44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 27, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/27/23 10:20:40 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a fairly simple question for my colleague.
Throughout my time in the House, so over the past three or four years, I have been hearing the government voice its concern about the French issue and say that it is very important to protect minority languages in Quebec and Canada.
Yesterday, the government presented its action plan for official languages 2023-2028. This is important. The plan includes investments totalling $4 billion over the next 5 years. However, $800 million, or 20% of these funds, will go to anglophones living in Quebec.
I just want to point out that even the government admits that Quebec anglophones are not under threat. English is not under threat in Quebec. In Canada and North America, English is the majority language.
Why is the government sending $800 million to anglophones in Quebec when they are not under threat?
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Mr. Speaker, unlike Émile Zola who, a hundred years ago, wrote an open letter accusing all the intellectual and government elites of his time of racism, I will turn the camera around and accuse myself.
I accuse myself and admit that I am guilty of being naive when it comes to political and public life. I am naive. When I went into politics three years ago, I thought that we would have intelligent debates in Parliament, in the House. I thought that the people elected across Canada, people with experience, people with a past, people who had worked on important issues, would come to Parliament and debate. I thought that, if I presented an argument, someone would come up with a counterargument, someone else would then present another counterargument, and that the process would result in brilliant bills—in short, the truth. I thought that we were going to come up with bills that would benefit Canadians, that people would look at us and say, “Wow, these are extraordinary people who are passing really effective bills that meet the specific needs of all Canadians and that are improving our country and ensuring we are going in the right direction”.
That is what I thought. Imagine how naive I was. I thought that was how democracy works in Quebec and Canada. I thought that that was how things worked, that we would work together and collaborate to get to the truth for the common good. That is what I thought. Imagine how naive I was and how my balloon burst after my three years here, when I saw how badly we fail to meet Canadians’ needs and, especially, how we have to keep repeating the same things day after day. I really was not expecting that.
In my past life I used to repeat lines as part of my work. I have a background in theatre. I played Molière’s Le Malade imaginaire 250 times. I repeated all my lines 250 times. When you work with Molière, there is always something new to discover. There are always truths hidden behind the lines. This broadens an actor’s horizons, since they can improve their performance every evening. In Parliament, however, all of us in the opposition strive to make speeches. We work in committee, we try to be wise. We conduct studies, we think hard every day to tell the government, the supposed decision-makers, what they should do and the measures they should put in place. We are close to the community, in our respective ridings. We see what is happening on the ground. Unfortunately, we have to repeat ourselves.
I say this because what I am going to say today is something I have said hundreds of times before in the House. I will have to repeat myself again today. It is sad, because these are important issues. For example, what is missing from this budget and this bill? Housing.
As my colleague said so well earlier, we need a game plan to build 3.5 million housing units in Canada in the next 10 years. This does not come from an extreme leftist group advocating for social housing, it comes from Scotiabank and the CMHC. These are the challenges we face.
We expected to see housing treated as an important concern in the budget. Most people devote 30%, 40% or 50% of their income to housing. There are even 80,000 households that spend 80% of their income on housing, and that is just in Quebec. That in itself is scandalous. Imagine someone earning $1,000 or $2,000 and having to spend $800 or $1,600 on housing. How would they eat? How would they send their children to school and pay for their school supplies? We are not even talking about recreational activities.
With such major concerns, with the bar set so high, with all the things we have repeated here and that organizations across the country have been repeating, we would expect the government to address the issue in the budget, to tackle this challenge and propose robust measures. Out of 250 pages of various measures in all sorts of areas, how many pages in the budget are devoted to the 3.5 million housing units we need over the next 10 years?
There is only one page. There is one short page about the most important issue of our generation. That is scandalous: a single short page on one of the most fundamental issues of our era, along with the fight against climate change and the language crisis. That in itself is scandalous.
Instead of addressing the issue, from what we learned yesterday, they are allocating $800 million over the next five years to protect the best protected linguistic minority in the history of humanity, the anglophone community in Quebec. This community represents only 8% of the population, but the power of English is quite evident in Quebec, Canada and North America. However, the government will be sending $800 million to the community over the next five years.
I advocated for 20 years for the survival of the French language in Quebec. That is one of the reasons I went into politics. The survival of the French language and culture in Quebec is one of our greatest challenges. Since I got here, I have heard a lot of promises. They say they recognize the symmetry between English and French in Canada, that they know it is important, that they know that French-language communities across the country are in peril, that they know that French in Quebec is also threatened, that they will get down to it and come up with a bill with teeth.
Now the government comes up with Bill C-13 and, yesterday, with a plan to invest $800 million. Anglophones in Quebec have three universities. They have as many hospitals and television stations as they need. They have access to all music on Spotify, and to more movies than they can watch. There is no housing for the most destitute in this country and no investments to make a difference in this budget, but the government’s excuse is that it has invested in recent years. It is unacceptable that we are failing to address this crucial issue. I just cannot believe it.
Right now, I am touring Quebec to document the crisis, to see what is happening on the ground. The things I am hearing are appalling. In Trois‑Rivières, a victim of domestic violence is sleeping in a car with her two children. How can we allow that? How can there be only one page about housing in the budget?
In my riding of Longueuil, there are 17 people living in a three-bedroom apartment. What country are we living in? Is this a G7 country, or is it some country in the Middle Ages? I cannot get over the idea of 17 people living in a three-bedroom apartment. There are no measures in the budget for these 17 people in their three-bedroom apartment. There are no measures to help that victim of domestic violence who is living in her car with her two children.
This budget is a disgrace, a disaster. It does not meet the needs of Quebec and Canadian society today. It is misguided. It fails to target the most important issues, and that is extremely unfortunate.
Maybe I am being too naive. Still, however much I do not like it, I will keep repeating these truths until the government finally understands what and where the real needs are in this society, here and now.
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- Apr/27/23 10:53:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, is it not against the rules to accuse another member of spreading misinformation in the House?
My speech was completely accurate. My colleague is talking about women who are victims of domestic violence. Every day in Quebec during the pandemic, women who are victims of domestic violence were being turned away from shelters because there were no resources available. There were not enough spots.
In Quebec right now, there are 45,000 households waiting for low-rent housing. These are people who cannot afford housing. These are the hard facts. I do not know what my colleague is talking about. I do not know what planet he is living on. Right now, the housing crisis is one of the most serious crises of our time.
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- Apr/27/23 10:54:47 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, encouraging Quebeckers to have more babies is a trap. They will not have more babies. Let us be honest, people in the west are not having babies. One way or another, we need to encourage francophone immigration to address the language crisis throughout Canada and Quebec. It is extremely important. People are not having babies.
Unfortunately, in Quebec, society is anglicizing naturally. This is happening naturally. I talked about it in my speech earlier. We need a substantial francophone immigration policy because there is not going to be another baby boom, unfortunately.
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- Apr/27/23 10:56:14 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it needs to be said: We always get the impression that the NDP is in the wrong Parliament. There is a party in Quebec called Québec Solidaire that is proposing this type of measure. It is working out quite well because when we talk about dental care, that is part of Quebec's responsibility for health care.
Obviously, I am not against dental care, because it is extremely important. What we keep saying is that Ottawa does not run any hospitals, it does not pay for any doctors and it does not train any nurses. It does not have the authority to talk about these jurisdictions. If it wants to create dental care programs, the government should send money to the provinces, and the provinces will take care of it.
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- Apr/27/23 12:02:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
My question was for the NDP member who spoke before him, since she talked a lot about housing, but I think my colleague should be able to answer.
As I said earlier, we have an acute housing crisis in Canada. One of the issues we do not hear that much about in the House is the financialization of housing, which is something really important. It refers to large national and international corporations' growing ownership of Canadian rental housing stock. It is thought that corporate ownership has gone from zero to 22% in 30 years. These large corporations could not care less about the right to housing. Their primary concern is making a profit. We have to deal with this.
I would like to ask my colleague if any concrete measures could be taken to tackle this issue.
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- Apr/27/23 1:28:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his very inspiring speech.
I asked a question earlier for which I did not receive a satisfactory response from another NDP friend. Housing is a top priority in this country. The financialization of housing is a growing phenomenon, where large financial conglomerates are buying more and more rental housing in Canada. According to a study, in the past 30 years, ownership of the rental housing stock by large international financial conglomerates has gone from 0% to 22%. There are no simple solutions to this issue. Obviously, their priority is not the right to housing, but rather their bottom line. We need to address this if we want to address the housing crisis.
I would like to know if my colleague has any solutions for dealing with the financialization of housing in Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals acknowledge that French in Quebec is under threat; it is even in Bill C‑13. That is nice, but they have not changed a single thing in the federal strategy for promoting English in Quebec.
Despite their lofty words, their action plan for official languages 2023-2028 is basically crumbs for French in Quebec and $700 million for English.
What will have more impact, the rhetoric or $700 million invested directly in the anglicization of Quebec?
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