44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 3, 2022 10:00AM
- Nov/3/22 4:01:38 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, for the past several months, I have been travelling across Canada—to more than two dozen cities and towns—to meet with Canadian workers and Canadian businesses.
I visited an auto parts manufacturer in Etobicoke, a potash mine outside Saskatoon, and the women and men in Sherbrooke who make the boots our armed forces wear around the world.
I visited the port of Saint John in New Brunswick, and a family farm in Olds, Alberta, and in Dartmouth, Brampton and Calgary, I spent time with some of the truckers who keep our economy humming. The Canadians I spoke to were all so proud of our country. They were proud of the hard work they do every day to feed Canada and the world, build our cars, send our goods to global markets and raise their children, but they were also anxious about whether our future will be as prosperous as our past, and anxious about paying the bills today.
That is where I want to start, with the high cost of living so many of us, along with so many Canadians, are concerned about.
I know it has felt like just one thing after another since COVID first reached our shores. We turned the economy off, and then we turned it back on again. Vladimir Putin illegally invaded Ukraine, and now we are dealing with inflation. These are related, of course. Global inflation is not created by the decisions of any one government alone, but by the combined aftershocks of two and a half years of historic turmoil.
Inflation was 6.9% in September, after falling for the third month in a row. That is lower than in the U.S., the U.K., and the eurozone.
For Canadians feeling the pinch at the checkout counter, or when they fill their tanks with gas, it is still too high. This is a challenging time for so many of us—for our friends, for our families, for our neighbours.
It is important, as both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, that I am honest with Canadians about the challenges that still lie ahead.
Interest rates are rising as the Bank of Canada steps in to tackle inflation, and that means our economy is slowing down. It means there are people whose mortgage payments are rising. It means business is no longer booming in the same way it was since we left our homes after the COVID lockdowns and went back out into the world. That is the case in Canada. That is the case in the United States, and that is the case in economies, big and small, around the world.
Canada cannot avoid the global slowdown any more than we could have avoided COVID once it had begun infecting the world, but we will be ready. Indeed, we are ready. That is because, for the past seven years, our government has been reinforcing Canada's social safety net. We have improved many important programs and added some new ones too.
These investments in Canadians are like a well-built house with a solid roof—needed in all seasons and in all weather, but most essential when the temperature drops.
That is why, as fall turns to winter, we will continue to stand up to those who would cut the EI and the pensions Canadians have been contributing to for their entire working lives, and need today more than ever. It is why we created the Canada child benefit and why we are making child care more affordable. It is why we enhanced the benefits that those who served with our flag on their shoulder depend on. It is why we doubled the Canada student grant, to make it a little easier for all young people to go to college or university or to pursue an apprenticeship. It is why we enhanced the Canada workers benefit, and why we increased both old age security and the guaranteed income supplement.
That is why it is so important that the Canada pension plan and our most important benefits are all indexed to inflation. In today's fall economic statement, that is why we are delivering on a plan that millions of Canadians voted for just over a year ago and why we are delivering new measures to enhance the social safety net that is there to support all Canadians.
We are working to deliver lower credit card fees, so that small businesses do not have to choose between cutting into their already narrow margins and passing fees on to their customers. We are taxing share buybacks to make sure large corporations pay their fair share and to encourage them to reinvest their profits in Canadian workers and in Canada.
We are delivering a multi-generational home renovation tax credit, which will help families across Canada afford to have a grandparent or a family member with a disability move back in if they want to. We are tackling housing speculation and making sure that homes are for Canadians to live in, not a frequently flipped investment asset.
We are delivering on our commitment to make home ownership more affordable for young people and new Canadians with a new tax-free first home savings account that will make it so much easier to save for a down payment. We are also delivering with a doubling of the first-time homebuyers' tax credit, to help cover the closing costs that come with buying that first home of one's own.
We are permanently eliminating interest on the federal portion of Canada student loans and Canada apprentice loans.
We are working to make sure families do not need to choose between taking their child to the dentist and putting food on the table. We are creating a new quarterly Canada workers benefit to deliver advance payments and put more money, sooner, into the pockets of our lowest-paid and often most essential workers. This means the Canada workers benefit will now support 4.2 million Canadians.
We are providing hundreds of dollars in new targeted support to low-income renters. For the Canadians who need it the most, we are doubling the GST credit for the next six months.
I have some very good news about that. For the 11 million Canadian households who need help the most, those GST cheques will start arriving in bank accounts and mailboxes tomorrow.
We are providing targeted inflation relief, because that is the right thing to do.
As the Bank of Canada fights inflation, we will not make its job harder. We are compassionate and we are also responsible.
Canada has the lowest deficit and the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7. In our April budget, with inflation in Canada and around the world elevated and still rising, we knew we had to chart a fiscally responsible course, and we did. In April we committed to bringing the deficit down to just 2% of GDP this year. Today, we forecast it will be just 1.3% of our $2.8-trillion economy.
We can bring the deficit down today because our pandemic spending worked. Thanks to the historic support we provided and thanks to the incredible resilience of Canadians, Canada is entering this time of a slowing global economy from a position of fundamental economic strength.
There are 400,000 more Canadians working today than before the pandemic. Our economy is now 103% the size it was before COVID hit. So far this year, Canada's economic growth has been the strongest in the G7, stronger than in the United States, stronger than in the United Kingdom, stronger than in Germany, stronger than in France and stronger than in Italy or Japan.
Thanks to that enviable economic performance, we are able to provide targeted support to the most vulnerable while still shrinking our deficit. In the months to come we will be able to invest in the Canadian economy and to be there for the Canadians who need it the most, because we were responsible in April and because we are keeping our powder dry today.
Canadians are tough, and the Canadian economy is resilient. That is why we can all be confident we will get through this, just as we have gotten through so much over the past two and a half years. In fact, there is no country in the world better placed than Canada to get through the coming global slowdown.
When we do, with our fundamental economic strengths preserved, and the pandemic recession behind us, there is no country in the world better placed than Canada to thrive in a post-COVID global economy.
We grow food to feed the world, and we mine the potash that farmers here and elsewhere need to grow their own. We have the critical minerals and metals that are essential for everything from cellphones to batteries to appliances to electric cars.
We have the natural resources to power the global net-zero transition and to support our allies with their energy security as that transition continues to pick up speed.
Critically, Canada is the democracy that has all of these resources in abundance.
The global economy is at a turning point. We are entering an era of friend-shoring, a time when our democratic partners and their most important companies are seeking to shift their dependence from dictatorships to democracies. That is why the Prime Minister and Chancellor Scholz signed an agreement in Newfoundland for Germany to buy Canadian hydrogen. That is why the United States has moved from a buy America to a buy North America policy on critical minerals and electric vehicles.
That is why our Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry has been signing agreements with global car manufacturers and battery makers—a new one almost every day, it seems to me.
That is why our Minister of Natural Resources is pitching Canada's critical minerals to the world and working hard with provinces and territories to get them out of the ground and to global markets. The world knows that Canada can build the electric vehicles of today and tomorrow. Canadians can mine and process the critical minerals that those vehicles, our phones and our computers are all made of, and Canadian energy workers, the very best in the world, can make Canada the leading provider of energy as the global economy moves to net zero.
Our allies are counting on us, and our government believes that this ongoing shift is the most significant opportunity for Canadian workers and Canadian businesses in a generation.
Seizing this opportunity is what our April budget invested in, and it is what this fall economic statement invests in, too.
With major investment tax credits for clean technology and clean hydrogen, we will make it more attractive for businesses to invest in Canada to produce the energy that will power a net-zero global economy.
We are launching a new Canada growth fund that will help attract the billions of dollars in new private capital required to fight climate change and to create good jobs in Canada at the same time. From critical minerals to ports to energy, we will continue to make it easier for businesses to invest in major projects in Canada, projects with meaningful indigenous participation, projects that meet the highest environmental standards, projects that will create good jobs and projects that will allow Canadian workers to drive our economy forward.
We will continue to invest in tackling the productivity challenge that is Canada's economic Achilles heel. We will continue to invest in making sure Canadians have the skills they need to get good-paying jobs, and we will continue to bring to Canada more of the skilled workers that our growing economy requires. However, we know these investments represent only a down payment on the work that lies ahead, so, in the months to come, we will continue to work hard to ensure that Canada is the best place in the world for businesses to invest and create good-paying jobs from coast to coast to coast.
Now, the investments we are making today and the ones we will continue to make will be crucial to the future of the Canadian economy. They will help make Canada a leader in the industries of tomorrow, and they will help to build an economy that is more sustainable and more prosperous for generations to come. However, what matters most is what these investments mean for Canadians. For energy workers in Alberta, investments in clean energy mean there will continue to be good-paying jobs for them and their children. For a young couple in Vancouver, more workers in the building trades mean more affordable homes for their new family. For auto workers in Windsor, Canadian leadership on electric vehicles means they will build the next generation of cars that have powered our economy for more than a century.
Canadian workers know how important our social safety net is, and that is why our government will never deplete the contributions that keep Canada's employment insurance and pensions strong.
Canadians know how important training is to equip them for valuable, good-paying jobs, so we are investing in that, too.
Canadian workers also know that the single most important thing—the difference between managing to pay their mortgage and fearing they could lose their home; the difference between paying the bills at the end of the month and falling behind—is a well-paid, stable job, doing work they are proud of with people who respect them and their skills.
That is why our overriding economic objective during COVID was to preserve Canadians' jobs, and that is why today, what Canadian workers need is a government with a real, robust industrial policy, a government committed to investing in the net-zero transition, to bringing in new private investment, and to helping create good-paying jobs from coast to coast to coast. That is what we have been doing, and that is what we are continuing to do today.
In 1903, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier stood in this House and said:
No, this is not a time for deliberation, this is a time for action.... We cannot wait because time does not wait; we cannot wait, because in these days of wonderful development, time lost is doubly lost; we cannot wait, because at this moment there is a transformation going on in the conditions of our national life which it would a be folly to ignore and a crime to overlook;...
He was speaking then about the transcontinental railway, one that connected Canada and the Canadian economy from east to west, and which helped usher in a new era of prosperity for the people of our growing country. That project, like Laurier himself, was imperfect. The prosperity and opportunity it brought were not shared equally with indigenous peoples, with women, with new Canadians, but his message then is one we should heed today, that we must heed today.
At the turn of the last century, Laurier and a generation of Canadian statesmen understood that Canada was at a turning point and that we could seize it or risk being swept aside by the manifest destiny of more ambitious leaders. Today, we are likewise at a pivotal moment.
The global green transition calls for an industrial transformation comparable in scale only to the Industrial Revolution itself, and Canada is blessed with the talented people, the natural resources and the manufacturing base needed to drive that transformation. At the same time, Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine has upended geopolitics, reinforcing for our allies the value of turning to each other, to us, for the critical elements of their supply chains and for their energy security.
Together, these two great shifts represent a generational opportunity to build a thriving and sustainable Canadian economy. We can lead the world in a way that far exceeds our footprint as a country of just 39 million people.
We can lead the fight against climate change, and we can do it in a way that creates good jobs and new businesses for Canadians from coast to coast to coast. We can build affordable homes and deliver affordable child care, helping our economy grow and making life more affordable for middle-class Canadian families. We can ensure that everyone in this country can enjoy the prosperity we are investing in together.
That is the future that we can create for ourselves and for our children. However, we cannot wait, because time truly does not wait. We cannot wait, because in these days of wonderful development, time lost is doubly lost.
I know that times feel tough right now, and they are, but we have a well-built house with a solid roof, and we have survived far colder winters before. Just as fall turns to winter, so, too, does winter turn to spring.
There are warmer days ahead. We will reach them together by building a country where everyone can earn a good living for a hard day's work, by building an economy that works for everyone, by investing in the Canada we are all so proud of today so that we can be even prouder of our amazing country tomorrow because, of all the countries in the world, the 21st century will surely belong to Canada.
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- Nov/3/22 4:34:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for her speech.
Her speech sounded nice enough, but take a look at the concrete measures in the economic statement and try to see what is new compared to last spring's budget. It is disappointing. The minister just gave two examples of measures that were adopted before this statement was presented.
What I liked about her speech is that she recognized that there is an inflationary crisis at the moment, and she acknowledged the risk of an imminent recession. However, I find it unfortunate that there are no new concrete measures that would show Canadians how this crisis will be dealt with, how they will be helped and supported.
For example, we know the employment insurance system is not working. It is broken. Now is the time to fix it, before the country goes into recession. However, that was not announced in the speech.
As prices go up, we worry about seniors, especially those from 65 to 75 years of age whose payments did not go up. There are no new measures for these people, who can no longer make ends meet and whose incomes are really limited, nor are there any fiscal measures that would give them an incentive to work if they want to work a few days a week. I think that would have been easy to do, and we expected to see something like that here.
My last comment is about health care. We know that health care systems in all the provinces and Quebec are underfunded and in crisis. There are problems. Provincial health ministers will be meeting with the government in a few days. What will they talk about? We expected the government to solve the problem by transferring the $28 billion and committing to increasing health transfers by 6% per year. With the ministers' meeting just days away, there is no money on the table. What is going on?
If the government knows there are problems, why did it announce so few measures—really, hardly any new measures—in this statement?
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- Nov/3/22 4:36:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are certainly some items that the finance minister has mentioned that are very familiar to us New Democrats because they are the things we have been pressuring the government into doing, whether it is dental care, the Canada housing benefit, child care or many other things we could go on about, including the GST rebate that is coming to Canadians tomorrow. However, today was an opportunity to go above and beyond those things, to address the real challenges that people are facing as we come into the fall, as they are worried about home heating costs and the cost of groceries, and as we learn that Loblaws is making a million dollars a day more in profit above their latest banner year.
What we thought we might have seen in addition to things that the NDP has required of the government to move on were things like more serious consequences for price fixing in the grocery industry. We wanted to see a windfall profit tax, so that companies that are making extraordinary profits in the pandemic context are required to pay more in order for there to be assistance for Canadians. We want to see the GST on home heating removed, a measure that would apply across the country and not just in provinces that are subject to the federal carbon tax.
The government is now starting to indicate there may be a recession coming, except that it just reverted to the prepandemic, broken EI system just as people are starting to worry about looking for work. Where is the promised EI modernization reform the government has been talking about forever?
I also want to say I was very disappointed to note that the only reference to health care in this document is about dental care. That is a good thing and we should be moving forward on that, but at a time when most Canadians do not trust that if they go to the emergency room they are going to be seen and helped, we need way more investment in health care, working collaboratively, of course, with the provinces. We need to see that the federal government is willing to come to the table with those dollars.
On all of these many things that this was an opportunity to take action on, why have we not seen any action on those important issues?
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- Nov/3/22 5:09:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as my colleague from Joliette said, the economic statement mentions a number of problems. It talks about supply chain issues, inflation and the possibility of a looming recession. Unfortunately, it did not take us long to realize that the economic statement lacks tangible measures.
Unlike the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois proposed many progressive measures to help Quebeckers and Canadians in the coming years, which will likely be difficult ones. The government is not only turning a deaf ear to the tangible, constructive measures proposed by the opposition, but it also really seems to be working in silos. Allow me to give two examples.
First, the government has been promising EI reform for months, but unfortunately, we are not seeing anything about that. According to the economic statement, there are no plans to carry out this reform in the next six months. Second, the Minister of Industry has been promising to reform the Competition Bureau, but once again, there is absolutely nothing about that in the economic statement.
The Liberal government seems to be completely out of touch and, more importantly, it does not really seem to be working as a team. Would the member for Carleton care to comment on that?
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- Nov/3/22 5:17:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to start off by saying how excited my colleagues and I were this morning to get a look at this important economic statement behind closed doors. As we read through the opening pages, we felt hopeful. We thought the government understood the problems we are dealing with, the global inflationary crisis that is having a real impact on ordinary people. People are having to make do with less because prices are going up. Food, energy and gas prices, not to mention housing prices, have all gone up. People are facing major challenges, and the government says that we are in the middle of an inflationary crisis. A few days ago, even the Minister of Finance said she would be making an economic statement today because we are looking at an inflationary crisis.
It is the same thing with the risk of a recession. Once again, it is a global issue. Most economists and analysts are saying that there is reason for concern and that we could enter a recession in 2023. We know that the Bank of Canada and the central banks decided to fight inflation to bring price increases back into the range of 1% to 3%, thus the 2% target. In order to do that, they are implementing a monetary policy that involves increasing interest rates. Higher interest rates mean an economic slowdown because of softening demand, which is why there is a risk of a global recession. The country's economy is facing a recession in the coming year, and the minister recognizes that in the economic statement. We commend her for that.
The further we read in the document, the more we examine it from every angle, the more we do the math and compare the tables, statistics and figures in this statement with what was in last spring's budget, the more we realize that it is all very slick rhetoric. The document recognizes the economic problems that we face, but when it comes to proposing any solutions, it leaves much to be desired. There are actually very few new measures announced in this economic statement. It reiterates what has been adopted since the beginning of the fall. It reiterates the commitments made in the last budget. It announces that there could be additional measures in 2024, but there is not much new for now.
There is actually some assistance for student loans. My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I, as the member for Joliette, can say that this does not affect us very much, given that the loans and bursaries system is under the purview of Quebec. I guess it is good for students in the rest of Canada, but this measure does not directly affect Quebeckers.
Next the government says it will spend more to hire more public servants to improve service delivery. That is great. We saw what happened with passports in the summer. There are countless examples. There are many problems related to wait times. Nevertheless, this is a fairly minor expenditure. There is nothing major here. The statement also reiterates the funding announced for the people in the Maritimes and eastern Quebec who suffered through hurricane Fiona. We applaud that commitment as well. However, all of this is very minor and very marginal.
The statement uses the word “inflation” over a hundred times, but the solutions it offers are the same ones that were presented in the spring budget, which made hardly any reference to inflation. There is an inflationary crisis going on, but what is being done about it? The government uses the word “inflation”, then rehashes the same proposals it served up in the spring, when it was not talking about inflation.
One of Quebec's national dishes is shepherd's pie. People generally say that it tastes better when it is reheated. The same cannot be said of the measures we have here. What we are being served in this update, in this economic statement, is reheated leftovers. Most of the measures in the update are reheated leftovers.
The significance of the current inflationary crisis and the risks of recession should not be minimized.
The Bloc Québécois called on the government to take that into account and propose concrete solutions. For example, if workers lose their jobs because of the recession, we will need an employment insurance system that works. Everyone, including the government, knows that the EI system is broken. It is so badly broken that for every 10 people who lose their job, barely four have access to EI.
Since 2015, the government has been telling us to wait. It has been telling us that change is coming, that the system will be reformed. We have been listening to the same broken record for seven years. We expected it to happen last September, as the special measures for the pandemic were ending, but no, back we went to the old Axworthy system that does not work at all.
The government is telling us that we are headed for a recession, so the time has come to take action. It is urgent that we fix the EI system. There has been plenty of consultation. We know exactly what needs to be done to improve the system, but no. This is yet another missed opportunity. According to this economic statement, the EI system will not be fixed. The government is going to leave it broken.
The government is saying that it is presenting an economic statement because we may be headed for a recession, but at the same time, it is saying that it will not fix the EI system. I completely agree with my colleague from Terrebonne when she said that the government seems to be working in silos. Did the minister responsible for EI talk to the Minister of Finance? Do these people talk to each other? This would have been a good opportunity to do so.
We are in the midst of an inflationary crisis. Prices are going up, and the primary victims are obviously those whose incomes are not indexed to inflation. I am talking about seniors. As we know, the government decided to help people aged 75 and up, but not those aged 65 to 75. This government created two classes of seniors.
Today, faced with a significant increase in the price of housing, gas and groceries, low-income seniors aged 65 to 75 do not have enough money to eat properly. They must turn to food banks and make some agonizing and very humiliating choices.
Given that today's statement acknowledged the problem of the current inflationary crisis, now would have been the time to announce measures for these people. The Bloc Québécois believes that the government must not create two classes of seniors and that it must increase old age security for seniors 65 and up to cover inflation and deliver a modicum of social justice. This government willfully refused.
Why is the government refusing to help those aged 65 to 75? I believe it is because the Liberals want these payments to be insufficient for low-income people in the first class of seniors that it created, those aged 65 to 75, so they will no longer have enough public support to make it to the end of the month. That way, those seniors will be forced to return to work.
In 2015, this government was boasting about rescinding the Conservative law that raised the retirement age to 67. However, when we look at what is happening to seniors aged 65 to 75 as a result of inflation, we see a government that is trying to bring in a similar policy through the back door, a government that is ensuring that seniors aged 65 to 75 do not have sufficient income from public pension funds to make ends meet. As a result, they are going to be forced to return to the labour market.
If that is the goal, it is very hypocritical. If that is not the goal, then I do not know what this government's problem is. It could be gross incompetence, but I think it is more likely utter hypocrisy. This is not right. It is unfair. When low-income people retire, they have often worked hard their whole lives. They are often single women. In many cases, they were caregivers. They do not have a pension because they stayed at home to take care of their family. This government claims to be feminist, but it does not recognize their contribution, and it is failing them.
In its statement, the government acknowledged that there is an inflationary crisis, but it is not doing anything for those hit hardest by this crisis. That is deplorable. We expected to see something like that in the statement, but it is not there, and that is deplorable.
There is an inflation crisis, prices are going up, and there might be a recession. Communities in Quebec and the other provinces are also experiencing another major crisis, the health care crisis. People no longer have access to doctors. The health care system is broken. It was strained during the pandemic. Workers and nurses are all exhausted. They are burned out. Plus, the system is underfunded. The fact is, these problems started in the 1990s when the federal government in Ottawa decided to deal with deficit and debt problems by reducing health transfers. That is when things started to go wrong.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, as infection rates begin to fall, we are starting to see how much was put off during that time. We thought that screening, care and surgery could wait a little while, but now we realize that the system is no longer working at all. The provinces and Quebec know what to do, and the specialists and the expertise are there. They know what to do, but they lack resources because Ottawa has been neglecting its role for quite some time now.
The provincial and Quebec governments are telling Ottawa that it is time for the federal level to play its role by providing as much funding for health care as possible. These figures are calculated year after year by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. According to him, health transfers should amount to $28 billion, and there should be a 6% increase every year to cover the rising costs and the existing needs. There is a desperate need.
In response to this public health crisis, the government had the role and the duty to address this issue today in this statement, especially since the government just announced that in a few days it is inviting all the provincial health ministers to a nice meeting with the federal government to discuss health systems and funding. What is the government going to tell those ministers just a few days after saying that it would not invest a penny more in the system when the need is there?
When he was health minister in Quebec City, the very Liberal and very colourful Gaétan Barrette accused this government of practising predatory federalism, because the government was imposing conditions without providing the necessary funding to go with it. It was a Liberal health minister who accused this government of practising predatory federalism. That kind of infighting among the Liberals sends a clear message that things are not going well, not at all.
Today, the government and the Minister of Finance had a unique opportunity to announce that they were going to address this issue and set the stage for the ministers' meeting. Again, they have been promising to fix this situation since 2015. Every time a Bloc Québécois member stands up in the House and asks the government if it is going to do its job, the government says that something is coming down the pike and not to worry. We may have believed that promise once or twice, but after hearing it for seven years, enough is enough.
What message are we sending to the provincial health ministers who are trying to figure this out? They are the ones holding together the health care system, which is crumbling because of the considerable strain it was under during the pandemic. Now they are being invited for talks, but the numbers that have just been released show that there is not a penny more for them. It is contemptuous. This government stands up at every opportunity to lecture every other level of government. It even stands up to lecture the Pope and people around the world. However, when it comes to dealing with its own files, it is nowhere to be found, it is not up to the task.
That is what we saw with passports and immigration too. Everything this government touches turns into a fiasco. There are cost overruns and service is not up to par. Now it is trying to tell the provinces what they should do, but it is not even investing any money.
I mentioned immigration. A few days ago, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship announced new immigration levels. Canada will aim to bring in 25% more immigrants by 2025. That means 500,000 newcomers per year, as reiterated in today's statement.
The Bloc Québécois is concerned about that for a number of reasons. Let me start with the practical, pragmatic reasons. We believe those targets are unrealistic. Our riding offices have been inundated with requests for urgent intervention because departmental employees cannot handle applications that are already in the queue. Wait times are atrocious, documents get lost, and mistakes are constantly being made. From a purely practical, technical perspective, maybe the government should show that it is capable of doing its job properly—and it is not—before it changes the target. Then we can talk.
The government did not include one line about housing capacity. We have a housing shortage. In Quebec and across Canada, there is a shortage of housing. The Liberal government in Ottawa withdrew from funding social housing in the 1990s, and nothing has been done since. Of course, a bit of funding was announced recently, but it does not go far enough to meet the current needs. There is not enough housing. The private sector does not have the capacity to build enough homes, condos, apartments to meet the current needs. The government is planning to grow the population very quickly. Where are we going to put all these people?
Condos and houses are no longer affordable. What do we tell young people? They want the American dream, which is to be part of the middle class and have a union job that allows them to buy a house and pay for it during their working life. Now that dream is shattered. Young people can no longer hope to be able to afford a home or become a homeowner in their lifetime. The housing shortage is exacerbated by the imbalance between supply and demand and the fact that the population is growing. Prices are skyrocketing, and housing is no longer affordable. These young people are being told that we are going to increase the population very quickly without restoring any balance to the housing market. This does not make sense.
I used housing as an example, but the same is true for schools. There are not enough spaces. There is no coordination in that area either, nor in the area of health care. This is irresponsible.
The situation is tough for us in Quebec, since we are not yet a country. Earlier, the leader of the Conservative Party talked about what he will do when he is prime minister. I want to talk about what Quebec will do when it is a country. I think this will happen within 10 years, because we will work hard. Seeing how this government and this nation ignore us, we will have all the cards to take control of our destiny.
If we were to accept our share of the target that has been announced, which is prorated to our population, how could we properly accommodate and integrate such large numbers? That is impossible. It is impossible to guarantee that the French language would be preserved and respected. Even in Quebec, we see that the French language is in decline. Bill C-13 is currently being studied in committee, and the government wants to reject the Bloc's amendments, which seek to better protect French in Quebec. I am not even talking about French outside Quebec, because the figures have plummeted and that is so very sad. With the complicity of the fourth party in the House, the government will continue to erode the weight of the French language even within Quebec.
We are not equipped to properly welcome all these newcomers in the language of Molière, the official language of Quebec. That is a serious problem. It is an impossible situation because if we welcome fewer immigrants in order to integrate them well, Quebec's weight as a proportion of Canada's population will quickly diminish. Either way, we could be marginalized, and it is the very survival of our culture that is at stake.
Let me be clear. Immigration is a great asset. Welcoming newcomers is wonderful, except that Quebec culture does not support the policy of multiculturalism, which basically consists of telling immigrants to come live here as though they were still living in their own country and not to integrate because their grandchildren will.
That is not what immigration is for us. We want to be able to say hello to a newcomer, to talk with them. We want to benefit from their rich cultural heritage, and we want them to be one of the gang, someone we can interact with. That is not going to work if the the immigration levels are quickly increased as announced. That is very worrisome.
I am sorry that I spent a little longer than expected on that aside, but it is still very important.
Let me come back to the economic statement. With regard to EI, as my colleague from Terrebonne said, the Minister of Employment and Workforce Development likely did not talk to the Minister of Finance.
As she also said, it sounds like the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry did not talk to the Minister of Finance either. It sounds like the Liberal government is using the Apple method of developing policies and projects piecemeal without any communication. It looks like that is what is happening here. Everything that the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry has said, in the House and in the media, is missing from the economic statement. I do not get it. That is problematic.
In times of economic uncertainty, discipline is called for, but not austerity. That is why we want the most vulnerable, like seniors aged 65 to 75, to have support measures they can count on during this inflationary period. That is very important. We do not want austerity. We have asked the government to focus on its basic roles, on the federal government's primary functions, to try to concentrate on those and do them well for a change. Health funding is one example.
We were really surprised by the last budget, in the spring. The government announced 15 or so new policies, new ways of doing things, mostly in health. These were all encroachments on provincial jurisdictions. Instead of focusing on doing its job well, the government wanted to work on the ground in Quebec and the provinces and encroach on their jurisdictions.
Here we have another example. The government is announcing the creation of a jobs secretariat. That is something Quebec is taking care of, and it is going quite well. Ottawa wants to use us as a model. One of our fears is an encroachment in a few years' time. Sooner or later, it is going to impose conditions on us. It is going to steal our model and then tell us that it has its own program now and that we have to follow suit. Then we will no longer have the freedom to implement our model, which is based on the labour market in Germany. We drew inspiration from Germany. Again, these are encroachments. Instead of doing its job well and focusing on its role, the government continues to stray.
The media reported a new tax on share buybacks. It is an interesting measure. We look forward to studying it, but the update states it will be implemented in 2024. It is now 2022. Today, the government was either rehashing old measures or announcing measures that will not be implemented in the next little while, or next year, but the year after that. Once that time comes, we can talk about it then and see if the government has made the same announcement about the same measure six times by then or if it changed its mind.
Evidently, this is not an economic update that will go down in history. The minister's speech earlier was full of fine rhetoric, fine principles, and a fine acknowledgement of the problems affecting the economy. However, this government was either rehashing old measures, approaches and actions it wants to take or putting off new measures to the distant future. The rest is inconsequential. The government had a golden opportunity to solve problems and consider the seriousness of the current crisis, but it did not do so. That is extremely unfortunate.
Obviously, I encourage the minister to talk to her colleagues, to come to the Standing Committee on Finance more often, and to communicate more with representatives from all sectors of the country's economy, without ever forgetting Quebec. That will only do her a lot of good and may even inspire her to implement concrete measures.
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