebec is not immune to this crisis.
When will the Prime Minister stop dithering and end his radical experiment? We want a date, please.
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- May/3/24 11:21:10 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years of extreme ideology, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost of the lives lost to overdoses.
Exactly one week ago today, seven days ago, the Premier of British Columbia asked the Prime Minister to reverse his disastrous experiment involving the legalization of hard drugs.
When will the Liberal Prime Minister put an end to his extreme policies that have caused chaos and death? We want a date, just a date, please.
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- May/2/24 5:12:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
How is this relevant?
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- May/2/24 2:27:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is not politicizing to talk about syringes on the ground, distressing situations and unacceptable behaviour a stone's throw from a school in Montreal. We now know that the Prime Minister's radical experiment to legalize hard drugs in British Columbia, which was supported by the Bloc Québécois, has been catastrophic and deadly.
The Bloc member for Joliette had this to say in the House: “The hope is that this pilot project will set a course”. The member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques said that “the Bloc Québécois fully believes that it is a step in the right direction”.
Quebec has no interest in going down that road. Can the Prime Minister assure the House that he will not follow the radical advice of the Bloc Québécois?
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- May/2/24 2:26:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, every day that this radical Prime Minister dithers on the deadly experiment of legalizing hard drugs is a day that more people die. Six people a day are dying in British Columbia.
After nine years of this Prime Minister, Quebec is not immune to this crisis, which is affecting all regions of Canada. The Journal de Montréal reports that crack consumption is surging in Montreal and will increasingly start happening in public places.
Will the Prime Minister put an end to his extremist experiment in legalizing hard drugs today and say no to any possibility of expanding it to Quebec?
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- May/2/24 10:48:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to ask you to verify the photo of the member for Papineau. His face is not visible. I would like you to check with the clerks to see whether his vote counts.
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- Apr/18/24 2:47:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and his Bloc Québécois allies should be ashamed to have voted in favour of allocating millions more dollars to ArriveCAN, a decision that made the owners of GC Strategies multimillionaires.
Yesterday, Kristian Firth, managing partner at GC Strategies, said that the Prime Minister had not taken any steps to recover the money wasted on his ArriveCAN app. ArriveCAN cost $60 million.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister ordered his people not to ask questions and not to ask GC Strategies for a refund.
Time is passing. When will the Prime Minister give Canadians back the money wasted on ArriveCAN?
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- Apr/18/24 1:50:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to remind the House that the leader of the official opposition sought the unanimous consent of the House to table the numbers that he presented—
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- Apr/18/24 1:49:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to add that the 90,000 or so units built on the member for Carleton's watch had an average rent of $970 a month.
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