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 7 of 17.
“Madam Speaker, let us come back down to Earth. The list of cases I gave are obvious cases where so-called religious freedom was used to commit a crime by calling for murder, hate and execration. The fact that the director of criminal and penal prosecutions, after consulting in-house lawyers, decided to use another technique to lay charges does not change anything. What are the Conservatives waiting for? Are they waiting for one, two or three serious crimes to be committed? Are they waiting for more hate, more attacks on mosques and synagogues? This problem has to be addressed with amendments that are perfectly logical and consistent with case law, and that is exactly what we are doing.”
“If we had said the same thing, we would have had to face justice. Priest Calvin Robinson was defrocked by the Anglican Catholic Church after giving the Nazi salute at a pro-life rally associated with Trump. Wow, this religion of love is so nice. Islamic preacher Uthman Ibn Farooq was denied entry to Canada, where he was planning to give a lecture. This was thanks to, among other things, the intervention of the Bloc Québécois and my colleague who is now the House leader . This preacher was banned from coming to give his lectures because he believed that members of the LGBTQ+ sexual minority did not have the right to live. These are crimes, and these actions and words must be treated as crimes.”
“There is a consensus, and that is why the Quebec Conservatives are hiding in the sub-basement. In 2017, Imam Sheikh Muhammad ibn Musa Al Nasr stated that Jews were the worst of mankind and that they should be slaughtered on Judgment Day. An arrest warrant was issued against him. In August 2024, in his mosque in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Imam Adnan Abyat called for the death of Jews and Christians. Is that what love and kindness look like? In October 2024, Adil Charkaoui prayed for the death of Jews during a protest. Praying at a protest is a loophole. He is so good at loopholes that he would make a good tax lawyer. Quebec's director of criminal and penal prosecutions was unable to prosecute him, concluding that he had taken refuge behind the problematic Criminal Code provision.”
“It reinstates the requirement for the Attorney General to give consent before charges can be laid for the offence of inciting hatred. It aligns the definition of hatred with the definition in Keegstra to be consistent with case law. It abolishes the religious exemption in the Criminal Code for the offence of inciting hatred. According to Keegstra, it does not in any way interfere with the freedom to read and teach religious texts. It is not normal to hide behind a particular provision of the Criminal Code in order to commit crimes. If I were a deeply religious person, the last thing I would want would be to be associated with someone who uses and exploits my religion to commit crimes. The case of Adil Charkaoui in Quebec is well known. That is why there is a consensus in Quebec for the kind of amendment we are proposing to Bill C‑9 .”
“This is what needs to be addressed. What does this bill do? I want to remind the Conservatives that we have a time allocation motion before us. Earlier, they said that that the committee dragged its feet at until two in the morning and that it had wasted everyone's time because it did not hear from enough witnesses. Personally, I watched the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights meeting. People may not know how patient I am. The member for Rivière-du-Nord asked all the witnesses who appeared before the committee a question about the religious exemption. Some people agreed with it, while others did not, but the question was asked. However, getting on everybody's nerves does not count as debate. Spreading disinformation does not count as debate. Wasting time does not count as debate. What does this bill do?”
“I listened to them and I want to tell them that no one has a monopoly on faith-based hate crime. In 2023, a total of 1,284 hate crimes were committed against a specific religion, 516 more than in 2022. These crimes were not necessarily triggered by a cleric's remarks. That is not what I am saying. However, each of these crimes was an attack on freedom of religion, freedom of worship and the freedom to go to a mosque, church or synagogue. These crimes are also a much more serious attack on freedom of religion than what the Conservatives are claiming about Bill C‑9 . The 45% increase in hate crimes in 2023 worries me a lot more. It was largely the result of the increase in hate crimes reported by police against Jewish populations. Jewish communities experienced a 71% rise in hate crimes. For Muslim communities, the increase was 94%.”
“With the amendments to Bill C-9, with the way they are written, with the protections included in the amendments, with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—which Bill C-9 and its amendments will be subject to—and with the case law that calls on us to adopt these amendments and clarify the law, we are protecting religious speech. We are protecting religious values. We are protecting peace. We are protecting love. We are protecting the best parts of religions without allowing certain people to use them to their own end. That is what Bill C‑9 is all about. I will say one thing: There is a reason we are discussing Bill C-9. (1310) The Conservatives are making noise on the other side. I listened to the Conservatives. I am a respectful guy, most of the time.”
“No. I want to reassure everyone that I do not know any Hittites, Amorites or Hivites. I do not know any Jebusites either. However, I do know that some interpretations or explanations of these texts in the hands of rogue prelates or pastors could lead to a crime being committed. If I were a believer who thought these texts had historical value, the last thing I would want is for them to be used by malicious people. I actually think these texts do have historical value, but there is no doubt they can be used for such purposes. That is how those texts could be used, because the last thing a reader would take away from them is that they should mend fences and spread love. Religions have evolved, but most religious texts are legislative texts that have not been amended as we are going to do with Bill C‑9 .”
“I decided to highlight Deuteronomy, chapter 20, which is in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, which is also the Devarim in the Torah. This reminds us of one thing. Most religious texts were written before medieval times. These texts were written by humans at a time when the killing of ethnic or religious opponents or those with a different way of life was the norm. Of course, military leaders at the time were careful to include, as needed, whatever moral guidelines suited them. However, these texts all include passages that clearly constitute hate speech and calls for massacre. In any case, that is clearly the case for the three Abrahamic faiths. Does that mean people do not have the right to read them? I just read them in front of everyone for educational purposes. Will I be put in jail? No. Did I commit a crime?”
“Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God. When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them— Indeed, it is important not to cut down trees. —you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them? However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls. I was raised in a very religious family. Both of my parents are theologians.”
“Madam Speaker, I will read a quote: When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.”
“Madam Speaker, in Quebec, there is a strong consensus in favour of this amendment. In Quebec, there is a strong consensus against using this exemption to incite hatred. However, the people I am seeing today on the Conservative benches are from western Canada: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. They represent the Conservatives' extremely radical religious wing. Why does my colleague think that the Conservative members from Quebec are afraid to speak up about this?”
“Madam Speaker, today, we are discussing Bill C-9 , not so much in terms of its substance but more in terms of time allocation. It is important to remember that, in committee, as long as the Conservatives decide to keep speaking to any amendment or clause, we are no longer able to work. They can read the telephone book, a novel or the Old Testament. It can be long and and it can be painful. I would like my colleague to explain what she thinks will happen with Bill C-9 if we do not adopt this motion today.”
“Mr. Speaker, whether the minister likes it or not, the Liberals are not going to get their high-speed train built by giving Alto abusive expropriation powers. It will require social licence. For now, it almost seems as though the Liberals are deliberately trying not to get it. The towns of Mirabel, Mascouche and Terrebonne want to have their say on the route. The region wants economic benefits. Farmers and communities feel that they are not being respected. When will the Liberals go back to the drawing board with all the local stakeholders to ensure that they have social licence?”
“Mr. Speaker, Ottawa promised to apologize to the expropriated residents of Mirabel, but it also promised to never again carry out abusive expropriations. In Bill C-15 , the Liberals, with help from the Conservatives, are giving Alto exceptional expropriation powers for the high-speed train. They are doing away with the right to be heard by a hearing officer. They are doing away with community impact studies. They are preventing a farmer who has suffered a disaster from rebuilding. There is not a single other citizen in Canada who is subject to this. Why are the people from the north shore being treated like second-class citizens by the federal government?”
“I would like my colleague, whose riding is full of farming communities, to tell me what he has to say to the farmers of Quebec who saw all this happen.”
“Mr. Speaker, I salute my colleague, with whom I have the pleasure of serving at the Standing Committee on Finance. My Conservative colleague is no doubt aware that Bill C-15 will create two classes of citizens and abjectly take away the rights of people whose property will be expropriated as part of the high-speed rail project. However, when Bill C-15 was being studied at committee, my Conservative colleague voted to continue to strip the rights of those whose properties will be expropriated. Yesterday, when amendments were being voted on at report stage, the Conservatives hid eight members in the lobby to ensure that the high-speed rail project would pass, even though it violates the rights of the people whose land will be expropriated.”
“Madam Speaker, this gives me the opportunity to say the following. Once again, the government has completely changed the budget time frame. It announced a $78-billion deficit in the fall. Since then, the Liberals have realized that people who could not afford groceries needed a cheque. Another $4 billion was added between when the budget should have been tabled and when it was actually tabled. We may now be looking at a $83-billion deficit. Not a single parliamentarian here knows the true figure for the deficit, because the Minister of Finance and National Revenue has decided, once again, to dodge the issue, to push public servants and to move too quickly, with all the unintended consequences that may entail. My colleague's comment clearly demonstrates that.”
“Had we passed it the day after it was tabled, we would have been criticized for not sleeping the night before. Come on; we may be in the opposition, but we are still elected, and we still have a job to do and a role to play. We need only look at what is happening around the world, in the United States, and in many places where institutions are being dismantled. In those places they could only dream of having an opposition like the one we have here to do the work that we are doing. Beyond the rhetoric, the government should recognize that.”
“Madam Speaker, our friend from Winnipeg North is very likeable, but he makes it sound as though we all have to belong to the Prime Minister 's fan club, and the moment we disagree with the budget measures, we are being obstructionist. The budget timeline was moved up. It is not uncommon to see budgets that, given that they were tabled in the fall, would have passed in March or April. That is why there is a notice of ways and means motion, why the tax measures apply, and why we are voting on the estimates. It was well done. For specific measures that fall under other departments, we needed time, but we have not had that time yet. We have been faster than the government could have hoped for in its wildest dreams. Government members are still rising to express their displeasure.”
“Every morning I read a butterfly sticker as I was instructed by the member for Lac-Saint-Jean . It is on the mirror in my office, and below it is an inscription telling me to never forget who I work for. Every time that we worked on a clause of this bill, I was working for Quebeckers, for the people back home. It produced some results, but we lacked the means to work as we had hoped. The last-minute reversal of the budget timeline, with no advance notice, is very hard to accept.”
“Madam Speaker, we could have worked on the fact that the government, as I said, decided to pick the winners of the accelerated capital cost allowance. The government says that we need to be able to override any legislation to create regulatory sandboxes, because we want innovation but we never know where it might happen. When it comes to issuing growth-related accelerated capital cost allowances, however, the government says it knows exactly where to turn, and it is always oil. Albertans have never had to fight in the streets to get tax credits for dirty oil. The tax credits came right away. In our case, for phosphate, it took a high-level diplomatic effort to have it included. In the end, what did we do? I spoke of amendments, which no one can say is not constructive.”
“It is not right that we have reached the point where we are studying omnibus bills that require 22, 23 or even 24 ministers in committee. Compromises were made: Only 18 ministers and 12 committees were involved with this budget. That is when we realize that ultimately they are using the convention of confidence votes for bills that should not be subject to such votes and should be more consensual. They sneak them into the budget to ensure that there is no opposition. Then they criticize us for being too slow. I think that if anyone should be calling their methods into question, it is the government members.”
“The facts are very simple, Madam Speaker. We were in committee before Christmas, preparing to study the budget. We then wondered which minister we were going to invite to come and testify. Well, the entire cabinet could have been invited given how many subjects they put in it and just how much they packed into it. There were between 15 to 20 ministers. It would have taken 10 or 12 committees, because the Standing Committee on Finance, with its resources, was not even able to get through this bill. We worked miracles with our colleagues in the other committees. Now the Liberals are standing up and telling us that we are very slow. What is next? Are they going to tell us that the earth is flat? At some point, the limited resources that we have run out. We need to be able to focus and do the necessary analysis.”
“Through the Quebec BIBLIO Network, I was able to read books in a town with a population of 4,000 and order books from other libraries. That was overlooked, but it is fine. If the government wants things to move quickly, it needs to allow opposition members to work. The government needs to table legislation that is less divisive and that actually implements the budget, instead of it being a grab bag. It needs to let us do our work. That is entirely its prerogative.”
“Madam Speaker, there are two parts to my colleague's question. The honesty of the first part is debatable. The budget timeline is perfectly normal. There was the budget speech, which the House adopted. There was a notice of ways and means motion to ensure that the tax measures already apply. We voted on the estimates. We now come to the budget implementation bill, which was tabled after the budget, and we see that it is two and a half inches thick and that we need time to study it. My colleague can say whatever he likes, but sometimes it takes time because the government went too far and the bill is a bit too thick. We can already see the improvements that we have made in the little time that we have had to work on it. I grew up in northern Quebec.”
“For once they were in the right place, they picked the winners. I believe in the work of the opposition parties. I think that we can improve budgets and are capable of doing something good with them. However, nobody thinks that spending half a day in committee on 603 pages makes the slightest bit of sense. In future, I urge the government to perhaps not do that again.”
“It took three, four, five years for the minister to understand, even though it was part of our budget requests. The government also agreed to reimburse customs duties to organizations for donated goods. Organizations were receiving donated goods and paying customs duties. I do not know if anyone looked up the word “generosity” in the dictionary, but that was not part of the definition. We had that corrected. Furthermore, is the accelerated capital cost allowance a good measure? It is an investment support measure. However, the Liberals choose the winners. The winners are oil. The winners are gas. We also have a problem with digital sovereignty. Fibre optic companies are chasing after the minister, trying to alert him to the fact that they were overlooked. The Liberals have picked the winners.”
“This is exactly what derailed the Liberals' national housing strategy initially for three and a half years. That was three and a half years ago. Well, here they go again. We would have liked to have some answers about that. However, what can we do, under closure, in a single morning? There are many things we could mention. There are a few good things in the budget, but not enough to vote in favour of it. For example, there is the luxury tax on aircraft. The New Democrats are shouting themselves hoarse, but the luxury tax was a luxury in name only. What we were doing was taxing commercial aircraft. We were taxing our own aerospace industry. Do members know what people were doing? They were buying aircraft from other countries. Aircraft fly and cross borders. We were killing our own market.”
“We do not know and they are incapable of telling us, but the government went ahead and added $10 billion in capital, all of which is hidden from parliamentarians because it is outside the government's reporting entity. The budget has $11.5 billion for Build Canada Homes. No one is against homes. Personally, when I take a walk in my riding, I see that everyone likes homes. However, the $11.5 billion is for an administrative entity. We do not know the programs or how things will work. Neither do we know whether Quebec will get its share. We do not know how the funds will be distributed across the provinces. However, we do know that this is important, because Quebec is the only province that has permanent social, community and co-op housing construction programs. This has always been a sensitive matter.”
“A clean electricity tax credit should not apply to dirty oil. The carbon capture tax credit is being extended until 2041 and, at the same time, this bill is weakening the anti-greenwashing law. Since Bill C‑15 was introduced, oil company advertisements have started to once again promote carbon capture and green oil. At the same time, the government is funding these technologies. That is what this bill does. It is anything but an energy transition. With regard to the Canada Infrastructure Bank, the government is increasing its capital from $35 billion to $45 billion even though the bank's officials have not managed to spend what they already had. Our committee has been chasing after them to find out how they spend the money.”
“The Bloc Québécois had to get an amendment adopted that explicitly says that the new federal legislation will not effectively invalidate Quebec's Consumer Protection Act. That is basic stuff, but the Liberals are still not doing their job properly. We had to patch those holes. We are not just complaining, we took tangible measures. We were forced to propose amendments so that the Quebec government would be comfortable with the bill. Do these ministers not have phones? Does the House not pay for phones? I want to talk about the clean electricity tax credit, which will apply to modular nuclear reactors that will be used to clean up dirty oil. What is clean about that? If my colleagues think that is clean, I invite them to drink a glass of it and see how they feel the next day. This is like a bad movie: long-winded and zero suspense.”
“They decided there were some laws that the government could not waive in those regulatory sandboxes. That is better than nothing. However, environmental laws are not protected. Labour laws are not protected. First nations' rights are not protected. The official opposition's temporary absence from the House allowed things to move forward. They can shout until they are blue in the face, but that is what happened in committee. (1130) We are in favour of open banking. We all want competition in sales and banking transactions. We want apps on our phones. However, banks are regulated by the federal government under the Bank Act. They are manufacturers of financial products. The brokers are regulated under Quebec's Consumer Protection Act. They are not manufacturers of financial products.”
“Had the Minister of Finance and National Revenue taken the time to do his job properly and to ensure public servants did their job, we would not have been forced to patch yet another hole. Let us talk about regulatory sandboxes. Countries around the world have regulatory sandbox arrangements. There are ways to make legislation and regulations more flexible for innovation, particularly in the health sector. No country in the world introduces legislation that applies to all sectors indiscriminately and to all laws but the Criminal Code. That does not happen. Taking those powers away from Parliament is a Canadian innovation. We think this can be a good idea, but everything depends on how it is done. This way of doing things does not exist in other countries. The Conservatives joined forces with the Liberals. An agreement was reached.”
“The government said no initially, but through debate, it finally said yes. When you cash a cheque in Canada, federally regulated banks are not allowed to freeze a cheque that is for less than $100. This amount has not been indexed for years. Today, if you have a small family, you cannot even deposit $100 and then go to the grocery store. This means that if you deposit a cheque for the new Canada groceries benefit at the bank, under the current law, the cheque will be frozen for two weeks. The Bloc Québécois had to introduce an amendment to increase the minimum amount to $250 to ensure that individuals who get these government cheques can deposit their cheque, and the funds will not be frozen. We are not making this stuff up.”
“An amendment was introduced and as we say back home, we managed to patch that hole. However, how many holes are there in this bill, which parliamentarians did not have time to go through in one morning? This is fundamentally a democratic issue. There is a rare earth elements and critical minerals strategy. The government forgot one important mineral, namely, phosphate, which is used to make batteries. We had to add that in the bill. The government did not want to. The government says it wants an energy transition, but it overlooked the fact that batteries require phosphate and that 100% of new phosphate-refining projects are geared towards battery manufacturing. That is what the Bloc Québécois is for. It took the Bloc Québécois and my amendment to add phosphate to the bill.”
“However, Canada Post provides services that may not be financially profitable but are socially beneficial, particularly for visually impaired individuals and for the BIBLIO Network of municipal libraries in the regions that send books to each other, sometimes over long distances, at preferential rates. The government worked so quickly, because it was not ready to table its budget, that it forgot it would deprive all the remote regions of Quebec and the rest of Canada of this preferential rate. I asked the Minister of Finance and National Revenue in committee whether he was aware that his bill had that impact. He did not have a clue what I was talking about. The government was right about that. I followed up with the minister and an amendment was introduced. That is what the Bloc Québécois is for.”
“Then, however, the Prime Minister went to Davos and infuriated the president, but he is still not reinstating the tax, despite the media crisis and the fact that our local media are having their content stolen and that it is a struggle to fund our newsrooms. There are no measures in the budget to ensure the health of the fourth pillar of democracy. It seems to me that this alone would have warranted a debate. When an omnibus bill of this size is tabled at the last minute, in the fall rather than in the spring, there can be unforeseen events and effects from the budget. Let me give an example. The government decided to exempt Canada Post from its obligation to have its rate schedule approved by the government.”
“The Prime Minister said he would exempt companies that are already evading taxes from the digital services tax, and at the same time, the minimum tax for multinationals was removed. These companies are not paying their fair share. It was a gamble on the part of the Prime Minister. He figured he would bow down a little to President Trump in the hopes that that would put him in a good mood, but he was still in a bad mood, so then we thought the Prime Minister might reinstate the tax. The president was in a bad mood, but the Prime Minister did not want to reinstate the tax because he said it would put the president in an even worse mood.”
“My colleagues know that megaprojects that fail and become a disaster for taxpayers all have a number of things in common: overestimated revenues, underestimated costs and very long-term forecasts to make things look better, because most of the costs come earlier in the project. We have the right to ask these questions. We have the right to want to improve things. That would have required an entire committee and a separate bill. That is what Parliament is for, and that is why this should not be included in such an omnibus bill. We have a major democratic issue with a bill that is so thick that I had to buy a trailer for my car to haul it around with me. (1125) Let us talk about the digital services tax.”
“Imbleau, Alto's chief executive officer, appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance and was asked how much the train was going to cost. He does not know how much it is going to cost. He cannot tell us that. Two weeks ago, I asked the chief executive officer of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, or CIB, whether it was going to be providing funding. The CEO of the CIB said that it was hard to know, because the project does not exist yet. However, for some reason, there is an urgent need to expropriate land at top speed, accelerate the process and say it is coming soon. Something does not add up. None of this was slowing down their project. What we are asking for is decency and respect in a project where all the usual red flags are already up.”
“The answer we are getting is that we are the opposition, that we are just whiners, and that people's land is being expropriated by email. However, on the ground, Alto officials are saying that they cannot expropriate by email. It is in the bill. It is in the legislation. It is written in black and white, and we explained that in committee. These people are being given tools to misbehave. We cannot assume that they will misbehave, but they have been given the tools to do it. They are coming to our ridings. They were there this week, and they are lying to the people who show up for their so-called consultations. Our amendments would not have delayed this project, because there is no project yet. Mr.”
“We also said that expropriations should not happen by email by default. We understand that it is the 21st century and people do not communicate by telegram anymore and they can send emails. Alto officials told the committee that if someone wants a registered letter, they just have to ask, and Alto will accommodate them. I introduced an amendment to incorporate what Alto asked us. It was not a joke. Our amendment said that traditional means of communication would be used, unless someone asks to receive communication by email, in which case the rest of the process could be done by email. I do not think this constitutes extremism, obstruction or opposition aimed at preventing the budget from passing. We are saying that the government has gone a bit overboard—“a bit” is a euphemism here—and that it needs to respect people.”
“He lost his livelihood to the fire. We saw his cows lying charred in the field. I went there the next day. It was awful. Rebuilding all of that is complicated. These people have a right to earn a living. Under Bill C-15 as it stands today, if the train goes through their property, they would not be able to rebuild everything and would not be able to earn a living. They would be told to just declare bankruptcy. We introduced an amendment, but the government would not hear of it. What does this have to do with the actual train? It has nothing to do with the actual train. We actually want to help improve the bill, but the government is telling us that it is no good and it is unwilling to get better. However, the opposition can be constructive, and that is exactly what we suggested.”
“This train will cross 700 roads in Quebec. It is possible that villages will be cut in half. This is not about opposing the project, but it is normal to want to know what is going to happen. It is our job as parliamentarians to seek the truth. Truth is not Alto's specialty, and it is our job to demand it. Under the legislation that is about to be passed, if the train runs through the end of a farm or field and the owner receives an expropriation notice, they will not even have the right to rebuild their silo, barn or stable in the event of a disaster. Yesterday in the House, I talked about my friend Éric Couvrette from Sainte-Scholastique, whose cattle shed burned down two summers ago. He is a dairy farmer. His farm runs alongside the airport fences. He has experienced expropriation before. He had to rebuild from scratch.”
“They will be asked to drain their savings and their RRSPs to go before the Federal Court. With our amendments, we simply wanted to restore people's right to be heard. I do not think it is unreasonable to ask for justice and equality and to ask that folks not be treated like second-class citizens. It seems to me that this has nothing to do with the project itself. It seems to me that this is about a basic level of justice. The Liberals have decided that justice no longer matters, as long as the train goes through. As for the Conservatives, some of them decided to hide behind the curtains when it came time to vote to restore the rights of people in our communities and across Canada who live along the proposed route. (1120) We think a study should be conducted on the impact this will have on communities. Villages are going to be separated.”
“However, as part of this project, a decision was made to create two classes of citizens along the proposed route. A decision was made to make it easier to expropriate people living along the route than would be possible with any other project in Canada. Mirabel is an expropriation case study. What the people of Mirabel and people along the route are being told is that they are not equal before the law and that there is a special law for them. What they are being told is that, if this were any other project happening elsewhere in Canada, when they receive a notice of expropriation, they would have the right to challenge the price and ask to be heard by a hearing officer, who is impartial, before the minister makes their final decision. However, since they are along the route, they will be pushed to their limits.”
“It did not let us listen to Quebeckers and Canadians so we could consider their recommendations. It tabled a budget. Despite the fact that some top-notch officials worked on the document, it is a budget that is, in many ways, poorly cobbled together and inadequate. There are some poorly drafted measures, and certain provisions will have unforeseen effects, so we had to work very hard during the only committee day we had. In some cases, the government listened to us. In other cases, it did not. One example of something that should not have been included in the budget is the high-speed rail network act. I believe it should be debated. I believe that cost-benefit analyses are needed, as my Conservative colleague said. I believe conversations are needed. I even believe that it could be a promising project.”
“That just goes to show that the government has decided to govern without the House of Commons and has little regard for Parliament. We know that the Prime Minister has decided to act like Canada's CEO. We saw an example of that today. This budget was tabled partly because parliamentarians had asked for one. In the last election campaign, we were told that the world had changed, that a budget needed to be presented quickly, and an election was called. We were not told whether there would be a budget when Parliament returned and, in the end, there was no budget. Fall came and we had to nag the Minister of Finance to tell us whether he was going to table a budget. He did not know. Eventually, the government decided to switch up the budget cycle. It did not allow the Standing Committee on Finance to hold pre‑budget consultations.”
“Even in the Harper era, people thought this approach was undemocratic. Budget implementation bills used to be much slimmer. We have before us today the second-longest budget implementation act in the history of the Confederation. It is 603 pages long and amends 49 statutes. This poses a problem for democracy because, as I said, it is a real grab bag. A lot of the legislative items in it have no business being included in a budget implementation act and should have been debated separately in the House. These 49 statutes, 603 pages and certain measures pose significant problems for democracy and for people's rights. I am going to talk about expropriated individuals, but I am also going to address other issues. We had just one day in committee to study all that.”