Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from West Nova. I am very happy to see him with us in the House to discuss this important matter.
We are hearing all sorts of things here this morning. However, we are not hearing enough about the real issues or the motion we have put forward today.
The motion of my colleague from Cariboo—Prince George reads as follows:
That the House stand in solidarity with every elected band council on the Coastal GasLink route, the majority of hereditary chiefs, and the vast majority of the Wet'suwet'en people, who support the Coastal GasLink project, and condemn the radical activists who are exploiting divisions within the Wet'suwet'en community, holding the Canadian economy hostage, and threatening jobs and opportunities in Indigenous communities.
That is exactly what we want. We want the conflict to be settled in a reasonable manner with respect for the different rules of law, the injunctions and, above all, the way things are done. The rule of law is important in Canada.
Unfortunately, there is a handful of radicals who are currently doing harm. They are hurting the cause of national reconciliation, they are hurting the cause of the Wet'suwet'en community, and they are hurting the economy of the entire country. That is what I am going to speak to today.
I heard my colleague from the NDP ask us where we get our numbers and whether they are made up. We have heard all kinds of things about the numbers. I will tell you where we get our numbers. They come from the National Coalition of Chiefs, which has said that the majority of hereditary chiefs support the Coastal GasLink project. That is not coming from us, the Bloc Québécois or the Liberals.
In reality, this conflict is being led by a very small number of hereditary chiefs. Two of them are chiefs who ran in legitimate elections in the Wet'suwet'en communities and lost, so they do not have the legitimacy to represent the people of the Wet'suwet'en band council. The vast majority of Wet'suwet'en and all elected band councils on the proposed route of the Coastal GasLink pipeline support the project.
Theresa Tait-Day, one of the hereditary chiefs of the Wet'suwet'en people, said that 85% of her people had supported the Coastal GasLink project.
I am not the one who said that and my colleagues are not either. People from the community itself are telling us that 85% of them support the project. That is the problem. Members on the other side of the House seem unable to hear anything that contradicts what they want to hear.
The fact is that 85% of the Wet'suwet'en people are telling us to support the project. However, the Prime Minister does not want to listen to them. He does not want to talk with them. All they can do is be there and wait for someone to do something.
Unfortunately nothing will ever happen because the Prime Minister has done absolutely nothing for the past two weeks. He is nowhere to be found and is showing a flagrant lack of leadership and unbelievable weakness, while Canada goes through a crisis unlike anything we have seen in a very long time.
The crisis is not connected to the Coastal GasLink project. It goes back a long way. I would say all the way back to the date of the 2015 election.
We all remember the false promises made by this government, the false promises made by this Prime Minister who fails to realize that false promises give false hope. These false hopes have led to major disappointment today, and not just for the indigenous communities who were fooled by the Prime Minister's fine words when he talked about reconciliation and said it was his top priority. Today, five years later, little to nothing has been done.
That is also the case for Canadian taxpayers who were promised small deficits. Today we have huge deficits that are out of control with no end in sight. The same goes for the promises of electoral reform. Hon. members will remember how hopeful everyone was when the Prime Minister promised that the 2015 election would the last one under the current system.
The 2019 election proceeded under exactly the same system as the 2015 election. Everyone who believed there would be electoral reform was very disappointed.
Obviously, that does not seem to bother the Prime Minister. In fact, he is not bothered by much right now because he is absent from this conflict. He talks a good game, but does next to nothing to resolve the situation.
Some of my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois were part of Pauline Marois' government. I am certainly not a big fan of Ms. Marois and I have never been a fan of the Parti Québécois. However, I must say that as a resident and mayor of Thetford Mines, I had a great deal of a respect for Premier Marois when she handled the Lac-Mégantic crisis the way a premier should. She was present and did not leave anyone in the dark. We knew exactly what was happening. It goes to show that sometimes we discover what a person is truly made of in times of crisis.
In this case, we are not learning a thing about the Prime Minister because he is not showing up. He had a chance to rise above the fray and find a solution to the crisis while keeping Canadians informed. Instead he chose to stay away and do nothing. That is why we are now in a very difficult situation. A community is tearing itself apart, Canadian citizens are afraid they will lose their jobs and businesses do not know if they can make it to next week all because nobody knows anything about the government's plan to resolve this crisis.
The municipality of Lac-Mégantic passed a resolution this week because one of its businesses, Tafisa, is in danger of closing. Tafisa employs 330 people and is doing everything it can to stay open, but it does not know what to do with its products or how to run its operations, so 330 families could end up jobless next week or in the near future if the situation is not resolved.
My colleague, the member for Beauce, provided me with some information that is truly troubling. Serge Lacasse of Agri-Marché, which is part of Groupe Brochu, and Laurence Couture of Alfred Couture limitée, have said that there are serious supply problems. The silos are almost empty and next week they will be cleaned out. Even if the trains started moving today, it would take at least five days to get the goods that feed Canadians and cattle. That is serious.
To solve the blockade problem, the government wants to be patient, engage in dialogue and wait for the radical protesters to dismantle their barricades. They say that discussions are taking place, but we do not know with whom because the Prime Minister has not told us anything. In the meantime, real businesses are suffering. Next week, supermarkets might not have food on their shelves. Animals may die because there is no propane. Chickens may die next week because there will be no propane to heat the henhouses. These are actual problems and the situation is real.
Today, I believe that we must rise in support of elected representatives and the majority of the Wet'suwet'en and tell them that we support their decision to choose a project that will give them and their children a better future. We must stand with the elected band leaders who have chosen to support a project that will truly improve the lives of these people.
We must condemn those who, at this time, are holding the rest of Canadians hostage for reasons other than to support the Wet'suwet'en community. In fact, a photograph published in a newspaper article about these blockades showed their real motive: #ShutDownCanada. We will never allow a group, as radical as it may be, to shut Canada down. We will not let anyone take all Canadians hostage.