Madam Speaker, Halloween is a great opportunity to rise in the House and tell scary stories about the Liberals and all their close friends who have been collecting candy since 2015. Trust me, there are a lot of them.
Over the past nine years, we have dug many skeletons out of Liberal closets and gone on witch hunts to unmask all the Liberal “ghouls”. From the sponsorship scandal to the green fund scandal we are talking about today, it all comes back to the man behind the mask, the Liberal Prime Minister.
It is always a privilege for me to stand in the House and proudly represent the interests of the people of Lévis—Lotbinière, no matter what their needs are, and to do justice to the hard-working Canadians of this country. They do not deserve to have their hard-earned money used for partisan purposes or used to grease the palms of some Liberal Party of Canada donors, as we have all too often caught it doing. Let us not forget all those who have been granted privileged access to ministers to talk about their projects. All too often, those projects have served only to line their own pockets, to the detriment of citizens and the future of our country.
This intervention on the privilege motion concerns the green fund scandal. The crux of the problem has not changed: The Liberal government still refuses to send unredacted documents to the police so that they can do their job and determine the scope of the corruption observed in this matter by the Auditor General. What saddens me so deeply about all of this is that, once again, Liberal Party members and the Prime Minister are dashing the dreams, trust, respect and hopes of Canadians.
Let me review the facts. The Auditor General identified irregularities in the procedure used to allocate money to businesses through the green fund, which was intended to help businesses develop solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We in the Conservative Party believe that technology is the best way to reduce our environmental footprint. Technology offers Canada a pathway forward into the future, unlike the punitive anti-economic measures, like the carbon tax, that are being implemented on the backs of Canadian workers and families.
However, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, funnelled much of its funding to companies owned by the members of its board of directors, who were also long-time Liberal insiders. The selection process was rigorous and merit-based, but it was overridden and used in an arbitrary way in order to favour Liberal cronies. So much for fairness, because with the Liberals, friends come first.
In fact, it is the profusion of arbitrary actions taken by this Liberal government that is undermining public trust in this government. This includes gifts to certain corporations over others, favouritism, punitive taxes imposed on certain sectors and the capital gains tax, which creates tax bias. Those are all the ingredients of the Liberal magic potion. If the price of a photo-op government were just a bit of fun now and then, we could live with that. Like any good masquerade ball, it always comes to an end and the secrecy ends with it.
The bill for the Liberals' systematic incompetence has led to the worst consequences in the history of our country, which is practically unrecognizable because it has changed so much in the past nine years. Right now, more than two million people are lining up at food banks because of failed Liberal policies. That is a record number in our country's history. That is a 90% increase from 2019. As former finance minister Bill Morneau said in his memoirs, the Prime Minister tosses aside good public policy in favour of scoring political points.
His golden image is now tarnished in the eyes of his own troops, and many are asking the same question: Is he standing up for Canadians or for himself? As a legislator since 2006, I can say that if he were really standing up for the interests of Canadians, he would call an election, not refuse to comply with the order of the House and to hand over the green fund documents to the appropriate authorities. This is the cause of our current state of paralysis, which is justified and perfectly legitimate.
Like many sneaks, our Bloc friends were once again left high and dry. They are playing the victim card, claiming that they want to work for real this time. However, when the time comes to vote on the side of common sense, their opportunism and hypocrisy always get the better of them, because they want to have their cake and eat it too. Ultimately, the “Liberal Bloc” and the “NDP Liberals” are the same. They are shakedown artists. We have the ultimate proof that, even with a minority government in place, a party like the Bloc Québécois is incapable of making gains for Quebeckers and Canadians and carries no weight whatsoever. At most, the Bloc Québécois is good at taking credit for the work and results achieved by others, when in fact they are all talk and no action.
Everywhere in my riding, there is one word on everyone's lips: “election”. When will the election be called? My constituents are fed up with this slapdash Prime Minister. They are telling me they want an election as soon as possible so that this minority government can be held accountable for everything it has done. House prices have more than doubled, and the dream of home ownership is gone for an entire generation. In the Canada I once knew, it was normal for anyone in the country who had a decent salary and a decent job to be able to buy a home and live in dignity. Today, this foundational pillar of our society is in jeopardy because of Liberal mismanagement. The Liberal government broke its promise to build homes to keep pace with the country's demographic growth. The immigration floodgates were opened wide, with no regard for the government's ability to provide services. These crazy policies have undermined the Canadian consensus on immigration. Canadians are the most welcoming people on the planet, but ending common-sense immigration policies like those introduced by the previous Conservative government has led to a few skirmishes in this country. It is so bad that even the Liberals had to reverse their infinitely ideological opposition by announcing earlier this week, to everyone's surprise, that they would be reducing the thresholds by about 20%. Unfortunately, it is probably too little, too late.
I dream of being able to go back to the days of the Right Hon. Stephen Harper's government, in which I had the honour of serving. In those days, the issue of immigration levels was a matter of consensus, not a matter that divides Canadians rather than uniting them. However, it is not too late for the government to do what the Conservatives want and adopt a common-sense measure that ties the number of people entering the country to housing construction. The Conservative Party will develop a mathematical formula to respect this rule, which will enable us to lower prices. This formula will make the number of doctors and jobs grow faster than the population. That is the exact opposite of the out-of-control immigration that has taken place under this Liberal government.
As I read recently in an article by Boucar Diouf in La Presse, “history will unfortunately remember [the reign of Justin Trudeau] as the reign under which intolerance significantly increased in Canada”.
Mr. Diouf adds: “his naive vision of immigration and harmonious co-existence pushed Canada even further toward intolerance”.
The Prime Minister has also had the nerve to attack Quebec even more by making all sort of comments about it since 2015, even though the latest polls show that Quebec is more open to immigration than anywhere else in Canada.
This same Prime Minister forced two women out of his caucus. Although Jody Wilson‑Raybould and Celina Caesar‑Chavannes did not belong to the Conservative party, they were both fine examples of competent and politically courageous people.
In an interview this week, Ms. Caesar‑Chavannes recalled how little consideration the Prime Minister had for his colleagues and how hard he was to work with. She described multiple incidents she had to deal with involving the person she was serving as parliamentary secretary, who tried to influence her to change the date when she would leave caucus, saying that he could not afford to lose two women on the same day. That type of comment proves he cared more about his image than about the people we represent.
The former MP for Whitby also said that while she was meeting with the Prime Minister to try to work out their differences, he approached her with such contempt and hatred that she had never been so scared in her life to be alone in a room with someone. He would later apologize to her in the House of Commons, which she described as cowardice.
I think it is necessary to look back on this kind of incident to see what a phony the Prime Minister is. For weeks now, his refusal to comply with the House's order has gotten us nowhere. It makes me wonder just how much the Prime Minister is trying to hide. I have to wonder how much political pressure MPs must be under to hide certain information and push certain secret agendas, the same way that Ms. Jody Wilson-Raybould was pressured in the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Considering how many people from his own party have left because of undue pressure, and considering that 24 MPs from his own political party are now calling for his resignation by trying to hold a secret ballot, this Prime Minister's time is clearly up.
The time has come to return to normalcy, both in terms of the transparency that Parliament should show to MPs, but also on the economic front, where powerful paycheques give everyone a chance to live with dignity, without compromising future generations through out-of-control spending that generates insurmountable debt and runaway inflation.
Oddly enough, the Liberals have dug the idea of a high-speed train out of the mothballs in a blatant campaign-style announcement. We will wait and see how much that will cost. It is always strange to see the Liberals pretend they can make everyone's dreams come true as their term winds down. Do they really intend to move forward with this? If they did, I think they would have made it a priority back in 2015, instead of making a last-minute announcement like this, while they are awash in panic and scandals.
It looks like the only ones who still believe in this Liberal government are the NDP. They are like an ex who just cannot let go, even though it is supposed to be over. What is the NDP's problem, anyway? Virtually all Canadians are wondering why the NDP is systematically supporting this dying government. Is it because the NDP leader wants to lock in his pension come February 2025? Is it because the party does not have enough money to run an election campaign? Does it have problems with organizing, volunteers or election sign vendors who want to get paid? It is very hard to know what is going on in the minds of New Democrats right now. One thing we do know is that they are more terrified of an election than they are of Halloween.
Meanwhile, the “Liberal Bloc” had a rude awakening when the deadline for its attempted hostage-taking expired. The Bloc Québécois leader looked like a schoolchild on the Liberals' playground.
The sovereignist party tried to hold a federalist party hostage, and it sure looked silly when its ultimatum did not pan out. The Senate is now under no obligation to move forward and pass Bill C‑282 on supply management.
The Bloc Québécois was so focused on scoring political points that it compromised farmers' legitimate demands. The failed schemes of the leader of the Bloc Québécois show the limitations of that party, which has not been able to accomplish anything significant since its inception.
What did the Bloc Québécois get in return for supporting this government 188 times and preventing it from being defeated? It got absolutely nothing. What is more, the Bloc Québécois's support for more than $500 billion in Liberal government spending shows that it was complicit in leading Canada into its current situation. The leader of the Bloc Québécois has systematically supported Justin Trudeau' measures, which have increased crime and violence—
