- Member of Parliament
- Deputy House leader of the Bloc Québécois
- Bloc Québécois
- Saint-Jean
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $109,900.56
- Government Page
- Jun/6/24 2:17:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this year we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
We have a duty to remember the soldiers who took part, those who are still among us and those who have left us or who fell in combat, many of whose names have been lost to history. It took a lot of courage for those young men to land on the beaches of Normandy under Nazi fire and to press ahead tirelessly, even when it meant stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Press ahead they did, however, until the enemy was vanquished.
Living in comfort in a nation at peace, we must always keep alive our gratitude toward the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. May we always stay on the right side of history by continuing to defend freedom and democracy today.
To all those fallen soldiers and to all the veterans who experienced the horrors of war and paid the price for their devotion for the rest of their lives, I say thank you. Lest we forget.
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- Jun/6/24 12:38:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, among the reports by the Auditor General that came out yesterday, there was one that talked about McKinsey. We know that when subcontracts are awarded to private companies, that contributes to a loss of expertise in the public service.
It is the same thing with the closure of Sustainable Development Technology Canada. We do not know where the workers with expertise in sustainable development will end up. There is an even greater risk that we will lose this expertise in the public service.
I would like my colleague to tell us whether, in general, we should support the public service more and stop delegating so we can keep more expertise within the government.
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- Jun/6/24 11:55:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think that the question clearly shows where the government's priorities are in terms of climate.
If we had applied the same criteria to Trans Mountain as those used for the SDTC in abandoning the whole project, we would have pulled out of Trans Mountain a long time ago. Finally, funding was secured, which went far beyond what was originally estimated, to end the damned project because it is oil and that is one of the priorities of a government that, despite everything, tries to make us believe it is green.
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- Jun/6/24 11:53:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the problem is that we never should have reached this point. It was said earlier. Minister Navdeep Bains was informed, and he did nothing. He did not request an audit. Shutting down SDTC is the nuclear option.
It might have been better to do things differently. We know this type of program is the product of the government's obvious desire to create a fiscal imbalance, stop funding the provinces and keep their money in an effort to prove that the federal government is the one that gets things done. The federal government is the one that creates agencies, gives funding and grants subsidies.
Quebec, however, had Transition énergétique Québec, which, incidentally, operated in partnership with SDTC. It could manage such a fund. Since Quebec is a leader in developing sustainable technologies, I put the suggestion out there.
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- Jun/6/24 11:52:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I said already, when we create parallel entities and delegate, including to firms or boards, the important principle of government accountability tends to get lost. This is the crux of the issue, of which Sustainable Development Technology Canada, SDTC, is just one example.
The way the government manages its affairs and its propensity to constantly delegate need to be examined. It is systemic. Decisions are being made further and further away from the government, which can then distance itself from them. Furthermore, the traceability of many decisions is lost. This is what we have to fix.
SDTC is a symptom. It is the disease that causes the symptom. That is what we must tackle. We have another blatant example of that here.
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- Jun/6/24 11:41:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always difficult to follow my colleague from Terrebonne, but I will do my best to address the day's topic, the production of documents following the three rather explosive reports just made public by the Auditor General of Canada.
I will quickly address the Conservatives' motion because I may have a few proposals to make at the end of my speech. The Conservatives' motion essentially asks that the House order the government and Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, to produce several documents within 14 days following the potential adoption of the motion.
They want all files, documents, briefing notes, memoranda, emails or any other correspondence exchanged among government officials regarding SDTC; contribution and funding agreements to which SDTC is a party; records detailing financial information of SDTC; SDTC conflict of interest declarations, which we will be talking about in detail; briefing notes and so on. They also want these documents to be provided to the RCMP for its independent determination of whether to investigate potential offences under the Criminal Code. I will circle back to that later as well.
In short, this motion relates to the performance audit of SDTC submitted by the Auditor General of Canada two days ago, on June 4. The Auditor General looked into the organization's activities between April 1, 2017, and December 31, 2023, and her findings were as numerous as they were damning. Let me name a few.
She revealed that SDTC “did not always manage public funds in accordance with the terms and conditions of the contribution agreements for the Sustainable Development Technology Fund”. That was the basis for her findings. She also revealed that “the foundation had not established targets or clear guidance for assessing eligibility criteria” of the projects it was going to fund. Despite the eligibility criteria, when it finally arrived at the conclusion that a project was ineligible, in some cases, the foundation gave the projects funding even if they did not support the development or demonstration of a new technology, or if “their projected environmental benefits” had been exaggerated.
The foundation did not inform Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada of funding that needed to be recovered. The foundation poorly managed its conflicts of interest in several respects. Its records show that “the conflict-of-interest policies were not followed in 90 cases”. The foundation's conflict-of-interest policies simply did not comply with its enabling legislation. It did not even have an “effective system to maintain records over disclosures of conflicts of interest and related mitigating actions.” SDTC's conflicts of interest were linked to approval decisions representing nearly $76 million in funding awarded to projects. This is no small matter. The foundation did not declare its conflicts of interest to the department. The board of directors failed “to oversee the foundation's compliance with key legal requirements.” Right from the start, the board was not set up correctly, since the number of directors did not comply with the enabling legislation. There were only two, rather than the 15 who were supposed to sit on the board.
Nevertheless, SDTC should not take all the blame. The minister did not provide sufficient oversight of the foundation's use of public funds. That, my friends, is another problem. Despite whistle-blowers having sounded the alarm a long time ago, nothing was done. As one of my colleagues, the member for Mirabel, mentioned in his question to a Conservative member, former minister Navdeep Bains could have requested audits but did not. As the saying goes, the longer we wait the worse things get. In this case, the wait was long indeed, and things went from bad to worse.
In short, what the Auditor General of Canada did two days ago was to finally confirm what we have suspected for months. She tabled three reports the same day and with the same ultimate finding, which is especially striking: The Liberals have completely lost control of the machinery of government. If we needed another blatant example of this, we got one today.
As my colleague from Terrebonne mentioned yesterday during a question, Ottawa should get its own house in order instead of trying to manage the provinces. It should begin by doing its own job before trying to do everyone else's. This shows there are systemic problems within the machinery of government. The widespread trend to contract out and create increasing distance between the government and the projects it manages leads to an absence of accountability and transparency. This doubles and even triples the number of intermediaries, causing us to lose the thread concerning who does what. We are unable to follow the money, and we lose track of everything. This is probably something the government can at last understand. It truly tends to be incapable of following up on programs because they have been outsourced to third parties.
If the government were asked to do an eight-piece puzzle, it would probably not be above making sure the puzzle was manufactured by a Liberal and creating a non-government agency specializing in solving puzzles. It might even hire a consulting firm to get engineering advice about puzzles, but it would certainly not be able to determine how much it ended up costing them to finish the stupid puzzle. It might not even be able to finish it because one of the pieces was lost in the sofa cushions. That is how the current government is running things, and here we have a clear example of that.
Essentially, the problem is that we need to support the development of sustainable technologies. At a time when climate change is likely to cause not only health problems, but economic problems as well, we need to deal with it and develop technologies that can help mitigate it. The problem is that, by suspending funding activities for SDTC because it was so rotten, they also suspended the funding needed to develop these technologies.
In the meantime, we are continuing to fund oil companies and engage in greenwashing by asking the same oil companies to develop their own sustainable technologies. Ultimately, it probably suits the Conservatives to be able to blame the government for its poor management inasmuch as we know they are climate change deniers, but we still need to tackle the underlying problem and fund the development of green technologies.
That being said, there are interesting things in the Conservatives' motion. My colleague alluded to them. Asking for the rapid production of numerous documents may help us prevent a few of them from getting lost in the sofa cushions. They are sending the message that members of Parliament intend to look into the matter, which is not bad in itself. We need to shed light on this issue to make the government stop constantly delegating its authority and its project management to other entities. Let us not forget the importance of transparency in the government's management of different projects and the subsidies it grants.
However, there are two things in this motion that bother us, and we need to point them out. They are asking that the documents be produced within 14 days of the adoption of the motion. The Conservatives appear to have forgotten that there are two official languages and that the Bloc Québécois works in French. Fourteen days will not be sufficient to have all of the requested documents translated. It might be a good idea to show a little flexibility in this respect without going overboard.
Furthermore, regarding involving the RCMP, as worded, the motion seems to be giving the RCMP instructions rather than simply allowing it to access documents, which it would be more than capable of obtaining through warrants, anyway. In short, we are open to talking with the Conservatives about minor amendments to their proposal.
We invite them to come talk to us. We will be in the House fairly late this evening anyway. Properly managing the Liberals' legislative agenda means we will be working for quite a while. The Conservatives should not hesitate to come see us to discuss proposals and amendments. We are always open to discussion.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order regarding relevance. My colleague has been speaking for about eight minutes. I would be curious to know his position on Bill C-20 because, unless I am mistaken, he has not yet spoken about the bill itself. I believe he has two minutes left to do so.
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- Jun/4/24 9:27:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke at length about the whole issue of systemic discrimination. Before the commission was created, complaints were handled on a more individual basis, making it impossible to see the big picture. We can only hope that the new commission will be able to identify trends and make reports and recommendations to prevent systemic inappropriate behaviour from happening in the future.
Does my colleague believe that this will really have such a positive impact? Is there anything that could have been added to ensure that this big-picture vision actually leads to recommendations on needs and on corrective action when necessary?
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- Jun/4/24 9:11:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech. She spoke exclusively in French, and I thank her for that. I should mention in passing that her French was excellent. It was very kind of her.
My question is actually about language skills. I would like to know if there were any discussions in committee about the need to ensure that there are bilingual commissioners so that complaints can be received in both languages. We know that the appointment of bilingual judges and commissioners was a challenge for the miscarriage of justice review commission. Was this a discussion that took place in committee? Were any recommendations made on this subject?
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- Jun/4/24 7:58:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I like the member very much, and I would like to hear his comments on the following point.
During his speech, he talked about the importance of transparency and independence. My understanding of the bill is that the chairperson of the commission is to report to the minister rather than reporting directly to the House. This is a problem we have previously discussed. For example, the military ombudsman reported exclusively to the minister, which led to issues with transparency in the Jonathan Vance case.
Does my colleague think that this is one of the blind spots in the bill and something that could perhaps be improved down the line?
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- Jun/4/24 7:47:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we were unable to identify the member for York South—Weston.
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- May/21/24 2:35:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, no one is pulling the wool over our eyes. They have not decided to overtake the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie because they had an epiphany about the fact that French is under threat in Quebec, Canada and around the world. No, they signed up because there is nothing more important to a Liberal than another Liberal. A friend is a friend. They signed up because they have to save their friend, the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell. After that, we will never see them again.
It might be a good idea for this government to start working as hard in the interest of the French language as it does in the interest of the Liberals.
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- May/21/24 2:34:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals seem to have a newfound appreciation for the cause of the francophonie.
The Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie, or APF, had 18 Liberals in 2021, 11 in 2022, and 22 in 2023. Since last week, there has been a sudden awakening: No less than 112 members of the Liberal caucus are now members of the APF. I say bravo. Francophiles thank them. It is an extraordinary commitment to the French language.
However, could someone tell us what is the Liberals' priority issue at the APF that explains such a sudden commitment on their part?
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- May/10/24 11:53:52 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, historically speaking, most of the armed forces' civilian employees in Quebec have been women.
They are rightfully asking why the federal government discriminates against them. For example, they are rightfully asking why a financial assistant in Bagotville gets paid $10 less an hour than an assistant doing the same job in Ottawa. The striking workers are rightfully demanding equal treatment across all bases. At a time when the armed forces are struggling to recruit, they should be demonstrating that they respect their employees.
The striking workers are returning to the table. They are ready. They will be tabling a counter-offer at 3:30 pm. Will the defence department finally listen to them?
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- May/10/24 11:52:32 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, for 117 days, the federal government has been ignoring its civilian employees at Quebec's military bases, who are on strike. The government cannot ignore them anymore, because their representatives from Saint‑Jean, Bagotville and Valcartier are here today.
They are here to ask why Quebeckers have the lowest salaries in Canada, why Quebeckers are treated like second-class workers and why the Liberals have been ignoring them for 117 days now.
Will the government standardize the pay scale and stop discriminating against Quebec defence employees?
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- May/9/24 1:00:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his passionate and informative speech.
With their motion, we are hearing the Conservatives trying to convince us that their proposal will solve everything, that fentanyl will disappear overnight from the illicit drugs sold in the street, that drug addiction problems will be solved overnight and that the handful of treatment procedures they are suggesting will have a 100% success rate.
This leaves me with the impression that, at best, they are engaging in magical thinking, but at worst, and this is the impression I am getting, they are approaching a social issue from a purely partisan perspective and trying to score cheap political points off people's misery.
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- May/9/24 12:33:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Montcalm for his speech, which was enlightening as always, because he himself is enlightened and well versed in his files. It is a pleasure to hear him speak.
This morning, several of us tried to get the Conservatives to explain the difference between decriminalization, legalization and diversion. They were unwilling to answer the question. However, we got the beginnings of a response when I asked one of my colleagues whether we were witnessing a public health crisis and he replied that drug addiction is a chronic disease.
My question is simple: Once we start to view drug addiction as a chronic disease, how can we do anything but decriminalize addicts' behaviour if we want to ensure that they receive proper treatment instead of throwing them in jail?
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- May/9/24 11:36:53 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party leader refused to answer the question by one of my colleagues, who asked him to give us the definition for legalization as opposed to decriminalization. This is important in the debate we are currently having.
Decriminalization does not allow people to systematically consume drugs everywhere. It allows us to ensure, in cases substance abuse, that the person will not necessarily go to prison, but can receive adequate care. We consider drug addiction to be a public health issue.
My question for the member is simple: Does he consider drug addiction to be a public health issue?
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- May/9/24 11:36:00 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a bit earlier the leader of the Conservative Party refused to explain the difference between legalization and decriminalization. The latter does not allow people to consume drugs wherever they want. Rather, it ensures that people with a drug problem are not systematically dealt with by the prison system and can get the care they need. This all stems from the fact that drug dependency or addiction is a public health issue.
I would simply like to know—
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- May/2/24 12:41:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, during the committee's study, the Bloc Québécois proposed a number of amendments, including the idea of conducting seabed impact studies before developing wind turbines, which was rejected by the Liberals, among others.
I have a simple question. Was it simply to avoid setting a precedent for oil and gas development on the seabed, so that there can never really be an environmental assessment or an impact assessment before drilling takes place?
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