Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in the House again now, at the beginning of a Parliament that I must remind my colleagues should not exist. We should be continuing with the previous Parliament. Clearly, that was the view of both Quebeckers and Canadians.
All of us, all governments, all countries, all hospitals and all seniors' residences, are desperately trying to really, truly emerge, once and for all, from a crisis where the main issue, besides the economy and the pressure that the crisis is putting on the health system, remains a human issue: the fear, anxiety, illness and distress of loved ones. We seem to be having great difficulty in emerging from this crisis, and once again, this applies to all governments, but this does not free us from the solemn obligation to do everything in our power, at all times, to come out on the other side in better shape and, shall we say, with as many people as possible.
It was in the wake of this human tragedy with far-reaching economic impacts that the Prime Minister of Canada decided, out of the blue, to call an election in the middle of the summer, although it did not come as a surprise to anyone because the writing had been on the wall for a long time. He was kind enough to explain the concept of urgency to us. Obviously, this all-powerful being had to be given a strong mandate to tackle the pandemic head-on and get us out of it once and for all.
I had my doubts, as I am sure many others did, the day after that very poorly timed, extremely disorganized, ill-conceived election. Some polling stations did not have enough staff. Things were done in haste and risks were taken, particularly with regard to health measures. The directives were unclear and applied differently from one polling station to another. If this election had been urgently required, we would have understood, but it was neither urgent nor necessary. The credibility of the democratic system was somewhat undermined when some MPs were told that they had been elected, only to be informed later that they had not actually won. It was completely ridiculous.
In addition, Canadians and Quebeckers asked, what is this nonsense? They felt so strongly about it that they re-elected the same Parliament. It is almost the same in Quebec. The people told the government that they had given it a mandate, so it should get to work and stop bothering them. The government should not betray or pervert its mandate out of sheer ambition by saying it would like to outnumber the other party. Clearly, that is not what voters wanted.
We were sure all of this would be explained in the Speech from the Throne. It is not the Speech from the Throne; it is more like the speech from the timeout chair. I took the liberty of saying that, even read slowly, it was very short. Any college or university student, such as the former students of my esteemed colleague from Mirabel, who is here with us, could have written something more creative, clear and captivating.
That is the throne speech. That is why we went out and spent $600 million. That is why Parliament shut down for five months. That is why it took two months to write something that could have been written in two hours and probably was.
People feel like the government is laughing in their faces. Is it any surprise that they are not engaged in our democracy?
The throne speech was an amateur job with no real substance. It did not offer a pandemic recovery plan or a specific agenda. I know we will be hearing more about that during and after this particular debate. There is no vision, no statement of intent. For crying out loud, it is a whole lot of nothing.
There is something of substance we have already touched on: Bill C‑2 on pandemic recovery programs, which is quite a bit clearer and more specific. There is more in the first bill they introduced than there was in the throne speech, which was supposed to put us on a four-year path to glory, prosperity and good health, or so they would have us believe. That is a bit odd.
When the government puts forward a good plan, we respond positively. Bill C‑2 is a bill that calls for collaboration, and we are ready to collaborate. Naturally, there is room for improvement; that is what the democratic legislative process promotes and demands.
In the meantime, the government's mandate, which was to manage and overcome the crisis and to pass this legislation much earlier, has not been fulfilled, and people have told the government to go do its job.
The Speech from the Throne contains the buzzword “collaborate”.
Not so long ago, there were expressions like “we walk hand in hand with Quebec and the provinces”. My God, I hope there were handcuffs involved, because the hands would not have been close for long.
We have everything but collaboration. Does the word “collaborate” in the Speech from the Throne, which was skilfully read out in several languages, mean “we will listen to what the provinces want”?
What the provinces and Quebec want is simple: an immediate, unconditional transfer of funding to cover 35% of health care system costs. Without this transfer, in the short term, the provinces and Quebec will have to divert resources to the health care system that should be allocated to other things and, in the medium term, some provinces will basically go bust, go bankrupt. This is because the great federal tradition, especially the Liberal one, is to try to bring the provinces, which are conquered territories if ever there was one, to their knees in exchange for a little money.
The Liberal approach is “sell us your jurisdictions”, which is why the throne speech ignored, or mentioned only very quickly, the fact that collaboration means a give-and-take on both sides. That left us dangerously dissatisfied and reveals something a little shocking. In the last few days and weeks, a lot of attention has been paid to the magnitude of the tragedy, to figuring out what led to a such a high number of deaths.
Sometimes the media will also try to politicize it and point fingers—