Mr. Speaker, I will take a few seconds to remind or inform my colleagues that this is the first St. Valentine's Day that the NDP and the Liberals have spent together since they struck their alliance. I wish them a happy Valentine's Day.
We, in the Bloc Québécois, are sovereignists, and we want Quebec to be its own country. We would like Quebec to make its own decisions and choices. There are many reasons for that, historical and institutional reasons, but we also want to be efficient.
In Quebec, we are against duplication. We believe that doing the same work twice, once in Quebec City and once in Ottawa, is not a good thing. It is not a good use of resources. I can see my Conservative colleagues nodding. That is a good thing because today we are faced with the duplication of previous motions.
This is the fifth or sixth identical motion. This unnecessary duplication, this waste of energy, is something we have seen before in the House of Commons. It is the same thing every Conservative opposition day. Economists call this looking for economies of scale. An economy of scale means trying to always produce the same thing with less and less effort. Lucky for us, it takes less and less effort to give them the same answers. Obviously they get paid big money just to copy and paste, in other words, to hit “control c” and “control v”. We already voted against a virtually identical motion last week. I would say that I am throwing their motion in the garbage bin, but even the garbage bin might vote against that.
We will talk about the motion for a few minutes. The diagnosis within the motion is not entirely false. It is true that there is inflation. It is true that Canadian families are facing a crisis. It is true that times are hard because many people are struggling. We have to think about those people. It is true that the inflation rate is at its highest since 1982. It was over 10% in 1982. It is roughly 6% today. The motion is a little overblown, but there we are.
However, what the Conservatives forgot to say is that if we do not consider energy and food, which are important components, the core inflation rate used by the Bank of Canada is 5.5%. The price of fossil fuel energy has increased by 28%.
Once again, the Conservatives think that attacking the carbon tax, which does not even apply in Quebec, is the solution to all our woes. Instead, we need to take measures to start an energy transition, so that the next time there is a crisis, we do not end up with a 22nd, 23rd and 24th identical motion. Surely it is clear why we are uncomfortable.
The reason the Conservatives can afford to keep tabling the same motion over and over is because the Liberals did little to help families during the crisis. True, there were some measures. They increased the Canada child benefit and so on. However, those measures were planned before the crisis. Very little was done. They did double the GST credit, something the Bloc had been asking for for months. We also asked that cheques be sent out more frequently, but that has not been done.
The Liberals are complacent. They spend too much time talking and not enough time helping people. That is why the Conservatives' populism, as expressed in yet another of these motions, is unfortunately beginning to gain credence among groups of people who are not always well informed.
One good thing about the Conservatives' motion is that at least we get an opportunity to talk about the federal government's efficiency in delivering services. We get to talk about the efficiency of the machinery of government and McKinsey. We will discuss that later.
I just want to say that inefficiency, especially in the form of duplication, is rampant in Ottawa. I would like the government to explain to me why it costs two and a half times more to process an EI claim than it does to process a social assistance application in Quebec, and that is the truth. That is a 250% markup on processing.
Why does it cost four times more to handle and process a passport application in the federal bureaucracy than it does for the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec to deliver a driver's licence? Of course, a driver's licence is not a passport, but that is 400% more. These are not unreasonable comparisons. This is a major problem.
Members talked about duplication, and I want to talk about federal government costs that have doubled or even tripled.
We know that Ottawa duplicates some things that Quebec already does. That management could be decentralized. There will be further discussion on the single income tax statement and the duplication of taxation centres. That is one thing.
Yesterday, the procurement ombudsman appeared before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. Based on what we heard, ministers can indeed subcontract work, even if the public service is available and has the skills needed to do the work. The work can be subcontracted to companies such as McKinsey.
I asked him if, during his audits, he identified whether work that public servants could have done had been subcontracted. Quebeckers and Canadians will not pay just once or twice, but three times. He responded that his work was rather to ensure that, when taxpayers get ripped off and pay twice, pre-established rules are followed. In other words, we will be ripped off in accordance with the rules. That is exactly how it works. I invite people to listen to the ombudsman's testimony yesterday.
There are ways to ensure that the machinery of government operates more efficiently. Are these solutions contained in the Conservative motion? I read it three times. It was quite painful but I did it, and I noted that it does not contain any solutions, so we will be voting against this motion.
There is another thing that is niggling at me. It bothers me, and I feel uncomfortable. The Conservatives and the Liberals both know that not all inflation is created equal. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom the Conservatives love to quote every 15 minutes, said and showed that the trajectory of the federal government's debt-to-GDP ratio would drop over the coming years. It could actually reach 10% of GDP, maybe even 0% of GDP, depending on the budget, in a few decades.
The federal government's long-term public finances are healthy, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer showed that the provinces' finances, which cover health, are going to be in bigger and bigger trouble. They are in trouble because the cost of the system, even before the inflationary crisis, was increasing at a rate of 5.5% to 6% per year. That is before any increase in the cost of nurses, orderlies and all the other inputs involved in health care systems.
Now there is a new agreement being imposed. I do not know of many marriages that are entered into legally and with mutual consent with this type of agreement. It is an agreement imposed by one side only. It is so stingy that the Conservatives have decided to support it. When inflation affects the sick people who are waiting in hospital corridors, people whose cancer diagnosis or treatment is pushed back a month, two months or three months, or families who will lose loved ones, inflation is the least of their concerns. All they want is to adopt austerity policies.
What will the Conservatives cut? Will they cut help for seniors, like the Liberals did for seniors aged 65 to 74? They will make cuts to the energy transition, obviously. As far as employment insurance is concerned, they are not proposing anything for people who have to deal with the spring gap. They are even proposing that pensions be reduced because they want to offer premium holidays. The Conservatives are going to force future retirees into poverty, and when they turn to Ottawa for help in 20 or 30 years' time, they will be told that the government needs to make cuts and will not help them. With the Conservatives, it is two layers of trouble, not one.
Workable solutions exist. The Bloc Québécois has put forward proposals. We have been doing so for a year and a half. We proposed GST and QST cheques. In cases such as the McKinsey affair, we are always there to ensure that we do not pay double or triple and that taxpayers get their money's worth. When it is time to defend the competence of our public service, the Bloc Québécois is always there.
When it is the Bloc opposition day, we are always accused of raising useless subjects. We are told that people are not interested in what we want to discuss.
In conclusion, I will explain why we are capable of talking about other things. It is because we do not move the same motion seven times. We understand things right away, and it gives us the time to think about other things. The Conservatives want to be in government. The people sitting in this place want to be ministers, but they are not even able to walk and chew gum at the same time. What will they do? Will there be 2,000 seats in the House and 22 parliamentary secretaries for each minister so they can think about two things at once? No, thank you.
For their next opposition day, I invite them to think about their motion, to speak to the other opposition parties and to ensure that the door is not slammed in their face for the eighth or ninth time. That way, they will stop crying and blaming the other parties.
