- Member of Parliament
- Deputy House leader of the official opposition
- Conservative
- Mégantic—L'Érable
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $94,201.00
- Government Page
- Jun/10/24 3:43:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the truth is that this Prime Minister has a long and troubled history when it comes to foreign interference, whether it involves political financing, his admiration for the basic dictatorship of the Communist regime in Beijing, or his talent for turning a blind eye to reports from the intelligence community.
The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians courageously exposed the fact that the Prime Minister has known for a long time that members have been wittingly co-operating with hostile foreign states.
After nine years of hiding, will the Prime Minister finally be transparent and tell Canadians who they are?
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- Jun/6/24 4:00:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.
Before I begin, I want to share some very bad news with the House. After nine years of this Prime Minister, the cost of housing has never been higher. Rentals.ca reports that rents have increased 9.3% year over year. That means the average rent reached $2,202 in May. This is an all-time high for rents paid in Canada. In Vancouver, rent costs $2,671; in Toronto, $2,479; in Halifax, $1,925; in Montreal, $1,763; in Winnipeg, $1,416. No one has been spared.
The cost of housing keeps soaring because this government is not building enough of it. Only the Conservatives have a plan for building homes, not bureaucracy. I wanted to take this opportunity to pass that message on. Why? We witnessed something quite incredible this week. We received not one, not two, not three, but four damning reports about this government's management.
A damning report has been released on this government's management of foreign affairs. We learned about it this week. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians also released a scathing report, which revealed that the Prime Minister repeatedly tried to cover up, deny and then downplay the impact of foreign interference on Parliament and on our elections.
It was probably a terrible day for the Liberals, but I would say that it was an even worse day for Canadians when they saw the Auditor General's reports on McKinsey, the Liberal green fund, which we are talking about today, and cybersecurity.
There have been three reports showing that this government is simply incapable of managing the affairs of the state and the money that Canadians entrust to it. It is not the government's money. It is Canadian taxpayers' money. Unfortunately, the government no longer deserves the trust of Canadians when it comes to managing the money people earn by working hard day after day, and night after night for some folks, seven days a week. Reading these reports, one cannot help but wonder how the Liberals manage to do so much so poorly.
Why am I mentioning that? The reason is that the government continues to spend freely with $61 billion in new inflationary spending that was supported by the Bloc Québécois in the last budget. What did that do? It drove up the cost of housing in a way that has never before been seen in Canada.
Food also costs more. All a person has to do is go to the grocery store on a daily or weekly basis. One has to be there to see people passing up the nicer cuts of meat for something cheaper. People have to make tough choices like that, and sometimes they cannot even buy food that is essential for staying healthy. Why? They cannot afford it. They are worried that, when they get to the register, they will find out they do not have enough money in their bank account to cover their groceries. That is what things are like now in Canada after nine years of this Prime Minister.
Last week, we moved a motion that neither the Bloc Québécois, nor the Liberal Party, nor the NDP supported. We asked the government to suspend the gas tax this summer to give a little breathing room to Quebeckers and Canadians who have been struggling with the cost of living and inflation over the past year. We wanted to give them a break and a chance to dream of taking a little vacation. Unfortunately, the other three parties rejected the idea out of hand. For purely ideological reasons, those people no longer want us to use cars. They want us to travel by bike, through bike paths or whatever, even though they know perfectly well that we do not have the infrastructure.
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Luc Berthold: It is true, Madam Speaker, that we do not travel through bike paths; we travel on bike paths. The NDP member himself is very much in favour of increasing carbon taxes. He himself voted against our motion to suspend the taxes. He is against Canadians and Quebeckers taking vacations this summer.
Today we are talking about the sixth report of the Auditor General, the subject of which is Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC. As I said, this report is damning for a number of reasons. This report covers the period from March 1, 2017, to December 31, 2023. During that time, the board of directors approved 226 projects worth $836 million. That is a lot of money.
It all started after a whistle-blower exposed what was going on by recording a senior public servant who criticized the Liberal government's total incompetence because it inappropriately awarded contracts worth $123 million.
I am going to take the liberty of repeating the statements made by this whistle-blower, given that they are the reason we are here today. Thank goodness at least one person dared to stand up and make it clear that the minister responsible, and his office, knew about the corruption within the Liberal green fund and were helping spread it. According to the whistle-blower, they then lied repeatedly. “The minister said...multiple times, that he was briefed on the outcome only on August 27, but that's definitively not true.”
These are comments from the whistle-blower who broke this scandal. Thanks to him, Canadians were able to learn about what was going on within this organization, this Liberal green fund.
The Auditor General noted that the SDTC did not comply with conflict of interest policies in 90 cases. That means that people voted on funding when they were directly involved in the companies receiving it. That is unbelievable. Unfortunately, a departmental representative attended most of those meetings but turned a blind eye. He seems to have done absolutely nothing to help prevent these conflicts of interest.
Some $76 million was allocated to projects with ties to Liberal cronies, appointed to the leadership of this organization. Some $59 million was allocated to projects that should not have received money. We are talking about money that should have gone to innovative environmental projects but instead went to projects that had nothing to do with environmental innovation. How was anyone okay with this?
The thing that stands out from the Auditor General's report is that this all started when former minister Navdeep Bains decided to dismiss the former chair and appoint one of his friends to head the fund. All the problems started there. Before that, there was no problem at the SDTC.
The other thing to keep in mind is on page 23 of the Auditor General's report and reads as follows:
We found that Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada had not received records of conflicts of interest at Sustainable Development Technology Canada....
That is understood. Further on, the report states as follows:
We found that the department had not asked for or received such information and did not determine what actions it should take when informed of conflicts of interest by the foundation.
The Auditor General concluded the following:
Sustainable Development Technology Canada did not always manage public funds in accordance with the terms and conditions....
Most importantly, she stated the following:
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada's oversight did not ensure that the administration of public funds was in accordance with the terms and conditions of the contribution agreements and with relevant government policies.
That is squarely the minister's responsibility. He did not do his job. He could have and should have put a stop to this spending spree a lot sooner. Unfortunately, he did not.
Today, we are asking that all of the material examined by the Auditor General be turned over to the RCMP so that it can get to the bottom of this matter and, most importantly, tell us whether any fraud was committed.
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- May/28/24 2:38:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the cat is out of the bag.
After nine years of inflationary spending, supported by the Bloc Québécois, which has tripled the cost of rent in Montreal, a detailed report in today's edition of La Presse confirms that wait times for construction permits in Montreal are endless. It takes 540 days to get a permit to build a home in the mayor's own borough of Ville-Marie.
Will the Prime Minister stop rewarding bureaucratic bungling and start rewarding municipalities that are accelerating the construction of housing, as the Leader of the Opposition's common-sense bill proposes to do?
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- May/8/24 2:17:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, can anyone here imagine a country where young couples, 24 and 26 years old, are forced to leave their apartment and move back in with their parents in the hope of one day becoming homeowners? Can anyone here imagine a country where the housing crisis has become one of the main causes of stress among psychiatric patients? Can anyone here imagine a country where a woman is thinking about living in a minivan because she cannot find an affordable place to live? Can anyone here imagine a country where renters are contacting housing advocacy groups and expressing serious suicidal thoughts because they are not only desperate, but they see no way out and want to give up?
Unfortunately, that country is Canada, as described in the papers day after day, after nine years of this Liberal Prime Minister. With $500 billion in inflationary spending, supported by the Bloc Québécois, this Prime Minister has created the worst inflation crisis in 40 years. The crisis caused the interest rates to go up, made home ownership an unattainable dream, doubled the cost of housing and will force thousands of people out into the street. Canada was not like that before this Prime Minister, who is not worth the cost, and, fortunately, it will not be like that anymore once the next Conservative government brings back common sense.
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- Apr/18/24 1:49:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to add that the 90,000 or so units built on the member for Carleton's watch had an average rent of $970 a month.
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- Nov/23/23 10:05:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, here are a few numbers that show just how empty the Liberal rhetoric is.
When the member for Carleton was minister, the average cost of rent in Canada was $950 a month. It is now over $2,000. The average mortgage payment on a new home was just $1,400. Now it is $3,500. When he was housing minister, housing was not just affordable, it was cheap. Canadians could still afford to buy a home. Young people could still dream of owning a home.
The Liberals have completely killed the dream of young Canadians who had one day hoped to be homeowners. That is the sad reality after eight years of this Liberal government.
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- Nov/21/23 2:41:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today's figures showed us that rents have increased by more than 9% in Quebec in the past year.
This morning, the Journal de Montréal reported that a homeless 30-year-old Sherbrooke man is getting ready to spend his first winter on the street.
After eight years of Liberal inflationary spending, we fail to understand why the Bloc Québécois would want two more years of the same, plus a drastic increase in the carbon tax. The Bloc Québécois clearly only cares about the balance of power, not a balanced budget.
Did the Prime Minister persuade the Bloc Québécois to let him keep recklessly spending billions of dollars, or will he finally listen to Conservative common sense and balance the budget?
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- May/8/23 5:11:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will try to answer my colleague in English. Transparency is what works all around the world. We can identify the foreign agents in our country and make sure the diaspora knows who they are. Transparency is the best cleaner or sunlight. I do not know how to say that in English, but I think the member understands what I mean.
We need a government that will be transparent and that will really act, answer real questions and give real answers to those people who came here to benefit from our freedom, our principles and our values. We should give them the opportunity to say what they know and to protect themselves, and we should help to protect them. With respect to police officers and CSIS, we should make them work for these people and not for the government.
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- Feb/3/23 11:22:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is quite ironic to hear the Liberals claim, day after day, that everything is fine thanks to their astronomical spending, because of which we are facing the worst inflation in 40 years.
The cost of food has skyrocketed, but it is not their fault. The cost of rent has doubled, but it is not their fault. Interest rates are keeping families from achieving their dream of a first home, but it is not their fault.
Why, after eight years, does this Prime Minister have such a reckless attitude towards people who have needs?
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