Debates of Nov. 27th, 2024

Resumption of Debate on Government Business No. 43

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Yes, it is an apology.

The hon. member for Port Moody—Coquitlam.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, as I was about to say, when I first came into the House, the member who made their speech today was very congenial, and I actually enjoyed conversations with him. However, over time, that has really stopped; it is really sad what has happened today and over the past months and even over the last years with the Conservative Party of Canada and its commitment to itself rather than to people.

The member spoke tonight about grocery prices. I want the member to know that corporate greed is why people cannot afford their groceries, and this member just voted again to prop up more corporate greed by refusing to have financialized landlords come to committee to tell us why they are displacing renters, persons with disabilities, immigrants and people living in poverty out onto the streets.

I want to remind the member of what the Conservatives are supposed to be doing in the House by sharing the NDP's record from the last three years. This is a reminder to the member that the NDP has achieved $10 day care for Canadians, which is already bringing the economy up for women. The NDP has achieved dental care for people. People in my office are crying that—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

We need a question. We have to limit each intervention to two minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, what has the Conservative Party of Canada brought to Canadians in the three years that it has sat in the House and done nothing?

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Madam Speaker, what is sad is that the leader of the NDP put on a theatrical performance that he learned from the former drama teacher Prime Minister. He pretended to rip up their agreement only to tape it up once again, once the New Democrats used the people of Elmwood Transcona for their votes, to go back with the most corrupt Prime Minister in Canadian history.

What did the New Democrats do? What are they supporting? They are supporting the doubling of housing costs for Canadians and the quadrupling of the carbon tax scam. They are supporting the fact that more than two million Canadians are going to a food bank in a single month in this country. One in four Canadians is skipping meals. One in five kids is living in poverty. Those are the policies that the Liberal government has brought about in our country, which the NDP has supported, and why? It is because the leader of the NDP is greedy for his $2-million pension. That is all this is about. That is why the leader of the NDP continues to prop up the Prime Minister and why Canadians' suffering is so bad.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This place has to function based on facts. That was absolutely untrue; I want the member to retract it and apologize for saying something he knows is untrue.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I will give the opportunity to the hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn to finish his answer.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Madam Speaker, facts speak for themselves. The Liberal-NDP government has doubled housing costs. It has doubled the national debt. The Liberals and New Democrats are the ones who forced Canadians into a food bank, and they want to quadruple the carbon tax scam. Let us call a carbon tax election now so that common-sense Conservatives can axe the tax for good and kick the costly Liberal-NDP coalition to the curb.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague and friend, the member for Shefford.

Eliminating the goods and services tax, or GST, on diapers and children's clothing is great and should be made permanent. However, we have serious reservations when the government says it is going to eliminate the GST on champagne and fancy restaurants, where only the rich can afford to go.

In fact, the proposed measure seems to benefit the rich more than anyone else. As we know, lower-income people pay rent, which is not taxed. At the grocery store, they buy staples, which are already tax-free. That leaves heating, and the government did not want to remove the taxes on heating in this bill. This means that the wealthy are the ones who will save money thanks to the gifts presented here.

On top of that, retailers are not happy with the measure because it involves huge costs, thousands and thousands of dollars to make the changes not once, but twice. This is a huge expense for temporary populist measures.

What is more, the way the government is going about this is unprecedented in the House. It is proposing a measure that will last for only two months and imposing a major gag order. We were only able to review the content of the bill just a few hours before debating it in the House. We were told that we will not be able to amend it or to examine it in committee. That is really unacceptable.

The government is really out of steam. It is tired and trying anything it can. It is giving people a little pre-election Christmas gift. That is called taking people for fools. When this government took office, it said that it wanted to do things differently. Quite frankly, it has become just as cynical as all of the other governments. This is a petty government. What it is doing is really petty.

I will now return to SMEs and small businesses. They are reaching out and telling us that they are worried. The adjustment costs are very high and can amount to several thousand, if not tens of thousands, of dollars per business. Small businesses can never earn that money back through the extra sales they stand to make. They have to check their entire product list, to make sure that products are correctly identified, and then pay their employees overtime wages for that. This involves recalibrating machinery, cash registers, and so on. The technicians needed to perform this work are already scarce, and recalibrating these machines is said to cost about $4,000.

For the big players, like Walmart, which have to regularly recalibrate their machinery and recheck their prices, this is no big deal. They have the necessary financial means and they can adjust. It is a different story for small businesses, however, and the bill makes no provision for any compensation to help them in that regard.

I will give some examples. The owner of a small business that offers accommodation told us he was closing his business for those two months. He calculated the cost of keeping his business open during the holidays and during the two months and he calculated the cost of adapting to the measure. To minimize the losses, the owner decided to close his business that offers accommodation. Also, a bar owner said that he knew that the measure applied to restaurants, but he hoped that bars would be exempt because he really did not feel like going through this.

As I was saying, in Quebec, every business, restaurant and bar will have to hire a technician to recalibrate the point of sale machines for January 1, because that is when tip options on the machines will have to be calculated before tax. They will already have to bring in a technician for that, but now they will also have to bring one in on December 14 and on Valentine's Day, two months later. The technician will have to come three times. As I was saying, there is a shortage of technicians. Obviously, the government never thought of that. It never thought about consulting anyone to see how these things work. Such is the government's way. The business owners are going to have to bring in technicians three times.

That same bar owner said his price for a pint of beer was $7.50. If the government takes the GST off, he is not going to lower his price to $7.22 or $7.15. The price will still be $7.50, and he will pocket the 5%. However, he does not want this to happen at all, because he wants to avoid all the headaches it will cause him. He gave another example. There will be no tax on drinks containing less than 7% alcohol, but drinks containing more than 7% will continue to be taxed. He will have to do an inventory of all his drinks and all his receipts to see what is taxed and what is not. He will have to do all that for an exemption that will last only two months.

He also talked about the following big problem. When he makes a bloody caesar, he uses one ounce of vodka and some juice. When he adds a lot of ice, the alcohol content is under 7%, but when he does not use a lot of ice, it will be higher than 7%. He does not know what he should do. He is going to pocket the GST because he does not want to lower his prices. He does not want this measure, because he thinks it is ridiculous and way too much of a hassle. It is unprecedented to go to so much trouble for two months. This government is really tired and on its last legs, so it is willing to try pretty much anything.

I have another example. Children's clothing is fine. The bill says that it must be for children under 14. If someone has a teenager under 14 who is tall and needs adult clothing, they will have to pay the tax because their child is too tall. Obviously the Liberals have thought long and hard about this.

Other things to mention include all the costs to the provinces. I will start with Quebec. We know that the QST, the Quebec sales tax, is based on the sale price, which has the GST added to it. If there is no GST for two months, the QST would be calculated on a smaller amount. Should Quebec also draft a whole bill to compensate for that loss? Obviously, that is not going to happen. There is going to be a shortfall. I imagine that, in its great wisdom, the federal government called the Quebec government to say that it would compensate for this shortfall, which I estimate at between $30 million and $40 million. No, it did not think of that either. This is a government that writes its bills at the last minute, on the back of a napkin. It is a real mess.

What is more, as we know, Ottawa pays Revenu Québec to collect GST on Ottawa's behalf. Ottawa gives Revenu Québec money. Given that all of the adjustment costs will be additional costs for Revenu Québec, I would imagine that Ottawa would have acted the gentleman and called Revenu Québec to offer it the necessary compensation before Revenu Québec had to ask, but no, there is nothing about that in the bill either, because the government does not look beyond the end of its tiny nose. We could say that it has a nose as long as Pinocchio's, but when it comes time to think about all of these applications, it does not look beyond the tiny nose of a petty government.

Worse still, for the five provinces that have the harmonized sales tax, or HST—Ontario and the four maritime provinces—it is Ottawa that collects the tax. Their tax level is the same as it is for the GST, so everything changes at once, everything is harmonized. With this bill, however, they have discovered that the provincial sales tax, for example in Ontario, will be zero for two months. Understandably, Doug Ford seems to agree with the idea of lowering taxes on beer and was unwilling to lock horns with Ottawa. In provinces like Ontario, where the harmonized tax is 13%, if I am not mistaken, specifically 5% at the federal level and 8% at the provincial level, the province will still have to absorb the bulk of this measure’s cost, which will make it possible for people to buy bottles or cases of champagne to ring in the New Year. As if people who buy champagne really need such a gift. As for the major restaurants, the treasuries of those five provinces will bear the brunt of the cost, again without any consultation. In this particular case, I think that the government was trying to set a trap for the provinces and for the Conservatives, thinking that all this really makes no sense and that the Conservative Premier of Ontario would no doubt refuse to let anyone play around with his finances.

The government could have said that it wants to lower taxes, but it is the Conservatives who do not. Doug Ford and the provinces that have the HST did not fall into the trap. Now, the government has to play the role of “Grandpa Ottawa” and claim that it is the one in charge of what the provinces do with their tax bases. It is outrageous, but that is what it comes down to.

I want to point out something else. I am thinking about all the businesses in the Outaouais and in Gatineau. Consumers will get a 13% tax holiday if they go to Ontario, but only 5% if they go to Quebec. Someone who wants to buy a big video game console tax-free, or a case of champagne, will go shopping in Ontario, which is just great for our retailers, who will have had to pay thousands of dollars to adapt only to see their sales drop, because the Liberals did not think of that either when they drew this up on the back of an envelope.

I would have liked to talk about the $250 cheques. They were in the first bill that we were told was going to be introduced, but it was such a mess, and there were so many mistakes in it, that they are left without a dance partner. They are no longer able to find a partner for this ploy to buy votes, which reminds me of the cheques that Stephen Harper sent to families in the summer of 2015; we all saw how that turned out. Most of all, these measures remind me of Maurice Duplessis, who gave fridges to his constituents so that they would vote for him. The government thinks that by giving us cheques and a GST holiday that we will vote for them. Do they take us for fools?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, this legislation affords members of Parliament of all political parties a look at how we can give a bit of a tax break by saying that during the holiday season, for two months, Canadians do not have to pay the GST on a number of products. I would have thought members of all political parties would reflect positively on this particular motion. I am a little but not overly surprised that the Conservatives are voting against it. However, listening to the member opposite, it sounds like the Bloc is going to be joining the Conservatives in voting against it.

Would the member not recognize that during the holiday season, given what Canadians have had to endure, even though we have done relatively better than virtually any other country in the world, it is a good thing to give them that bit of a break, even if it is just for two months? Why would he not support it?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, we cannot even study the bill in committee. We cannot even amend it. We cannot do anything.

For example, seniors have been calling my office to talk about the fact that children's diapers will be tax-free, so why not seniors' diapers as well? This is no joke for these individuals. What they are asking for is not even in the measure, but a $100 bottle of champagne is. Now that is using the collective credit card wisely. I would remind members that the government is handing out money that it does not even have.

Why did it proceed this way? Why did it not double the goods and services tax credit, a measure that would have cost nothing to administer and would have gone to those who need it? It could have done that, but it did not. I agree that the measure should include children's diapers, but including bottles of champagne for the rich and fancy restaurant meals is ridiculous.

The government is going about this in a very foolish way.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think that the country's financial problems are actually structural problems. There are a lot of people across the country with debt. Next year, a million people in Canada are going to renew their mortgages.

Does my colleague agree that, if the government throws an extra $6.5 billion into the economy, there is going to be a problem and there is a risk that inflation will go up?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, if we include the cheque for $250, the gift from the government to buy people's votes, then this initiative is going to cost more than $6.5 billion.

We have been asking the government to address the inequity among seniors with the old age security pension, but the government said that doing so would cost too much. It would cost $3 billion, or half of the amount we are talking about now. If the government had put $3 billion of this $6 billion into restoring fairness among seniors and the other $3.5 billion into housing, that might have helped. It would have been structural. It would have made a difference.

This is a small, short-sighted government that has no vision. It just wants to get re-elected and minimize the losses.

That is not going to fix the foundations of the economy. There are many challenges. The government is past its expiration date.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, there is no doubt that Quebeckers will benefit from this bill. The NDP lobbied hard for taxes to be taken off essentials for families. There are benefits.

I want to come back to another benefit that was brought in by the NDP, namely the dental care program. It is more popular in Quebec than in any other province in the country. One million Quebeckers are participating in the NDP dental care program. To date, 400,000 people have received dental care services. However, the Bloc Québécois is opposed to it. That is what I do not understand. The NDP works to ensure that ordinary people, real people, get benefits. The Bloc Québécois seems to oppose this program that helps people. Quebeckers have already voted. A million of them have said it is a good NDP program.

Why is the Bloc Québécois opposed to a program that helps so many people in Quebec?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, first of all, the GST holiday for essentials is great. We have no problem with that. However, why design the measure to include $100 bottles of champagne and $500 restaurant bills? That is short-sighted, and it makes no sense.

As for dental care, Quebec was already administering a public program. Now, the government is handing it over to the private sector, to Sun Life, for a total of $2 billion. That means that people in Quebec are paying $500 million just for the administration of this program. It would have been be better if the government had invested $500 million in dental care, while respecting jurisdictional boundaries.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, this evening we are debating a bill. As we, Bloc Québécois colleagues, talk to each other about our meetings with constituents in our ridings, we have come to realize that many people are angry about this. Even experts on the economy have said that it is a bad idea.

In these inflationary times, the Bloc Québécois pointed out that it has long been calling for action to help the most vulnerable get by; it is calling for solutions. However, the devil is in the details, as we say in Quebec. The more we go through the bill, the more we realize that it completely misses the mark.

At first, I must confess, even I was naively taken in by this mirage. When I got home last Thursday evening, I thought that I would hear about this measure and that it might make a few people happy. Instead, as soon as I got back to my riding, I learned that constituents were unanimously disappointed. They were not fooled. To add to what was said by my colleague, the member for Joliette, people linked this measure to another one-time cheque mailout. In 2015, the Harper government gave cheques to families; in 2021, the Liberal government did the same. At the time, we could tell that an election was coming. This government sent out cheques to seniors, but only to those aged 75 and over.

I will take the time to talk about seniors. My colleague from Joliette said that he may not have touched on that in his speech. I know that there is nothing about seniors in the bill that we are talking about this evening, but the fact remains that the two subjects were addressed at the same time. I want to mention the fact that seniors will be excluded from the $250 cheques. I will also come back to what could have been done with the $6.3 billion in question and give the government some ideas, in case it does not have any. Finally, I will close by mentioning some other opponents of this bill.

First, let us talk about the fact that seniors are unanimously opposed to this. Last weekend, we read the information that was starting to come out about this announcement, and we were shocked to realize that seniors were once again being forgotten. That is right. There will be no cheques for retirees, students, people with disabilities or others who could use the money. However, everyone with a taxable income of up to $150,000 could get an election gift of $250. What a display of cynicism and crass opportunism. It is shameful.

As early as last weekend, I was in contact with seniors' groups. In fact, it all happened quite quickly. It culminated in seniors' groups coming to Parliament Hill today to criticize the fact that they are once again being ignored by the government. Earlier this week, FADOQ spoke out to explain why giving this cheque only to working Canadians is a bad idea. Unfortunately, its members are not the only ones who feel that way.

I would like make a quick aside. I want to commend my colleague from Honoré-Mercier for reiterating in an interview this morning that this measure is a bad idea. That is coming from a former member of the Liberal government's cabinet, but I digress.

I want to come back to the FADOQ:

The federal government abandons retirees

The federal government has once again demonstrated its disregard for retirees by excluding them from its one-time $250 payment, a measure announced on November 21^st. This payment, called the Working Canadians Rebate, will be distributed next spring and is reserved for workers with an individual net income of less than $150,000 in 2023.

FADOQ spoke out on behalf of its members and retirees in general and communicated their displeasure and dissatisfaction to the offices of the Minister of Finance..., the Minister of Seniors..., as well as the Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Quebec lieutenant.... Our president, Gisèle Tassé-Goodman, urged them to include seniors in this program to correct an inequity.

Today on Parliament Hill, three more groups came to speak out. Micheline Germain, president of AREQ-CSQ, said, “If someone had told me that I would one day have to advocate for retirees to be eligible for a $250 cheque meant to help Canadians cope with the rising cost of living, I would not have believed them”.

That is how ridiculous this situation is. It is not as if inflation affects only workers. Furthermore, it is not as if there are not that many vulnerable retirees in Quebec.

The Association québécoise de défense des droits des personnes retraitées et préretraitées, or AQDR, which advocates for retirees and pre-retirees, reiterated what the research chair on inequality said at the Bloc Québécois conference on the financial situation of seniors. The AQDR pointed out that nearly half of Quebec seniors do not have a livable income. Seniors have fixed incomes, and for far too long, those incomes have not been keeping up with wage growth.

Second, what could this money have been more usefully spent on?

The money could have been spent on increasing old age security pensions. We have been calling for a 10% increase for seniors aged 65 to 74, like the one for seniors aged 75 and up, for more than two years now.

Poverty does not wait for people to turn 75. Needs are growing, and food banks are no exception. My thoughts are with SOS Dépannage, an organization back home in Granby. That organization recently told me that more and more seniors are requesting food assistance. A temporary GST pause is not going to help them.

On the occasion of the last homelessness day, I read that homelessness was on the rise, including among seniors and students. My measure is less expensive and better targeted. We calculated that Bill C-319 would cost $3 billion. As the leader of the Bloc Québécois said in his speech today, the other $3 billion could have been used for housing or to address homelessness.

The GST holiday is not a targeted, meaningful measure that will help families get through the inflationary crisis. As my colleague from Joliette mentioned, there are other measures that would have done more to help families, such as the GST credit.

The most expensive budget item and biggest worry for families is housing and access to home ownership. I attended a housing conference in Granby last Friday, where housing experts talked about the ineffectiveness of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, and the problems it is having.

I want to reiterate that $3 billion could go to Bill C‑319 and the other $3 billion could be invested in social and community housing. My colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert toured Quebec and wrote a report on housing that sets out a dozen great recommendations for the federal government. I toured Quebec to talk about Bill C-319. There was strong support in Quebec for both of our projects.

I am not even talking about the funding for the Reaching Home strategy, which should be increased. In fact, Quebec is still waiting for its share so that it can work on the homelessness file. Assistance was promised for cities that are having issues with supervised encampments. They are still waiting.

Third, there are other problems stemming from the GST pause. Last Thursday evening, the chamber of commerce and industry told me that this will cause problems. My colleague from Joliette explained it very well. A family services organization called Maison des familles Granby et région said that this is just a band-aid solution that is not going to help vulnerable families in the long term. The executive director wants to have dinner with me soon so we can talk about it. The tourism body Commerce tourisme Granby région warned that there will be issues for businesses, which will have to reprogram cash registers. For example, ATLAS&CO sells children's gifts and holiday products. First of all, not all products in the store will be exempt from GST. What is more, the holiday season is approaching. This is peak season for retailers, but they will be busy reprogramming their registers, all while there is a labour shortage. This is a big problem.

Then there are the elected municipal officials who got less money than expected from the federal gas tax fund. Municipal infrastructure is needed to help with the housing crisis. The federal government needs to do its part, instead of dumping all the work onto Quebec and the municipalities.

I want to make one last point. This debate underscores more than ever the importance of the bill I introduced. The Bloc Québécois is once again calling on the government to give a royal recommendation to the bill that puts an end to having two classes of seniors and increases old age security by 10% for those aged 65 to 74.

According to the OECD, Canada is one of the industrialized countries where people experience the biggest drop in purchasing power when they retire. Clearly, this is a major problem. I do not want the government to tell me that it is too expensive. I do not want it to tell me that it cannot afford it because all the money is tied up in the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Basically, we are asking the government to focus on its responsibilities and, above all, its central mission, which is to protect people, especially pensioners aged 65 to 74. The government has deliberately overlooked them once again in favour of priorities that will do nothing to really help families and workers. Let us not forget that social housing and homelessness are crucial issues, not to mention all the harmonization problems between the various provinces and Quebec.

Since I am running out of time, I will now inform the House that I move the following amendment:

That the motion be amended by adding the following:

“(g) it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Finance that it study the subject-matter of the bill and, for the purposes of this study, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance shall be ordered to appear before the committee, for at least three hours, at a date and time to be fixed by the Chair of the committee, but not later than Friday, December 13, 2024.”

On that note, I look forward to my colleagues' questions.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The amendment is in order.

Questions and comments.

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I am somewhat disappointed that the Bloc would move such as amendment. I guess their relationship grows closer with the Conservative Party. At the end of the day, this legislation would give a GST tax break to Canadians on a wide variety of products. That would be a wonderful thing to take place for two months during the holiday season. I understand the Conservatives have said that they are going to vote against it. Now we have the Bloc that seems to want to put it off and take the risk of Canadians not receiving this tax break during the holiday season.

Why does the Bloc party not want the people of Quebec and all Canadians to receive at least some sort of a holiday relief? Does she not believe the people of Quebec deserve some relief during the holiday season?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I do not think that my colleague heard the rather unanimous comments from Quebec. I gave the point of view of community organizations, citizens and economic organizations. Everyone really is unanimous. Over the weekend, elected officials at the municipal and other levels of government told me that this measure is completely ridiculous. It excludes basic necessities and includes products that are not essential. It is temporary, when what people really need is long-term strategic assistance.

They do not need a band-aid solution. They need a government that has political vision and that is going into the next election to serve the public's interests, rather than its own.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member just spoke about something extremely important, about the structural problems that exist within our economy right now, the debt and deficit. People are looking for relief, but they are not looking for short-term relief; they are looking for long-term relief from an affordability standpoint, which, in our view, also includes axing the carbon tax because it is having a cascading effect across the economy. From a structural standpoint, these pieces being spread out about the economy are not going to do anything.

Does the member agree that, structurally, it is not going to have an impact on the major problems that exist today?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I can see that neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have a grasp of Quebec's reality. No one back home talks to me about the carbon tax. People talk to me about meaningful measures, like increasing old age security by 10% for seniors aged 65 to 74. Given the current economic uncertainty and the likely return of inflation, it is more important than ever to restore the purchasing power of these seniors. In fact, the Conservatives, and even some Liberals, voted for it, including the member for Honoré-Mercier. At some point or another, all of the parties have supported this bill.

Another way to help our economy is to protect our farms. I am thinking of Bill C‑282, which deals with protecting supply management. We hear about it in Quebec. With the economic risk and uncertainty expected over the next period, plus the growing risk of inflation, protecting Quebec's farms, protecting our farm model, protecting supply management and writing down in an act that we are going to protect our farms here is important.

When I am in Quebec, I hear more about those two things than I hear about the carbon tax.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I really appreciate my colleague and I always listen to her speeches with great interest.

There is no doubt that this measure will benefit Quebeckers. We are talking about zero-rating a number of essentials that struggling people need. However, the Bloc Québécois opposes it.

There is another issue supported unanimously by Quebeckers, and that is pharmacare. The largest coalition in Quebec's history, which includes the labour movement, the Union des consommateurs and health care professionals, has unanimously told the Bloc Québécois that it should vote in favour of the NDP's plan to implement pharmacare. Currently, drug plans in Quebec leave 15% of Quebeckers behind. The same applies to dental care. Quebeckers are calling for what the NDP is proposing, but the Bloc Québécois says no. They do not want to listen to Quebeckers. It seems to me that there is a contradiction here.

Can my colleague enlighten me? Why is the Bloc Québécois opposed to all these measures that Quebecers want?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the New Democrats do not understand the reality of Quebec.

With regard to the dental plan, what I am hearing is that seniors did not know where to go, that people were confused, that dentists have changed their minds and that the money was given to a private company. The government could have done many things with that $6.3 billion, such as increase the health transfers. That would have been helpful to Quebec's health care system and social services—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Resuming debate.

The hon. member for Westminster—Burnaby.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, this is just another example of the NDP getting things done in this Parliament. When we look at the past four years, starting with COVID and all the measures, Conservatives basically did not contribute anything to the COVID measures. Members will recall that during that period, it took unanimous consent to get material through. It was the NDP driving the government to provide more supports for families, seniors, people with disabilities, students and small businesses, and trying to ensure that people were taken care of at all times during COVID.

Madam Speaker, I would ask if the member could be brought to order, please. It is very difficult to hear myself, being at the end and under this ceiling.