Hon. Diane Bellemare: Honourable colleagues, today I want to share a very interesting initiative based in my province, Quebec. This is a project called Indicators of Well-Being in Québec, and it was unveiled in January by members and partners of the G15+ collective.

The G15+ collective is made up of 15 economic leaders from the union, social and environmental communities who have taken unprecedented steps to support Quebec’s economic recovery efforts. The group includes the Conseil du patronat du Québec, Fondaction, the Institut du Québec, Équiterre, the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec and the FTQ.

I applaud this concrete example of social dialogue. This kind of dialogue moves ideas and major social undertakings forward. After all, by speaking to one another, we can understand one another.

The collective explains its work on the indicators of well-being as follows:

Gross domestic product (GDP) and job creation are no longer enough to evaluate the well-being of Quebecers.

I agree. They are no longer enough. We also have to talk about all the elements that go into what we call the social wage, and other things too.

I would also like to take a moment to point out that the Senate Prosperity Action Group, an informal group in which I participated along with several other colleagues, also proposed a series of key performance indicators for building sustainable, inclusive and shared prosperity in Canada.

In Quebec, the indicators will be updated annually and will take into account the impact of the pandemic. The data is also available online.

The collective is calling on policy makers to make well‑being more central to their actions by linking well-being indicators to government budgeting and strategic planning, and to align methodologies through high-level federal, provincial and territorial collaboration in order to properly measure the well‑being of Canadians.

Honourable colleagues, that statement was written prior to February 24, 2022. As I reread it, it occurred to me that peace in this country, and in the world, is a necessary condition for the pursuit of collective well-being. War can never improve the fate of humanity.

I urge everyone to support the approach proposed by the collective for the benefit of all Canadians and, consequently, to pursue dialogue and social peace.

Thank you, meegwetch.