Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleagues who are here today.
Today, we are debating Bill C-15, the budget implementation bill, which we are now considering at report stage. Believe it or not, some people are tuning in at home. I know a few of them. These people need to understand what the report stage is.
The 603-page budget contains a great many things that will be toxic for Quebec, toxic for some of our industries, toxic for co-operatives like Desjardins, and toxic for farmers. When a budget is this toxic, amendments are put forward at committee. The committee met on Monday. Sometimes, people think that the work is over after the committee stage, but the reality is that we still get one last chance to make this inadequate budget a little less bad or a little better. The last chance that we get, the final opportunity, is now, the report stage. The report sets out the amendments, but we can still change them.
What happened at the committee meeting that took place on Monday under a closure motion is inexplicable. Some parts of the bill should have been changed by consensus. Lessons were offered and explanations were given, but no one was willing to listen. I will give the example of the high-speed rail network act.
The part of the budget containing the high-speed rail network act gives powers to an operator that is basically doing the government's dirty work, but without being subject to scrutiny by the Auditor General or the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The operator is being given excessive expropriation powers. It will be allowed to violate the rights of people whose property will be expropriated for the rail project, including rights that all other Canadians continue to have. This will create second-class citizens along the rail corridor.
The government says the same thing was done in Quebec for the Réseau express métropolitain, or REM. However, Quebec's REM network is only a few dozen kilometres long. Its tracks curve, it can use existing rights-of-way, it does not go by as many homes and it has stops everywhere and creates benefits along almost every kilometre of track. However, the federal government is taking that remedy and applying it to the wrong problem. It is applying it to a network that is completely different. This network is 1,000 kilometres long. It cannot use existing rights-of-way in many cases, it does not curve and it hardly stops anywhere, yet the government says that the same remedy is being applied.
People are being stripped of their right to challenge expropriations before a hearing officer. Hearings are an alternative mechanism that help avoid mass challenges before the Federal Court. This means we could end up with 1,000 kilometres' worth of property owners going to the Federal Court, at a time when the government is struggling to appoint judges.
What were our amendments? They sought to allow people who receive an expropriation notice to request a hearing before a hearing officer within 30 days, as is the law for all Canadians. The Conservatives abstained from voting on this amendment and allowed the Liberals to create two classes of citizens, particularly in my riding, in Mirabel. My constituents went through expropriations once before. Abstaining is not an option when it comes to equality before the law. Abstaining is not an option. This time, we want members to vote in the House.
We also wanted people who receive an expropriation notice to be allowed to rebuild a cattle shed, a barn or other agricultural facilities following a disaster. Here is what the current bill would do. If the path of the high-speed train crosses so much as a corner of a person's farm and their cattle shed burns down, they are not allowed to rebuild it.
My friend Éric Couvrette is tuning in today. The summer before last, Éric's cattle shed burned down to the ground. He lost all his cattle and his entire livelihood to the fire. It is a tragedy that everyone in Mirabel knows about. He could no longer make a living. Under the current bill, if the high-speed train crosses the end of his property, even if it is nowhere near the cattle shed, he would not have the right to rebuild it. The people in my riding will understand what that means. People living in agricultural areas will understand the seriousness of what the government is doing. That is why we wanted to fix that.
What did the government tell us? It said that it was going to compromise and allow people to rebuild in the event of a natural disaster, but even that was too much. The Liberals withdrew their own amendment and, in the end, they said that, if there was a fire, tornado or flood, the poor souls could not rebuild and would have to declare bankruptcy. That is the Liberals' approach to equality before the law. We wanted to fix that. The amendment that we are tabling today gives the Conservatives and the Liberals one last chance to show a little compassion, respect and concern for equality among citizens.
We also wanted to give people back the 30-day period for appealing to a hearing officer. Alto is lying to people. Alto says that it is not true that people will no longer have 30 days to appeal the decision to a hearing officer if their land is expropriated. However, if there is no hearing officer anymore, then what is the point of the 30-day period? We want to give people back those rights. More importantly, we want to ensure that, if a person's land is expropriated, it cannot be done by email by default. What we are saying is that, if people want to communicate with Alto by email, they should be free to do so, but it must be at their request. It should not be up to Alto to be so magnanimous that it decides to send people registered letters the day their land is being expropriated. To me, that does not seem like too much to ask.
We also want the digital services tax to be reinstated. Do my colleagues know what that is? The NDP member was very diplomatic. The elimination of the digital services tax was just a way of sucking up to Donald Trump. The Prime Minister woke up one morning and decided to kowtow to the President in the hope that this would serve him well, but in the end, it did not. He lost out on $1 billion in revenue a year. Meanwhile, the privately owned media sector is in crisis because its content is being stolen by the big platforms, yet the minimum tax on multinationals has been scrapped and they are getting a free pass in Canada as if it were no big deal. There is nothing for our media at a time when the media is in crisis. We want that to be fixed. We want that tax to be reinstated.
We want the deficiencies in the open banking system, or consumer-driven banking, to be fixed. In the bill, the government wanted to regulate not only banks, which are federally regulated, but also digital brokers, which are considered retailers and fall under the legislative purview of Quebec and the provinces. This means that the federal government wants to tell Desjardins Group what to do. It wants to tell institutions that fall under Quebec's jurisdiction what to do. Obviously, it is not just Quebec. Albertans would also be affected. Alberta has ATB Financial, or Alberta Treasury Branches, formerly known as Alberta's Public Bank. However, it is not really a bank, so much so that the federal government went after it, demanding that it change its name. The federal government was trying to regulate a branch of the Alberta government. Some amendments did get adopted, but one has yet to be adopted. That is the amendment that says that if there is a dispute over jurisdiction and the federal government wants to regulate these brokers, there will be another problem, namely the minister's obligation to meet with their provincial counterparts to ensure the matter does not end up at the Supreme Court and the banking system can truly be open. Well, guess what? The Liberals voted against that. That is what I mean when I say that this is toxic for the provinces. In this case, modernity is not exclusive to the federal government. Brokers do not manufacture financial products and are not federally regulated.
Let us talk about the red tape reduction act. Regulatory sandboxes are fine, but there are models of them around the world. These models do not all give any minister, in any sector, the right to suspend just about anything, giving the executive branch lots of latitude to determine the road map for verifying that process. This is a violation of Parliament's prerogative. There was a compromise. The Liberals struck a deal with the Conservatives. However, as has been said before, this does not protect the environment, first nations or workers. We want to fix that. That part of the bill needs to be thrown out and redone, as we do with anything that deserves to be thrown out.
As members can see, we are being constructive. We want to make this budget less toxic. We are proposing constructive changes, and we are reintroducing these amendments because we believe that even people with a negative attitude, as we are currently seeing across the way, can change their minds and start thinking positive.
