- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Mirabel
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $114,073.56
- Government Page
- May/29/23 7:41:25 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, this is the first government budget that we could describe as a postpandemic budget. Obviously no one here in Parliament is to blame for the virus. However, the programs that might have helped us to get through the pandemic at the time are the responsibility of this Parliament. We need to learn important lessons and make corrections. We also need to prepare for the next crisis that could arise.
The government boasts about having signed agreements with the provinces on health. These agreements were imposed. Out of the demands that were made by the provinces and Quebec, only $1 out of $6 was granted. Before the Liberals came along, the transfers covered 24% of provincial health costs. Now they cover just 22%. With these new agreements, which are not real agreements, we are back to 24%. They are perpetuating the chronic underfunding of health.
Does the minister recognize that the federal government's chronic underfunding has left us short on hospital beds and that the measures to counter the pandemic, which hurt our economy, had to be excessively extended?
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- Mar/29/23 5:18:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on February 14, I wished the NDP and the Liberals a Happy Valentine's Day. Today, to look at the budget document we have before us, I think that the union has been consummated. It is clear.
What we learn from reading the budget document, which was summed up well by my colleague from Joliette, is that the federal government has a tremendous amount of means and that, with the help of the NDP, which is not surprising, it is having a hard time spending and investing those means wisely in the priorities of people on the ground who are dealing with real problems when it comes to employment insurance, seniors' return to work, or health. There is absolute disparity between the government's financial capacity and the real needs on the ground. It is not for nothing that when the Liberals toss $4 billion to provinces that are asking for $28 billion and tell them to accept it or get nothing, they have the nerve to stand up and say that it is an agreement. They have the nerve to do that. I know that they are not lying. They believe themselves and that is even worse.
The budget document is clear. It seems to be very much like what the Parliamentary Budget Officer described, and my colleague put it well. It states that, in 25 years, if we include the new financial commitments, Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio will be zero even in the worse case scenario. There is no other industrialized country that plans to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio to zero, which means that there will be no debt, without looking after its people. No other developed country is doing that.
There is fiscal flexibility in the budget. The Parliamentary Budget Office has done the calculations. Those people are paid to provide Parliament with information. They are competent. They are quite right in saying that as the government eliminates its debt over time, the provinces will find themselves in more and more trouble, and that when the federal debt is eliminated, the provinces will be technically bankrupt.
The federal government tells us that there is no fiscal imbalance because this year, the current year, some provincial governments are running small surpluses while the federal government has a $40-billion deficit. All of this is without recognizing that the problems we are experiencing in health care today are the same problems that could not be solved 25 years ago when the Liberals began cutting the transfers. By repeating the same thing today, they will create even more serious problems 25 years from now. In their minds, there is nothing dynamic. They are always thinking six months ahead, to the next election, and it is exactly the same with the NDP.
There is $40 billion in lapsed spending from last year. We have the figures and the public accounts. That is $40 billion that was not used. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that another $40 billion could be used to help the provinces with health care and other things. Even so, the federal debt-to-GDP ratio would remain the same and the provinces would be able to take care of people. We are talking about $80 billion.
We can add to that the fact that inflation is estimated to be 3.5% this year. That number is way off, which means that there will be additional tax revenue. That puts us at more than $80 billion, which is far more than the $28 billion the provinces were asking for. They would have $50 billion or $60 billion left over while allowing us to take care of our people. This is no joke. They could keep lowering the debt-to-GDP ratio while taking care of people.
Allow me to summarize. The Liberals had an opportunity to relieve the suffering of Quebec's patients. Instead, they decided to relieve the electoral anxieties of the NDP. That is essentially what they did. I can understand why the NDP is crowing about it. If I were them, I would be happy too. That is the reality.
What will the NDP tell us? The NDP is going to tell us that they got us dental care. The budget says that Health Canada is basically going to turn into an insurance company. If you have tried to get a passport, Mr. Speaker, you have every reason to be concerned. By the end of the year, it looks as though Health Canada will become an insurance company. They are going to call all the dental associations in all the provinces and they are going to negotiate agreements. Then we will be able to start submitting dental bills, all by the end of the year.
That is the promise that they are going to make to us, but they need a reality check. The federal government is so bad. The Liberals have no idea how to do anything. They are so far removed from what they are good at—and one has to admit that there is not much that they are good at—that the dental care program is not even included in the budget implementation bill.
They are going to implement the budget without even knowing how to do so. The dental care program is not even there. That will bring us to the summer. We will come back in the fall and there will not even be a dental care program because they just have no idea how to implement one.
There has been no talk of seniors because the Liberals created two classes of seniors, those aged 65 to 74 and those aged 75 and up. There is nothing in the budget for seniors aged 65 to 74. They are taking the injustice they created and indexing it to inflation, and yet this government is supposed to have an aversion to injustice.
When it comes to inflation, the NDP has spent all year getting worked up into a lather over grocery store owners. The Liberals decided to make the NDP happy. They are going to take the GST rebate cheque that they doubled, as the Bloc Québécois has been asking them to do for a year and a half, they are going to issue it early in the year—we asked them to increase the frequency of the cheques—and they are going to call it a grocery rebate. It is a great victory for the NDP. We congratulate them.
On employment insurance, this system that insures one in two people and leaves half the people behind when they lose their job, they are saying that there will be a recession, but no EI reform.
If I were looking to insure my house and the insurer told me that I had a 50% chance of my claim being rejected if my house burned down, I would switch insurers. That is exactly the situation that the unemployed are facing. The Liberals say that, according to actuarial forecasts, the EI fund is good for another 10 years before it needs to be reformed. There is nothing in the budget about getting experienced workers back to work without penalizing them for offering their strength, intelligence and experience to our businesses. When I walk around Mirabel and other places in Quebec, everyone talks to me about it. Everyone is talking about it except for the Liberals and the NDP.
There is nothing for the aerospace industry. The minister was telling me that he is talking to CEOs and inviting them to invest. The minister is not a lobbyist. His job is not to be a chargé d'affaires but to ensure that the investment climate is favourable to investment, in order to have investment, research and development, investment funds, credits for research and development, and to fix the implementation of this luxury tax, which is about to kill 2,000 jobs in Quebec. People will go elsewhere to buy planes.
We are the laughingstock of the G7. The Liberals tell us that aviation is important, but they are closing the control tower in Mirabel. They have shut down light aircraft access, our flight schools and a runway. The industry's strategic infrastructure is now managed by a board of directors that takes care of Montreal and whose CEO is a former accountant from Coca-Cola. Nobody is accountable and nobody knows anything about aviation. They appear to be really good at this. When they do not know something, it is scary.
With regard to energy, the budget gives $18 billion in subsidies to oil companies, which have money. When it comes to taxing luxury jets that are used to transport passengers and that harm our industry, there is no problem. They are for equality. However, when it comes to giving subsidies to companies that are making tons of profit, that could invest in reducing their emissions if they wanted to avoid the carbon tax, but instead the government gives them subsidies so that these CEOs can buy private jets to go to their cottages, that is not a problem for western Canada.
Now there is an election coming up in Ontario. Their 15% and 30% clean energy subsidies—because when we get right down to the nitty gritty, CO2 is all that matters to them—are going to go to Ontario's nuclear plants. Oddly enough, there is an election coming up in Ontario. Oddly enough, the majority of the next Canadian government is going to be in Ontario.
We are willing to collaborate and we are willing to vote in favour of measures that are good for Quebec. That is what we do, but our goodwill is like an elastic. There is a limit.
Since my time is almost up, I will move the following amendment to the amendment:
That the amendment be amended by deleting all the words after the words “since it” and substituting the following:
fails to:
(a) immediately reform employment insurance and increase old age security for seniors aged 65 to 74;
(b) fight climate change by ending fossil fuel subsidies; and
(c) increase health transfers to 35%, preferring instead to interfere in the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces, such as by creating dental insurance without giving Quebec the right to opt out with full compensation.
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- Feb/16/23 4:53:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals keep saying that health care is important to them and that the provinces and Quebec accepted the deal. The reality is that they were forced to accept one-seventh of what they were asking for. If I offered the member a choice between one-seventh of his income or nothing, and held a knife to his throat, he would likely take one-seventh of his income because he would have no choice.
Under a minority government, there is a way to make health care really matter. We know that the provinces need funding. The way to make health care matter is to tell the Liberals that we will vote against their budget if it does not allocate an acceptable amount of funding for health.
Since the NDP is taking a full opposition day today to talk about health care, can it commit to voting against the Liberal budget if the provinces' health care demands are not met?
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- Feb/16/23 3:40:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about funding for health care.
We all know that the provinces were calling for $28 billion per year, but the government only put $4.4 billion per year on the table. Therefore, the government is giving the provinces only $1 for every $7 they asked for.
I have two questions for my colleague. Does she think that $1 out of every $7 the provinces were calling for is enough? I would like her to explain why she thinks that the provinces' initial requests were unreasonable.
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- Feb/14/23 5:01:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will take a few seconds to remind or inform my colleagues that this is the first St. Valentine's Day that the NDP and the Liberals have spent together since they struck their alliance. I wish them a happy Valentine's Day.
We, in the Bloc Québécois, are sovereignists, and we want Quebec to be its own country. We would like Quebec to make its own decisions and choices. There are many reasons for that, historical and institutional reasons, but we also want to be efficient.
In Quebec, we are against duplication. We believe that doing the same work twice, once in Quebec City and once in Ottawa, is not a good thing. It is not a good use of resources. I can see my Conservative colleagues nodding. That is a good thing because today we are faced with the duplication of previous motions.
This is the fifth or sixth identical motion. This unnecessary duplication, this waste of energy, is something we have seen before in the House of Commons. It is the same thing every Conservative opposition day. Economists call this looking for economies of scale. An economy of scale means trying to always produce the same thing with less and less effort. Lucky for us, it takes less and less effort to give them the same answers. Obviously they get paid big money just to copy and paste, in other words, to hit “control c” and “control v”. We already voted against a virtually identical motion last week. I would say that I am throwing their motion in the garbage bin, but even the garbage bin might vote against that.
We will talk about the motion for a few minutes. The diagnosis within the motion is not entirely false. It is true that there is inflation. It is true that Canadian families are facing a crisis. It is true that times are hard because many people are struggling. We have to think about those people. It is true that the inflation rate is at its highest since 1982. It was over 10% in 1982. It is roughly 6% today. The motion is a little overblown, but there we are.
However, what the Conservatives forgot to say is that if we do not consider energy and food, which are important components, the core inflation rate used by the Bank of Canada is 5.5%. The price of fossil fuel energy has increased by 28%.
Once again, the Conservatives think that attacking the carbon tax, which does not even apply in Quebec, is the solution to all our woes. Instead, we need to take measures to start an energy transition, so that the next time there is a crisis, we do not end up with a 22nd, 23rd and 24th identical motion. Surely it is clear why we are uncomfortable.
The reason the Conservatives can afford to keep tabling the same motion over and over is because the Liberals did little to help families during the crisis. True, there were some measures. They increased the Canada child benefit and so on. However, those measures were planned before the crisis. Very little was done. They did double the GST credit, something the Bloc had been asking for for months. We also asked that cheques be sent out more frequently, but that has not been done.
The Liberals are complacent. They spend too much time talking and not enough time helping people. That is why the Conservatives' populism, as expressed in yet another of these motions, is unfortunately beginning to gain credence among groups of people who are not always well informed.
One good thing about the Conservatives' motion is that at least we get an opportunity to talk about the federal government's efficiency in delivering services. We get to talk about the efficiency of the machinery of government and McKinsey. We will discuss that later.
I just want to say that inefficiency, especially in the form of duplication, is rampant in Ottawa. I would like the government to explain to me why it costs two and a half times more to process an EI claim than it does to process a social assistance application in Quebec, and that is the truth. That is a 250% markup on processing.
Why does it cost four times more to handle and process a passport application in the federal bureaucracy than it does for the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec to deliver a driver's licence? Of course, a driver's licence is not a passport, but that is 400% more. These are not unreasonable comparisons. This is a major problem.
Members talked about duplication, and I want to talk about federal government costs that have doubled or even tripled.
We know that Ottawa duplicates some things that Quebec already does. That management could be decentralized. There will be further discussion on the single income tax statement and the duplication of taxation centres. That is one thing.
Yesterday, the procurement ombudsman appeared before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. Based on what we heard, ministers can indeed subcontract work, even if the public service is available and has the skills needed to do the work. The work can be subcontracted to companies such as McKinsey.
I asked him if, during his audits, he identified whether work that public servants could have done had been subcontracted. Quebeckers and Canadians will not pay just once or twice, but three times. He responded that his work was rather to ensure that, when taxpayers get ripped off and pay twice, pre-established rules are followed. In other words, we will be ripped off in accordance with the rules. That is exactly how it works. I invite people to listen to the ombudsman's testimony yesterday.
There are ways to ensure that the machinery of government operates more efficiently. Are these solutions contained in the Conservative motion? I read it three times. It was quite painful but I did it, and I noted that it does not contain any solutions, so we will be voting against this motion.
There is another thing that is niggling at me. It bothers me, and I feel uncomfortable. The Conservatives and the Liberals both know that not all inflation is created equal. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom the Conservatives love to quote every 15 minutes, said and showed that the trajectory of the federal government's debt-to-GDP ratio would drop over the coming years. It could actually reach 10% of GDP, maybe even 0% of GDP, depending on the budget, in a few decades.
The federal government's long-term public finances are healthy, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer showed that the provinces' finances, which cover health, are going to be in bigger and bigger trouble. They are in trouble because the cost of the system, even before the inflationary crisis, was increasing at a rate of 5.5% to 6% per year. That is before any increase in the cost of nurses, orderlies and all the other inputs involved in health care systems.
Now there is a new agreement being imposed. I do not know of many marriages that are entered into legally and with mutual consent with this type of agreement. It is an agreement imposed by one side only. It is so stingy that the Conservatives have decided to support it. When inflation affects the sick people who are waiting in hospital corridors, people whose cancer diagnosis or treatment is pushed back a month, two months or three months, or families who will lose loved ones, inflation is the least of their concerns. All they want is to adopt austerity policies.
What will the Conservatives cut? Will they cut help for seniors, like the Liberals did for seniors aged 65 to 74? They will make cuts to the energy transition, obviously. As far as employment insurance is concerned, they are not proposing anything for people who have to deal with the spring gap. They are even proposing that pensions be reduced because they want to offer premium holidays. The Conservatives are going to force future retirees into poverty, and when they turn to Ottawa for help in 20 or 30 years' time, they will be told that the government needs to make cuts and will not help them. With the Conservatives, it is two layers of trouble, not one.
Workable solutions exist. The Bloc Québécois has put forward proposals. We have been doing so for a year and a half. We proposed GST and QST cheques. In cases such as the McKinsey affair, we are always there to ensure that we do not pay double or triple and that taxpayers get their money's worth. When it is time to defend the competence of our public service, the Bloc Québécois is always there.
When it is the Bloc opposition day, we are always accused of raising useless subjects. We are told that people are not interested in what we want to discuss.
In conclusion, I will explain why we are capable of talking about other things. It is because we do not move the same motion seven times. We understand things right away, and it gives us the time to think about other things. The Conservatives want to be in government. The people sitting in this place want to be ministers, but they are not even able to walk and chew gum at the same time. What will they do? Will there be 2,000 seats in the House and 22 parliamentary secretaries for each minister so they can think about two things at once? No, thank you.
For their next opposition day, I invite them to think about their motion, to speak to the other opposition parties and to ensure that the door is not slammed in their face for the eighth or ninth time. That way, they will stop crying and blaming the other parties.
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Mr. Speaker, I wish I could say that it is with great enthusiasm that I rise today, but for me to be truly enthusiastic, I would have had to see something new in the economic update. There really was not much there. As my colleague from La Prairie said earlier, it merely dusts off and updates some old legislation. It is an implementation act and a very long document, but there is not much in terms of real content.
There is one new aspect, though. Once again, as my colleague mentioned earlier, we are doing something we did not do last March when the budget was presented. We are talking about inflation more than anything else. The word “inflation” appears in the document roughly 110 times and is referred to ad nauseam. There is also the prospect of a recession now and, for the first time, the document includes an official forecast of a slowdown for two consecutive quarters. This is an extremely important observation. We are talking about inflation and we are anticipating a recession.
As my colleague from La Prairie said, the situation is such that we are being told that inflation is very serious, and the Prime Minister is doing what he likes to do when he goes on a trip to India: He dresses up as a sorcerer, a magician or whatever, and thinks that repeating it 10, 20, 50, 100 or 120 times will make the problem disappear. However, the people struggling with inflation every day in their homes do realize that 80% of all the money announced and spent in this budget update had already been announced either in Bill C-30 or Bill C-31, or still in the last budget or one-off announcements. That is why there is almost nothing in there.
Part of what is new is that it provides for workers to access certain benefits, to which they are already entitled, a bit sooner. People in Saint-Colomban, Saint-Joseph-du-Lac or Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines who are facing inflation and are afraid of losing their jobs will look at this and surely see that it is largely a rehash.
What should have been proposed? The last election campaign was my first. One of the highlights of the campaign was when the Liberal Party went to the public for ideas. The Liberals called the election even though they did not know what to do. They did not even have a platform. They went door to door and had nothing to say. One suggestion in their suggestion box could have been to fulfill the promise they made seven years ago, which was to make major reforms to the employment insurance system.
Workers are sometimes overcome by life's misfortunes. They may have to go through a recession and face COVID-19 while paying for groceries that now cost 10% more. Currently, not even one in two workers qualifies for EI even though they have paid into the system every paycheque, and their employer has paid into the system every paycheque. The government must reform the system. However, we know that a Liberal promise is basically only good for being torn up and thrown away, much like the motions we vote on in the House.
This government does not know how to listen. Even when it takes a step forward, it fails to implement its very own measures. The Bloc Québécois asked for 50 weeks of benefits for people with serious illnesses, such as cancer, who need treatment for long periods of time. If people are undergoing chemo and not applying for jobs, I think it is fair to say they are not trying to rob the system. The Liberals thought 26 weeks of benefits was fair. That measure was voted on in the House and is ready to roll out, but to this day, workers are not getting even one extra week because cabinet has not passed the order in council. It has been 18 months and still no order in council. That is the very definition of a lack of political will, a lack of empathy for people, a lack of respect for Parliament, a lack of consideration for members of the public, for Quebeckers, for Canadians, for workers and for sick people. The Liberals' appalling failure to take action on employment insurance is a manifestation of all those things.
I had hoped there would be something in the statement about climate change, at least. The energy transition is an opportunity to transform our economy, an opportunity to invest, innovate and export. We have to unlock that potential.
The Prime Minister could not even be bothered to go to COP27. He is known for his judgment, so he surely had something less important to do. He did not go to COP27. We said to ourselves that at least the Minister of Environment, who is a reasonable guy, would go to COP27. Since the Prime Minister was not going with him, the minister was lonely and said he would invite some friends. He called the Royal Bank of Canada, one of the largest financial backers of oil projects, western Canadians and oil people. It seems that there was partying going on in Egypt at the Canada pavilion. Oil spill shots were served, people were standing on tables at midnight or 1 a.m. and they sang O Canada after 3 a.m. It seems that the oil people and the environment minister were really partying.
Now, the minister is saying that it was very important to invite them because they have a role to play in the transition. My colleague from La Prairie would say that it is like inviting Dracula to a blood bank. Those are his words.
My grandfather, who was a very wise man, used to say, “Tell me what company you keep and I will tell you who you are”. Today, we know who the Liberals are, and it is reflected in the budget update. The Liberals tell us that they are supposedly going to eliminate subsidies to oil companies, which is not the case, because they are only eliminating some of them. One positive aspect, though, is flow-through shares.
However, the government is subsidising small modular nuclear reactors. These reactors are only being sent to Alberta and the north to be used at oil sands processing facilities to produce more oil.
Does anyone know of any person, city or street in Canada that needs a small nuclear power plant on a skateboard on a street corner? Does anyone think they are for domestic use? No, these are oil subsidies. That is what the government is shamelessly doing. I wonder how the Liberals wake up in the morning feeling good about themselves when they say one thing and do the opposite. I would have a hard time with that and would struggle to look in the mirror every morning even just to shave. Maybe that is why the environment minister has a beard. Perhaps he struggles to look in the mirror to shave.
There is nothing for health care. As the Minister of Health said, this is a futile debate, and the money is not important. He wants to pay his doctors with love and sunshine. I hope he has good genes. He says that funding is not important, because the provinces have money. This is the new strategy. The provinces have been helping people with inflation by sending cheques, so that means they have money.
We look at the budget statement, in which the Liberals claim that they will reduce the federal debt to GDP ratio from 45% to 37% in a few years. They tell us that they have the money.
The week when the Liberals told us that the provinces have too much money, they announce in their statement cheques to reimburse the goods and services tax. They announce measures, but the provinces do not have the right to do anything at all. Essentially, what the Liberals are telling us is not to spend any more money on education or child care, not to help our seniors any more, not to build any more roads, to give up on public transit and certainly not move into an energy transition because as soon as we spend one penny, we will be told that we should have invested in health. According to their argument, which is flawed and preposterous, we should close down schools to prove to them that we truly need money for health. It is plain to see how the federal government is part of the problem.
Ottawa has money to subsidize the oil companies. It has money for that. Today, it had money for a military intervention. It can give money to Asian countries to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, as announced today. There is money in Ottawa.
There is money to undermine our public dental plans for children. They have money for that. There is money for GST rebate cheques, to lower the second tax bracket for people who make $90,000, $100,000 and more. That is what they call the middle class because they assume that people cannot count. There is money for permanent facilities on Roxham Road for Liberal donor friends. They have money for that.
The Liberals need to stand up, show some backbone, meet with the health ministers and get the money out.
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- Feb/8/22 11:43:46 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I feel like I am dealing in antiques today. The motion we are debating would amend a Constitution that was ill-conceived and that has aged poorly. The Constitution has so many holes, it looks like moths got at it. The holes in this Constitution are costing the provinces, Quebec and taxpayers a lot of money and preventing the provinces from properly and independently funding their public services.
What we are talking about today is a 136-year-old, billion-dollar company that cleared $2.8 billion in net profit last year and is exempt from paying taxes. As an economist specializing in taxation, my first instinct is to say this is an injustice and a relic of post-colonial cronyism.
This tax revenue is owed to Saskatchewan, and we think that the provincial government should get this money back. I want to inform my colleagues straightaway that I will be pleased to support this motion.
However, since we are speaking of holes in the Constitution that are costly for the provinces, I think it is difficult to ask the opposition, and especially members of the Bloc Québécois, to disregard other fundamental problems that this Constitution has created.
As I said, the Constitution has not aged well. The Constitution was drafted in 1867, and the majority of its provisions are still in force today, but the country that drafted this Constitution was not a modern country. Health care essentially referred to field hospitals run by religious communities. Assistance for the poor was essentially charity, again run by religious communities. Education consisted of a few one-room schoolhouses and some private schools supported by charity. These responsibilities were assigned to the provinces. The Catholics were in Quebec, and they were essentially given peanuts. The Constitution was obviously drafted to ensure that Ottawa would get more and more revenue over time.
When Canada was founded, there was no personal income tax, no corporate tax, and no sales tax. I just listed basically all of the federal government's revenue sources. Since then, all the responsibilities have remained with Quebec and the provinces, but half of the revenue has gone to Ottawa.
That is the problem, because we have a dusty old Constitution, the spirit of which the party in power deigns to respect. The provinces have responsibilities, and they must have management autonomy and must be able to legislate in their areas of jurisdiction. What remains is the power to spend. The problem is simple, and I have explained it many times to students: Ottawa has too much cash. That would make a great headline.
Ottawa loves to meddle in provincial affairs, loves to spend money and make legislation in areas of provincial jurisdiction, but the Constitution does not allow this. However, there is a loophole: the federal government can tell the provinces that if they do not do what it wants, it will withhold the promised money instead of giving it to them. Unfortunately, the Constitution has evolved, but not for the better. That is the problem.
Today, we have a government that provides Canada health transfers that cover only 22% of the system's costs. When this government is asked to respect the Constitution, it spits in Quebec's face. The line that all the Liberals across the way keep repeating like trained parrots is that Quebec will not be given a blank cheque, that money is not given out without accountability.
We tell them that it is none of their business and that health is not a federal jurisdiction. Their response, which I have been given here in the House, is that this is false and that it is a shared jurisdiction. They say that we have only to look at the Canada Health Act to see the way it is institutionalized. This act is the embodiment of the federal spending power. It is an almost unethical way of confirming that Ottawa has too much cash.
The blank cheque is Canada's Constitution, and that is not what Quebec is asking for. The Liberals have slashed funding for health care. People need to understand that. The Constitution is full of holes. It has evolved, but not for the better. That is also true for other sectors.
Mental health is an important matter. The pandemic has shown how difficult things can be and how great the provinces' needs are in terms of mental health. That is also the case for health care and hospital capacity.
What was the government's response? It decided to appoint a minister. Instead of appointing a minister of mental health, it should have sent money to Quebec. The issue is not that we are begging for money, but that the Constitution is full of holes as though eaten by moths. It should have been printed on cedar.
The same goes for housing. There is currently a housing crisis. We know the Liberals well. They talk a lot and think that the problems will solve themselves. Quebec wants respect. Negotiations on housing have been been ongoing for two and a half years. We are at that point because Quebec ensures that its jurisdictions are respected and stands up for itself. That is nothing new.
In 1951, the then premier of Quebec, Maurice Duplessis, was already turning down federal subsidies for universities, because Ottawa had already started acting predatory by then. What did Quebeckers do when Ottawa refused to give in? They forfeited their own money, just as they are doing now, just as they have done for housing, health and mental health. Ottawa wants us to give in to its conditions because it has too much cash. That is the case for social policy, for the Canada health transfer and for the Canada social transfer. Ottawa says that if we do not accept its conditions, it will not give us the money.
I did not say I was against a universal public health care system and so on. What I said was that it is none of their business. The reason they are not minding their own business is that the Constitution has aged poorly. None of it has aged any better than the section that applies to the CPR. It is important to understand that this is not an exception. It is a major problem.
Now I would like to share a bit about myself.
I remember the moment when something just clicked and I decided to become an economist. I believe it was in 2001. I had read the Conference Board of Canada's report on the fiscal prospects for Quebec and the provinces. In early 2000, I was attending CEGEP. I still have the document, which has a blue binding. It showed the changing demographics and the provinces' responsibilities and how everything was going to fall apart. I should note the Conference Board is not a group of sovereignists.
People have been saying this for a long time. The Tremblay commission in Quebec said it, and so did the Séguin commission. This was based on forecasts that proved to be accurate. What happened on the other side? Nothing.
Former Quebec premier Bernard Landry, who was negotiating with former prime minister Jean Chrétien, had no choice but to call him a predator because of his behaviour. The Constitution has not aged well and was not well written.
I sympathize with our friends in Saskatchewan. A mistake can be corrected. In fact, correcting one's mistakes is a sign of intelligence. I think that we will show some intelligence today on this file.
Following this debate and after all is said and done, I sincerely hope that the CPR will be able to sing “Saskatchewan, you took my tax”.
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