Mr. Speaker, the House leader of the Bloc Québécois just said that he planted an apple tree. He is already doing better than the government. According to my calculations, if it costs approximately $3 billion to plant two billion trees, then the government should pay the House leader of the Bloc Québécois $1.50 or so in compensation.
Once again, the government is going to have to do a lot more than that, and we hope that, in the next budget, the government will have a real plan for the environment. These are good measures and we recognize that, but they really are not enough.
Earlier this fall, the wage subsidy was extended and improved on. Most of the measures announced in today's document improve the wage subsidy, which we applaud because that is good. During a pandemic, implementing income support measures that help maintain employment relationships is the thing to do.
The same thing goes for the new Canada emergency rent subsidy. The first version of this commercial rent subsidy did not work. This second version was announced, we said it was good and we adopted it this fall. We applaud that.
However, we had asked the Minister of Finance what we are now asking the government to do, and that is to present aid programs for industries that are struggling, sectors that are having a tough time. We need aid programs that target sectors that are in a particular situation. We expected to see that, since there had been rumours to that effect in the media.
Sadly, the rumours were not true. Instead, we are being told to wait for the next budget, that something is coming and that, until then, they are thinking about it. For instance, there is a section on assistance for the air sector. It sets out the measures that have been announced for airports, but the air sector and airports are not one and the same.
I met with some airport representatives last week, including one from the Montreal airports authority. Quite honestly, airports are struggling. They need programs. Airlines also need assistance, but nothing has been announced for them, despite the misleading title. We are being told to wait for the next budget and that something is coming. We have been waiting for quite a while already.
On top of that, the government managed to include the words “aerospace industry” once in its document, saying that it was connected to the air sector. However, since there is nothing for the air sector, that means there is even less for the aerospace industry.
This despite the fact that greater Montreal is the third-largest aerospace hub in the world, after Seattle and Toulouse. If we look at what is happening in the United States, France and Europe, it is clear that those countries are doing everything they can to support that industry. Of course, since planes are grounded and orders are being delayed, the industry is struggling. However, that sector of the economy has the highest value added. That means well-paying jobs and innovation.
There is the C Series in Mirabel, which was taken over by Airbus. It is the most fuel efficient aircraft in the world. We have a little gem on our hands and what does the government do? For eight months now, all of the industry representatives, major suppliers and SMEs have been saying that a special assistance program is needed. They had to bend over backwards just to get access to the wage subsidy because Quebec invested a little money in that industry to prevent all of the expertise from being lost, something that Ottawa did not do. Under the program rules, the companies could not get help if public funds had been invested.
We managed to change that, but now a targeted program is needed. We cannot lose this cluster. This value-added sector is very important to Quebec and Canada. We are building planes in Ontario, Manitoba and some other places too. It takes a vision of economic interest, which is not found in this document.
It is the same thing for the tourism industry. We were told that a bit of money was included for that industry and that something will be done one day, but nothing has happened, even though this is an extremely important industry. It is the same thing for the arts. The government is talking about online events, but think about all of the festivals and other events. A lot of sectors are affected. I am thinking about summer camps. People are contacting us to tell us that it was a disastrous season. Sugar bushes and reception halls are also having a hard time. Targeted measures are needed. The government is saying that these things are important but that it is going to wait for the next budget to do something. That is a problem.
As I said earlier, the same goes for the stimulus plan. The government says there will be vaccines. I believe Canada and Quebec will spend weeks or months watching the train go by because the government took too long and lacked vision. Word is that the vaccine will be coming soon, or at least our neighbours will be getting one, so now we can start thinking about economic recovery.
This gives us a great reason to hope we will come out the other end soon. This situation is tough, and we have endured it for months, but the possibility of a vaccine gives us hope that things will get back to normal and that new opportunities will arise. Unfortunately, there is no recovery plan.
Sometimes, people can make numbers say anything they want. That is not something I agree with, but one example from this document really made me laugh. In defence of its vaccine strategy, the government says on page 9 that Canada has the most agreements per capita. It lists fifteen or so countries and puts Switzerland at the bottom of the list. However, we all know that Switzerland has vaccine production capacity because plenty of headquarters, labs and pharmaceutical multinationals operate there. Once again, the government is trying to show that Canada did a good job, but in truth, we should be worried.
When we asked Dr. Caroline Quach-Thanh if we could have manufactured our own vaccines in Quebec or Canada, she said that Canada's vaccine manufacturing capacity is non-existent. There is a little work in Toronto, at Sanofi Pasteur, where Connaught Laboratories used to be. There is a little work in Quebec City at GSK, but they mostly focus on manufacturing seasonal flu vaccines, and vaccines for children and travellers.
Quebec had a strong pharmaceutical industry and some large laboratories in the past 15 years that would have had the capacity to quickly manufacture vaccines. This was all dismantled as a result of the inaction and political choices of successive federal governments.
I would like to go back in time. In 1987, during the Meech Lake accord negotiations, Quebec had leverage and managed to work well with Ottawa to establish an ecosystem that would foster significant growth of the pharmaceutical industry in Quebec. The province attracted five multinationals, an expertise was developed and about 2,000 high-calibre jobs were created.
Following the 1995 referendum, Quebec lost its leverage and Ottawa withdrew its support. Quebec tried to redouble its efforts, but it was not enough. The multinationals moved, closed their doors or reduced their staff one after the other. The process accelerated in the 2000s. Ever since the referendum, political decisions destroyed the industry.
Then the pandemic arrived. Health specialists say that there have been many pandemics in the past, such as H1N1 and SARS. Some specialists even say that we are lucky because the current virus is not too deadly and that, despite the present crisis, it could have been worse.
We learned that the government had masks, gowns and equipment destroyed last year when it closed a centre. With respect to the protection and security of the economy, it was unacceptable to let go of such a leading-edge industry. Is it because it was located in Quebec?
Had the industry been sustained, we would have had the capacity to produce vaccines rapidly right here. Unfortunately, that interest was not protected. That is the tragedy of Quebec's pharmaceutical industry.
I would say that Ontario's pharmaceutical industry, though slightly older, is pretty much a joke, to paraphrase the other philosopher. I was talking about that earlier.
Established in 1913, Connaught Laboratories was a globally recognized leader, a massive success, the best in the world. The labs recovered their costs and succeeded at eradicating all kinds of problematic diseases affordably. They produced insulin for diabetes and even worked with Dr. Salk, an American, to produce the polio vaccine.
In the 1970s, under the elder Trudeau, Connaught was converted into a development corporation. It was gradually privatized over the years and then completely privatized under Mulroney in 1989. That was the end of Canada's vaccine production capacity and affordable expertise. Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig wrote an article about it in March based on a chapter in her book.
In order to develop the economy, a vision is needed. Some extremely important and highly developed sectors in Quebec could have brought us out of this slump very quickly. They were dropped, and now we are paying the price. When the time came to negotiate for vaccines, the government dragged its feet, and we are paying the price. The government is announcing funds to restart vaccine production, but that will not happen before 2023 at the earliest. That will not help us with this crisis.
Let's hope that we learn from past mistakes and complacency and that we do not repeat them. We have seen what happens when a neighbour decides for us and we are subjected to someone else's decisions. There were multinational drug companies and we had domestic expertise that meant we could produce vaccines for other parts of the world. Because our neighbour is the one who decided for us, we lost everything. Because our neighbour dragged its feet during the first few months of the pandemic, we will only receive the vaccine after others do.
No matter how many charts the Liberals put in this document to try to prove that Canada has more deals than anyone else, everyone knows that we are neither at the very back nor at the very front of the line when it comes to getting vaccines here in Canada. Quebec, then, is paying the price.
We were hoping this document would talk about health care funding, but there is nothing on that. We also hoped it would talk about funding for seniors, a commitment this government made, but, again, there is nothing there.
We expected there to be something for the recovery, but that is missing as well, just like the assistance programs for struggling sectors such as aerospace. The result is not very good, but the government is putting things off and telling us to wait for the budget.
This update did not have much to say about the environment and was well below our expectations. What is there is good, however, including the measures for electric cars and the energy efficient retrofit programs. However these measures do not go far enough.
As far as tax fairness is concerned, we applaud the announcements on web giants paying their taxes, potentially through the use of levies. We also applaud the measure to limit stock option deductions to $200,000. We applaud the gesture, even though the limit remains high. We also applaud the special family benefit that is not insignificant.
We applaud the deductions of up to $400 for the costs of working at home. It is a nice gesture for people who had to turn to telework and this facilitates the requests for that. The wage subsidy is increased to 75% of salaries paid to take into account the gravity of the second wave, which is good.
We will wait for the budget to be tabled. In any event, I am not sure if we will be voting on this document. At the end, two bills were introduced. We were expecting a ways and means motion at the end of the minister's speech. As I understand it, this motion is supposed to be moved before these bills can be voted on. At first glance, the bills seem worthwhile, but we will take some time to study them.
There was no budget last spring. The government has never spent this much money before, and we need a budget. We were expecting more from today's statement, and we are disappointed. The deficit is extremely worrisome, as it has reached an astronomical $381 billion. We have never seen this before, so accountability is important , because this is a lot of money. Fortunately, a substantial portion of this money went to income support measures for people who lost their jobs and for businesses, which is important.
The government needs to show some transparency. We learned our lesson with WE Charity, with the ventilators from the former Liberal member who did not manufacture ventilators and with the management of subsidies connected to their chief of staff's husband. That is a lot, and we need more transparency. Four committees have studied these issues, but the Liberal members on these committees filibustered. We are asking for a special committee to study all of this spending. It was announced when we returned after prorogation, but things are taking a long time.
Liberal members on the Standing Committee on Finance systematically filibustered proceedings for dozens of hours, preventing us from hearing people talk about their needs for the next budget. We need to be able to do our jobs. A special committee is needed to assess spending, because we are dealing with a significant deficit. If the money was well spent, then it was the lesser evil during this crisis, but a committee needs to look into it.
I think that about sums it up.