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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 305

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 30, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 305 - Apr/30/24
Mr. Xavier Barsalou-Duval (Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, BQ)
  • Apr/30/24 1:43:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, since we are talking about the budget, my speech today will focus on the most recent budget, which was tabled by the Liberal government exactly two weeks ago today. Before I talk about the budget itself, I want to take a moment to give a little background. I want to talk about the context in which this budget was introduced. I would imagine that the government was aware that the polls were not in its favour during the period leading up to the tabling of the budget. Members of the Liberal Party were surely aware that the Prime Minister's popularity was plummeting. In such a context, I would imagine that people got together to have a discussion and figure out what they could do about it. They came up with a solution. They realized that the situation was so dire that they had to make people forget just how dire things were, so they decided to create a diversion. They decided to talk about something else, to make people look elsewhere, so that they would not look at the government's track record, or the current situation, and instead look at what was being announced and proposed. As we know, the Liberals are not going to reinvent the wheel. Their solution was to encroach heavily on areas under Quebec's jurisdiction, just to be original. Perhaps we can say they were indeed original, in spite of everything, because they had never gone as far as they did in this budget. They decided to promise so many billions of dollars that everybody would be happy and nobody would notice anything. It would be so much money that people would not even notice anything else. Well, it did not work. Liberal strategists saw that selfies were not working anymore and decided to try a budget striptease to change things up. We are here to speak out against all of this. The Bloc Québécois has submitted proposals to the government. For example, rather than the approach it has taken, we would have liked to see money for seniors aged between 65 and 75, who do not receive the same old age security benefit as those aged 75 and over. We believe that everyone should receive a decent pension that covers their expenses. Everyone has rent to pay and food to buy. All retirees have similar expenses, regardless of their age. However, the Liberals went a different way. We proposed other things. For example, we suggested putting an end to funding oil companies. The Liberals say that they will do it eventually. When they were elected in 2015, that promise was part of their platform. It is still part of their platform today. Maybe it will still be part of their platform in 2050 or 2100. Unfortunately, in spite of everything, we were realistic. When we proposed these things, we suspected that the Liberals would go in a different direction. Still, we took a chance and hoped they would listen to us and do as we asked. At the very least, we wanted them to do one thing. We know the Liberals have a habit of encroaching on areas of jurisdiction that are not theirs. We told them that if they did that, they had to give Quebec the right to opt out with full compensation. Again, the answer was no. I think the vote itself was even more telling: It looks as though the other parties in the House agree with the Liberal position. The reason they said no is not hard to understand, because the only jurisdictions the Liberals are interested in are the ones that do not belong to them. In fact, they solved that problem with their budget: Jurisdictions no longer exist for the Liberal government. The solution was simple. They just made daddy's Constitution go poof. Being Prime Minister is not enough for the member for Papineau. He decided to become premier of all 10 provinces and three territories and mayor of all municipalities across Canada to boot. Not bad, eh? That is what this budget is all about. We have a Prime Minister who is Canada's new self-proclaimed king. He is the one who will run Quebec's health care system. He is going to show up at long-term care facilities and tell them how to run a long-term care facility. He is going to show up at dental offices and tell them how to run a dental office as well, even though Quebec already has programs to help people. He is going to show up at hospitals to tell people how to run their hospitals, while also telling them that he is not going to give them any more money. In fact, he is going to show up practically everywhere. He will show up in cities and decide what new urban planning rules they have to follow. He will even decide how land is taxed, which is a big deal. He will tax land in the cities, even though it is a municipal jurisdiction. He will even go so far as to manage school cafeterias. Just imagine. His own affairs hold no interest for him. What interests him is our affairs. It reminds me a bit of the know-it-all kid at school, who always told everyone else how they should do things, even though nothing he himself did ever worked out right. Do not ask Ottawa to print a passport. Ottawa is not interested in doing it and not capable of doing it. Do not ask Ottawa to manage borders either, because it is not interested or capable. If something is Ottawa's responsibility, Ottawa is not interested. It is that simple. In fact, for years, I had a hard time understanding the Prime Minister's fascination with the monarchy. Now I am starting to understand it a bit more. The king is someone who is not accountable to the public. He is not accountable to anyone but himself and God because it is God who made him king. It could be Allah, Buddha or Yahweh, or whatever we want to call it. He is accountable to a higher power, hence the idea of fighting secularism and Bill 21 and the idea of Islamic mortgages in the budget. In the Liberals' postnational world, every religion has its own banks with their own rules. It is not up to the government to establish the rules. No, it is up to the religions. If someone is Christian, they will go to the Christian bank. If they are Muslim, they will go to the Islamic bank, and if they are Jewish, then they will go to the Jewish bank. Living together in harmony is wonderful, is it not? This will be called positive segregation: a monarchical and theocratic postnational state. Obviously, I am being facetious, but I do not think this government is headed in a very good direction. The sad thing is that it is not a joke, because it is in the budget. That is the direction this government is heading in. Naturally, any Quebecker who reads this budget and sees that will want to get out of here, because it makes no sense. It is clear that we need independence. Without independence, soon we will not even have provincial jurisdictions. There will be no more Government of Quebec, no more municipal governments. Ottawa will be the last one standing. Ottawa will call all the shots. Does nobody care about jurisdiction? That is what we really need to ask ourselves, because that is what the Prime Minister is telling us. He says people do not care about jurisdiction, but I do not buy it. Let us look at how the government manages its affairs, and take the ArriveCAN app as an example. It should have cost $80,000 to design, but it ended up costing $60 million, and we are not even sure if that is the real figure yet. Two guys in a basement managed to rack up $250 million in government contracts and line their pockets at taxpayers' expense. Soldiers are being forced to go out and buy their own boots because the government cannot supply them. The Phoenix payroll system cannot pay public servants. Federal wharves and train stations are going to rack and ruin. I think people do see these things, and I think they do care about the government's incompetence. The polls are starting to show that pretty clearly. We can see that the government's attempt to divert attention away from its pitiful track record is not working at all. What we see, in fact, is a government that is completely disoriented and that has lost its way. If we gave it a compass, it would not even know what to do with it. That is why we are going to vote against this budget. That is why the Bloc Québécois will keep fighting. That is also why we, the members of a separatist party, insist that Quebec needs to be respected, that its jurisdictions are its own and that it can make its own decisions without constantly having another government's decisions imposed on it. It is not for Ottawa to decide how Quebec will run its cities and hospitals. It is not for Ottawa to decide these things. The government's own Constitution says that it must not run these things. The government does not care, but we do. We are going to create our own country.
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