- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Joliette
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $132,165.46
- Government Page
- May/28/24 12:50:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I do not thank my colleague for his remarks, because I find them highly disrespectful.
As we know, the Bloc Québécois is doing well in Quebec. Perhaps that explains why the Liberals are accusing us of colluding with the Conservatives and of leaning to the right, if not the far right. Meanwhile, the Conservatives say we have joined the Liberals in promoting socialism. This is what the House has been reduced to: rhetoric and caricature.
Personally, I am just trying to do my job fairly and properly. The Speaker tried to participate in yet another partisan activity, despite knowing he could not. Today we are debating a motion about the confidence we have in the Speaker and the fact that he must exhibit impartiality and judgment. This matter has moved to the top of the agenda because it is a priority. Last time, we were told that the Speaker would learn from his mistakes and would not repeat them, yet he has in fact repeated them. We need to talk about this.
I could then respond at length to the other questions, but I see that my time is up.
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- Jun/21/23 6:23:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleagues are applauding me because I am announcing that I will be sharing my time with the member for La Prairie, who is also my esteemed House leader.
Populism is proposing simplistic solutions to complex problems in order to pander to the population's most basic instincts. Today's motion is a good example of that. After giving an accurate picture of inflation, household debt and the housing crisis, the Conservatives are saying that the solution is simply to eliminate deficits. I guess that housing prices will then magically drop and households will have less debt. That is populist rhetoric.
Beyond the rhetoric, the motion asks only one thing, which is that “the House call on the government to table a plan to return to balanced budgets.” That is what we are voting on today, and the Bloc Québécois wholeheartedly supports that, because governing involves planning and forecasting. Bringing forward a plan to return to balanced budgets is the least that we can do. Had the motion called for approval of the rhetoric of the Conservatives or the Liberals, the Bloc Québécois would vote against it in either case.
Canada is going through a tough time right now. On the one hand, a spendthrift and unserious Prime Minister is spending lavishly on one-size-fits-all programs to promote his ideology rather than to meet immediate and real needs, including in areas that are outside federal jurisdiction. On the other hand, the populist and somewhat mean-spirited Conservative leader is proposing nothing except to get rid of the Liberals. His sound bites serve as economic policy, and his vision of the economy and the environment is stuck in the 20th century, the century of oil.
Between the two, there is the Bloc Québécois, which proposes tangible measures. It proposes flexible and targeted programs to meet people's real needs. These are much less costly and more effective programs than the current one-size-fits-all initiatives. It proposes to bring some order to how the government operates to end waste and the chronic inability to manage properly. This is all related to my question.
The Bloc proposes to end interference by having a government that uses its flexibility to address matters within its jurisdiction rather than increasing initiatives in areas that are not its responsibility. The Bloc proposes to end support for oil companies and shift that money to programs specifically designed to transition to renewable energy rather than remaining trapped any longer in the 20th century of oil.
The Bloc proposes a federal government that stops spreading itself too thin and focuses on its fundamental responsibilities, which are the following: stopping the erosion of purchasing power, especially for seniors; providing a level of health transfers that ensures the sustainability of public services; creating a Marshall plan for the construction of social and community housing; and ensuring we have employment insurance that works.
In short, we are proposing a real plan to balance the budget, which will strengthen the core responsibilities of the government and avoid the full-scale austerity that could risk plunging the economy into a recession. A plan to return to a balanced budget is necessary, especially since the government is increasing its initiatives in areas that are not within its jurisdiction, which causes tensions, boondoggles and costly duplication of efforts.
A study by the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation, a research group at the Institute for Research on Public Policy, analyzed federal spending since 2015 and came to the following devastating conclusion on June 7, saying, “the current Liberal government has used federal funds to seek provincial engagement with its own social policy priorities....the current trend is toward a more directive and less collaborative use of the spending power....Partnership seems to be conditional on a province accepting the federal government's policy vision.”
A plan to re-establish balance is also a way to put an end to federal paternalism that uses its spending to impose its own political choices on Quebec.
Things have also been mismanaged. Every time Ottawa touches something, it ends up costing too much. Ley us take the gun registry fiasco. They spent $2 billion to maintain a list. At that price, Quebec could not afford to keep a registry of vehicle license plates. Managing employment insurance costs two and a half times more than managing social assistance. Ottawa's management of passport files costs four times as much as Quebec's management of drivers' licences.
That is another product of fiscal imbalance. Since Ottawa is collecting more taxes than it needs to meet its responsibilities, it does not need to be a good manager of public funds.
For the Bloc Québécois, a plan to re-establish balance means putting an end to waste. There is a way to manage the state a little more rigorously. That rigour will make it possible to avoid the austerity the Conservatives are inviting us to accept today in their speeches.
Historically, the biggest driver of price volatility has been oil prices. The best way to protect against this is to move to the post-oil period as soon as possible. Already, 98% of Quebec's electricity comes from renewable sources and is immune to oil prices. Oil and gas account for only 13% of home energy consumption. The rest is electricity or firewood. These are all energy sources that are not affected by oil prices.
The Quebec fleet is the most electrified in Canada. The network of charging stations in Quebec is the most developed. The price gap between electric vehicles and gas-powered vehicles is constantly shrinking. The sale of personal gas-powered vehicles will be banned in Quebec as of 2035.
We need to accelerate this shift. The best and cheapest way to do that is to redirect the money currently earmarked for modernizing the oil industry to clean energy. In the post-oil world, Quebec has everything it needs to be the most prosperous society on the planet.
Since the government has not taken any budgetary or legislative measures to address the sources of inflation, it is the Bank of Canada that has had to act with the monetary tool it has at its disposal: rising interest rates. Yet there are things the government could have done.
In order to provide relief for pensioners on a fixed income, the government should have increased old age security. The government increased OAS only for those aged 75 and up, leaving those between the ages of 65 and 74 to fend for themselves.
As we know, according to OECD estimates, the net pension replacement rate was 50.7% of pre-retirement income in Canada. In other words, the transition to retirement means a major drop in the average standard of living for Canadians and Quebeckers.
The average net pension replacement rate for OECD countries was 57.6% and the EU average was 63%, so Canada has a poor record in this regard, lagging far behind Italy, India, France and Denmark. We are doing only slightly better than the U.S., where inequality is skyrocketing. We need to take action. We need to better protect the standard of living of our seniors.
To reduce pressure on the cost of housing, the government needs to increase the supply of social and community housing. The current funding will not make up for two decades of underfunding and the resulting housing shortage.
To limit price increases on consumer goods, we need to improve competition laws. Last December, the Governor of the Bank of Canada told the Standing Committee on Finance that concentration in the food distribution sector and the lack of competition had led to the prices hikes we saw, which resulted in significantly higher profits for that sector, on the backs of consumers.
The competition regime needs to be reformed, particularly to slow down the trend towards concentration and the abuse of dominance that naturally ensues.
In the face of rising household debt, we need to regulate credit card fees, which are the costliest form of debt for heavily indebted households. The government's announcement in the last budget that it trusted credit card issuers to set and maintain reasonable fees is woefully inadequate.
In the face of supply chain problems, we need to make it easier to increase local production; support investments that help boost productivity to counter the adverse effects of higher interest rates on investments in production equipment; address the labour shortage, which is getting in the way of adjusting the supply to meet demand; encourage seniors to keep working by not penalizing them with GIS clawbacks; and make it easier to use temporary foreign workers in professions where there is a labour shortage by transferring management of the program to Quebec City, which is already doing the impact assessments that the federal government is asking business owners to do.
Those are some of the measures the government could take to address both the cause and effects of inflation.
Lastly, let us not forget the importance of seriously addressing the use of tax havens by major banks, multinationals, web giants and the wealthy. It is high time that this grossly unfair loophole was closed. It is immoral and we must make it illegal.
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Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his speech. I would like to talk to him about the rhetoric coming from the party in power.
In the spring budget, the government said that the supply chain issue needed to be addressed, but no measure was proposed. In the fall economic statement, it is the same thing. It talks about supply chains, but no concrete measure is proposed to deal with the issue.
The government is doing the same thing again with the issue of inflation. The word “inflation” comes up 108 times in the economic statement, but there is no new measure other than the ones that we already voted on in the House this fall or that were announced in the spring budget.
Would the hon. member agree that there is a disparity between the rhetoric and the actions that are actually taken?
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