- Member of Parliament
- Leader of the Bloc Québécois
- Bloc Québécois
- Beloeil—Chambly
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 56%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $98,385.23
- Government Page
- Apr/17/24 2:47:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with his budget, the Prime Minister is recognizing that the issues that are really important to Canadians fall under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces.
Therefore, he is shamelessly using the fiscal imbalance, thanks to which he has a lot more money than he should, while Quebec and the provinces have less.
Does he recognize that, to implement his budget at the expense of Quebec's jurisdictions, he is grossly abusing the spending power instituted by former Prime Minister Trudeau?
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- Jun/7/23 2:47:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while the Prime Minister does more to protect Liberal government secrets and the Trudeau Foundation, he is not protecting the people with family still living under the Chinese regime, being oppressed by China as an intimidation tactic. These people have the right to security on Canadian and Quebec soil. He is not protecting them.
This morning, representatives from Taiwan, the Uyghur Autonomous Region, Hong Kong, Tibet and the Solomon Islands asked the Prime Minister for a public inquiry.
Will the Prime Minister act like a head of state and allow this public inquiry?
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- Jun/6/23 2:29:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when I refer to the Prime Minister's ignorance, I get chastised, but he gets away with it.
I believe the rapporteur, the Prime Minister's friend, spoke to the Trudeau Foundation. Things are easier among friends. I believe the rapporteur spoke to the Prime Minister. The question is whether he was in fact reporting to him.
As he explained this morning, his belief is that a commission of inquiry takes too long and costs too much. Keeping secrets is better; it is faster and cheaper.
Is Mr. Johnston's true mandate actually to sweep this Chinese interference business under the rug?
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- May/31/23 3:08:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, he just needs to come out with the facts, but as someone once said, he would not know what to do with the facts.
The Prime Minister is protecting someone or something. Who? What? What skeletons are hiding in the Trudeau Foundation's closet? Just how low will he go to protect his secrets? What is China doing and to whom? How has China managed to intimidate the entire Liberal government?
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- May/31/23 2:48:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to suggest a hypothesis that explains why we are seeing what we are seeing. Has there ever been a Prime Minister less serious than this one, or one so unworthy of the office he holds?
We are talking about the intimidation of elected officials, illegal election financing, industrial espionage, research funded by Huawei, the Trudeau Foundation and contempt for intelligence officers. We already know more than enough to demand a truly independent and public inquiry, not just this nonsense from his buddy.
Will the Prime Minister scrap his policy, which is damaging to Canada and Quebec, and is good for China?
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- May/30/23 2:26:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the appointment of a former member of the Trudeau Foundation, a family friend and a friend to China was not legitimate. The findings and the report have no legitimacy. Mr. Johnston's obstinacy in designating himself to continue on with this matter is wrong.
If Mr. Johnston refuses to recuse himself, as Parliament may well ask him to do, will the Prime Minister have the dignity and statesmanship to remove him from his role and create an independent commission of public inquiry?
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- May/3/23 2:31:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I find it irresponsible at best, and perhaps imprudent, for the Prime Minister to say he knew nothing and to systematically attack the quality, integrity and service of Canada's intelligence officers. Heaven knows that coming from a sovereignist, this is no trivial statement.
I would like to hear, from whoever wants to answer, if we are really sure that Mr. Trudeau, the PM's brother, Mr. Johnston and Mr. Rosenberg are above reproach.
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- May/2/23 2:28:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have to admit that I do not understand what part of the Leader of the Opposition's questions was not true. I therefore support the Leader of the Opposition's questions.
I have a question for the Prime Minister of a country that China holds in such contempt that it sees it as an easy target. If the person responsible for Pierre Elliott Trudeau's legacy at the Trudeau Foundation were to be called in for questioning by the CRA, the committee or whoever, would the Prime Minister recuse himself from participating in any way—
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- Apr/26/23 2:47:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate, but he has close ties to the Trudeau Foundation.
The Trudeau Foundation is an incubator for Liberal circles, often unbeknownst to those who once supported it but now regret it, including some scholarship recipients.
The government and the Prime Minister are tolerating interference in our institutions and the intimidation of some Canadian citizens of Chinese origin.
Does the Prime Minister not realize that when people talk about the Prime Minister in China, they are laughing at him and at us?
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- Apr/26/23 2:46:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I personally have nothing against Mr. Johnston. If I remember correctly, he was the debates commissioner when one of his moderators called Quebeckers racist, and he refused to apologize. We all remember that fondly.
He still has ties to the Trudeau Foundation. The Trudeau Foundation took a cut from a donation made to the University of Montreal. The Prime Minister's brother signed a contract on behalf of the Trudeau Foundation that was irregular, to say the least. Thirty people at the Trudeau Foundation have resigned.
I do not believe that the Prime Minister knew nothing. Maybe he is a good actor, but does he realize that he does not have the independence to call an inquiry—
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- Apr/26/23 2:30:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, please forbid members from singing.
Moving on, I have some big news: The Prime Minister has had no direct or indirect contact with the Trudeau Foundation for 10 years. Remind me not to go to his Christmas party, because I am guessing that it must be fairly tense.
We now know that five deputy ministers were recruited to go to the Prime Minister's office to talk to the Trudeau Foundation. He must have been at least a little bit curious. Ignorance is not a virtue for a prime minister. What was decided at that meeting?
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- Apr/25/23 2:29:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, among the people I identified, I am not sure who should be most concerned.
I am not taking issue with the Prime Minister's father because the Prime Minister's father did not receive five deputy ministers and the Trudeau Foundation in his office and then claimed he did not know what was going on.
Now that the Prime Minister knows that this occurred, should he not, at the very least, tell us what happened in that office at that meeting, since he hardly called five deputy ministers into his own office for no reason? This concerns us.
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- Apr/19/23 2:58:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's Office has admitted that it sent questions to the Trudeau Foundation, which is named after his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. This is the same foundation for which his brother, Alexandre Trudeau, received or solicited a donation of $200,000, plus $50,000 for a statue of his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
By admitting that his office is in touch with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, is the Prime Minister not saying that he has had relatively direct involvement with the Trudeau Foundation?
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- Apr/19/23 2:43:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister knew nothing. He does not talk to his own brother. Does he talk to his office?
Back in 2016, his office asked the Trudeau Foundation for answers, but he does not talk to his office. The intelligence service has been telling him month after month about Chinese interference, but he does not listen. He does not listen to anyone or talk to anyone.
Does he only work as Prime Minister between vacations at his friends' properties?
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- Apr/19/23 2:42:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister says we have the wrong Trudeau. He is going to be thoroughly confused now, because I am adding a third one to the mix. Alexandre Trudeau allegedly signed a deal, one that was improper at best, with two major Chinese donors who used a company as a front for the transaction. This might interest the Minister of National Revenue.
Has the Prime Minister spoken with his brother, and is his brother directly or indirectly connected with the foundation?
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- Apr/19/23 2:30:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, how do we define the right Trudeau? The Prime Minister claimed he knew nothing about how the Trudeau Foundation was being run. I find it hard to believe that he was unaware of the donation by the Green family. In fact, I am sure he knew about it. Even if he was unaware of it, he should have at least looked into it. If not, he is not doing his job. Why does he not tell us how much the Green family donated to the Trudeau Foundation before he joined them on vacation?
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- Apr/19/23 2:29:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it has now been established that the Chinese regime is behind the million-dollar donation that a businessman, also Chinese, wanted to give to the Université de Montréal. Unfortunately, it is also clear that, when speaking with Le Devoir about it, the university official had some doubts. It is also clear that the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation solicited funds from the Chinese Communist Party for its own activities and for a statue of Trudeau senior. We are talking about $250,000 out of the $1 million.
Is it not also clear to the Prime Minister that he does not have the distance needed to impose his choices when it comes to an independent public inquiry?
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- Apr/18/23 2:28:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Ethics Commissioner also should have been told that the Trudeau Foundation had just received a donation.
In another example, the Chinese government wanted to donate $1 million to the University of Montreal—not out of friendship; we are not naive—so it went through Zhang Bin. Rather than protecting Quebec's largest academic institution, the Trudeau Foundation took a $200,000 cut and asked for a statue of Trudeau senior.
Will the Prime Minister admit that it is completely inappropriate for him to make any decisions on the issue of Chinese interference, and will he defer to the House?
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- Apr/18/23 2:27:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, friendship really matters. There is an old saying in Quebec that a friend is a friend.
I am not going to ask questions that the Prime Minister is not going to answer. I will assume that he knew that the Green family contributed to the Trudeau Foundation before going on vacation with them. I will move on to the ethical point.
Can he tell the House, Quebeckers and Canadians the cost of the accommodation where he stayed, and whether he personally paid, out of his own pocket, for the stay?
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- Feb/9/23 10:09:43 a.m.
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moved:
That the House remind the government that it is solely up to Quebec and the provinces to decide on the use of the notwithstanding clause.
He said: Mr. Speaker, rest assured that I am excluding you from this argument, but I get the impression that Quebec does not have many friends in the House. This has been made particularly evident by what seems to be—and this may seem harsh—the Liberal government's descent into hell. The government is essentially the only one to blame, and it is useful in this context to revisit—and, again this may sound harsh—a recent debacle. I will let you be the judge of that. Speaking of judges, we will, once again, have to refer to the Supreme Court of Canada on this matter.
I have made a little list. Bill C-21 on gun control was a lesson in clumsy backtracking, an unruly fiasco and a retreat that was anything but strategic. There was not even a whiff of them admitting to an error—an implicit error—and no recognition of the fact that, indeed, one must consider the safety of civilians and women while also preserving the legitimate privileges of sport hunters.
One example is the electoral map. I remember going to the Gaspé region last summer, just a few days after the Prime Minister, when the first new version of the electoral map had been considered and the riding of my colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia was disappearing. The Prime Minister was in the region and had not said a single word about the fact that the regions in Quebec were being weakened. There might even have been a threat regarding the expressed desire of the member for Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine to keep the file. The Prime Minister, however, never said a word; again, the government is essentially its deputy minister.
There is Medicago, a company, a flagship in technology research that, due to a kind of negligence perpetuated over time and interventions that were often too late, risks seeing the achievements of Quebec engineering go to Japan, subject to the good will of Mitsubishi, which will certainly be a major loss for Quebec and Canada.
There is the acquisition of Resolute Forest Products by Paper Excellence, which is owned by Sinar Mas. That represents 25% of cutting rights in public forests in Quebec and does not qualify in the new Bill C-34, which does not even protect it. Good heavens, if that is not protected, what will Bill C-34 protect?
There are obviously the health transfers. That is really very interesting. Of everyone here, we see that only the Bloc Québécois is both speaking for Quebec and representing the provinces' common front. The Bloc Québécois is the only party to stand up for Yukon, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Alberta. We will wait for the thanks from the benches next to us. Only the Bloc Québécois is standing up for the will of the provinces, the territories and Quebec, while the others are being opportunistic or lazy. We will be told that what we are doing is a waste of time. It is not a waste of time; it is very revealing of how things work.
There is the McKinsey case. I do not have time to go through everything about McKinsey. There would be far too many secrets to be brought to light, like McKinsey and ethics, McKinsey and lobbying, McKinsey and defence, McKinsey and standing offers, and so on. McKinsey's former boss himself—who is surely not as naive as he tried to make us believe in committee—said that, if he had been the client, he would not have signed the contract that the Government of Canada signed. That is interesting. There is also McKinsey and immigration, as well as McKinsey and Century Initiative. One hundred million Canadians, how nice. That is quite a lot, given Quebec’s inability to absorb, over time, in French and with our values, the number of immigrants that that requires. I asked Mr. Barton whether he had considered Quebec. They did not consider it at all. It was not even on their radar.
Based on the ignorance expressed, my word, I want to be the boss at McKinsey. He does not work that hard and says he does not know anything. Also, I suspect the pay is not too bad. McKinsey has a role to play in border management and, of course, in language and identity.
There is also the exploitation of Roxham Road. As my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean mentioned, according to recent revelations, not only do we have criminal smugglers, we now have an all-inclusive package on offer, on both sides. A bus ticket is provided and migrants are openly and brazenly sent to Roxham Road. No one likes handcuffs. However, a brief moment of discomfort from being handcuffed is worth it for migrants, who are very happy to have reached Quebec; of course Quebec is paying the costs of welcoming them in a humane manner.
There is the appointment of Ms. Elghawaby. I will not repeat the whole speech and I do not want to make this personal. That said, it was clear that the government has an extraordinary ability to isolate and protect itself. If our homes were as well protected as the government, we would not need insulation.
Of course, there is also the referral of Quebec’s secularism law to the Supreme Court of Canada in the hope of overturning it.
Beyond that, the divisiveness over Bill C-13 is quite dramatic. I would not want to invite myself to a Liberal caucus meeting, and I think its members would not like that either, but there must be some very passionate conversations within that caucus. It must be just as fascinating as the Conservatives’ conversations about abortion. There may be a few little things that need to be resolved. For our part, everything is going very well. The federal government may also go to the Supreme Court over Bill 96, which deals with the French language.
We have now come to the motion on the notwithstanding clause, which may also go before the Supreme Court of Canada. I would like to speak about a very interesting aspect. In principle, Trudeau senior said that the will of Parliament had to ultimately prevail. That is why the 1982 Constitution, which we consider to be a despicable document, includes this principle of ensuring the primacy of the democracy of parliaments. Let us keep in mind that we have never signed on to that Constitution. We have been pointing that out for a few weeks now.
That was quickly tested. In 1988, the Ford decision established, on the one hand, that the use of the notwithstanding clause was legitimate and, on the other hand, that the role of the court was not to engage in pointless discussions, but to rule on the substance and wording of things.
Let us not forget that Mr. Lévesque firmly invoked and inserted the notwithstanding clause in all of the laws passed by Quebec’s National Assembly. Many fits were had, but Canada survived.
It is important to understand the current government’s legislative or judicial approach—or flight of fancy. By invoking federal documents such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Constitution, and by appointing new judges as old ones leave, the Prime Minister hopes to replace the decisions of the provincial legislatures and of the House of Commons with those of the Supreme Court of Canada in order to modify by interpretation the Canadian Constitution. As we said earlier, the Constitution is much more theirs than it is ours.
Having had the opportunity over time to appoint judges, the Prime Minister is confident that he has a Supreme Court of Canada whose constitution, pardon the pun, will be favourable to him. He wants to modify the Constitution by having it interpreted by judges he has appointed. This happens elsewhere in the world, and it is rarely an honourable procedure. A Parliament is always sovereign, otherwise any one Parliament could impose its will on another.
Quebec’s National Assembly is sovereign in its choices and its votes. Quebec’s Parliament is, in a word, national. Now, more than ever, Quebec’s National Assembly needs the notwithstanding clause, which guarantees the prerogative and primacy of parliaments and elected members over the decisions of the courts. Courts are there only to interpret, despite the fact that we have learned, particularly over the course of Quebec history, that interpretations can, over time, and without casting stones, be nudged in a certain direction. We do not want government by judges, but government by elected members, government by the people.
As I said at the beginning, it is important to mention that the notwithstanding clause is the legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. I remember a question period during which we were told that it was awful, that they were not against the notwithstanding clause but against its pre-emptive use.
Of course, as it is wont to do, it is when the government runs out of arguments that it starts spouting the worst nonsense. That was a good one. If the notwithstanding clause is not to be used pre-emptively, what is the point?
The notwithstanding clause is like a COVID-19 vaccine. People get vaccinated to avoid getting COVID-19, not after they get it. The notwithstanding clause protects Quebec’s laws. We could say “the laws of Quebec and the provinces”, but let us be clear: Aside from a recent notorious case in Ontario, the notwithstanding clause is mostly used in Quebec, particularly when it comes to national identity and jurisdiction, precisely so that we do not have to hear the courts say that we cannot apply our own legislation, that it is being challenged, and that we now have to use the notwithstanding clause to fix a situation that, in the meantime, has had a deleterious effect.
Clearly, that is not how we want to or even how we should use the notwithstanding clause. Too often, harm would be done, and the same courts would have to suspend the application of the law. The notwithstanding clause is a small piece of sovereignty. “Sovereignty” is a word that frightens people. Using it inspires strong feelings and cold sweats. Sovereignty, however, is merely exclusive jurisdiction held by any party. This Parliament claims sovereignty, except in the case of Chinese spy balloons.
It is essential to recognize that, by invoking the notwithstanding clause, a jurisdiction that is a parliament, which by definition is sovereign, is claiming a small part of its sovereignty in jurisdictions which, logically speaking, should be exclusive to it.
This logical relationship between identity, the fact that Quebec is a nation begrudgingly recognized by this Parliament in a very specific context on June 16, 2021, and the fact that Quebec is the one that must resort to this clause is because Quebec is a nation, and its parliament is a national Parliament. Allow me to say that, in my opinion, this is too little.
It is too little because, of course, we want Quebeckers—in their own time, obviously, but we will encourage them—to think about sovereignty as a whole, a nation with a single national Parliament, which, as Mr. Parizeau said, would collect all taxes—we are capable of doing this and we would be having an entirely different conversation about health transfers—vote for all laws applicable in Quebec, sign all treaties and honour all existing treaties, as necessary.
Usually, people do not think about being normal. It goes without saying. We embrace normality, we seek normality and we assume normality. Quebec just needs to think about it right now, and for some time, and observe how its national identity is treated in a Parliament that should at least be a good neighbour if it cannot be a good partner.
This remains an essential reflection, but given the current context, it may no longer hold tomorrow or the next day. The game of cat and mouse, the jurisdictional stonewalling, the encroachments, the interference are anything but progress, efficiency or instruments for the greater good.
Until that necessarily deeper reflection occurs, we certainly need, in this Parliament, to solicit the good faith of colleagues and elected officials in recognizing that Quebec and the provinces have a legitimate right to use the notwithstanding clause. We are not requesting a change to the way things are done. We are asking that it be acknowledged. We simply wish to state the truth and are calling on Parliament to say that it does indeed reflect reality.
Voting against this truth would be akin to challenging the Canadian Constitution itself. This temptation was evident in the Prime Minister's comments. That raised some eyebrows, given the legacy. We are calling on the House to recognize a literal truth, if only out of respect.
In the meantime, and regardless of today’s vote, the Quebec nation and its representatives have only one true friend in this place. Only one political party raises the issues of language, identity, immigration, health care funding and the preservation of the notwithstanding clause in this House. Its members have just as much legitimacy as those of every other party. They are the members of the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc Québécois is proud to stand once again, without compromise, but with a sense of responsibility and with courage, to raise, defend and promote the interests of Quebec, which we hope will accomplish even more.
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