Mr. Speaker, I have the great pleasure this evening of taking the floor in the House to debate Bill C-38.
I will honour my colleagues across the way, who truly love superlatives—they thirst for them—and congratulate each other a lot. I must admit that, to my eyes, to my knowledge, Bill C-38 is an important, if not a crucial, part of the greatest plan to dismantle the country ever seen since Confederation. It is a massive and destructive operation that my colleagues opposite are praising and supporting without it weighing on their conscience, despite the millions of victims it will create in Canada.
it is very important to frame it this way because not all of our actions are innocent, on the contrary. Our actions have significant immediate and, of course, future consequences.
One of the very important aspects of Bill C-38 is that it is just one step more after many steps of significant cuts to the Canadian state, to various government operations, be they direct operations involving individuals or operations involving all the provinces of the Canadian confederation.
This reminds me of another sad, dark time in recent history: in the mid-1990s, Chrétien and his finance minister made harsh cuts that hurt everyone in Canada.
Obviously, there are many ways to address certain problems, and the government just needs a little imagination and a little willingness to talk to and co-operate with other partners to seek and find solutions that are the lesser evil—as they say—to problems that seem insurmountable or inescapable. At the very least, the government must avoid subjecting vulnerable members of society to pointless suffering. That is truly inescapable.
As Christ said, “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” He did not want his disciples to collect money for the poor at the risk of forgetting to concentrate on his message.
Here is another parable, an important one, to illustrate just how drastically this government is compromising our heritage and the future of all Canadians of all ages. I will focus on young people, but people of all ages—including seniors—may find themselves paying a heavy price.
It is the parable of the prodigal son, who asks his father for his share of the inheritance immediately. He quickly wastes every last bit of his money on strangers.
That is what is happening here. Instead of taking care of things at home, the Conservatives are slashing taxes, adding counter-productive exemptions, being careless and adopting questionable practices vis-a-vis foreign investors. I know what I am talking about because I can see this in my very own riding. Much to my chagrin the members opposite told me in their responses that I am against investors and against economic growth.
I have a question. When an honest worker or a retiree is deprived of tens of thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, that he worked hard to put aside in a private pension fund, through the fault of a foreigner who does not care about the fate of those who work for him, and this happens because of loopholes in the Canadian legislation, what type of society are we building for the future?
It will be a society of the poor who will serve the very small, very wealthy minority. Does the government opposite want the New Democrats to be a party to this operation? I am saying no. I am shouting no. We especially do not want to be party to that, absolutely not.
This government has used the absolutely—or probably, I will hold back a little—most simplistic arguments to defend its bill. They are the most simplistic arguments ever presented in this House. It is absolutely incredible to be given a mess of figures without any context, which flies in the face of reality and shows contempt for the truth.
It is truly appalling to see this government, in its operation of massive destruction, clearly targeting all those with the necessary empirical knowledge to understand what will happen now and in future years with Bill C-38. An incredible number of scientists have been fired, attacked, muzzled, and told to shut up. We are talking about people who have spent many years of their lives studying and, furthermore, dedicating themselves to a vocation: to serve the truth and all of society.
How can a government be so mean and contemptuous toward the intellectual elite of our society? It is a true horror to see that. Bill C-38 sanctions it. The government sets itself up as an enemy to science, to intellectuals and to people who have knowledge they can use to the benefit of society. Let us call a spade a spade. That is exactly what is going on here.
When you get down to it, Bill C-38 is a massive attack on millions of Canadians, be they retired or entrepreneurs. When we talk about employment insurance-related measures, it is mainly an attack on entrepreneurs who do seasonal work in logging, agriculture and fishing operations. Even in urban areas, let us think about people who work in construction and road repair. Quebec City is one of Canada's snowiest cities, and every winter in Beauport—Limoilou I have seen hundreds of skilled tradespeople and operators of heavy machinery clearing snow during the night after storms or heavy snowfalls. All these people depend on employment insurance not only to make ends meet, obviously, and to find a way to meet the city's needs, but also to preserve and protect their particular expertise that cannot be applied year-round.
This government is deaf and blind to this reality that affects millions of Canadians. It is absolutely unbelievable to see this kind of thing.
One of the clearest signs—and I will end with this—that the government does not care in the slightest about those millions of Canadians is that they are constantly boasting about the fact that this is going to bring a lot of prosperity to all Canadians.
However, one of the clearest signs that many Canadian households spend every last dollar of their income each week or month is that, currently, there is $500 billion in unused RRSP contributions, unused RRSP tax credits. It means that those millions of Canadian do not even have the means to save, and this government does not care. Actually, the only thing that it seems to care about is to force them to save at the expense of the bread and butter that they could be putting on the table.