Debates of May 23rd, 2024

Opposition Motion—Federal Intrusions in the Exclusive Jurisdictions of Quebec and the Provinces

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about the importance of fighting the rising cost of living. It is true that it is difficult for many of the people we represent.

The new dental care program will save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for many people. Half of the population in Quebec has neither private nor public dental insurance. I am glad that the Liberal minority government has finally listened to the NDP. We twisted their arm a bit to agree to the dental care program, and the Liberals ended up saying yes. Now, it is real: we are starting to set up this program.

Can my colleague tell me how this program will help seniors and teenagers in his riding?

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to remind my colleague that this program was introduced by the Liberal government.

Today, over two million people are already enrolled in this program; it is already making a difference in my riding. Over 9,500 oral care providers and specialists are already registered, with more to come this week and next. The program is working, and it is working well for the entire population of Quebec and Canada.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to stand today to discuss the motion by the member for Jonquière and Bloc Québécois critic for intergovernmental affairs, natural resources and energy.

I would like to address the issue of federal and provincial jurisdictions. I studied at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi in 1978, 1979 and 1980, years that were eventful in Quebec's history. The experience was very enriching. We learned a great deal about the history, development and evolution of Canada, and especially about Confederation. We had very interesting discussions in the classrooms.

What really struck me were the partnerships formed over the years. We can begin with the Patriotes who started a rebellion in Lower Canada in 1837 and 1838, and whom we have just celebrated in Quebec. This significant rebellion had very harmful consequences for those who took part in it, especially for the 58 Patriotes from Quebec who were exiled in Australia, but their words and their actions influenced the events around them.

There was also another rebellion in Upper Canada, less significant, but those events set off a discussion on the importance of having a responsible government, that is a government representative of citizens, especially for a rapidly developing society.

A few decades later Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin formed a partnership to remove those in power and demand the establishment of a government accountable to the British Empire. At one point, Mr. LaFontaine's family even took care of Mr. Baldwin's children in Quebec, and one of Mr. Baldwin's children became a sister in the Ursuline convent, which is very touching.

Clearly I like history a lot, but it is important to recognize that our country's history is the history of people, real people, who felt it was more important to work together than to separate. We need not look any further than the famous partnership between John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier, who signed an agreement, with all the other Fathers of Confederation, which recognized the powers of the provinces while placing them under the umbrella of the federal government. This agreement stressed both the importance of respecting these powers along with having a responsible local government when it comes to business, social services, education, health care, etc.

Because there were wars during those years, either with our neighbours in the United States or with countries in Europe, it was important for the federal government to have the power to defend the country and maintain order in society to ensure everyone's safety.

I know I am going a long way back in history, but I want to bring us up to the present day and explain why the Canadian Constitution is not just an asset, but a guarantee of our democracy, our freedom and our rights for everyone who lives in Canada, regardless of which province they are in. The Canadian Constitution guarantees all Canadians the same rights and freedoms.

That said, I should talk about what is happening today to show how this wonderful collaboration between the federal government and the Government of Quebec is continuing.

My colleague gave the example of child care. This is a great example of how Quebec was a pioneer. I benefited from it when my daughter was in day care 35 years ago. I now have a grandchild, and a few years ago, when my daughter and her husband were living in New York, they were worried about how they were going to pay for child care. Now they have moved to Halifax. I was ecstatic when she called me to say that she and her husband had found child care for Roy, that it was not too expensive and that she was able to go back to work. Quebec led the way on this issue.

I always say that it is Canada that needs Quebec. It is a partnership that continues to this day and that enables us to pool our talents and abilities. An asymmetrical agreement on child care that was signed with Quebec will allocate nearly $6 billion between 2021 and 2026 and provide so many opportunities across the country and in Quebec. Indeed, the federal capacity to partner financially helped Quebec open more child care spaces. Naturally, we are very proud of this system.

Housing is another good example. I will talk about something that is vital in my riding and in those neighbouring mine in Montérégie. I had the opportunity to go to the riding of the member for Salaberry-Suroît a few weeks ago for an announcement on affordable housing. Forty-eight homes will be built. I was joined by the provincial MNA, the mayor, stakeholders and the member for Salaberry-Suroît. We were very pleased to make this announcement together. We also promised that other housing would be built. This happened thanks to a $900-million contribution to Quebec from the housing accelerator fund to speed the construction of residential housing in Quebec. The Quebec government added another $900 million.

We work hand-in-hand to achieve the critical mass to implement this priority, which is a priority for both governments, and on which we consulted to reach this agreement. Yes, it sometimes takes time to reach agreements between the federal and provincial governments, but working together is worth it. We need only think of our colleagues of old, the Patriotes, Baldwin, LaFontaine, and all others who worked together to make our country what it is today.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am dumbstruck. I do not really know how to respond to what people have been saying about our opposition motion all morning. Something my colleague from Terrebonne said this week on social media really stuck with me. The Liberals are good for nothing but spending more and doing less. I am paraphrasing, but that is what I have been hearing. The consequences are profound.

The member who spoke earlier sang the praises of what the government has done for the aerospace industry, but the Bloc Québécois is the only party calling for a meaningful national strategy, which is what the aerospace industry itself wants. That member and this one have been bragging about investments. They talked about helping seniors, but the federal government, which is responsible for pensions, cannot even do that job properly. It is maintaining two classes of seniors by refusing to increase benefits to help seniors aged 65 to 74, who are in dire straits. That is incompetence. It is also increasing the number of public servants without delivering any more services to people.

I have so much more to say, but I will stop there.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have a lot of respect for my colleague. I know that she has been a strong advocate for seniors in my riding, and I have some good news. The dental care program is working. It is working—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member for Shefford had the opportunity to ask her question. She should listen to the answer. If she has any further comments, she should wait until the appropriate time.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I recently did the rounds at FADOQ's end-of-the-year dinners and at every table where I lingered, someone greeted me, shook my hand and thanked me for this dental care program. They had appointments to get their teeth fixed.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest at the background our colleague provided, but I want to come to the reality and to the future, where meaningful care is being provided to Quebeckers under the dental care program. This program does not in any way dictate to Quebec City how to run the health care network, or create federal dentists or federal dental clinics, but instead pays the bills that people are otherwise unable to pay.

There are already 90,000 people being treated under this program, including thousands of Quebeckers. They are people who, in some cases, were unable to have access to a dentist for decades. I would like my colleague to say a few words about how this program is going to help not only seniors in her riding, but also teenagers, who will be able to register for the program starting next month.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I completely agree with my colleague. Having a dental care program will affect every aspect of health. Research shows how our oral health affects us by being linked to Alzheimer's and heart disease. When I think about the young people who are going to have the chance to have a beautiful smile, that is priceless.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member about the federal government's support to the sectors that are very important to Quebec, such as Quebec's efforts to develop a clean economy, its aerospace sector and the sectors where it has strength in artificial intelligence. For example, in the recent budget, the federal government is looking to invest $2 billion to support the artificial intelligence sector, and another $200 million to support various companies in sectors such as health care, agriculture and manufacturing to allow for artificial intelligence.

Can the hon. member explain how that would not only strengthen Quebec but also help all Canadians across Canada?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for that question because Châteauguay—Lacolle, soon to be Châteauguay–Les Jardins-de-Napierville, is an agricultural hub, and our farmers are at the forefront of technology, which allows for expanding agricultural production without increasing greenhouse gases. We have carbon capture companies working in this area that have received federal money for their research, and they are very appreciative of the federal support to continue their work.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Before I begin, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with the excellent member for Carleton.

What I say in the next few minutes is not intended as a personal attack on the Bloc Québécois or its members. There are a lot of very good people in the Bloc. I want to talk about the Bloc today in more general terms.

First off, we fully agree with today's motion. That is how the Conservatives have always done things: We have always respected the provinces' areas of jurisdiction. It is part of our DNA, and we have no objections. However, we do have questions about the contradictions in the Bloc Québécois's behaviour and actions.

First, it is important to understand that the Bloc's primary motivation is separation, or Quebec sovereignty. It is in their policy platform, and they make no secret of it. Everyone knows that the Bloc wants Quebec to leave Canada.

It is also important to understand that the Bloc members were elected by about 30% of the population of Quebec. The other 70%, including my colleagues and myself, are just as much Quebeckers as the members of the Bloc. The 70% of Quebeckers who did not vote for the Bloc also have hopes and dreams for the Quebec nation, just like the Bloc does. It is time to stop playing around and always saying that the Bloc members are real Quebeckers, while members from the other parties are not. That is the message we keep getting here in Parliament.

There is another contradiction. According to the Bloc, and as the Bloc candidate who ran against me in 2021 said publicly, when a member of the Bloc gets elected, they are sitting in a foreign country's Parliament. A Bloc candidate runs for office, gets elected by maybe 30% or 40% of the people in their riding, and tells Quebeckers that they are going to represent them in a foreign country's Parliament. That is always how it has been, and it has been the same story for 30 years.

Now let me get to the most serious contradiction.

The leader of the Bloc has repeated, as his own slogan, that if something is good for Quebec, the Bloc will vote for it, and if it is not good for Quebec, the Bloc will vote against it. That is what the leader of the Bloc Québécois says publicly. As a Quebecker, I can say that that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is truly an approach focused on Quebec's main interests, on co-operation with the Canadian federation. We cannot be against that.

However, we have seen the concrete actions the Bloc has taken when voting on budgets, which are contradictory. The Bloc Québécois publicly says that it votes against all the budgets because they are no good, which is true. The Bloc members vote this way for various reasons, saying that they are against them, so people think that the Bloc Québécois votes against the Liberal government's budgets.

However, there is the important matter of budgetary appropriations. The Bloc Québécois has voted in favour of all the supplementary appropriations, totalling $500 billion, but that is something it does not boast about.

I heard the leader of the Bloc answer a question from my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent on this very topic this morning. He answered that they would not do like in the U.S. and start shutting down the government. That is how he justified approving $500 billion in additional spending. These appropriations added 109,000 public servants to the government apparatus. Among other things, these appropriations were used to give millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, for ArriveCAN.

When a scandal breaks out, the Bloc members are suddenly astonished to discover that they voted in favour of granting the money. In a public exchange, reporters asked the Bloc Québécois House leader a question, and he answered by asking whether they thought that the Bloc members had the time to study every single budget item. Is that not their job? There are 32 of them, and they have their own research teams and staff. What do they do all day? In our party, we scrutinize every budget item. That is why we vote against them most of the time, because they make no sense.

The Bloc says publicly that it votes against the budgets when, in fact, it votes in favour of all the appropriations, while claiming that it has no time to study them. What is the primary responsibility of an elected official? It is to know what they are voting for and to vote against it when it is something that makes no sense.

The leader of the Bloc Québécois often says that the Bloc members are the adults in the room, that they are the best and that they truly work for Quebeckers, yet they voted in favour of $500 billion in additional spending by this government, which, by the way, is the worst government in the history of Canada.

This government has doubled our country's debt, which means that Quebeckers' living conditions are appalling nowadays and everything is much more expensive. Inflation and the increase in interest rates and the cost of living in general, particularly the cost of housing, have skyrocketed, in large part because of this government's mismanagement. The Bloc Québécois approved this reckless spending.

As an organization, the Bloc Québécois is a left-wing, socialist party. We know that. Members of the Bloc have admitted it, have said it. How can they reconcile fiscal responsibilities with always wanting to support socialist, left-wing measures and exponential spending? They cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that they are the responsible adults in the room and then vote with their eyes closed. As the leader of the Bloc Québécois said, the Bloc members do not have time to look at that. It is difficult to vote with one's eyes closed, to vote for spending that just creates problems for Canadians today. In the House, we have done nothing to help anyone over the past nine years. No one has been helped. We just have more problems now than we did in 2015.

Take, for example, the supply vote. Since the new Bloc Québécois leader arrived in 2019, 219 votes have been considered confidence votes, such as votes on budgetary allocations or on motions similar to the one that the Conservative Party moved a month ago. The Bloc Québécois had 219 opportunities to vote against this government that it is criticizing, and we agree with those criticisms. However, instead, the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of appropriations 200 times. They did not support the non-confidence motion and they supported the government. They could have said that they had had enough, but 92% of the time they did not. They chose instead to continue to support this government's out-of-control spending.

I will give an example of this spending so that it appears in the public record. Let us take Bill C-36, appropriation act No. 4, 2022-23. The tenor of the bill is not obvious from the title. If we do not take the time to look into it, we really have no way of knowing what it is about. By way of information, it represents $20.7 billion in spending. Here is another example: Bill C-16, appropriation act No. 1, 2022-23. Our viewers will not know what I am talking about. I am talking about more than $75.483 trillion in spending. There are a lot of things in this bill, like pipelines. The Bloc Québécois voted for pipelines in the north. The Bloc supported the bill, despite the fact that the member for Jonquière rails against the oil and gas industry every day in the House. The Bloc voted for it. They did not know that the bill contained anything about pipelines, because they did not read it.

Here is another example: Bill C-24, appropriation act No. 2, 2022-23. It represents $115.056 trillion and change. By “change”, I mean a few hundred thousand dollars. Bill C-54, appropriation act No. 2, 2023-24, represents $108,700,157,669. These are only four examples from a long list of spending supported by the Bloc Québécois. They can say what they want. They will do a lot of things here and there and say that they are the adults and the responsible ones, but, in reality, they have supported this spendthrift government whose spending is out of control. Today we have problems, and these problems were supported by the Bloc Québécois.

Why did the Bloc Québécois support this government when the Liberals have an agreement with the NDP, which is always there to support the government, no matter what? The Bloc Québécois could have done the same thing the Conservative Party did: vote against the Liberals' nonsense and ensure that the country is truly managed effectively. The fact is that their objective is to get Quebec to separate. The Bloc's actions are meant to give them reasons to say that things are not going well in the other camp.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. I would just like to correct him and point out that we do not say “supporter” in French for “support”. We say “appuyer” or “soutenir”. “Supporter” is an anglicism in this context.

The Bloc Québécois was not deluded when it came here to defend Quebec's interests. The reason there are 32 of us in the House is that Quebeckers understood that they needed us to defend their interests in the House because nobody else was doing it.

This being said, I would like to tell my colleague something. If we had voted against the appropriations, many employees of the federal government in Quebec would not have been paid. Many seniors would not have received their benefits, which are paid out by the federal government for now, until Quebec becomes independent.

Our goal here is not to sabotage the government just for the sake of sabotaging the government politically, for populist reasons. Our goal is to take concrete action to ensure that Quebec is always as high a priority as possible in the federal context until things change, and I think that change is coming fast.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. She confirms precisely what we have been saying: the Bloc Québécois voted for these budget appropriations, while there is an official agreement between the NDP and the Liberals. In the circumstances, it is impossible to defeat a budgetary vote.

The Bloc Québécois could have taken the time to work, study the credits and say they would not vote for them for such and such a reason, but no. These MPs voted as a bloc for each of the $500-billion items. Let them stop trying to be the adult in the room again. There was an agreement on the other side. The government could not fall, even if we voted against it. The Bloc Québécois could have stood with us and said it was against the current government's extravagant spending.

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

Madam Speaker, former prime minister Stephen Harper inherited a health care accord that saw incremental increases in health care expenditures. A lot of Canadians are very much concerned with that, because when it came time to renew the health care accord, the Harper government did absolutely nothing. In fact, it cut back the 6% to 3%. I am not 100% sure of that figure, but I believe that to be factual.

Could the member specifically tell Canadians about the role of health care? Does the Conservative Party believe it is nothing more than a transfer of cash payments to provinces? Does it believe there is another role for health care delivery?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, what is clear for the Conservative Party is that we must respect jurisdictions. Health transfers must be made to the provinces. The provinces are the masters of health care management.

We have no place interfering in provincial business, because health and education are provincial matters. Because Quebec is a big boy or a big girl, depending on how one looks at it, Quebec is capable of managing health care. On the federal side, we transfer the funds and we do not have to interfere as the Liberals do.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Madam Speaker, we often talk about jurisdiction, and a jurisdiction that we often exclude in this place is the jurisdiction of indigenous peoples. It is clear that in the case of Quebec, there have been many instances where the government has attempted to claw jurisdiction that is not necessarily the jurisdiction that is most appropriate for first nations.

Could the member elaborate on whether his party would support the claims of indigenous people, particularly first nations, who claim that Quebec is attempting to erase their history?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will not answer on behalf of the Quebec government, but I can say that relations between the Quebec government and indigenous people are going very well. This is the place, I think, where treaties and ways of working with indigenous communities are among the best in Canada.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois is in the midst of an identity crisis.

The Bloc Québécois is trying to go in two totally different directions. First, the Bloc Québécois claims to be a separatist party whose goal is to finally get rid of the federal government's control over the Quebec nation and the lives of Quebeckers. Then, according to its leader, the Bloc Québécois is a “progressive, socially democratic” party. It shares the same ideology as the current Liberal Prime Minister. The Bloc wants a big government that directs the economy with huge taxes, deficits, regulations, programs and industry subsidies. It wants a government that extends its tentacles everywhere.

Although I do not share these two objectives, namely socialism and sovereignty, a party in Quebec's National Assembly can coherently propose both at the same time. It can propose the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada and the creation of a massive welfare state in Quebec. I think it is a bad idea, but at least we know that it could be part of a coherent approach. The problem is that the Bloc Québécois is not a provincial party in the Quebec National Assembly. It is a federal party in Ottawa, and its socially democratic demands are helping to expand the size of the federal government.

In this zero-sum game, when the federal government has more money and power, this leaves less money and power for Quebec and Quebeckers. Every taxpayer dollar spent in Ottawa leaves a dollar less for the Government of Quebec or Quebec taxpayers. Do not take it from me; this comes from Paul St‑Pierre Plamondon, or PSPP. He calculated that Quebeckers pay $82 billion to Ottawa in taxes. Most of the taxes that Quebeckers pay the federal government goes back to Quebeckers in the form of child benefits, payments for seniors or transfers for health care and social services that are received by the Government of Quebec. PSPP seems to be saying that there is even more money that does not go back to Quebec. Where did that money go? It went to budgetary appropriations.

Budgetary appropriations refer to money that is voted on in Parliament and spent to fund the bureaucracy, consultants, agencies, contributions to corporations, and interest groups. It is basically the big federal monster in Ottawa that sovereignists want to separate from.

One would think that a separatist party would have voted against all the budget allocations that feed this federal monster, but that is not what happened. In fact, since arriving in the House of Commons in 2019, the leader of the Bloc Québécois has voted in favour of all of this Liberal Prime Minister's budget allocations. On 205 occasions, the Bloc leader has voted to authorize a total of $500 billion in additional government spending. That is almost equal to Quebec's GDP. We are talking about $500 billion, half a trillion dollars. That money did not go toward old age security or health, since such expenditures are already set out in legislation and we do not need to vote to authorize them. The Bloc Québécois voted in favour of the federal machine in Ottawa, in favour of hiring an additional 100,000 public servants and pumping 50% more money into the federal bureaucracy. The Bloc voted to double spending on private consultants. It voted for $21 billion in spending, or $1,400 per Quebec family, for federal consultants.

This includes financing ArriveCAN, which cost $25 million, when the Liberal government promised it would cost only $80,000.

Again, I find it fascinating that a Quebec party that calls itself separatist never supports measures seeking to reduce the federal tax burden shouldered by Quebeckers. It never supports income tax cuts. One would think a separatist party would always oppose Quebeckers being forced to send their money to Ottawa, but this is not true for Bloc Québécois members. They want, in their own words, to radically increase taxes. Furthermore, the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of Bill C-11, which gives the CRTC, a federal agency, full control over what Quebeckers can see and post on social media.

Even its support of Radio-Canada is paradoxical. The Bloc Québécois wants to separate from Canada, which would expel Radio-Canada from Quebec, but at the same time, it says that Radio-Canada is essential to the culture and media of Quebec. Apparently, it believes that Canada and the federal government are essential to Quebec life. This is not very separatist of them either.

The real question is, how would a sovereign Quebec under the leader of the Bloc Québécois be different from the Canada led by the current Prime Minister? The Bloc Québécois supports high taxes, massive federal debt and a bloated bureaucracy that meddles in everything but is good at nothing.

We should also remember that the Bloc Québécois supports a justice system that frees repeat offenders and bans hunting rifles. In fact, an independent Quebec with the leader of the Bloc Québécois as premier would be almost identical to the federal state led by the current Prime Minister.

Luckily for the Bloc Québécois, its fantasies of a welfare state have already become very real in Canada under the current Prime Minister, with all the government programs, bureaucracy, taxes, deficits and regulations. Everyone depends on the government. This is a dream for left-wing ideologues like the leaders of the Bloc Québécois, the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, but it is a nightmare for the working class, with housing, food and everything else being unaffordable. There is more homelessness, poverty and desperation.

The Bloc Québécois does not offer Quebeckers either sovereignty or independence. Instead, it offers a more costly, centralist and indebted federal government, exactly like the Liberals. The Liberal Bloc is not a pro-independence party but a pro-dependence party. It defends what it depends on. The Bloc Québécois depends on the federal government for its pensions and paycheques and for all its ideological dreams, which are in reality centralist.

However, with our common-sense plan, we will axe the tax, build the homes, not the bureaucracy, and fix the budget by capping spending and cutting waste. In short, with a small federal government, we will let Quebeckers make their own decisions. They could decide to keep more money in their pockets or to give more money to their government in Quebec City. It will be up to them. This is a message for Quebeckers: With the Liberal Bloc, the federal government is master of your house, but with the common-sense Conservatives, Quebeckers will be master of their own house.

Thank you very much.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I listened very carefully to the Leader of the Opposition telling us that he has discovered a past, present and future passion for provincial autonomy. Under the Harper government, that may not have been how Premier Charest, the darling of Quebec Conservatives, felt about it, but never mind.

Let us fast-forward to today. Since the Leader of the Opposition is so keen on respecting provincial jurisdictions, can he promise here and now that a future Conservative government will never push through an oil or gas pipeline project without Quebec's consent?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I know why the Bloc Québécois does not want the approach of the Harper years, because in the Harper years we reduced the role of the federal government, we decentralized powers and respected the powers of the provinces, which eliminated the Bloc Québécois.

At that time, the Bloc Québécois had four seats. Quebeckers wondered why they needed the Bloc Québécois, and the Conservatives let them make their own decisions. Furthermore, they had autonomy and a Prime Minister who respected Quebec. When it came to issues they did not agree on, the federal government did not interfere in their business, so they were okay.

Now the Bloc Québécois's entire raison d'être revolves around this centralist Prime Minister. That is why we saw this lovefest yesterday between the Prime Minister and the Bloc Québécois, who were applauding one another.

We are the nightmare of the Bloc-Liberal coalition, but we will be wonderful for people who respect the autonomy of all provinces, including Quebec.

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

Madam Speaker, I think of programs like the national dental program, and the national pharmacare program that is being proposed. I think of the health care agreements, where we saw a federal government demonstrate a tangible interest in developing more on mental health and long-term care. The federal government, through the Canada Health Act, does have a very important role to play in delivering health care in our communities.

The question I have for the member is this: Contrary to what the former Conservative speaker stated, does the current leader of the Conservative Party believe that the federal government has more of a role than just providing cash to provinces?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, if the government does have more of a role, then that role has been to extend wait times and make emergency rooms even more full of people. Since the Prime Minister said he was going to get more involved in health care, wait times have doubled, so if he wants the power, he has to take the responsibility and explain why he has failed so badly.

Then he talks about other grand federal programs, which is interesting, such as a dental program that has not cleaned a single tooth. There is a housing program that has doubled the cost of housing and increased severe homelessness by 88%. Then there is the pharmacare program, which has not delivered a single jar of medicine and which, if actually implemented, would ban Canadians from having their private drug plans.

The Prime Minister and the NDP want to roll back the rights that unions have fought so hard and so long to secure. Our labour movement fought too hard to secure private drug plans, and we will never let a big, centralizing, bureaucratic government in Ottawa take those rights away from workers.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, unions across the country are in support of universal pharmacare and the delivery of diabetes medication to Canadians. The Leader of the Opposition and his family have one of the best health care plans in the country. I met a mother who was so concerned about how she cannot afford medication, and—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!