- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $115,154.34
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague, the member for Mirabel, on his excellent speech. He gave us a very clear picture of the situation.
I agree with him completely on the fact that Charles III is not the only one embarrassed to support the Liberal budget, but also on the fact that contempt is being shown for democracy.
Here is my question for my colleague. I would like to know what he thinks about the fact that, since the NDP and the Liberal Party formed an alliance, 26 time allocation motions have been used to speed up debates. Commonly called a gag order, this practice is anti-democratic.
In the House, the NDP, this new party that calls itself democratic, is engaging in anti-democratic procedures. It is taking speaking time away from parliamentarians.
There is a limit to the boundaries of contempt for our institutions. There is a limit to the boundaries of contempt for democracy. There is a limit to the boundaries of contempt for the right to speak. In a democracy, we have the right to discuss bills and the budget, as we are now.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise this evening to speak to Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, introduced by the government.
The budget is a key exercise in our democracy. It is the time when the government decides how and where it will spend the hundreds of billions of dollars that it controls. The government does not pull all this money out of thin air. Each of these dollars comes directly out of the pockets of individuals from the four corners of Quebec and Canada who worked hard to earn that money. That is why the government has a duty to use that money responsibly and reasonably. Most of all, it has to spend so as to meet the needs and priorities of the public—because, again, it is our money.
The government can also use the budget to implement its vision for society, the vision it has for the future. We saw that in Quebec with the construction of hydroelectric dams, which continue to make the Quebec nation an ambitious, visionary and decidedly green nation. I will say, however, that if we want to find a vision of the future, then we need to look somewhere other than this Liberal budget.
If we take a close look at the budget, we see that the government's priority is more about saving its faltering marriage to the NDP than meeting the needs of Quebeckers and Canadians. While the Prime Minister plays political games and uses the treasury as his personal piggy bank to stay in power, everybody else is tightening their belts and wondering how they will pay their mortgage.
We are talking about inflation, recession, the economic slowdown and skyrocketing interest rates, but the government has not seen fit to implement preventive measures to prepare the economy for the possibility of rough times ahead in the coming months and years. This government is completely out of touch with the economic situation and its day-to-day impact on the lives of real people. Since these ministers are chauffeured around and do not often take the time to look beyond Ottawa and the greater Toronto area, I will use the rest of my time to explain what is happening in areas such as mine, the Lower St. Lawrence, and how their inaction is making life difficult.
The first urgent issue is housing. It is not complicated. There is virtually nothing available on the market in my region. According to the most recent data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, the vacancy rate in Rimouski is 0.4% this year compared to 0.2% last year. That is a slight improvement, but it is nothing to write home about. To give members an idea, a healthy real estate market usually has a vacancy rate of about 3%. We are nowhere near finding a balance between the current vacancy rate of 0.4% and the average of 3%.
That imbalance is having unprecedented consequences for my region. I held a housing summit in my riding in March to better understand and identify those consequences. Here are some of the things that the organizations and people on the ground shared with me. There is no longer any such thing as affordable housing. The housing units that are available are unaffordable or not fit to live in. Requests for emergency assistance have tripled since the beginning of the pandemic. Obviously, there are not enough resources to help all of those people and many are being left to fend for themselves. Emergency shelters, particularly in Rimouski and the surrounding areas, are full to overflowing. It is unprecedented. People were homeless in Rimouski in the middle of winter. Spending the night outside in the Lower St. Lawrence area in the middle of winter is far from pleasant.
I have heard some extremely disturbing stories. Students looking for housing are being approached by older men offering to put them up in exchange for services. That is completely unacceptable. Staff at addiction treatment centres have even told me that people cannot leave their facilities because there is nowhere go.
Given all the precariousness and the distress people are feeling, one might think the government would have made it a priority to tackle the housing crisis, but no. The Liberals have completely dropped the ball. There is nothing at all for housing in the latest budget—zero, nada, niet, not one penny.
The government members are patting themselves on the back and quoting data from the 2022 budget. It is unbelievable. How can this be happening? A crisis is going on, but no investment is being made to find solutions that could end it. The disconnect is staggering.
However, the demands of the Bloc Québécois and community organizations were fairly clear and specific. For instance, the government was asked to permanently renew the rapid housing initiative and to increase the rent supplement transfer.
The need to speed up the transfer of funds between governments was also discussed. With each day that the federal government holds on to funds instead of passing them on to Quebec to send where they are needed, construction costs keep rising and our students, families and seniors keep growing poorer. How much longer do we have to wait for action? Urgent action is needed now to resolve the housing crisis.
Another area where we hoped the government would deliver on expectations is employment insurance. This issue has been a topic of discussion for a long time. When the Liberal government came to power in 2015, it was one of their election promises. When it came back to power in 2019, it did not keep its promise then either. In 2021, it made the same promise again. We were told that consultations were being held to find out what was going on, but they know what is going on. They know the problems and they know the solutions. What is missing is the will to act, the action.
I have not forgotten the Liberal promise of 2015, and I can say that the rights groups advocating for the unemployed have not forgotten it either. The unemployed men and women who are waiting for the government to deliver real reform have definitely not forgotten it.
Currently, six in 10 workers who pay into employment insurance are not eligible for it because the eligibility criteria no longer reflect the reality of the labour market in 2023. These are not people who hope and pray for an unemployment cheque, they are people who pay into the fund. It is not complicated: this program was set up many years ago and has not been updated. There has been no reform. Naturally, it no longer reflects reality. I hope that the government will take action on this for once and for all.
As mentioned, on reading budget 2023, we learn that the government is not planning for any reform before 2030. The Liberals promised reform in 2015. During the 2019 election, they said they would do it.
In 2021, they called an early election. We all remember what a good idea it was to change government and call an election in 2021. What is more, they did it in the middle of the pandemic, when they were telling people to wear their mask and maintain social distancing. Then the government and its Prime Minister, the member for Papineau, went out and took photos with babies. They acted like the pandemic was over because they wanted to win the election. They did not want to change things for people. They wanted to return with a majority government. It is not easy to be in a minority government.
Every day, this government shows us that it does not care one iota about democracy. We know that it entered into an alliance with the NDP, which has been doing its bidding for some time. This is not new. The NDP also serves the government by supporting its gag orders. There have already been a dozen gag orders since the government and the NDP, which calls itself the New Democratic Party, struck a deal.
Let us come back to the budget. My colleagues will understand that it is quite difficult to just go along with it. I hope that the people listening to us at home will realize what is happening in this democracy. It is now operating under multiple closure motions to allow the government or an opposition party to save face. That is what we are currently putting up with in a G7 country.
I will repeat that six out of 10 workers who pay into EI are unable to access it. In the Lower St. Lawrence area, back home, seasonal work is a large part of the economic activity and the lives of workers. A strong EI system would help build solid regions and ensure that people keep living in our regions and do not leave.
The EI reform is urgent. It is part of the support measures that are necessary for seasonal work, which is an economic driver in our regions. I am thinking mainly of tourism, agriculture and the fishery. We can discuss that.
All of these sectors rely on seasonal activities. It is not because people do not want to work in certain seasons. Potatoes cannot be planted in the middle of winter. Some government ministers do not seem to grasp how it works. People are still wondering about this in 2023.
Another issue I absolutely must address has to do with seniors, specifically the inequity suffered by people aged 65 to 75 who are not getting an increase in their OAS benefits. The government is completely out to lunch on this. It is yet another broken election promise. I hope the government will do something once and for all.
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Madam Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for you and the office you hold. However, my colleague's behaviour is completely unacceptable. I hope that you are taking note of it. My colleagues in the House noticed it, as have I.
Here is the question that I have for my colleague. We are currently experiencing a housing crisis. There are no new investments in the most recent federal budget to address that crisis.
In Rimouski, in my riding, we have a record vacancy rate of 0.4%.
I would like my colleague to tell us why the government has not done anything or invested anything in the most recent budget to create—
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Madam Speaker, we hope to exercise our democratic right in the House. We do not want to be gagged and we do not want to have to repeatedly rise on points of order, as my colleague from Timmins—James Bay has been trying to do in the last few seconds.
My colleague—
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Madam Speaker, the member is part of the New Democratic Party, but it is not very democratic to talk while other members are talking.
Once again, the new gag order party—
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Madam Speaker, this evening's debate has been very animated.
The first thing that jumps out at me and that I cannot ignore is the point of order raised by my colleague from Timmins—James Bay, who is asking us to return to the budget debate. Earlier, this same colleague and his party imposed a gag order to cut members' speaking time. So much for lessons in democracy and comments on the need to return to the debate at hand.
Mr. Charlie Angus: Is that a question for me? I am ready to answer my colleague. Does he have a question for me?
Mr. Maxime Blanchette-Joncas: Madam Speaker, we can hear him talking again. I would like you to intervene.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. It seemed like she was playing the violin for us, but it was all sounding a bit off-key.
My colleague spoke about waiving the interest on student loans. Today, students are out in front of the Parliament buildings as part of “Support Our Science” day because the federal government has not indexed student grants for 20 years. Student grants have not been indexed to the cost of living for the past 20 years, yet my colleague is boasting about supporting students. What is even more shameful is that her party did not even show up at the multi-party press conference.
I would like to ask my colleague the following question. Can she name one thing that has not been indexed to the cost of living in the past 20 years other than grants for graduate students?
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Madam Speaker, I listened closely to the speech by my colleague from Victoria.
Today, we are seeing the hypocrisy of the New Democratic Party, which I am now calling the NGP, where the G stands for gag, as in gag order.
Today, that party, which is trying to lambaste the government, is not on its second, fourth, sixth or eighth, but on its 13th closure motion. The New Democratic Party is using anti-democratic gag orders to cut the democratic speaking time of parliamentarians in the House.
We have no lessons to learn on morality from the social justice warriors the NDP members would have us believe they really are.
On this May 1, Workers' Day, if standing up for workers is such a good thing to do, why did they not include EI reform in their agreement?
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