Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by acknowledging the position taken by the member who just spoke. I assume he was speaking on behalf of the Liberal government. I must commend his stance, because all too often we see governments, whether Liberal or sometimes Conservative, oppose bills simply for the sake of opposing them. Obviously, it is currently a Liberal government.
The Bloc Québécois has introduced many bills, and we have often been disappointed to see the Liberals oppose certain ones for no good reason. Basically, they want to prevent their opponents from building a track record. Even if the bill is a good one, the Liberals will oppose it.
In this case, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I hope this will not be the only time. The Liberals are saying that even though Bill C-323 is not one of their own bills, it may have enough merit to be considered. That is a good start.
My colleagues will have guessed that there is a good chance that the Bloc Québécois will support Bill C‑323, based on what I have been saying. We are not supporting it because it is a Bloc bill, because it is not a Bloc bill. It is not an NDP bill either. It is a Conservative bill.
This is worth noting because I often feel disappointed by the kinds of questions the Conservatives ask in the House and their priorities, like oil and gas, abortion and firearms. There comes a point where there are other things to talk about. When their attention shifts to other topics, the results are sometimes positive. Bill C‑323 is a good example. I congratulate the Conservatives for tabling this bill. It shows a different side of them. Even if it never happens again, we are glad of it now.
I am going to say a few words about Bill C‑323, a bill to amend the excise tax. Whenever we make a transaction, we pay a 5% federal excise tax. The bill's goal is to amend a specific section of the act to exempt psychotherapy and mental health counselling services from this tax.
We know that some services are considered essential, and we want to make it so that taxpayers do not have to pay extra for them. When these services are taxed, they become even more expensive for taxpayers. Therefore, eliminating the tax is a way to lower their cost for the people who use them.
We know that there is a dearth of mental health services. Often, when people start getting therapy it takes a bit of time. Problems are rarely solved in one counselling session. This gets expensive very fast.
Unfortunately, this 5% tax, or the federal portion, is added to the 10% tax, which is the Quebec portion. On a $100-per-hour fee, the client pays an additional $15. Eventually that really hurts the budget. Sometimes a person who needs mental health services has money, but sometimes they do not. It is good for people to get help. We welcome this kind of support.
I can share a story. I know that I am running out of time, unfortunately. My constituency office is above a centre called the Centre des Ils et des Elles, a multidisciplinary professional centre for childhood and early childhood. It offers all sort of services, such as speech language pathology, psychoeducation, occupational therapy, psychology, special education, and even sexology.
One of the centre's co-founders is himself a psychoeducator. I met him because my office is upstairs from his, and also because I used some of his services to help my son on his personal journey. This well-known psychoeducator told me that the situation is not normal. He says that he is providing essential mental health services, yet patients do not pay taxes when they go to an optometrist, chiropractor, hearing aid specialist or doctor.
Why should people have to pay taxes for mental health services when they do not pay taxes for any other recognized services? There is an inequity there, and we need to put an end to it.
I would like to congratulate the sponsor of this bill. Above all, I want to say that psychoeducation is one way of lightening the load on psychologists and enabling qualified people to meet the high demand for mental health care.
I would like to comment on another aspect of the bill, namely the issue of mental health counselling, which is not regulated in Quebec. We may want to raise questions about this in committee to determine the impact of recognizing this practice from a tax standpoint when it is not regulated.