Madam Speaker, I was thinking today about how I should approach the budget implementation bill.
I have a particular fondness for the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. I like it when he says we are trying to pick a fight. I was wondering how to interpret that, and I was reminded of a name my father used to call me when I was a teenager.
My father was the king of neologisms. He was a guy who could invent concepts and words. When I was young, he would tell me that I was “contrarious”. I do not know if that came from the word “contrary” or “contrarian”, but he told me that “contrarious” means someone who scratches their backside when their head is itchy. That is just his turn of phrase. I do not mean to be offensive. That, according to my father, is what it means to be “contrarious”. I think that someone who is “contrarious” is someone who goes against what makes sense. It is true that in my teenage years, I frequently did things that did not make sense and defied my father out of stubbornness.
Now when I hear this government telling us that we are trying to pick a fight, I often think that they are using the same contrarian rhetoric. I am not saying that the government has an itchy head and is scratching the wrong spot. That is not what I am saying. I am simply saying that perhaps some of the government's actions are counterproductive.
In my view, there are four aspects of Bill C-30 that clearly demonstrate that the government's actions are counterproductive.
The first aspect is old age security. My office has never received as many complaints as it has about the government's proposal to give $500 to people aged 75 and over.
While my father used to use the analogy that our heads are itchy but we are scratching our backsides, I would say that seniors are fired up, and that is the truth. I have never received so many complaints, both online and by email. This is unfair. It creates two classes of seniors. We have made our position clear, but we did not even need to, since that is how it looks on the ground.
The seniors receiving the payment are unhappy. Seniors aged 75 and over who have a spouse under 75 who will not be receiving it are unhappy, and they are vocal about it. Some of the emails I received even got quite abusive, blaming me as if it had been my decision. I am getting this type of criticism. It is understandable in the context of the pandemic that there are tensions and people who are unhappy. As we know, seniors were the ones who were overlooked during the pandemic.
The Bloc Québécois made a proposal, masterfully presented by the member for Shefford, that I think was rational and reasonable. Why not increase old age security by $110 a month and increase the guaranteed income supplement by $70 for a couple and $50 for a single person? To me, this is a desirable and reasonable position.
I said earlier that the government is acting unreasonably. In my opinion, it is not picking a fight to say that. I am saying that, having listened to the people on the ground, the seniors in my riding, I believe that a desirable and reasonable position would be to increase old age security by $110 and the guaranteed income supplement by $50 or by $70 for a couple.
Health transfers are another aspect of Bill C-30 that I find unreasonable. To me, this perfectly encapsulates what is not working in federalism. I clearly remember two instances of what we call Canadian-style neo-liberalism that took place in the Canadian federation after the 1995 referendum, in 1996-97 and 1997-98. The government cut transfer payments by $2 billion each fiscal year. It totally dismantled Quebec's health system.
There was a report, the Séguin report, which was issued not by a sovereignist, but by a federalist. This report demonstrated what we call the fiscal imbalance. No one ever came out and said that it was conjured up and contrived by the interests of people who had a different political opinion from the sovereignists. No one ever came out and said that, but I think it is a proven fact.
Then there was a slightly better agreement on health transfers with the Conservatives, thanks to a bit of a push from our party, it must be said.
Then, under the Harper government, we were back to meagre health care funding. Year after year, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that if nothing changed with respect to health transfers, provincial deficits would grow while the federal government ended up swimming in surpluses. That is according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, not me. It is in the 2013 report.
What is in Bill C-30? Certainly not the 35% the provinces want. The government is signalling that transfers will come with strings attached. That is what we saw for senior care. That seems to be the government's intention. I think this indicates something unreasonable that nobody wants to see.
Another fairly important aspect of Bill C-30 that made me raise my eyebrows when I read it is the extension of various programs, such as the wage subsidy. My thought was that, if the government were interested in fixing a mistake, it could simply change the wage subsidy to make it off-limits to political parties, but there is nothing about that in Bill C-30.
It is no secret that we will likely be in campaign mode soon. Some political parties will be campaigning using money from the wage subsidy. We are still waiting for our Conservative friends to pay back this money. They at least admitted that it may not have been ethical and may not have been the right thing to do. The Liberal Party and our colleagues in the NDP, however, seem quite comfortable with their decision to claim the wage subsidy.
The government could propose a worthwhile amendment to fix that. At the very least, an amendment would send the message that members of the House of Commons do not create programs that benefit them personally. That is all I will say.
The infamous green recovery is another thing that I think is unreasonable and counterproductive. I will never understand what the government is trying to do with this green recovery. There is virtually no mention of it in Bill C-30.
The only information have we gotten about the green recovery so far is an announcement about the electrification of transportation.
Allow me to back up a little. I am sure this figure is shocking, but the government is talking about a $17.6-billion investment in the green recovery.
Do members know how much the Trans Mountain pipeline cost? It cost $17.1 billion, and that was just one project. Overall, the pipeline costs as much as the green recovery.
That is an image that really hits home, for anyone who is serious about the environment. When it comes to the green recovery, what we have been hearing about is the electrification of transportation. That bothers me a bit because Ontario is going to make off with most of the money associated with that, yet it is the only province that is no longer offering a rebate for purchasing an electric vehicle. That is ironic, but let us leave that aside.
The other thing that really bothers me is that the government announced its intention to get into hydrogen production. There are three types of hydrogen. In committee, the government told us that it would prefer to develop the hydrogen market without making a distinction. Anyone who is familiar with the energy sector would tell us that the worst idea out there right now is grey hydrogen. There is no way that making hydrogen out of oil and gas is environmentally friendly. It is anything but.
Lastly, I want to talk about the forestry industry. There is nothing in Bill C-30 about the much-talked-about $55 million that was announced for the investments in forest industry transformation program, or IFIT. Why is it not in there? I do not know. Fifty-five million dollars is nothing. It is peanuts compared to the support that was announced for the oil and gas industry. There is nothing about that in Bill C-30.
I do not have much time left, but, in closing, I want to tell my friend, the leader of the government, that I am not trying to pick a fight, but when my head is itchy, I scratch it, and when my backside is itchy, I scratch that. It is important to be consistent.