44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 29, 2023 02:00PM
- Mar/29/23 2:20:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker,
In the Quebec of days gone by, English stole the words “French” and “Canadian”.Quebeckers were born.Out of a dream, anger, the street and words.Michèle Lalonde voiced the indignation of our nation in the Americas,of hard-working Quebeckers and African slaves. Speak white!Speak white!Speak the language of whites!Speak the language of the conqueror!Speak English! Speak white!An insult that Quebec neither chose,nor appropriated.An insult that the English, this House!threw in the face of Henri Bourassa when he spoke French here...to the French-speakers of the country,to the Africans of the continent.History identifies what happened,literature records it.A people that lies to itself has neither history nor literature.If censorship wins,Speak white, a poem, will become a symbol of racism.The n-word is not for me. It belongs to those who suffer from it.Poetry is the weapon of Justice.
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- Mar/29/23 2:32:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the National Assembly, which speaks for Quebec, adopted a unanimous motion asking that no more money be invested in subsidies for the oil industry. However, that is just what Ottawa is doing.
Incidentally, Quebec also asked that the federal government not interfere in provincial jurisdictions, including dental care. That is exactly what Ottawa is doing.
Will the government admit that the budget it has tabled—which essentially caters to oil companies and the NDP—is a budget that does not work for Quebec?
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- Mar/29/23 2:43:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in yesterday's budget, the Liberals chose to spend heavily in areas of provincial jurisdiction to please the NDP, but that is not what Quebeckers need. That is why, this morning, the Quebec government asked to opt out with compensation from the federal dental care program because it already has one. Quebec rightly explains that, before new programs are created, existing programs should be adequately funded.
Is the government committed to giving Quebec the right to opt out with full compensation?
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- Mar/29/23 2:44:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to hear the member make the connection with the major investments announced by the Prime Minister on February 6 and confirmed in the budget tabled yesterday by the Minister of Finance. These investments will support hundreds of thousands of Canadians, patients and workers across Quebec. In addition, the dental insurance program that will be implemented in the coming years and months will also help millions of Quebeckers take better care of their oral health.
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- Mar/29/23 2:45:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Quebec is also concerned that the budget is diverting our money away from the environment to line the pockets of oil companies, with good reason. Up to $37 billion over 10 years could be used for dirty energy projects or to indirectly stimulate the production of hydrocarbons. This morning, the National Assembly was unanimous. It is asking the federal government to halt all direct or indirect subsidies to oil and gas companies with Quebeckers' money.
Will the government finally listen to the unanimous voice of Quebec and stop investing our money in dirty energy?
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- Mar/29/23 3:01:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Ottawa is betraying Quebec's aerospace industry.
Commenting on the budget, Aéro Montréal laments the lack of meaningful measures to help SMEs.
As if that were not enough, Ottawa is actually undermining our industry. The Liberals are handing Boeing a $9‑billion military contract on a silver platter, excluding Bombardier and not giving Quebec one penny in economic spinoffs.
When will Ottawa start supporting Quebec's aerospace industry instead of giving our money to our American competitors without a tender process?
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- Mar/29/23 3:03:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have an income tax regime here in Canada and a tax system that requires all Canadians to pay their fair share.
Let us look at the budget announcements for Quebec. There is $447 million for Quebec through a health transfer top-up; $47.8 million over 9 years to redevelop the Bonaventure expressway; and new investments, meaning over $1 million, to protect French in Quebec.
We are meeting expectations, and the Bloc wants to pick a fight.
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- Mar/29/23 5:13:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very interesting and very important speech.
I would like to ask the hon. member from the province of Quebec, one of the signatories of the health care agreements, a question. We have come to an agreement with all 10 provinces and territories. The federal government will have an additional $198 billion, in total, of health care spending over the next 10 years to the provinces. With the negotiations for the child care agreements, I obviously salute the province of Quebec. It was a first mover on a child care program for its residents.
I ask my hon. colleague across the way if he is not in favour of the health care agreement the Province of Quebec signed with the federal government, which is contained within budget 2023.
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- Mar/29/23 5:14:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the answer is simple: No, because it is not enough. It is six times less than what Quebec and the provinces are asking for to prop up the health care system.
What is Ottawa doing with this agreement? It is stabilizing the proportion of support it provides to the health care system. In 2015, when this government was elected, the federal government was funding 24% of health care spending. With what is being proposed, it will still be 24% in 10 years.
To restore fiscal balance a bit, it needs to be 35%, because it is not enough. The Government of Quebec told us that given the choice between this and nothing, it decided to take this, but it is not enough and it is not going to solve anything.
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- Mar/29/23 5:31:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, last week, the member for Kingston and the Islands tweeted so much misinformation that Twitter had to put a warning notice on his post. I just realized that the Liberals are okay with that way of doing things. That way of doing things has spread from Kingston to Outremont.
I am going to set the record straight on a number of things. We never said that everything in the budget was bad. However, we made very clear, specific pre-budget requests. In a budget, there is what is included and what is missing. Are the Liberals telling me that it is okay to refuse to grant health care transfers, to reject our seniors and to leave half of unemployed workers out in the cold? Are they telling me that all those things are okay? In any case, that is clearly what the member for Outremont is saying. The member for Outremont is rejecting the needs of Quebec, and that makes me sad.
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- Mar/29/23 5:31:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoyed working with my hon. colleague on the health committee.
I am a bit disappointed in my friend's pessimistic view of the efficiency of government. He seems to think government is not capable of delivering programs. He was highly skeptical that the federal government could deliver insurance for a dental plan.
However, we know the federal government administers employment insurance for millions of Canadians. It administers the Canada pension plan for millions of seniors. It administers old age security for millions of citizens, and these programs include many people in the province of Quebec.
I know he is a separatist, so it seems strange that he thinks the Province of Quebec could form a nation, but does not seem to think a nation-state is competent to deliver programs for citizens.
My question is on dental care. The NDP's dental plan would mean that about two million Quebeckers at the end of this year, including seniors, children and people with disabilities, would be able to go to the dentist and have the federal government pay 100% of that cost.
Can he tell the House why he is opposed to having people who are suffering in Quebec get the dental care they need at zero cost to the Government of Quebec?
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- Mar/29/23 5:33:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is no need to get angry.
My colleague started by telling me that the government is good at administering programs, and he spoke about employment insurance. I hope that the government will not dip into the dental care fund as it did with the EI fund, because it is not doing a good job of administering that.
Health care is a provincial jurisdiction and an area where the federal government often shows its incompetence. We know that from experience. What the Government of Quebec is saying is that health is important to us and that existing programs must be improved.
What Quebec is saying is that birthing rooms remain closed, there is a lack of palliative care, cancers are going undiagnosed, emergency rooms in the regions are struggling to stay open, and mental health services are unavailable. We are not saying that dental care is not important, but rather that the NDP is using this issue for electoral purposes. We see that clearly. That said, as public decision-makers, we must set our priorities. The NDP is making the next election its priority.
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Madam Speaker, I too will speak to Bill C‑215, which is being debated today in the House.
Bill C‑215 seeks to make a change to employment insurance. I am getting tired of having debates on employment insurance. I wonder why we are talking about employment insurance in the Canadian federal Parliament.
In 1867, when Canada was founded, there was a division of powers set up. The federal government took care of the money, the army, international border contacts and customs, but all the social affairs fell under the responsibility of the provinces. The reason employment insurance is a federal jurisdiction is that someone pulled a fast one in 1940. The economic crisis in 1929 was still having ill effects, the Second World War had just started and, in the meantime, there was a Liberal premier in Quebec, Mr. Godbout, who did not necessarily want independence for Quebec and let it drop. That is why the federal government is responsible for employment insurance today.
I would like to use an analogy about the federal government. I have a five-year-old son. Sometimes when a few children are playing together, we often see one of them go over to a friend who is playing with toys and snatch the toy away from them. He will go over to another friend who is playing with a toy and snatch that away. He will want all the toys that his friends are playing with. He will take them all, he will not be able to hold on to any more toys, but he will still try to take some more. That is classic behaviour. Eventually, the toys will quite simply gather dust. He will no longer play or be interested in them.
That is more or less how the federal government operates. It tries to take on all the responsibilities, keeps taking a few more here and there, but then neglects them. That is happening with EI.
Employment insurance is not working. The federal government is not working, and I believe that there is no desire to see it working. That is sad.
That is not just for employment insurance; there have been problems with passports and the Phoenix pay system. The problems keep piling up. This sort of thing is always happening with the federal government, but that does not stop it from wanting even more responsibility. It tries to tell us how we should be running our hospitals. It decides to launch all kinds of programs that it should not be launching. Meanwhile, the EI system is not working. The government is not carrying out the reform that people have been calling for for years.
That is unfortunate, because every time there is an election the Liberals promise to reform the EI system. They hold consultations and then more consultations and in the end they do nothing to reform the system.
As a result, right now, only about half of unemployed workers are covered. That means that one out of every two people who lose their job is not covered by EI even though it is an insurance plan and they should be eligible. The federal government was even siphoning money off the fund, which ran surpluses for years. From 1996 to 2009, $60 billion were siphoned off the EI fund. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives put unemployed workers' money directly into their pockets and left workers in the lurch.
Today we are talking about Bill C‑215, which seeks to amend employment insurance, more specifically sick leave. Sick leave is another thing that is not working. A person who gets sick gets only 15 weeks and that is it. It is a season, nothing more. They can spend the summer recovering, but if they are not better at the end of the summer, then they do not get any more money.
It is sad because if someone loses their job and is the one person in two who is covered, they can usually get quite a few weeks of benefits, maybe even up to 50 weeks. I do not remember exactly how many weeks are available these days, but it is somewhere around there. A person can go about a year with that. However, if that person gets cancer and has to stop working, they are entitled to only 15 weeks. That is an inequity that does not work. The purpose of Bill C‑215 is to correct this inequity. This is not the first crack at this.
My colleague, the member for Salaberry—Suroît, introduced a bill in the House during the last Parliament to fix this. In her case, it was not about getting to 52 weeks, it was about going from 15 weeks to 50 weeks. If it were 52 weeks, that would be even better. We could applaud that. We support this initiative, obviously.
However, this shows how hard she worked at the time. Her bill was even known as the Émilie Sansfaçon act. Émilie Sansfaçon was a woman who was on sick leave. It is called a leave of absence, but really, it is a forced resignation due to illness. She was on EI for too short a time and eventually passed away. She did not live to see Bill C-265, introduced by my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît, pass.
It is sad, because her father, who supported the Bloc Québécois, later ran for the Bloc Québécois and hoped that this bill would eventually pass. My colleague from Salaberry—Suroît worked hard. The bill passed first and second reading, was sent to committee and returned to the House for third reading. It went through all the stages. What was missing? Royal assent was missing. It just needed the government to say yes, nothing else.
That did not happen, which is sad. The Senate could have helped, too. It is sad, especially when we look at all the people who have supported this over the years. My colleague from Salaberry—Suroît, who introduced the bill, was not the first to come up with this idea. Yves Lessard, a Bloc Québécois member for the Belœil region, had already introduced a similar bill. Paul Crête, a Bloc Québécois member for the Bas-du-Fleuve region, had also already tabled a bill on this subject. Robert Carrier, a Bloc Québécois member for the Laval region, had already introduced a bill on this subject. Jean-François Fortin, a member of Parliament from eastern Quebec, had also introduced a bill on this subject.
The Bloc Québécois has repeatedly called for this problem to be fixed, for sick leave to be given to people who fall ill and for them to be supported during this difficult time. It is not a luxury for them to be able to eat, pay their rent and receive 50% of their pay, if not less, because it is 50% of the eligible amount. All we have been asking for is support to get them through a difficult time. By not giving them the money they need to heal, the government is adding to the stress they are under. It is sad.
I spoke about the members of the Bloc Québécois who worked on this, namely MPs Lessard, Crête, Carrier and Fortin, but there were also members from other parties. I must admit that we are not the only ones who had this idea. I could talk about the NDP MP Dawn Black, who introduced a bill three times to remedy the problem with sickness benefits and to provide more support for these workers. There was Fin Donnelly, a member who introduced a bill to resolve the issue four times. The next person that I name should certainly help the government understand that it needs to support this bill. Denis Coderre, a Liberal Party MP, once introduced a bill to resolve the issue with sickness benefits.
It is fascinating to see that members from all political parties have introduced bills year after year. This has been going on for what must be over 20 years now, maybe even 30. This is a problem that members are trying to solve. Unfortunately, they are not succeeding, either because their bills do not receive royal assent or because the party in power decides not to support them.
What we have now is a bill introduced by the member for Lévis—Lotbinière. It is important to highlight that it is his bill. We are at a point where this is coming from a Conservative member. We have reached a point where the Conservatives are also saying that the problem must be fixed. When everyone says that the problem must be fixed, there is no reason why it should not be fixed. It would be truly sad if the Liberals did not want to fix it. That would make the Liberals look more right wing than the Conservatives, more heartless than the Conservatives. I find that hard to believe. I hope that is not what happens.
Deep down, no one wants to leave sick people in the lurch. No one thinks it is okay for sick people to be in a position where they cannot afford to buy food, pay for groceries, be able to take the transportation they need, put gas—or electricity, I hope soon—in their car, so they can get where they need to go to receive care. It is sad. I hope that once the debate on Bill C‑215 is over, things will not end there. I hope we will finally find a solution and manage to do something positive for these people.
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