Bernard Généreux

[Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, June 6th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I did not say whether I would support the bill or not. What we hope to do here this evening, as we have done since the beginning in committee, is to potentially improve this program and how it is implemented. We want to avoid using smoke and mirrors to fool Canadians without actually delivering what was promised. It is always the same thing.

The best example is the one I gave earlier, the two billion trees. The Liberals put on a big smoke show; it was unbelievable. This was supposed to save the environment. Earlier, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands said that if we had implemented programs 20 years ago, there would not be any forest fires today. I think it is worth saying that that is not quite the truth.

I think that when a government really wants to keep a promise or implement a program, the plan needs to be whole and complete.

[Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, June 6th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, we are here this evening to discuss Bill C‑35, or what the Liberals like to call the universal child care plan.

In particular, we are talking about the report presented by the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, which studied this bill. One of the reasons the Conservatives are here is to ensure that parents' voices are heard.

As a Quebecker, I must provide some context about what has been happening in Quebec for years. We have our own child care system, as my colleagues know. In January 1997, the provincial government unveiled Quebec's family policy, which included five main elements: child care services and parental leave, the family allowance, the work premium, the solidarity tax credit, and the refundable tax credit for child care expenses.

This program is not perfect, but it has existed since that time, and many parents in Quebec have been able to take advantage of it. We need to take that into account in this discussion we are having here tonight.

In my riding, there is a small association that was created in recent years, shortly before the pandemic, called Ma place au travail. A woman took the initiative to start a Facebook group that ended up bringing together women from all across Quebec who are, unfortunately, still waiting for a child care space in the province. The parents of approximately 70,000 children are in that position. I hope that the $6 billion that will be transferred from the federal program to Quebec will be used to address the lack of child care spaces in the province. The situation is different in other provinces, which do not have this kind of program in place. We must therefore analyze the bill from that perspective.

I must inform the House of all the efforts that we, the Conservatives, made in committee to improve this bill with a view to implementing it at the national level. Of course, the government wants to apply Quebec's model to the whole country. No one can really be against that, but it must be done properly. The Conservatives moved many amendments calling for choice, inclusivity, access, data and accountability. Unfortunately, the members of the Liberal-NDP coalition rejected all of them.

This coalition says it cares about access and inclusivity. However, its actions speak louder about what it is really interested in, namely promoting an ideology that will decide what is best for children.

We cannot trust this coalition on this or any other matters. We had another example of this with the budget implementation bill we discussed tonight. Nothing in that bill takes into account the labour shortage, the burnout affecting frontline personnel and the exodus of these professionals. That is an important point that I believe my colleagues raised at committee. Sadly, it was not included or considered by the Liberal Party or the NDP. Those amendments were entirely reasonable. They were justified and justifiable. Sadly, once again, they were rejected.

Once again, Conservatives introduced an amendment to solve the problem. The amendment stipulated that the annual reports needed to include a national strategy to recruit and retain skilled workers in early childhood education. Surprise! It was also voted down by the coalition. Why was it voted down? We would have to ask the coalition's members. I hope they will ask me the question. I repeat that it is a very reasonable amendment. I do not think this requirement concerning annual reports would have hurt the bill. Quite the opposite, it would have enriched it. It would have been a good thing if this suggestion had been accepted.

That makes me think of the 2 billion trees that this government, three or four years ago, promised to plant by 2030. It is 2023, so there are 7 years left, and 3 years have already passed. We have not even reached 4% of that objective. There was a big show with a lot of smoke, and it is the same with this bill.

The government is making big promises by announcing its intent to roll out day care services across the country based on Quebec's successful model, but it is unable to put in place all the elements or tools needed to carry out this project. Once again, it is not surprising, coming from this government.

The bill is supposed to include five pillars: quality, availability, affordability, accessibility and inclusivity. However, once again, we have proof that the Liberals want to score political points and are more concerned about marketing a plan they can sell than about the actual supply of what they are selling. As I just said, it is easy to make promises.

Over the past eight years, the government has promised many things. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it was not a Liberal promise, the only thing families have more of are taxes. The cost of living for families never stops rising. I completely agree with my colleague who talked about increasing the wages of all these workers. However, there is a limit because, eventually, families will also have to foot the bill.

The Liberals moved an amendment to the amendment in committee that removed the words “availability” and “accessibility”, which are the biggest issues with child care in this country. They are also the biggest issues in Quebec, where 70,000 families are currently unable to find a child care space. Obviously, the labour shortage is affecting all areas of society and all types of employment. It is not just child care. To attract workers, the right plan needs to be in place, which is clearly not the case at the moment.

I will paraphrase my colleague from Peterborough—Kawartha, who is doing a fantastic job. The reality is that we have about as much chance of solving the child care crisis with Bill C-35 as we have of winning the lottery. That is exactly what child care is like in Canada, because getting a child care space is like winning the lottery.

The reality is that the Liberals want to implement a nationwide program without having the means to actually do so. Some 70% of children still cannot get a space in day care. It is a national problem.

This brings me to the subject of families. Today, compared to eight years ago, the price of homes and the cost of rent have doubled. Everything has gone up. Inflation is at its highest in 40 years, and the interest rate keeps going up. My own daughter is now paying $700 more a month for the home she built five years ago. Inevitably, the amount of money that families are forced to spend is going to reduce their ability to pay.

When my children were young, there was no program. We worked hard and paid child care workers to come to the house. Then we starting sending the children to day care. Obviously these programs are an incredible help. My colleague from the Bloc was saying that it was a feminist policy. I totally agree with her. This has helped thousands of women to go back to work.

However, the reality is that today, unfortunately, 70% of families still do not have a spot. In Quebec, 70,000 children do not have a child care spot and women cannot go back to work because of the labour shortage.

I will say it again: Yes, these people have to be paid well. I think that there have been major improvements in this area in Quebec. However, the government is blowing smoke by launching a program of this scale without being able to put all the necessary effort into ensuring that it is carried out properly.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, June 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, we believe in the science of technology. It is actually surprising that the NDP and Bloc Québécois members do not want to believe in new technologies. It is as if we were going back in time. We only have to look at communications technologies, for example. We hold those in our hands every day. We did not have that 25 years ago. We were still sending letters by mail, as my colleague pointed out earlier.

Obviously, things evolve, including in the world of oil and gas. It is a lot less polluting than it was before. In fact, I really applaud the people of western Canada who have made huge efforts to reduce their carbon footprint over the years with the help of new technologies.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, June 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, there are some good bakeries in my riding. Four years ago, I could still get a loaf of bread for less than $2. That was perfectly normal. I go grocery shopping regularly. I am also very pleased to tell my colleague that.

In the past four, five or six years, I have seen prices skyrocketing, particularly in the past two years. The inflationary taxes that the government continues to impose on Canadians are inevitably driving up the cost of food in Canada. There is a reason why 1.5 million people across Canada, my riding included, are turning to food banks. I spoke with the director of Moisson Kamouraska just last week and she told me that this is unprecedented. Every month there is a significant increase in demand.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, June 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his important question.

The carbon tax was effectively put in place by the government to get people to change their behaviour. The people who pay this tax were to receive the equivalent amount in the form of a rebate. Obviously, that is not what is happening, because the math does not work.

Furthermore, the government has had environmental targets in place to reduce greenhouse gases for seven and a half years now, and none of those targets have been met, even with the carbon tax.

Now, they want to add carbon tax 2.0, and they want to add the GST on top of that. We are talking about 61¢ a litre. That is going to send the cost of every food item and product in Canada sky-high.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, June 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to share my thoughts on budget 2023, which is at report stage.

This government, under this Prime Minister, who has turned out to be the biggest spender in history, has delivered a reckless, irresponsible and free-spending budget. It has upset the fiscal balance that Stephen Harper's Conservative government had managed to restore. Let us remember that in 2015, the Prime Minister, who was driving a backhoe, promised three small deficits before returning to a balanced budget in 2019. What happened? For eight years, this government has posted deficit after deficit, the biggest deficits ever seen in Canada.

In her fall economic statement in November, the Minister of Finance gave us a glimmer of hope. She said a small budget surplus would be recorded in 2027-28. I remind members that it is 2023. Just a few months later, in the budget we are now discussing, where is the return to a balanced budget? Poof. It has evaporated, it has flown away. It has disappeared into thin air. It has gone up in smoke.

I will give my colleagues some staggering figures that illustrate just how irresponsible this budget is and how spendthrift this government is. Since 2015, the national debt has risen from $650 billion to $1.3 trillion. It boggles the mind. Sadly, the Liberals have managed to double the debt in just eight years. If this Prime Minister were to be awarded a prize, it would be for the prime minister who has increased the debt by more than all the other Canadian prime ministers combined in 155 years.

We know that the Liberals will point out that there was a pandemic. We know that. However, our expectation was that this government would return to more sensible spending after the pandemic. It is incapable of that. The minister told us that hers was a prudent budget. On the contrary, this budget is written in very dark red ink, and we see no end to the deficits.

In 2008-09, the Harper government was forced to invest $60 billion to kickstart the economy after the 2008 crisis. We then managed to recover very quickly. Canada was the first of the G20 countries to recover from the economic downturn, which some compared to the 1930 crisis.

The minister told us that her budget was prudent; however, it is anything but. I am certain the government members will say we are too partisan. That is what they always say. However, I have a few quotes here from independent economic experts and commentators that confirm the opposite.

Gérald Fillion, from Radio-Canada, said the following:

So, where is the prudence and discipline that the Minister of Finance was talking about before publishing her budget? Even back in November, we knew that economic growth was going to be weak in 2023 and that interest rates had risen rapidly. Why add so much to deficits, debt and, consequently, public debt charges?

Public debt charges have doubled. They went from $24 billion to $48 billion. Imagine what we could do with $24 billion. My colleague mentioned health transfers earlier. This is money that was requested by all the Canadian provinces, but they were given virtually nothing.

Derek Holt, an economist with the Bank of Nova Scotia, said this:

Big spending, big deficits, big debt, high taxes, high inflation and bond market challenges are not the path to prosperity. [The Minister is] wrong to describe the budget as prudent, with overall program spending set to balloon to 51% above pre-pandemic levels by 2028.

Michel Girard, a leading economist with the Journal de Montréal, wrote an article with the headline “Ottawa is taking $102 billion more out of your pocket”. I will quote from the article:

$46.1 billion more in personal income tax

$35.4 billion more in corporate income tax

$14 billion more in GST

$2.8 billion more in other excise taxes and duties

With such a deluge of money into the federal coffers, one might have expected the Trudeau government to finally announce a return to balanced budgets.

The fact is, Canadian families are currently being heavily taxed by the government. This is to say nothing of the carbon tax and the second carbon tax that is right around the corner.

Michel Girard continues with the following:

Well, no. According to finance minister Chrystia Freeland's latest budget, the federal government will remain in the hole for the next five fiscal years.

This completely contradicts what the Minister of Finance had said a few months earlier. It is completely backwards.

Have the Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance read or heard these words? I do not believe they have. They continue to spend lavishly and to propose inflationary policies.

This is very unfortunate because the biggest losers in all this are Canadians who work hard and are seeing the fruits of their labour slip away more and more each day.

I have a company with 30 employees and we had to make a major salary adjustment in the past few months because of the rising inflation and interest rates. I have employees whose mortgage payments have gone up by $700 a month. Wages have not kept pace with inflation.

Inflation is at his highest level in 40 years, and the impact on food prices is dramatic. Here are a few examples: The price of butter is more than $8; a loaf of bread costs $5.50, compared to $1.50 four years ago; a pound of bacon costs $10.

A family of four, meaning two parents and two children, will spend $1,065 more on groceries this year alone. That is a lot. It is way too much. It also does not help when we add to that the price of gas, which is hovering around $1.80. Obviously, there is transportation. The Liberals are always telling us that the carbon tax does not affect Quebec, which is completely false. The food that is sent to us from across the country travels between the provinces. Obviously, there is trade happening. All of the items that need to be transported are subject to all of these taxes, which are inevitably inflationary.

Some parents have to skip meals so they can feed their children. The use of food banks has skyrocketed. In Canada, 1.5 million people are using food banks every month. That is a source of daily stress for families, and yet nothing stops this government's out-of-control spending, which is driving up the cost of everything.

That is not even to mention the cost of housing. Since this Prime Minister took office, the cost of housing has doubled. Just last year, the price of houses increased by 21% in the Quebec City area. That is unbelievable. Successive interest rate hikes have doubled the average mortgage payment, which is up to almost $3,000 a month. It is the same thing for rental units. It is not unusual to see ads for one-bedroom apartments that are renting for $2,000 a month.

As a result, young families are abandoning their dream of owning a home. I have been an MP for eight and a half years and, for the first time, young people are coming up to me and saying exactly what we have been saying for months. They are asking me how they can one day become homeowners. No one had ever talked to me about that before, but now that is their reality.

The list of negative effects and wrongs caused by this government's policies is too long to fit into a 10-minute speech. I am not even talking about the other problems caused by this government, such as violence, which is constantly on the rise, or the inadequate services to citizens.

Just think about last year's passport crisis. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The number of federal employees has increased by nearly 70,000 over the last eight years and we have never had such bad service. This is truly poor organization from this government.

I am not going to touch on the other problems. I am not going to talk about foreign interference, about everything that is going on at the moment or about our colleagues who have been spied on, and even threatened in some cases, by Beijing.

Canadians deserve a lot more and a lot better. They deserve a government that puts them first, that thinks about their paycheques, their homes, their families and, most importantly, their future. They deserve a government that recognizes the hard work they put in every day and that is not always trying to squeeze more out of their paycheques. They need a government that will bring back some common sense. They need a Conservative government.

I really look forward to the day when we are back in government. We will simply stop spending, and we will still have plenty of money to deliver all the programs people need.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, June 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, if I am not mistaken, my colleague is an economist and has taught economics.

As recently as February of this year, the Minister of Finance said that higher deficits would add fuel to the fire of inflation. That statement from the finance minister is the exact opposite of what she proposed in the last budget.

Does my colleague think that makes sense? Does he believe that the government has failed in its duty to manage the country properly by adding fuel to the fire of inflation, with such high interest rates and skyrocketing inflation?

[Carbon Pricing, June 5th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, contrary to what the Liberals are saying, the carbon tax will have an impact on Quebec—we just have to talk to farmers and truckers. As if that were not enough, this government wants to add a second tax, a tax on a tax. That tax represents $436 per family per year in Quebec. Canadians are already struggling with rising interest rates and inflation. People are sick and tired of this.

Will the Prime Minister give them a break and abandon his second carbon tax?

[Justice, June 2nd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, since the Prime Minister took office, violent crime has increased by 32%. As an aside, I would just like to remind the House that the Conservative government lowered the crime rate by 23%.

This situation is a direct result of this Liberal government's soft-on-crime policies. It is incredibly easy for criminals to get out on bail.

Will the Prime Minister finally get the message and make changes to stop the revolving door in our prison system? One would think these offenders were staying at a hotel.

[Criminal Code, May 16th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I would just like to say to my colleague that we are not in government, and, unlike them, we do not use speech writers.