Jean-Denis Garon
Mirabel, Quebec · Bloc Québécois · Canada
“The government is likely going to keep Parliament in session until very late this Friday. That is okay because it is our job to be here. However, this is happening because the government is not communicating with the opposition parties properly.”
“Mr. Speaker, as I said, this is one of those rare instances where Quebec will get its share of the cash, and it is a sign of recognition that the federal government is not good at this, not good at building things. The federal government is not on the ground; it is a government that is far removed from immediate matters.”
“Allowing air passenger complaints to be outsourced to private sector companies chosen by the Minister of Transportation , who is himself buddies with the airlines, which may even choose the companies that will handle complaints about them, was not part of the Liberals' platform.”
“At this point, we are taking the minister's word for it that he has reached an agreement with Quebec and that, based on this agreement, Quebec will receive its share of the funds, no strings attached. However, we had no way of knowing this from reading the bill.”
“The bill also states that amounts are to be paid out “at the times and in the manner that the Minister...considers appropriate.” Now we find ourselves in a situation where we have a vague bill, and we are realizing, after months, that the intent is there, that negotiations are happening, but also that our questions were legitimate.”
“Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge all the brave men and women who are here tonight and who will be staying up late. I was joking around earlier with my colleague and neighbour, the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles . All kidding aside, I think that she knows that I really like her.”
The complete record
Every one of 824 lines we hold for Jean-Denis Garon, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 12 of 17.
“Mr. Speaker, it is because the Liberals became conservative to steal votes from the Conservative Party. It is true and it has been proven that the Liberal Party of Canada, which currently forms the government, stole $814 million from Quebeckers. It stole that money. When the 42 Liberal members from Quebec tell us that they are standing up for Quebec, that is utterly false. They were not elected by Quebeckers to steal from Quebeckers. They took advantage of people's fear of Donald Trump so they could get elected and then said they were going to take $814 million. That $814 million is as much as the whole SAAQclic project cost. It is more than what we are asking for in health transfers. It is three times the annual amount that the Prime Minister is going to spend in Quebec next year on hospital infrastructure.”
“I do not mind the Conservatives being alarmist over the current situation, but we have been asking them for the past four years whether they want to see health transfers increased, so why have we never gotten an answer?”
“Mr. Speaker, we are all in opposition and usually, we rarely attack each other. My colleague is right on the first point. Ultimately, there is only one taxpayer. At the end of the day, the taxpayer gets all the tax bills. That is why we are calling for health transfers. That is why we think that the government should stop disengaging from health care funding and stop keeping the health transfer escalator at a level lower than system costs. What happens at the end of all this? What happens is that Quebec and the provinces become unable to provide care and are forced to raise taxes, increase the debt and cut back on services. That is exactly what is happening.”
“The Prime Minister is doing the exact opposite. He is someone for whom values are just a word and for whom everything else can be sacrificed on the altar of votes and power.”
“Mr. Speaker, members often say "esteemed colleague", but in this case, it is really true. I think my colleague misunderstood what I said. The Prime Minister is an economist who has done great things. I have read his book Values . I have it at home. I even made notes in it. It is because of all the wonderful things he has said and written in the past that I am disappointed in his behaviour today. The disappointment is proportional to the Prime Minister's previous values. I would love to believe that the member for Québec Centre has been true to his values throughout his political career. I want to believe that. One example is that he reinstated benefits for families in his first term. This is someone who came in and made political moves that were in line with what we can read about his academic career.”
“The Governor of the Bank of Canada said that it had no effect on inflation and that we should look elsewhere to find the source of price increases, because these big businesses export their materials. Bill C‑4 is a mishmash of all sorts of things. We are obviously in favour of the part about housing, but how can anyone be in favour of a major environmental reversal that only served the Liberals' electoral interests? How can anyone support that? It is rather difficult. How can anyone unreservedly support a tax cut that ignores people with disabilities, that gives very little to households and that is ultimately being used to fund the cuts to health transfers that we saw in the last budget? All I can say is that the government needs to stop introducing bills like this one, where everything and anything is all mixed together.”
“I was at the budget lock-up with the member for Repentigny , and we were looking for the government's environmental policy. To pretend that they were investing money, the Liberals had to include critical minerals in that part. We are talking about $4 million over five years for the environment. Now the government wants to go after the only thing left, the industrial carbon tax. It is funny that the Liberals want to go after this, because we heard from the Governor of the Bank of Canada at the Standing Committee on Finance. The Conservatives said that everything produced by big businesses that would be hit with the industrial tax is expensive, including steel, and they produce materials that are used to build housing, so that would increase the tax on homes.”
“The move was denounced by a motion passed unanimously in the National Assembly of Quebec and by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, journalists and analysts. The only ones who thought the Earth was flat in this case were the Liberals. There are 42 Quebec Liberals here who claim that they are proud Quebeckers and that they represent Quebec. How can they claim to represent Quebec when a Prime Minister from Ontario, who represents an Ontario riding, a parliamentary secretary from Winnipeg and a bunch of members from British Columbia tell them to vote against Quebec and they obey, despite the motion adopted by the 125 members of the National Assembly? That is exactly what happened, and it is just one example among many of how this government is backpedalling on climate action. The last budget included $4 million for the environment.”
“This was intended to make the mechanism socially acceptable when it was introduced. The government said it would send out the cheque first and collect the tax later. What did the Liberal government do? It abolished the tax. It never collected it for that quarter, and yet it still sent a rebate to people in seven provinces who had never paid it in the first place. The government still sent them cheques. The government told us that we had a different pricing system in Quebec, and that was why we did not get a cheque. When it sent out those cheques with money from the government's consolidated revenue fund, 22% of which came from Quebec taxpayers, not one province, including Quebec, was paying a federal carbon tax.”
“It means ensuring that vulnerable people are not abandoned by the Department of Finance. Right now, we are studying the budget implementation act and, thanks to the Bloc Québécois's work with the groups that flagged this issue to us last spring, we know that the Department of Finance will look into this matter. We are confident of that. The carbon tax is just one example among many of how this government is backpedalling on the environment. Just before he called the election, the Prime Minister decided to abolish the carbon tax because he did not want a carbon tax election, as the Conservatives wanted. This is how the mechanism worked. In provinces where the tax applied, the tax that would be paid later in the quarter was refunded upfront. It would be collected later.”
“For people with disabilities who do not pay income tax, the government's tax cut increased their taxes by $141, even though they are among the most vulnerable members of society. For a couple, we are talking about a loss of $155, due to the form these tax credits take. (1645) We had to prod the minister into announcing that he was going to try to find a solution. He ended up announcing it right out there in the foyer of the House before his appearance at the Standing Committee on Finance meeting, because he was afraid that his testimony might do him too much harm after he was confronted with all of this. That is why holding the balance of power in committee is so important. That is what making gains looks like. It means giving genuine first-time homebuyers a real GST tax credit after the government let them down.”
“When the tax rate on the first personal income tax bracket is lowered, the tax credit is lowered. It is a refundable tax credit. People with a disability who are too poor and who sometimes do not even pay personal income tax because they are in such a difficult situation were losing money. We are talking about 60,000 people. Did the government think about those people? No, it did not. The Bloc Québécois did. The Conservatives also worked with these groups, who came to us and said they had not received a response from the government. The government told them that there was nothing it could do, that this is how tax credits are calculated. We are talking about 60,000 people. These people did not benefit from an $180 tax cut. For a single person, it is more like a loss of $141.”
“Apparently that was too much. This tax cut alone would have paid for the Bloc Québécois's requests within five years, but our demands were too expensive. Worse yet, the tax cut is an ill-conceived, poorly thought-out election ploy. It is a fairly small tax cut. According to figures from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which I am quoting from memory, we are talking about an average of approximately $180 per person in Canada. With the cost of housing and groceries rising, that is clearly not enough to keep people afloat. However, for 60,000 people in Canada, this is a tax increase. Who are those people? They the most vulnerable people, including people with disabilities. Canada has something called the disability tax credit. This tax credit is calculated based on the tax rate applicable to the same bracket, which has been reduced.”
“These programs are designed for high-rise residential buildings, whereas Quebec's housing stock consists mainly of small multiplexes and buildings with five stories or less, made up of five, six or eight units. This would also have been a program for social and community housing, because there is one province in Canada that has permanent programs for the construction of social, community and co-operative housing: Quebec. We therefore requested our share of a separate program, the rapid housing initiative, which amounted to $1.4 billion. Old age security benefits for seniors amounted to $3.18 billion. With regard to health care transfers, we were essentially asking that the amounts provided for in the temporary agreements under the Trudeau government be renewed, since they were expiring. That represented $6.6 billion.”
“However, when the Bloc Québécois said that we had reasonable demands for the budget, the government told us that it was too expensive. The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons , who I assume knows how to count, was so determined to show that our budget demands were unreasonable that he multiplied them by five so he could say that we were asking for too much. We had submitted demands totalling $6.6 billion. What we were asking for was half a percentage point of GDP. It is next to nothing. We were asking for a program for first-time homebuyers, the program I mentioned earlier. We were asking for an investment of $1.4 billion per year for social housing because, generally speaking, Quebec does not receive its share of funding from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation programs.”
“With that we scored a victory for first-time homebuyers in Quebec and in the provinces. This is a victory for Quebec. (1640) This is another example of how the Liberals operate. They make promises before the election, they get elected, and then they give as little as possible and tell people to deal with their own issues if they were naive enough to believe them. That is exactly what happened. Now, let us talk about the other part of the bill regarding the tax cut. The tax cut will cost $26 billion over five years. Funnily enough, the Liberals are offering a tax cut of $26 billion over five years while running a deficit of at least $78 billion. We should come back to this again in a year, because the deficit could be $5 billion, $6 billion, $7 billion, $8 billion or $10 billion higher. To them, $26 billion is not a lot of money.”
“At that point, in committee, the legislative clerks had found our amendments to be in order. However, the government tried to convince the committee chair that the bill could not even be amended to bring it into line with the Prime Minister's words. The chair accepted the government's arguments and our amendments were rejected. Thankfully, the Bloc Québécois holds the balance of power on the Standing Committee on Finance. We overturned the decision of the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance not once, not twice, not five times, not eight times, but eleven times. Eventually, we came back here to the House to plead the case of the first-time homebuyers who had been cheated by the Liberal government. The Speaker of the House told us that we were right and that the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance was wrong.”
“We also heard from representatives of the Association des professionnels de la construction et de l'habitation du Québec, or the APCHQ. They told us that many of their clients were in this situation. At the Standing Committee on Finance, we proposed an amendment to move up the date for the GST rebate on new homes so that it could also apply to these people. How did the government respond? It responded by filibustering. There was opposition from the parliamentary secretary to the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, who is also known as the Minister of Finance. I do not think that he makes many decisions in the current government. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance was opposed to including these people who were trusting enough to believe the word of the Prime Minister of Canada. The Liberals refused.”
“This was not announced during the election campaign, and the Prime Minister had said it himself. Then the Prime Minister called an election and launched his election campaign. He put on a show for 36 days and then recalled Parliament. All of a sudden, people were being told that the GST rebate would only be available to people who had signed contracts on or after May 28. Everyone who believed the Prime Minister because he was the Prime Minister, everyone who thought this man had a modicum of integrity and principles and who signed a contract to buy a home, were not eligible for the rebate. We heard from representatives from the Ontario Home Builders Association. They told us that many people were in this situation.”
“We are talking here about the down payment, not the total price of the home. This measure would have ensured that the least fortunate were not left behind. The government said no. Let us now come back to Bill C-4 , which is another example of the fact that, at the time, the Prime Minister did not know the difference between a party leader, someone who campaigns, and a prime minister. On March 20, when he was Prime Minister, he issued a press release saying that the government was going to refund the GST on new homes for first-time homebuyers. Some people started buying new homes. They thought it might be a good idea to buy a house in a new subdivision. People bought houses and signed contracts. They thought they were going to get their rebate because the Prime Minister had said they would.”
“These six demands had to be met in order for the Bloc Québécois to support the budget. One of our proposals was aimed at helping first-time homebuyers who do not receive money from their parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles to fill their FHSA. This measure was intended for those who do not necessarily have an income that would allow them to maximize these accounts and who have not yet saved enough for a down payment to buy their first home and, by the same token, obtain a GST rebate. We proposed an interest-free loan from the government to help these people finance their down payment. It was a measure that would have cost $200 million or $300 million for all of Canada, from coast to coast to coast. This measure would have cost the government about $300 per year for every $10,000 loan it granted for a down payment.”
“(1635) Today, there is another measure that is very similar, and that is the GST rebate. New homes very quickly come up for sale in new subdivisions. There are people who can afford the down payment on very expensive homes. In my riding, there are now bungalows that cost almost $1 million. I know that in places like Vancouver or around Toronto, that is still considered affordable by some people's definition, but people back home cannot afford that. If these people get GST rebates on a new home because they are first-time homebuyers or because they have not owned a home in four years, that is a good thing. The Liberals are accusing us of voting against the budget, even though we told them our priorities. The Bloc Québécois made six demands that were affordable, all things considered.”
“The Liberals have been saying for several years that housing prices are going up and up. Construction costs are up. Demand has also gone up a lot. Today, we know that there is also an element that is related to immigration, the population and demand. The Liberals decided to help first-time homebuyers, who are angry about the current market, so they can have the money to outbid others using a tax shelter. That is why they created the FHSA. According to CMHC data, the FHSA allows a person, such as a young person whose father, mother, grandfather or grandmother has money to help them contribute to an FHSA, to go fuel bidding wars in the housing market, because the supply of houses is fixed in the very short term. The result is that people are fighting for the same houses.”
“The Liberals, who were the champions of the carbon tax in the last Parliament, aggressively criticized the Conservatives for wanting to abolish the carbon tax. Suddenly, during the election campaign, the Liberals decided that votes, seats and power were more important than principles, the planet, the environment and, above all, their credibility, so they got rid of the carbon tax while stealing from Quebec. That is what is in Bill C-4. We do agree with some of the measures, particularly the GST rebate for first-time buyers purchasing a new home. However, this was essentially an election stunt and should be viewed as such. First, there is the GST rebate on a new first home. It is important to understand that this measure is designed to stimulate demand, much like the tax-free first home savings account, or FHSA.”
“Despite this, despite the fact that the Liberal Party was unable to table a halfway decent financial framework, which we rather successfully picked apart during the election campaign, Bill C-4 includes election promises that were hastily made by the Prime Minister whenever he wanted to grab a vote from the left or the right. Let us talk about the $26-billion tax cut over five years. A tax cut could be a good thing. It is okay to take care of the middle class. However, when do we see a tax cut like that without a budget, without a budget forecast and without any regard for the impact this will have on balancing public finances? What is more, there was no mention of what exactly would be cut. Everyone now knows that health care and seniors are paying the price. It is the carbon tax.”
“The same is true of the Liberals' budget framework during the election campaign. The Prime Minister said that the countertariffs would bring in $20 billion, that that money would be used to finance current spending and that this would help reduce deficits. We know that, in the end, the government received only a fraction of that amount in countertariffs. As a result, we are now facing a projected deficit of almost $80 billion. If we are to believe most analysts, including the Parliamentary Budget Officer and Fitch Ratings, who believe that the government will not be able to achieve $50 billion in cost reductions over five years, the deficit is going to be even larger.”
“This Prime Minister saw that people were afraid of the Conservatives and that President Trump was making threats, so he decided he would say whatever it took to get elected, without any regard for the budgetary consequences. It was in that context that the current Prime Minister announced in January or February that he would eliminate the deficit. Then he walked into a room, probably a back room somewhere, and the people around him told him that it was not going to happen. Instead, he decided to invent a new definition of operating deficit. His definition is disputed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, does not align with how things are done in Singapore or Great Britain, and violates established accounting principles, but he decided to invent it in order to renege on his promise.”
“Mr. Speaker, in a way, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-4 at third reading today. This bill was introduced at the beginning of this Parliament and was left untouched all summer. When we returned in the fall, we spent a lot of time reworking the bill in committee. I will explain later, but this is one of the bills where the fact that the Bloc Québécois holds the balance of power in committee was a boon for first-time homebuyers. Let us start with the genesis of this bill. This year's election campaign was pretty odd. We had a Prime Minister who did not know what he was talking about when it came to economics. I know that the Prime Minister is an economist, but he quickly turned into a politician. I am a politician too. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that, but being a Liberal politician is not always a good thing.”
“I would like to know whether my colleague from Alfred-Pellan will explain to his colleagues why, technically speaking, this is a disengagement from health care. Does he perhaps think we should freeze the salaries of a couple of Liberal MPs for a couple of years to show them what happens when sums of money are not indexed?”
“Mr. Speaker, earlier in the debate, my colleague from Montcalm explained that this budget represents a disengagement from health care funding because the health transfer could potentially increase more slowly than the costs of the system. In response, the member for Bourassa , the great intellectual, and the member for Trois‑Rivières , the great diplomat, shouted names at the member for Montcalm, saying that he was wrong. I know that my colleague from Montcalm knows that what he said is true, and he knows what disengagement is: it is when a transfer increases at a slower pace than the costs of the system. We know this because it gets taught in introductory CEGEP courses and university intro to economics courses.”
“Second, by spending heavily on programs, is the Prime Minister creating a problem that he is promising to fix later? Is the new creative accounting in this budget not ultimately a way of hiding the true facts?”
“Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister 's latest mantra is that he wants to eliminate the operating deficit, in other words, the normal net deficit from his bad investments. However, by his own definition of operating deficit, the Trudeau government achieved a balance or generated a surplus during its first four years. We will overlook the pandemic years. The Trudeau government did not run an operating deficit in 2022-23. In its last year, the so-called operating deficit was $31 billion. In this budget, the operating deficit is $32.5 billion. First, does this not demonstrate that by increasing program spending, which the Parliamentary Budget Officer says is not capital spending, they are hiding the truth from Quebeckers and Canadians?”
“Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North and his colleagues from the governing party go around telling everyone that it is important to invest in infrastructure. They talk about hospital infrastructure. However, the budget lays out $5 billion over three years to build hospitals in all the provinces. That comes out to about $1.7 billion a year. For Quebec, this means $300 million a year over three years. The Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital alone is likely to cost between $5 billion and $6 billion. Although it is saying that it is investing in hospital infrastructure, is the government not simply telling Quebeckers that it does not care about patients, those who are sick or the health care system itself, and that, ultimately, their concerns come far behind the oil interests of the western provinces?”
“Madam Speaker, we will soon be called upon to vote on a budget in which the government has decided to redefine what constitutes an investment. It turns out that the government's definition of investment does not exist anywhere else. The budget says so itself. It does not exist in Singapore and it does not exist in the United Kingdom. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, we are not talking about $45 billion in investments, but rather $2.2 billion. He has indicated that that definition is likely wrong and has suggested that a committee of experts should look into the matter. I would like to know what role truth should play when a budget is tabled. What role should transparency play? Is the government not engaging in a campaign of misinformation directed at Canadians and Quebeckers?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer did not drink the Liberal generational Kool-Aid. There is no surprise there: His mandate is to conduct non-partisan analyses. That is exactly why the Liberals want to replace him. They posted a job listing for a permanent replacement with “tact and discretion”. They want a low-key parliamentary budget officer who apologizes before he speaks. A little more and they will ask him to get a Liberal Party membership card. Will they take the same approach used for judges and recruit the next parliamentary budget officer through the “Liberalist”?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that the Liberal budget deficit is twice as large as projected because the government is disguising spending as investment. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that "the Government’s definition of capital investments is overly expansive". He even suggests that this subjective definition be reviewed by independent experts. If Justin Trudeau had used this method, he would have balanced the budget every other year and would have practically been accused of austerity. In short, it is a sham. Why are the Liberals hiding the real numbers from Quebeckers?”
“Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that my colleague has previously served as a city councillor. I would like to know his thoughts on the fact that the federal budget, as presented, includes only $9 billion in new infrastructure funding over five years. Furthermore, within that, there is $5 billion over three years for hospitals from coast to coast. Today, building a single teaching hospital costs more than $5 billion. The Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital in Montreal will cost even more. As a city councillor, would my colleague have felt insulted to receive such crumbs from the federal government?”
“What does my colleague think about the fact that the Prime Minister and the minister tried to use this dishonest tactic to hide 58% of their deficit from the public even as they assert that money spent on a FIFA soccer game or on a program to identify potential investments counts as investment? What does my colleague think about these fraudulent tactics?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have invented this notion of considering a budget balanced on the basis of operational spending. Under the Minister of Finance's newly invented rules, the Trudeau government would have had a budget surplus in 2015‑16, followed by two years of balanced budgets, a surplus in 2018‑19, and a budget surplus the year after the pandemic. If someone in the private sector were to calculate capital according to those rules, it would be considered accounting fraud. Not one chartered professional accountant in Canada, not one auditor, would sign off on these financial statements.”
“Mr. Speaker, the budget is kind of the worst of both worlds. It is a Liberal deficit with Conservative ideas: nothing for health, nothing for seniors, cuts to the environment. It is Stephen Harper all over again. I am not the one saying so. The leader of the government said yesterday that this is a budget that Conservative voters can get behind. The Liberals are not even trying to hide it any more. Quebeckers did not vote Conservative. They did not vote for cuts to health care. They did not vote for abandoning seniors. They did not vote for giving up on the fight against climate change. Why are the Liberals not responding to what Quebeckers want?”
“Mr. Speaker, in his speech, my colleague talked about the importance of protecting jobs. Among the first victims of the current crisis are the 300 fathers and mothers who were laid off at Paccar. In a recent interview with Mario Dumont, the Liberal member for Thérèse‑De Blainville told these workers not to take it personally. She encouraged them to visit food banks. She told them to come up with a plan B, change careers and go back to school. Those are the words of the Liberal member for Thérèse‑De Blainville. I want to know if that is what the member calls taking care of people, taking care of Quebec and taking care of Quebeckers. More importantly, I want to know whether he agrees with the comments made by that member and the way she treats her own constituents.”
“Mr. Speaker, a $78-billion deficit will affect future generations in my riding. Worse still, the Liberals are increasing the deficit while announcing cuts to health transfers. They are not investing a penny in seniors who are struggling with the cost of living. They are refusing to offer loans at preferential rates to first-time home buyers. They are replacing the only housing construction program in Quebec that worked with Build Canada Homes, which will jam everything up and slow it all down. How is it possible to create a $78-billion deficit by failing to meet all of Quebeckers' needs?”
“Mr. Speaker, there has been much talk about the $78-billion generational deficit in the budget, and rightly so. What are the key features of this budget? Military is the top priority, the fight against climate change is over, oil companies are getting more tax credits and tens of thousands of jobs are being cut. All of these choices would have delighted Stephen Harper, because they are conservative. They are so conservative that a Conservative member of Parliament became a Liberal because he identified with them. It is a Liberal deficit with Conservative priorities. In all this, why is there nothing for Quebec's priorities?”
“Quebec's environment ministry already has a system that does all that. In all sincerity, it will be difficult for the Bloc Québécois to support this bill.”
“Do members know that this would cost less than one German submarine, and far less than four? This is one thing we are asking for. They are asking for a co-insurance program. Insurers are coming to see us. I understand that houses will no longer be built in flood zones, but houses have already been built in certain areas. They will not be demolished, but there needs to be some sort of help to reassure these people, who are generally low-income earners. They do not have an answer to that. They are asking for $500 million for riverbank erosion, and that can be spread out over a few years. However, here we have a bill that says the federal government will write a report and suggest, in a nicely put together strategy that no one will read, to do what Quebec is already doing.”
“Under parliamentary rules, the committee cannot change anything other than the sections of the act that are amended by the bill itself. However, this bill does not change anything. What can the committee do? Should the committee members sit around and twiddle their thumbs? The member for Terrebonne has not done her job properly. Maybe she did not have enough time. Maybe she was busy doing something else. She is not even giving us the chance to put this bill through a modicum of parliamentary debate. Meanwhile, the budget is right around the corner. For a long time now, the Bloc Québécois has been calling for an $875‑million increase in the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. That would be a concrete measure that would have a meaningful impact on people's lives.”
“Everyone knows that building sewers does not win elections. However, we know that there are significant infrastructure needs. That is one of our budget requests. The Liberals are introducing a bill with no budgetary impact and no royal recommendation. Those who were asking for infrastructure will not get any money for that because of the passage of Bill C‑5 , so they will just get the weather forecast instead. After passing Bill C-5 under a gag order with the help of the Conservatives, the Liberals were in too much of a hurry to build a pipeline. What can I say? I cannot say that we are going to vote for this. There comes a point when we have to wonder why this bill does not amend any section of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. We even have to wonder whether it should be sent to committee. What could the committee do with it?”
“Quebec's share is one-third of a percentage point of GDP. For the skilled mathematicians across the way, the Einsteins over there, it is one-third of a percentage point of GDP. How much less could we ask for? That is still too much. However, we are asking for that to include investments in infrastructure, resilient infrastructure. The members for Vimy and Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel on the island of Montreal know that there are challenges related to resilient infrastructure, given the new rainfall levels and the large variations currently being recorded by precipitation gauges. There are municipal elections coming up, and the Union des municipalités du Québec, or UMQ, and the Fédération québécoise des municipalités are asking for a transfer to Quebec so that that money can be redistributed.”
“Apparently the Prime Minister had an innate talent for greenwashing, as demonstrated by this bill. We are being told that people are facing flooding, that they are facing droughts, that there is 60 inches of water in their homes, and that people are losing all their childhood mementoes. However, this bill essentially tells us that what these people need is a federal website to give them the weather forecast. People can tell when it is raining. That is not what people need. They need resources. There is going to be a budget. The government is jeering at us during question period, saying that we are not going to vote in favour of the budget and that we are going to trigger an election. The Bloc only has 22 members in the House. All we have done is present clear, costed demands. We made six demands.”
“He said that we needed to stand together and care for the most vulnerable among us, who usually bear the brunt of climate events, as has been shown. Once he came to power, however, he tossed out all the principles he supposedly held most dear and announced that what we urgently need is pipelines. He told us we need as much gas as possible, as fast as possible. How did he go from an economist known for his ambitious stance on fighting climate change to someone pitching oil today? (1840) As members know, public life has its risks. When someone becomes prime minister or a candidate for party leader, people start to get interested in that person's financial affairs. People found out that the green funds, the environmental funds that the Prime Minister was investing in, were more brown than green. There was some greenwashing going on.”