44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 16, 2022 10:00AM
- Jun/16/22 11:51:44 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-9
Madam Speaker, I too will ask my colleague a question in French.
I understand that my colleague agrees with me about reviewing the appointment process. We have said it before: The “Liberalist” is appalling. I am not the one who came up with the name, by the way—it was the government. When even the government refers to this list of conditions by that name, we can imagine what impact this can have on the public. This really needs to be addressed quickly.
I would like to know what my colleague thinks about the example from Quebec, the Bastarache commission, during which former justice Bastarache reviewed the appointment process and proposed conditions that are better than those in place at the federal level.
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- Jun/16/22 11:52:39 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Madam Speaker, I will not miss any opportunity to say that Quebec is forward-thinking and is doing great things that we should emulate more often.
We need to have a much more transparent, non-partisan and depoliticized process. I will say it again, because this is key to having confidence in the justice system: The legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches must be kept separate, which is not the case with the “Liberalist”. This example is painfully obvious.
Since most of the judges who sit in Quebec are federally appointed superior court judges, efforts to ensure a non-partisan appointment process will have a particular impact on the routine workings of the courts.
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- Jun/16/22 12:42:07 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question from my friend from La Pointe-de-l'Île.
We made some great changes to the process following the 2015 election. We created regional committees made up of Canadian Bar Association members and people who know the community and can tell the Department of Justice whether or not a person is qualified before their name is put on the judicial appointment list.
I followed the process launched in western Quebec, and I am very pleased that the Minister of Justice can now only appoint people who are on the lists approved by these committees. That said, the process can always be improved.
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- Jun/16/22 2:25:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, people are having to line up for two days to get a passport because this government did not anticipate that Quebeckers and Canadians would be eager to travel this summer. When these people manage to get their passports, they head to the airport. The government also failed to anticipate that. The Liberals did not make the connection that more passports mean more people at the airport.
These ministers do not anticipate anything. They spend their time telling Quebec how to manage its health care system, its infrastructure and its language planning.
Why do they not mind their own business instead of interfering in Quebec's business? They already have a hard enough time looking after their own affairs.
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- Jun/16/22 2:26:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the only thing this government sees coming are requests for access to information. When it comes to hiding information from the media and the public, the Liberals are officially the best of all time. Last year, 7,000 complaints were sent to the Information Commissioner, which represents an increase of 70%. The Liberals are the Wayne Gretzky of secrecy.
When we look at the most opaque departments, it becomes obvious. We are talking about the Prime Minister's Office itself, since leadership comes from the top, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, and the Canada Border Services Agency.
If the federal government has so many skeletons then why does it not just clean out its closet instead of always interfering in Quebec's jurisdictions?
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Mr. Speaker, the Institute for Research on Public Policy is an independent, bilingual, pan-Canadian organization that nobody could suspect of harbouring separatist sympathies.
However, in a recently released study, the organization says that the new Official Languages Act will not slow the decline of French. To slow the decline of French, Bill C‑13 must be compatible with Quebec's Charter of the French Language.
Does the minister understand that the only way to protect French in Quebec is to make it so that only Quebec's language laws apply in Quebec?
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Mr. Speaker, regurgitated talking points are not an answer.
The author of the study, economist Mario Polèse, said that equality between the two languages is no longer sufficient because the two languages are not equal in their ability to attract newcomers or in their importance, period. This means that French needs to be prioritized.
The problem with Bill C-13 is that the minister continues to put English and French on an equal footing in Quebec, when in fact, only French is under threat.
Putting both languages on an equal footing means stomping on my language with both feet.
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- Jun/16/22 9:08:32 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I have always wanted to answer this question for the farmers in eastern Canada.
They are disproportionately being impacted by the fertilizer tariffs. Forty per cent of the fertilizer that comes into eastern Canada, and that is Quebec east, is imported, so they pay the most tariff out of all the farmers across Canada. The fertilizer trade is a global phenomenon. Forty per cent of the nitrogen that comes out of the world's production of fertilizer comes out of Russia or Russian-owned assets.
Putting a 35% tariff on Canadian farmers is fixing nothing. It is actually penalizing Canadian farmers. The Liberal government seems to be very good at that.
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- Jun/16/22 10:19:36 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I often find that my friend from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa is more aware of what happens on the land in the place where he is rooted than on that of other members. We cannot separate them. The global warming crisis, the climate emergency, drives the water crisis. They are inextricably linked.
We have to set a date and start moving away from fossil fuels. It will be hard. It was hard for Quebec to shut down the asbestos industry, but if we do not plan to shut down the fossil fuel industry in the near term, we will not be able to protect our water, we will not be able to preserve the possibility that farmers can plant crops that have a chance of surviving and we will create mega-droughts.
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- Jun/16/22 10:24:13 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I would like to continue along the same lines. The food crisis is directly linked to the climate crisis. It began before the COVID-19 pandemic, although that amplified it. It also began before the war. As a country, it is imperative that we set meaningful targets and find ways to begin a real energy transition. That means Canada has to stop approving projects like Bay du Nord, which made absolutely no sense.
Let us think of the droughts in western Canada last year, or the flooding and the fires they had in British Columbia. These were all major disasters. Things do not appear to be as bad this year, but we certainly have had excess water in Quebec. We have had far too much rainfall, an abnormal amount, I would say. Farmers cannot even dry their hay, because sooner or later a cloud comes along and it rains for 15 minutes. That is enough to spoil the whole process. The climate is unstable.
A while ago, we had very high winds. The Lanaudière farmers' union actually told me it is asking the Government of Quebec for a support program for maple syrup plantations. The damage was extremely severe, and there is concern for the safety of the landowners, who will be cleaning up all those precariously fallen trees themselves. Maple syrup plantations take more than just a couple of years to turn a profit. It is more like 20, 30 or 40 years. That is the reality. It has begun. The longer we wait to take real action, the worse it will get.
Food insecurity is happening here because of COVID‑19, the housing crisis, and rising interest rates, with inflation playing a role. People who paid too much for their homes are up to their eyeballs in debt. Some unpleasant stories will play out in the months to come. A crisis response team was put together in my riding in anticipation of the housing crisis this coming July 1, because housing is too expensive. When people pay a greater portion of their income for housing, where else can they cut spending but on groceries? People eat noodles more often, and they eat less. I hear people talk about this every week.
Just this morning, someone told me that they receive old age security and that this government is stubbornly refusing to increase it. I will digress here because I talk about this subject every chance I get. This creates food insecurity. We need to be vigilant.
I want to appeal to all members to recognize the importance of maintaining our social safety net. That is why the Bloc Québécois rises so often to protect our jurisdictions. People can say what they want, but the social safety net in Quebec is more effective than elsewhere. This means that we need our health transfers as well as an increase in old age security and the guaranteed income supplement. We have proposed easy solutions. We must ensure that we redistribute wealth equitably.
Let us now talk about the global food crisis and the war in Ukraine. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, 44 countries will need aid this year, and 53 countries will face food insecurity in one form or another. Those are big numbers. This appalling war is being carried out in such a way as to create food insecurity. It becomes clearer the more we analyze it. We are working on this issue at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, which received Ukrainian elected officials. I have to confess that I found this extremely difficult. I would like to tip my hat to these people, who are standing guard and are showing exemplary courage.
In this war, Russia is targeting infrastructure and deliberately blocking ports. The Ukrainians are unable to export last year's crops. This year's crops are growing, but there is nowhere to store them. It is a serious problem. We absolutely need to create a safe corridor to ensure the export of grain out of Ukraine, not just for us, but for the entire world.
We have to think about food insecurity. As long as there is hunger, there will be no peace. There have already been several coups in African countries recently. This will create a lot of political instability.
I hope I am wrong, but the implications of the war in Ukraine are much greater than currently projected. At some point, someone is going to have to make a move. Exporting this grain is of capital importance.
I think that Canada is capable of helping with respect to temporary storage infrastructure, obviously located outside the combat zones so that it too is not targeted. To save the crops, they need to be moved.
Canada can also increase its contribution to the UN World Food Programme, as was mentioned earlier. It is important. The Oxfam representatives who testified at committee told us that Canada's international food aid contribution right now is half of what it was a few years ago. That is due to inflation, and we need to adjust it. We can afford to do that, and we have no right to refuse. That is something meaningful we can do.
We need to provide constructive international aid. A few weeks ago, I was in Ghana. I visited the main FAO offices for Africa, which are located in Accra. People were telling me that only 8% of international aid goes to improving agriculture because most international aid is geared to generate specific demands. A somewhat exaggerated example is that a tractor may be provided, but there is a requirement that the parts be purchased from the supplier. We need to invest in the long term, in infrastructure, while respecting local cultures. We could develop food autonomy.
I am sure it will come as no surprise when I say I am going to talk about supply management again. It is another option, something we could do that works well here. It needs to be protected, and we must stop selling it out bit by bit in the international agreements we sign. We should export the model. African countries are being flooded with cheap food surpluses from developed countries, hindering the development of local production. We should organize local farmers. In many African countries, women do the farming, but they have no bargaining power or market organization. This kind of thing costs nothing. We have the know-how, so I think we have a duty to go there.
I now want to talk about what needs to be done in this country. We must ensure that we are self-sufficient when it comes to food. I was happy to hear a lot of speeches about how we need to make life easier for our farmers. Charity begins at home. We need to give to others, but we must first ensure that we are protected. We must protect supply management.
We must not implement unnecessary restrictions, such as labelling trans fats on ground beef. It makes absolutely no sense. Ground beef is a whole food; people know what they are buying.
Taxing pollution is a good thing, but there is no point taxing grain drying, because there is no alternative and it only ends up increasing the cost of food.
We need to stay focused and be smart about what we are doing. We need to support our agricultural producers' environmental innovations. When they do something to protect the environment, that is worth money. We pay them money, we ensure that the money is at their disposal for the next innovation. We need to trust our farmers. They will not disappoint us.
We need to listen to our people. This morning I shared with the minister a letter from the UPA dated May 18, asking for emergency support because of the skyrocketing increase in input production costs. Costs have gone up by 50% compared to the consumer price index, which is around 5%. Farmers need meaningful help. Farm debt is extremely high. These farmers are currently burning through all of their cash. In a few months, we are going to start seeing businesses close down and disappear. Is that what we want? Obviously the answer is no, so we need to do something about it.
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- Jun/16/22 10:41:46 p.m.
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Madam Chair, before he started his speech I told my colleague that he would be the cherry on top of the sundae. He said that he might just be the sundae. He is both the cherry and the sundae. The teacher in me is irrationally happy to hear him talk about passing on knowledge and about sharing Canada's success stories, especially when it comes to supply management. At the same time, he also reminds us not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and the historian part of me loves that as well.
I would like to hear my colleague talk about the mistakes we should not repeat and the success stories from Quebec and Canada that deserve to be better known.
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