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Member of Parliament

Alexandre Boulerice

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • NDP
  • Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie
  • Quebec
  • Voting Attendance: 64%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $114,314.06

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 228 - Oct/3/23
Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)
  • Oct/3/23 3:34:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is yet another answer that is completely disconnected from reality. Families who have to renew their mortgage soon are headed for a cliff. Negligence by the Liberals and the Conservatives has resulted in the loss of one million affordable housing units in the country. In the meantime, the government has given the Bank of Canada the mandate to increase interest rates without any regard for how that will impact people. That is the Liberals' record: families worried about losing their home. It makes no sense. Why did the Prime Minister not give the Bank of Canada a clearer mandate to avoid this crisis?
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Context: House Hansard - 75 - May/19/22
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That is very kind. I will take the next few minutes to review the purpose of this new bill introduced by the former Conservative leader. It is essentially designed to give more work to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, but to do what? To investigate the Bank of Canada? Why? As my colleague before me already said, the Bank of Canada is already accountable to Parliament for its own administration, its work, its monetary policies and its decisions through House and Senate committees. It seems that the reason behind this is to hype up the bill introduced by the member for Carleton, who is pointing the finger at Canada's central bank, accusing it of creating all our inflation woes and blaming it for the current decrease in purchasing power that Quebeckers and Canadians are unfortunately experiencing. As we said earlier, the Bank of Canada is not perfect and we have a duty to criticize it and to demand accountability. This bill is a thinly veiled threat, an attempt by the Conservatives to intrude on and interfere with the Bank of Canada, an independent body. They are doing this for partisan and political purposes. They want to use the Office of the Auditor General for partisan purposes, in a thinly veiled threat to Canada's central bank. This bill reeks of populism. I think it is pathetic that they are taking up hours of our time in Parliament to help give a Conservative Party leadership candidate some credibility on this issue. Of course, from a libertarian or far-right economic perspective, the likes of which can be found in the ranks of the Conservative Party, no one blames anything on big business and the massive profits these companies are making. They think it is perfectly normal for the big oil companies and big grocery chains to profit off the pandemic, the crisis and the supply chain issues by unreasonably increasing prices at the expense of workers, the least fortunate and families that are struggling. The Conservatives are leaning into right-wing populism and will never explain why billionaires should exist or why companies make billions of dollars at Canadians' expense. Instead, they blame the Bank of Canada. I do not necessarily agree with dramatically raising interest rates as a way to fight inflation. It has tragic consequences for people who, for example, are already having trouble paying their mortgages and bills. That is one way to do it, but it is really not in the best interests of the poor, workers and the middle class. I will come back to that later if I have time. They want to discredit Canada's central bank in order to give more credit to cryptocurrencies. I do not know whether anyone has been following what has been happening lately with the collapse of cryptocurrencies. They are not governed or controlled by anyone, and no one is accountable to anyone else. Of course, cryptocurrencies are an unbridled capitalist's dream. I am not sure that this is the kind of society that we want to live in. I am not sure that we should be telling people to trust this virtual currency and that this is how the country's currency is going to be run from now on, because some shadowy forces are controlling the evil Bank of Canada and that this is not in everyone's best interests. This is really a bill that is being used for partisan purposes, for the leadership race that is going on right now. If we want to point the finger at those largely responsible for the current price increases, then we must not be afraid to look at the facts and see who exactly is lining their pockets right now at the expense of the average citizen. The Association des distributeurs d'énergie du Québec recently published a chart to make comparisons between the number of cents in the price at the pump between 2008 and 2022, that is attributable to different factors. In 2008, the price of oil was 84¢, while it is at 91¢ this month, May 2022. That is not a huge increase. Pollution pricing rose from 1¢ to 9¢. Taxes have gone up, but not that much, just from 45¢ to 60¢. The refining margin, in contrast, has gone up from 9¢ to 48¢. That is the biggest contributor to rising pump prices over the last 15 years, and it is profit for big corporations like Suncor and Imperial Oil, which made billions in profits in the first quarter of this year. We have to be able to tell people the truth. We have to be able to tell them that there are solutions other than raising interest rates. The NDP has solutions to help people get through this crisis. Increase the GST tax credit, which helps hundreds of thousands of people in Quebec and across Canada, and increase the Canada child benefit, which is a good way to redistribute wealth. We need to be able to tax these companies that are making billions of dollars in profits so that we can redistribute that money to the people who really need it, people who are suffering right now and struggling to pay their rent and buy groceries. There are other solutions. I would point out that, in this morning's edition of Le Devoir, a dozen economists went over different ways we could be helping people, including regulating Airbnb rentals, lowering the cost of public transit, building massive numbers of social housing units and bringing in rent control. Not all of these measures would come from the federal government, but there are some excellent ideas and solutions. What is currently before us is not only unnecessary, but also dangerous for our democratic institutions.
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