44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 8, 2022 10:00AM
- Apr/8/22 10:46:31 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-2
Mr. Speaker, we are facing multiple crises, both current and looming, so we expected this budget to put forward concrete solutions to address the risks associated with these crises.
First is the public health crisis. After living with the pandemic for over two years, we are now entering yet another wave.
Next is the inflation crisis. For months now, inflation has been higher than expected. That seems unlikely to change for quite some time and will probably even go up. People are very worried.
Of course, there is the war in Ukraine, which is directly victimizing the Ukrainian people, who are being subjected to bombings and unspeakable atrocities. This conflict is impacting the whole planet, and we are feeling the repercussions here too.
Finally, there is the environmental crisis, which is causing all the climate catastrophes we have been witnessing.
As the crises multiply, so do the risks. These are uncertain times, and the budget was the best opportunity to protect us from all those risks. This budget, however, despite listing virtually all the problems in detail, addresses virtually none of them. What irony.
What we see in this budget, as we did in the previous budgets and in everything the government does, is a federal government that is more centralizing than ever. The government is once again using the budget as an opportunity to further centralize the federation's power. This is a real pattern. The bulldozer is moving forward slowly but very surely.
Here is one example. The government wants to tackle the housing issue, but it is making threats. It is telling the municipalities that it will cut infrastructure funding if they do not build enough housing. The federal government is once again infringing on other jurisdictions. It is once again centralizing. Once again, paternalistic Ottawa wants to be the be-all and end-all. They want to make all the decisions and tell everyone what to do. That is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for Quebec.
The irony is that, although the House recognizes my nation with its words, the government is trying to force the Quebec nation into the Canadian mould it has created. We can no longer live in our own way. This budget is a reminder of that. It is becoming increasingly difficult to do things our own way.
The best example of that is clearly health care funding. Ottawa has failed to include in the budget any commitments to review its funding for the next five years. We are in the midst of a health crisis. Our system is under maximum pressure. Health care workers are at the end of their rope, and we have had it. Rather than funding the health care system within its means, know-it-all Ottawa is telling us that we are not doing enough, even though it is not providing adequate funding.
While Quebec and the provinces are asking for increased funding with no strings attached, the feds are telling us that they only want to talk about the strings, not the funding. For instance, on page 155, the English version of the budget document reads, “Any conversation between the federal government and the provinces and territories will focus on delivering better health care outcomes for Canadians”.
This means more standards, without funding, even though the Parliamentary Budget Officer points out each and every year that transfers need to be set at 35% to restore the fiscal balance between Ottawa and the provinces. The Conference Board and the Council of the Federation both agree. This is what Quebec wants, what the provinces want and what the Bloc wants, but know-it-all Ottawa says no. Ottawa says we will get nothing except strings.
Transfers are currently set at 22%, and the Minister of Finance justified her inaction by citing a tax point transfer from the 1960s. She has dismissed decades of cuts and ignored all the serious studies on the subject. This is called being arrogant, in a big way.
Now let us talk about seniors. The cost of everything is going up. The cost of food is going to skyrocket because of the war in Ukraine. Seniors are always the first to suffer as a result of inflation. Seniors often live on fixed incomes that are not indexed to inflation. The budget should have done more to help them out, but the feds decided not to do that.
The Minister of Finance then adds insult to injury. In her budget she presents a graph showing that seniors are much wealthier than the rest of the population and that the feds have already done enough.
Groups representing seniors feel betrayed: We now have two classes of seniors and the government is not responding to the needs. The minister presented her little graph saying that seniors have nothing to complain about, they already have plenty of money. That is what we see.
As for inflation, with all the crises that are unfolding, high inflation is especially worrisome. The government should be lending a helping hand to seniors and the least fortunate, but it is doing little to nothing to help.
It should be lending a hand to SMEs, which are the hardest hit by high inflation, including family farms, taxi drivers and bus drivers. There is nothing for them. The feds describe the problem of inflation in the budget, but do not offer any help.
I want to give you a real example showing that Ottawa identifies the problems but does nothing about them. In the budget, there is one paragraph on the problem of the semiconductor shortage. There are specialized businesses in Quebec that we can be proud of and that have existed for several generations. These businesses repurpose trucks into ambulances and armoured trucks, for example, or add custom cargo boxes. That is a Quebec specialty.
As a result of the semiconductor shortage, major truck manufacturers are not getting product out and our specialized businesses are having trouble procuring trucks. We have been telling the minister about this for months.
In December, we even supported Bill C‑2 because she told us that the shortage would be resolved imminently, and she would even send us the figures to prove it. We believed her and we acted in good faith. Nothing was done and we never saw the figures. It was completely false. The problem has only worsened since then.
Businesses now run the risk of going bankrupt. We might lose for good specialized industries that have been operating for generations. The government's role is to support businesses and get them through the crisis.
Businesses joined forces and reached out to the government. They asked to meet with the minister. The Bloc has been waiting for a meeting about this for months, but we have not heard a peep.
The minister mentioned the problem with the semiconductors, but did not offer any solutions. She is not doing anything to save this sector, which is so important to Quebec's economy. All she said was that the government will look into photonics to see whether Canada could manufacture its own semiconductors. There was no indication of when, however.
That is actually not the problem. The government needs to help the companies that are going to shut down, because Ford and GM are manufacturing very few trucks as a result of the semiconductor shortage. These companies just need a little help until the American giants resume production. Has Ottawa abandoned these specialized industries because they are in Quebec? If they were in Ontario would the feds have stepped in? That worries me.
There has been one crisis after another, but the most important one right now is the environmental crisis. The climate is undergoing disruptive changes and we must now take drastic measures if we want to avoid disaster.
Even as the IPCC is saying that we need to drop any new oil projects if we are to stand a chance of avoiding disaster, know-it-all Ottawa goes and does the opposite. It sends its Minister of Environment and Climate Change to announce a one-billion barrel project. This minister is the same person who founded Équiterre with Laure Waridel and climbed the CN Tower for the environment when he was at Greenpeace.
With one gesture, one decision, he has dealt a terrible blow to the planet. Very few humans will have done this much damage to the climate. With this gesture, he undid all of his past work and turned his back on his values and commitments. He threw all that away to serve the federal government, which is a petro-state and an environmental embarrassment.
Elsewhere in the world, environment ministers have resigned for far less than that. From now on, this is how this minister is going to be remembered. I would like to remind the House that Marshall Pétain is not exactly remembered for winning the battle of Verdun.
The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, or the pollution minister, chose to make his announcement the day before the budget, just before the House rises for two weeks. That was intentional.
I thought that the government would include some extraordinary environmental measures in the budget to try to compensate for this terrible compromise, but it did not. Instead, the budget mainly contains measures that are vague and weak, such as a future public-private fund like the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which is a flop.
All the concrete measures in the budget support the fossil fuel industry. The budget allocates billions of dollars for carbon capture projects for the oil sands, a technology that is underdeveloped and that will cost a fortune, if it is ever actually implemented. According to the International Energy Agency, if the private sector were to cover the cost of such projects, it would quadruple the price at the pump.
Furthermore, the feds have announced that they will support the development of small mobile nuclear reactors to allow the industry to extract more oil and sell the gas they save. This is the government's plan for the environment, despite all the risks and health concerns.
To wit, on Wednesday, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change announced a project that will extract a billion barrels and, the next day, the Minister of Finance announced more support for the oil and gas sector. That is Ottawa's plan for the environment.
Illustrating just how far Ottawa is going in the opposite direction of the IPCC report, journalist Philippe Mercure, from La Presse wrote the following:
This report contains lengthy passages about the risks of “lock-ins”, meaning building new infrastructure that will pollute for decades and undermine our efforts.
One would have thought that UN Secretary-General António Guterres was speaking directly to the Minister of the Environment when he presented the document on Monday.
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” he said.
Now more than ever, being part of Canada means choosing to be an environmental imbecile in the world's eyes.
The Bloc Québécois had five demands, five unconditional expectations, and called for a suite of more targeted measures. The first four of our five unconditional expectations are not in the budget: health, seniors, green finance and an acceptable transition, and concrete measures to address inflation.
At least the budget addresses first nations housing. That was one of our five demands. It is in the budget, so now all we have to do is hope that, for once, that earmarked money will actually flow and improve the lives of indigenous people. What we have seen to date is that the Liberals vote to put up cash but do not spend it. That causes all kinds of problems, such as lack of access to drinking water, that never go away.
The budget contains housing measures, but the Bloc Québécois obviously does not think there is enough money in the budget for social housing. Housing is a major problem, and the solution is increasing supply. The budget talks about 6,000 affordable housing units, which apparently means a two-bedroom apartment for $1,200 a month. That does not fit with the Bloc Québécois's definition of social housing. The money is there, but much more needs to be done.
As I said at the start of my speech, we are grappling with numerous crises. The government is aware of them and names them in the budget, but does not actually do anything about most of them. Any solutions it does put forward are poorly conceived. That is a problem.
In addition, what we are seeing is an increasingly centralist state that interferes and wants to impose its own model and make everything fit a certain mould. The feds are taking a father-knows-best approach and telling the provinces and Quebec, “All right kids, here is what you need to do and how you need to be.” That is unacceptable.
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- Apr/8/22 12:15:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a lot to be said about the budget; my colleagues will say more when we resume debate. Unfortunately, I have to call out the government's tradition of systematically presenting the budget just before a parliamentary break. It prefers to tour around selling its version of the facts than to face the criticism of every elected member and every legislator in the House, and I strongly object to that. We will have a great deal more to say.
For now, I move, seconded by the member for Saint-Jean:
That the amendment be amended by adding the following:
“(d) increase health transfers as unanimously requested by Quebec, the provinces and territories;
(e) increase the old age pension for those aged 65 to 74;
(f) take concrete action against climate change;
(g) offer solutions to the rising cost of living for individuals and their businesses; and
(h) consult and respect the jurisdictions of Quebec, the provinces and territories.”
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- Apr/8/22 12:18:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada is short 1.8 million housing units. The government's plan is to provide 100,000 more units. It is true that we need to build more housing units, but saying so and doing so are two different things.
I also want to raise the issue of social housing. Even though the budget does mention it indirectly, the government chose to use the expression “affordable housing”. That is not at all the same thing, and it could turn out that a two-bedroom apartment for $1,200 per month is considered affordable housing. The government says it is going to build 6,000 units, which is really not enough. We need clearly defined social housing, not affordable housing.
I also criticized another aspect of the speech. In the budget, Ottawa is threatening municipalities by telling them they will get their infrastructure transfer if, and only if, Ottawa thinks they have built enough social housing units. It is not up to Ottawa to tell municipalities how to do things and play father knows best. We expected much better.
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- Apr/8/22 12:20:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I, too, wish to greet my friend from Simcoe North. It is truly a great pleasure to work with him on the Standing Committee on Finance. Even though we are not in the same party, it is always a pleasure to listen to his proposals, which are always constructive.
Unfortunately, since arriving in the House in 2015, I have seen the Liberal government bulldoze and crush what used to be federalism. We now have a centralizing, hyper-interventionist state where the provinces, and thus Quebec, my nation, have no freedom to exist.
The historic compromise of the federation was that Quebec could have a place in Canada while being different from it. We do not believe it and that is why we are sovereignists, as it will be far easier for us to be good neighbours than bad roommates.
Unfortunately, what the budget shows us once again is that Ottawa is going to tell us what to do in health care. As I was just saying, Ottawa is going to impose conditions before going ahead with the transfers. Ottawa is making funding for infrastructure contingent upon the creation of social housing. The Liberal government is telling everyone what to do.
This stands in contrast to the recent article by Francis Fukuyama, who states that liberalism can exist in small nations such as Quebec, Scotland or Catalonia, where people are proud of who they are and where they can do things their own way and not just for the sake of doing it. However, this multiculturalist government, which wants to force everyone into the same mould, does not endorse this view.
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- Apr/8/22 12:22:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I salute my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith and congratulate her on her excellent French. We always appreciate being asked questions in French in the House. I commend her and I thank her.
Indeed, there is nothing in the budget. In 2015 the government said that there would be consultations with the provinces the following year to come to some sort of agreement. We were told the same thing in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. Yesterday we were told that there was nothing in the budget but the government would sit down and negotiate with the provinces next year. That is what the government told us during question period.
We do not believe it. The health care system in Quebec, much like others across Canada, has been under a great deal of pressure for a little over two years because of the pandemic, and people are burned out. The system needs more funding. This is urgent. Quebec has been calling for more funding, but the federal government is missing in action.
I humbly encourage my colleague to join us in saying that this is unacceptable and to vote against this budget.
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- Apr/8/22 12:24:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Kitchener South-Hespeler. I completely agree with him.
On the very week the IPCC released a report stating that there should not be any new oil projects, the former environmentalist who climbed the CN Tower announced that Canada is going to launch a new one-billion-barrel project.
The next day, the government presented its budget. We were hoping that the Liberals would counterbalance this historically unacceptable compromise. We know that environment ministers around the world have resigned over much less that that. This dishonest compromise makes no sense.
However, what do we see in the budget? Fossil fuel subsidies. We are cutting our emissions, so now we can produce more.
There is an urgent need for action, but it seems as though the government is not there at all. For the government, the industry is the most important thing. The government is extremely short-sighted when it comes to fighting climate change.
The Bloc Québécois will continue to put pressure on the government because this is unacceptable. I am very disappointed that the Minister of Environment and Climate Change compromised on this. It is historically unacceptable.
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- Apr/8/22 12:26:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in this subamendment, the Bloc Québécois is essentially proposing the expectations it had for the budget, which it had previously expressed to the Minister of Finance and at the Standing Committee on Finance.
In order to prepare our proposals, we looked at everything that is happening in Quebec, what the expectations for the federal budget were, and what needs to be done. That is what we have put in this subamendment and what the people of Quebec all agree on.
Our proposals should be welcomed by a left-wing party like the NDP. There is, of course, the temptation to centralize. If the Sherbrooke declaration is any indication, things should be fine, aside from the fact that the NDP has vowed to vote for the budget along with the government, so that it will not lose a vote of confidence.
My guess is that the NDP will vote against our proposal, even if they are in favour of it.
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