- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Mirabel
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $114,073.56
- Government Page
- May/6/24 2:03:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, 2024 is a defining moment in the history of the community of Saint-Benoît, now part of the city of Mirabel. Founded in 1799, this village is celebrating its 225th anniversary this year.
From the rise of the Patriotes' movement of 1837 to 1838—which was a battle for our freedom and democracy and saw the entire village burned by General Colborne's soldiers—to the expropriation of land by the federal government for the Mirabel airport, the people of Saint-Benoît have experienced many moments of adversity in their history.
Despite these major trials and tribulations, the village has been revitalized thanks to the industrialization of agriculture, the diversification of agri-tourism and the ingenuity of numerous entrepreneurs over the last few decades.
Surely members can see why I have such admiration for the people of my riding. The people of Saint-Benoît have a sense of honour, solidarity and innovation running through their veins.
On behalf of the citizens in the riding of Mirabel and on behalf of Quebeckers, I would like to wish the people of Saint-Benoît a happy 225th anniversary.
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- Feb/14/24 2:20:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on January 27, more than 200 people gathered at the Église de Sainte‑Scholastique to pay their respects to Louise Léonard, who died at the age of 79. She was the wife of my friend Denis Lauzon, who founded the Centre de formation agricole de Mirabel.
Denis had a very special way of introducing himself to people. For nearly 60 years, he called himself “the most happily married man in Sainte‑Scholastique”, and with good reason. He and Louise shared a wonderfully close bond. The love was palpable in their home, where I was welcomed as a son.
As a teacher, Louise Léonard touched the lives of hundreds of young people. She was a proud, accomplished and caring woman who was involved in her community and in the world around her. Like many seniors in the village, Louise was looking forward to growing old peacefully with her husband and loved ones at her side at the new seniors' residence in Sainte‑Scholastique.
As we walk around the Hill today, we may run into Denis, and if we look up to the heavens, we might see Louise tenderly watching over him and all of us, as she always did.
I wish Louise a safe journey.
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Madam Speaker, it is a rare opportunity for me to address you twice in such a short period of time. I am sure you are delighted.
I would like to take a few seconds to say that I am thinking of the people in my riding and all the organizations in my riding that are working very hard in these increasingly difficult economic circumstances, when housing and food prices are rising. My thoughts go out to them, given that the Bank of Canada raised interest rates yesterday.
I have in mind the Centre d'aide et de références de Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Plaines, the Dépannage alimentaire de Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Plaines, the Centre de dépannage St‑Janvier, the Comptoir d'entraide populaire de Mirabel in Saint‑Augustin, the Centre de dépannage de Saint‑Canut, the Comité d'action sociale in Saint‑Joseph‑du‑Lac, the Communauté d'entraide de Saint‑Placide, the Armoire d'espoir in Oka, the Saint-François d'Assise parish in Oka, the Sainte‑Marie‑du‑Lac parish in Sainte‑Marthe‑sur‑le‑lac, the Petite Maison de Pointe‑Calumet, the Centre d'entraide de Saint‑Colomban and all the other organizations that provide support in my riding. I want them to know that they are important to us and that we support them in these increasingly difficult times.
That said, today we are debating Bill C-294 at third reading. First, I would like to thank the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands for introducing this bill. I think it is a great initiative. I think, not surprisingly, he knows that we will support it.
This is a very short bill that contains only two clauses. However, the length of the bill is no indication of the quality, because it is designed to resolve important issues related to the debate we had in the House on the issue of planned obsolescence. Essentially, this bill allows the owner of a device that uses an operating system, for example, to break the lock on the operating system in order to take full advantage of it and use applications in the operating system that are not provided by the company that created said operating system. This is essentially an amendment to the Copyright Act.
We understand that creators have to make a living from their art, that it is important, that we have to take action against copying and against the unapproved use of a cultural good or, for example, an application, and so on. However, there are times when the consumer ends up paying a price.
I will give a few examples. Today's phones are literally computers. They are not like the phones of the past. Mine is quite sophisticated, for example. These phones have operating systems. Theoretically, under current copyright law, the company that makes my phone could prevent independent app developers from allowing me to use those apps on my phone. These apps can be extremely useful, like the VaxiCode app we used during the pandemic, or GPS apps that prevent people from getting lost in the woods.
Obviously, phone companies have been gracious enough to allow users to install apps of all kinds, but they do still have the right to prevent us from making full use of our devices. However, it appears that not all companies have been so gracious as to allow us to use other apps on their operating systems, which I think goes a bit too far.
I will give the example of John Deere tractors. I represent an agricultural riding. Over 80% of the city of Mirabel is zoned for agriculture. Our farmers use very sophisticated machinery. Today, these machines are computers on wheels. The operating systems of these tractors have software to optimize the way fertilizer is spread. They come with all kinds of devices that can even coordinate farm machinery based on weather conditions, outside conditions, and so on. They are basically computers.
Farmers think that an innovation market could spring up to allow third parties to offer all the technological innovations that John Deere could offer, but does not. However, when they buy their tractors, they are only paying for a licence to use the operating system.
They do not own the operating system, so they do not have the right to improve the performance of a piece of equipment that they paid a fortune for. Those things are expensive.
There is also the matter of code sharing. The company could say that people can develop apps if they want to but that it will not share its code. That is the kind of situation that my colleague's bill seeks to address.
It is closely related to the issue of planned obsolescence. The House previously worked on the right to repair. What was the objective? The main objective was to give consumers the full value of a product that they paid for, by ensuring that they do not have to buy the same item again at full price when the original item still has years of life and use left in it. We therefore worked on the right to repair.
We worked on planned obsolescence. That is a term that can be defined in a variety of ways, but basically, it refers to methods used by companies to ensure that, after a certain period of time, a period shorter than the full physical lifespan of the product, the product will no longer be usable. There are all sorts of keys and mechanisms that can be used to do this.
How can one describe planned obsolescence? As I said, it can take various forms. A company may simply design a product that is less durable. It could launch new models so that the older model becomes out of date or incompatible with new software. It can make products impossible to repair because the parts are unavailable or prohibitively expensive. It can use the Patent Act to prevent parts from being manufactured, or it can use the Copyright Act, and so on.
The original intent of these copyright laws and patent laws was not to prevent consumers from using their own property. The original intent was to allow the author of a work or the inventor of a new device to earn a living and ensure that a third party did not appropriate their own invention. Today we are in a situation where these laws are being used to prevent the consumer from benefiting. That is precisely what Bill C‑294 addresses.
It is complementary to the approach taken by the Government of Quebec. For example, in 2019, the Liberal MNA for Chomedey at the National Assembly of Quebec introduced Bill 197, which sought to stop planned obsolescence. This bill introduced a sustainability rating. It stated that the replacement parts, tools and repair service required for the maintenance or repair of a good must be available on the market for a reasonable length of time after the purchase of the good. It includes a provision stating that the manufacturer cannot refuse to perform a warranty on the grounds that the good was repaired. We know how it works: If we do not go to the dealer because we do not want a monopoly, since no one likes monopolies, and we get the thing repaired for less somewhere else, we are told that the warranty will not be honoured.
The Quebec government addressed this. The law is not yet in force. Europe has also addressed planned obsolescence. According to a European Union directive, member states are to amend their laws to classify products according to their repairability. Every product will eventually have a rating on a scale of 10 so that buyers know if the product is durable. This is good for consumers and for the green transition. Europe has a repairability index based on five criteria: the availability of documentation; disassembly, thus access to tools; the availability of spare parts; the price of spare parts; and specific criteria for various categories of equipment.
In the Canadian context, this represents consumer protection. It is the responsibility of Quebec and the provinces. No matter what Quebec does to protect its consumers, if the owners of operating systems, in this case, can use the provisions of the Copyright Act against the initial spirit of the Copyright Act to block consumer rights, this counteracts the efforts made by Quebec.
In this context, I want to again applaud my colleague's bill. I thank my colleague for introducing it, and I recognize that his bill complements the work done by Quebec. I will repeat, as I did at the start of my speech, that we will support the bill.
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- Sep/27/22 5:05:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is important to point out that the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot certainly does not have terrible colleagues.
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- Jun/2/22 2:04:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House to speak for the residents and elected officials of Mirabel who are visiting Parliament Hill today. They are here for one reason only, and that is to tell the Minister of Transport that they need a seniors' residence in their community, in Sainte‑Scholastique. Of course, I am thrilled to have them here, but I cannot help but think it is not right.
It is not right for an 80-year-old to have to travel 200 kilometres to appeal to a minister. It is not right to have to start a petition to get a minister's attention. It is not right to have to struggle for months, years even, to get a minister to listen. The right thing would be to let the seniors of Sainte‑Scholastique grow old at home, without having to leave because they lack resources. My colleagues will agree with me that at a certain age, everyone deserves a dignified, peaceful and happy ending to their life.
On behalf of my constituents, I therefore ask the Minister of Transport to give the green light for a seniors' residence in Sainte‑Scholastique. Let us give the green light to the Synergie Mirabel project.
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- May/10/22 2:16:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment in the House to highlight the work of a constituent in my riding.
Serge Blondin, a proud resident of Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Plaines, was until recently the owner of Le point d'impact, a newspaper covering current affairs in the Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Plaines community.
It was a lifetime of work that ended last January. We learned, with regret, that after 33 years of journalism and loyal service to the community, the local newspaper was going to publish its last edition. Almost everyone in the community knows Serge, the journalist. When he was not at town hall meetings covering political news, he was visiting merchants and organizations or organizing the next annual business dinner.
Serge left his mark on those around him throughout his career. On behalf of the Bloc Québécois, all the people of Sainte‑Anne‑des‑Plaines and my riding, I would like to salute Mr. Blondin's exemplary career.
I thank him and say bye for now.
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