- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Montcalm
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $126,025.95
- Government Page
- Feb/9/23 5:13:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will try to remain calm even though I heard arguments throughout the day that really betray ignorance.
When a human community established within the same territory has language, culture and heritage, when it is animated by a collective conscience and a desire to go down in history, and when all members of the community are on board with a common enterprise, that is called a nation.
The House of Commons claims to recognize the Quebec nation. The Quebec nation, via the people's elected representatives who make up its parliament, the National Assembly, democratically passed Bill 21 and Bill 96. The Canadian Constitution says that a parliament must be above governments. However, the Liberals currently in the House seem inclined toward the judicialization of politics. They lack courage and would rather refer the debate to the courts to decide in the people's stead. In the last election, the people of Quebec re-elected the 90 members of the government that introduced and passed these laws. Where, then, is the democratic deficit?
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- Feb/9/23 5:10:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I heard my colleague say that we had better things to do than to talk about the notwithstanding clause.
However, I would point out to him that the notwithstanding clause ensures two things for the Quebec nation and the Quebec National Assembly: the separation of church and state, in the case of Bill 101, and the continued existence of the French language, thanks to Bill 96.
On behalf of a nation that intends on passing the test of time, I want give my colleague the chance to reconsider his words because if he still maintains that it is a lost cause for Quebeckers, I want to make sure that he and his party face the political consequences of their position in Quebec.
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- Feb/9/23 4:25:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to know what my colleague thinks about one of the greatest minds in multiculturalism, Will Kymlicka.
Regarding the Quebec nation and its desire to have access to certain tools, such as the notwithstanding clause, Kymlicka wrote: “Had Quebec not been guaranteed these substantial powers—and hence protected from the possibility of being outvoted on key issues by the larger anglophone population—it is certain that Quebec either would not have joined Canada in 1867 or would have seceded sometime thereafter.”
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- Oct/20/22 7:13:54 p.m.
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Madam Chair, at least 10 departments helped develop this plan, which was divided into seven pillars. In fact, the Government of Quebec is investing $1 billion in this plan.
The first pillar is promoting mental health and preventing mental illness. The second pillar is prevention and crisis intervention services. The third is partnerships with community organizations. The fourth pillar focuses on actions aimed at young people, their families, their loved ones and their inner circle. The fifth pillar is improving access to mental health care and services. The sixth pillar is prevention and alternatives to hospitalization in psychiatric care, and the seventh is consultation and improving practices.
I think the federal government could contribute to research.
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- Oct/20/22 6:32:17 p.m.
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Madam Chair, listening to the minister gives one the impression that the federal government is reinventing the wheel and starting from scratch in Quebec. No one is against virtue. On November 23, 2023, the CRTC is going to launch the 988 hotline. However, Quebec organizations are concerned because Quebec already has its own lines, 1-866-APPELLE and 1-855-CRAQUER. The organizations therefore want to be assured that their resources will be able to continue to act and that their equipment will be updated somewhere along the way so as to be able to connect to this new service.
Can the minister assure these organizations that are concerned that a lack of coordination will prevent them from being able continue to offer their services in Quebec?
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Madam Speaker, before I begin my comments on Bill C-30, I would like to say a few words about democracy.
As members know, I am strongly committed to democracy. Of course, everyone knows that I am a sovereignist, but I am first and foremost a democrat. I am a sovereignist precisely because the democratic ideal is the very foundation of the sovereignty of a people. Yesterday, in Quebec, 125 elections took place. I repeat, 125 elections. This was not “the Quebec election”; we held “elections”. There were 125 elections, and I would like to congratulate all the candidates, from all parties, who ran in my riding. In Montcalm, there are three Quebec ridings—
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- Sep/27/22 12:06:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague opposite said that he expected the new Leader of the Opposition to bring in new ideas.
What does the member think about the fact that the new Leader of the Opposition does not know that the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec?
In addition, with inflation as it is, all economists are saying that we need targeted measures. In Quebec, however, there are some people whose livelihoods are at risk. Does my colleague support highly targeted programs to help people like farmers, taxi drivers and truckers?
This is something the Bloc Québécois is proposing.
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- May/31/22 5:07:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Waterloo for her speech. I also thank her for making an effort to actually discuss. She did not simply try to look for the underlying intent of the Bloc Québécois's opposition day, as if opposition days were named as such because other parties simply needed to oppose them rather than try to participate in what my colleague called the ethics of discussion earlier.
That being said, I imagine my colleague heard my colleague from Mirabel's speech this morning, as she is taking part in the debate this afternoon. He explained how difficult it is to go out and find good people, even if you want to look around the globe, given the many pitfalls you have to overcome, such as the ability to pay these individuals.
Is my colleague aware that Quebec has equal access employment programs? Despite my young age, those equal access employment programs have been in place throughout my teaching career. Does she understand that Quebec has a recruitment problem that is not necessarily related to the criteria she wants to apply all across Canada?
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- Apr/25/22 11:24:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the second point reads that “we need to make sure the conditions of work reflect the care standards our seniors deserve”.
Everyone agrees that we have a collective responsibility to care for our seniors as individuals. However, the conditions of work in long-term care facilities and seniors' residences do not fall under federal jurisdiction. That is the first problem, and I will come back to it.
The third point states that “the management of long-term care facilities is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction”. Here, they are basically admitting that it is none of their business. At least they are acknowledging it.
The motion continues by saying, “we share the goal of ensuring safer, better care for seniors”. Well done. I am very happy to see that the federal government has the same goal as Quebec and the provinces, that is, to ensure better quality care for seniors. That is effectively what Quebec wants.
However, health care is not under federal jurisdiction. If the federal government truly wishes to help the provinces and Quebec, it should convene a summit to discuss a sustainable increase in health care funding and health transfers, as requested unanimously by Quebec and the provinces, which are united on this. I will come back to this point.
The beginning of the second part of the motion states that, “in the opinion of the House, the government should work with the provinces and territories to (i) improve the quality and availability of long-term care homes and beds”. Quebec already has a plan for revamping its health care system. Parliamentary debates will be held to improve the plan, to determine whether it is sound and to look at the pros and cons, but that is the responsibility of the elected members of the Quebec National Assembly, not the House of Commons.
What our health care systems are missing is financial resources, meaningful recurrent investments, and a substantial increase in the federal government's contribution. That means increasing federal health transfers from 22% of system costs to 35% and increasing the escalator from 3% to 6% per year. That is what is being called for by Quebec and the provinces, as well as by many other stakeholders. I will come back to that later.
The second point in the second paragraph of the motion states, “implement strict infection prevention and control measures, including through more provincial and territorial facility inspections for long-term care homes”. Quebec has assessed, and continues to assess, its actions during the pandemic. It is not up to the federal government to tell Quebec what to do or how to do it. Besides, the feds do not even have the required expertise. The best solution the federal government can come up with is to take best practices found from coast to coast to coast and impose them, as if that were within its jurisdiction.
The third point in that second paragraph states, “develop a safe long-term care act collaboratively to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve, no matter where they live”. The Quebec National Assembly unanimously opposed such federal standards, and let us not forget that the House of Commons voted against imposing standards when the NDP moved a motion in March 2021, in the 43rd Parliament. The Liberals voted against that at the time.
The Liberal Party must be suffering from amnesia, because during this 44th Parliament, it is at it again with this motion. I have to say, since the advent of the NDP-Liberal government, positions have become muddled. One thing remains clear: their appetite for interfering in things that do not concern them.
Has a federal government ever been defeated in an election over issues related to health? The answer is no, because the provision of health care is not a federal responsibility. In Quebec, we have often seen governments get the boot over health-related matters.
Health has been an exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces since 1867. Quebec has exclusive authority over health, except when it comes to the health of indigenous peoples, military hospitals, drug approval and quarantines. It is therefore up to Quebeckers to have this debate and make the decision. In a democracy, it is up to voters to sanction their government.
A debate has been raging for months in Quebec over the issue of long-term care and the decisions that were made during the COVID‑19 crisis. That debate is still going on, and it is the Quebec government that will take steps to correct the situation and the public that will decide, this October, if it is satisfied with the actions of its government.
Quebec already has solutions. It does not need the federal government to provide them.
In his November 23, 2021, report, the ombudsman pointed out flaws, but he mostly identified measures that the Quebec government must implement so that this never happens again.
In response to that report, the Quebec government presented its plan for reforming the health care system. The plan includes an array of measures, such as large-scale recruitment, better access to data, the construction of new hospitals, and increased accountability for executives. Additionally, the coroner is still investigating. People are calling for a public inquiry into the situation at long-term care facilities.
In any case, it is up to Quebeckers to take stock of the situation and to fix their system. I have said it before, and I will say it again: Quebec already has standards. Quebec's Act respecting health services and social services includes regulations for long-term care homes. I remind members that 86% of long-term care homes in Quebec are public facilities.
The report prepared by the Canadian Armed Forces at the end of its deployment to Quebec's long-term care homes is clear. There are already plenty of standards and rules for things like contamination prevention and control and PPE. However, that was not enough to stop the virus.
Why was Canada's federal stockpile empty? Why did we send PPE to mainland China when we were about to be hit hard by the virus? The government should answer these questions before lecturing others.
The main reason these rules were more difficult to follow is also very clear: There was a labour shortage. I will quote the Canadian Armed Forces report: “According to our observations, the critical need for CHSLDs is an improved level of staff with medical training”.
If the federal government truly wants to help the provinces and Quebec get through the pandemic and improve care for our seniors, it needs to stop patronizing us. It needs to drop this idea of mandatory national standards that are ill suited to the different social and institutional contexts, and it needs to increase health transfers, which will allow the provinces and Quebec to attract and retain more health care workers.
That is the federal government's job. It needs to increase health transfers. It knows that, but it thinks it can keep making one-time investments instead of recurring investments, even though we need to get through this pandemic.
The Bloc Québécois is steadfast in its demand for the federal government to immediately increase health transfers to 35% of costs and to index them going forward. The Parliament of Canada itself made this demand when it adopted a Bloc Québécois motion calling on the government to significantly and sustainably increase Canada health transfers to support the efforts of the governments of Quebec and the provinces, health care workers and the public. All of the premiers have made this demand. The Quebec National Assembly has made this demand. All of the unions, the FTQ, the CSN, the CSQ and the CSD, have made this demand, pointing out that the systemic funding problems facing the provinces and Quebec are hampering Canadians and Quebeckers from accessing the services they need.
On April 4, 2022, the Quebec medical community, including the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec, the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec and the Association des médecins hématologues et oncologues du Québec, along with several unions, joined the Bloc in calling on the federal government to hold a public summit on health care funding. All voters across Quebec and Canada want our health care systems to be improved. According to a Leger poll, 85% of voters support the recommendation made by the premiers and their united stance.
This motion is as pointless as the last election. It is not standards that will ensure better care, but rather the funding needed to deliver that care.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is well aware that the House supposedly recognized the Quebec nation as a nation. If Quebec is recognized as a nation, there should be some kind of statute saying so.
The number of seats is one thing, but if the number of seats everywhere else goes up, Quebec will lose its political weight.
If a senatorial clause is good for Prince Edward Island, would my colleague agree that we could have a Quebec clause for the Quebec nation?
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Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his fascinating and impassioned history lesson. His students must have been riveted.
The Liberal and Conservative parties claim to have recognized the Quebec nation. As long as their recognition is symbolic, there is no problem. However, when it has a legislative impact, they and the NDP balk. That is precisely what is happening in the House.
The motion presented by the Bloc on its opposition day said that we did not want to lose any seats or political weight and that they must be maintained. We tabled a bill well before the supposed NDP agreement, and everyone voted for it except for a few Conservatives.
Could my colleague explain the House's logic and coherence, given that it is prepared to symbolically recognize the Quebec nation but not to attach any legislative meaning to that recognition?
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Madam Speaker, my colleague gave a very interesting speech. However, his party voted in favour of the motion that was debated on a previous supply day that read in part, and I quote:
...
(a) any scenario for redrawing the federal electoral map that would result in Quebec losing one or more electoral districts or that would reduce Quebec’s political weight in the House of Commons must be rejected;
....
He cannot be happy that, today, Bill C-14 meets and delivers on only one of the conditions he voted for. If he recognizes Quebec as a nation, he will agree with us and vote in favour of our bill, which will ensure that the Quebec nation's political weight is maintained by allocating 25% of the seats in the House to Quebec.
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- Feb/21/22 10:59:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have no idea, but it is clear that the order does not meet the criteria set out in section 3 of the act.
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- Feb/21/22 10:46:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix.
I taught political philosophy for 30 years. The democratic ideal is at the heart of my political involvement. That is why I am a sovereignist, because the political sovereignty of the people is the very foundation of the democratic ideal.
The debate that is coming to a close today is one of the most serious debates I have ever participated in in the House, because the Emergencies Act is the most powerful and coercive action that a nation governed by the rule of law can impose in a democracy.
Government by decree is the antithesis of the exercise of legislative power. Such decrees cannot be made based on feelings, frustration with what others are saying, or ideological differences—whether far left or far right—or simply to cover up incompetence on the pretext of a legal vacuum.
It is not with joy in my heart or without emotion that I rise today. I never would have thought that the 10-year-old-boy from a working-class neighbourhood of Montreal who was forced to walk by armoured tanks and soldiers armed with machine guns every morning for the duration of the October crisis, because his school was right next to the police headquarters on Parthenais Street, would end up in the House of Commons 52 years later debating the Emergencies Act.
I remember the fear and the intense climate of suspicion that gripped the neighbourhood every time there was a police operation or arrest, whether or not it made the news, involving people we considered to be perfectly ordinary, like us, with no criminal record and far from being terrorists, as we rightly thought.
Despite the emotion I am feeling by recalling this memory, I never would have failed in my duty to add my voice to that of my colleagues in this debate that started long before January 29, in the wake of a global health crisis that has affected our lives, everyone's quality of life, that has left thousands of families in mourning, that for two years now has challenged our sense of solidarity and mutual goodwill and that gives new meaning to the old adage, “One person's freedom ends where another's begins”.
This should lead us as parliamentarians to be more careful than ever not to set a precedent, but also to be as thorough as possible in order to maintain the increasingly fragile trust the public has in their democratic institutions.
The issue here is not the opinions or the interpretation that different people can have of democracy or freedom. As we saw in the streets for 23 days, and in many other countries of the world throughout history, people can say and do many things in the name of freedom and democracy. However, in a country governed by the rule of law and in a self-proclaimed free and democratic society, the legitimacy of the government's power in relation to its citizens must be guided by and measured against a fundamental question that must be answered to prevent abuse of power.
What are the limits to the government's power to intervene?
My questions arise only out of the desire to understand the necessity of invoking this act. I would point out that it is special legislation, which, let us not forget, was developed in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act so that the executive branch, meaning the government, any government, regardless of its political stripes, can never again claim the absolute power to trample rights and freedoms for political purposes, nor engage in abuse of power with impunity.
I recognize that it is not the same act. Much like Thomson and Thompson are not the same, these acts are not the same. With this act, however, the government has brought out the heavy artillery. In 1988, parliamentarians created some safeguards, and one of those safeguards was us, as members of Parliament. We have a duty to question the legitimacy of the Emergencies Act, which was invoked in response to a situation we all now know, when the government stood by for 21 days.
To all those who claim we are living in a dictatorship, I do want to point out that totalitarian and dictatorial regimes rarely hold the kinds of debates we have been having today. These types of debates are the essence of a parliamentary democracy, of a representative democracy, but we also have to live up to that responsibility and maintain credibility. Unfortunately, the sequence of events and the failure to implement the necessary measures in response to the siege of the federal capital do not justify these orders.
How did we wind up here? According to the Emergencies Act, the government had a responsibility to consult the provinces and report on those consultations to establish that there was a nationwide emergency. Seven out of 10 premiers opposed the use of the Emergencies Act in their provinces because they did not feel it was necessary. Two of the three other premiers said that they did not need this special legislation.
What national crisis are the Liberals talking about when they continue to claim that the Emergencies Act must absolutely be confirmed? We are hearing that it is useful, but it must be proven indispensable. Even the Quebec National Assembly saw fit to distance itself from the process and unanimously adopted a motion against the application of the law in Quebec. It reads:
That the National Assembly be concerned about the current disruptions in Ontario and around certain federal border crossings;
That it affirm that no emergency situation currently justifies the use of special legislative measures in Québec;
That it ask the Canadian government to not apply the federal Emergencies Act in Québec;
That, lastly, the National Assembly reiterate the importance of close collaboration between the federal government and the Québec government, in particular to ensure peace of mind and safety for citizens in the Outaouais region who are affected by the ongoing demonstrations in Ottawa and who could have to bear the brunt of any further deterioration of the situation.
The Government of Canada has ignored the requirement to demonstrate a national emergency. How can it claim a national emergency when seven premiers say they do not need this legislation? How can we draw any other conclusion besides that the usual laws were sufficient?
I can understand that the members sitting on the government side feel obliged to support their government's shaky logic and failure to provide the required proofs. However, I am of the opinion that there should be a free vote on such a fundamental issue.
This minority government did not do its homework, but because it has the support of the NDP, it does not matter if it fulfills the obligations set out in the act. As we speak, the siege in Ottawa has ended. The so-called national crisis that the government failed to demonstrate no longer exists. In the circumstances, I wonder if the NDP is aware that by voting with the government, it is an accomplice to setting a dangerous precedent by accepting such a low bar and that, one day, a majority government may use it to do something even worse.
The government failed to fulfill another requirement, that of demonstrating, in accordance with section 3 of the act, that any other law of Canada, the regular laws, cannot effectively deal with the emergency situation of this alleged national crisis. Not only did the government not prove this, but it did not even try. My colleagues from Joliette and Rivière-du-Nord eloquently and methodically explained that existing legislation was sufficient to resolve the situation and that seven out of 10 premiers were opposed to the invocation of the Emergencies Act in their provinces, because they had the situation under control. This clearly demonstrates that the conditions of section 3 were not met.
In conclusion, I invite members of all parties to vote according to the highest principles that should limit the exercise of the government's power to ensure its legitimacy and guarantee the rule of law. This will result in a parliamentary democracy where not only can the general will of the people be expressed, but also where different points of view can be heard, rather than being relegated to the streets.
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