SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mar/19/24 1:08:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my question is really about questioning the government's choices. There are a lot of things I do not understand about this country, but let us just focus on the Liberal government's budgetary choices. There is a homelessness crisis going on right now. It has been going on in Quebec for five years. In fact, since the federal government launched the national housing strategy, homelessness in Quebec has doubled. There is also homelessness in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. This is really serious. There is only one federal program that deals with homelessness, and that is the Reaching Home program. Now we have learned that the program will be cut by 3% for the next two years. This 3% cut seems crazy to us. It seems like the Liberals want to show the Conservatives that they are capable of fiscal restraint, so they are making cuts all over the place, including to services for the homeless. Recent budgets announced $83 billion in tax credits for oil companies by 2035, and yet services for the homeless are being cut by 3%. I would like my colleague to explain that to me.

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Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Mar/19/24 1:09:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if the member is concerned about homelessness and initiatives this government has put forward, I would encourage him to not be tempted into voting against all the opposed items the Conservatives will be putting up. As I indicated, two of them, the Reaching Home program to address homelessness and the Canada housing benefit, are on the chopping block as a result of the opposed items the Leader of the Opposition has put forward. The reality of the situation is that, while he says we are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, we have phased out the fossil fuel subsidies. The only way we continue to subsidize, in any way, the fossil fuel industry is to help to deal with abandoned orphan oil wells. That member might that think that it is not our problem, because they were companies from 50 years ago. We should leave the wells there, and that would be the end of that. Unfortunately, governments at the time did not think it was good to ensure that the proper money was in place to deal with those wells later on, so now society has to pick up the tab. That is the unfortunate reality. However, it is something that we have to do in our environmental interests.

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Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)

Mar/19/24 1:41:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, over the past year, I toured Quebec on the housing issue. I travelled all over Quebec. I met with over 70 organizations representing 15,000 members. These are people who work with the most vulnerable, namely, women who are victims of domestic violence and people with intellectual disabilities. We talked about housing and homelessness. No one—not a single person—talked to me about the carbon tax to deal with people who do not have shelter or housing. I was told that we need investments, that we need to invest in social housing and the most vulnerable. No one talked to me about the carbon tax. When I hear my Conservative colleagues say that they are close to the disadvantaged and the people who care for people, I cannot believe that they would say that.

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