Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Terrebonne for introducing this bill. This subject is very important to me.
As members know, I am the member for the riding of Mirabel. A large part of my riding borders the Lac des Deux Montagnes. Folks in my riding are very familiar with extreme weather events that have a devastating impact on our built heritage and people's lives.
As everyone knows, in 2019, extreme weather events caused the Lac des Deux Montagnes to flood 2,500 homes with more than 60 inches of water, or much more in some places. Six thousand people were displaced. Lawsuits are still going. The financial toll was in the millions or tens of millions of dollars.
Understandably, when I go to my constituents and talk to them about policies to fight climate change, to adapt to it and mitigate its effects, people do not ask for an empty national policy with no budget and no teeth that does not amend the environmental legislation. No one ever asks me for that.
This government is not taking action. It was doing a little bit to fight climate change, promote adaptation and provide assistance, but this government is losing more and more ground. This kind of national strategy looks a bit like greenwashing. The government says it wants everybody to sit down, plot together, think about this issue and write a report so people think we are taking action. Droughts are happening, and there are ways to deal with them. Our farmers experience this every day.
Here is an example. Why does the government never talk to us about the possibility of enhancing AgriRecovery? In the previous Parliament, my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé hounded the Minister of Agriculture for months because of extreme weather events in Quebec. There were some in my riding. Farms were flooded in Saint‑Janvier. We are facing challenges, and we have had droughts this year. The program was designed to use Canada-wide criteria, and, because it was so convoluted, no action was taken.
The current government has no idea what it is doing in the fight against climate change because this government is interested in just one thing: winning as many seats as possible and going with the flow, no pun intended, going wherever the wind blows it. This government eliminated the carbon tax. Quebec still has its own system. The federal tax did not apply in Quebec, and it still does not apply. It may be detrimental to our trade relationships because, starting next year, Europe will start enforcing its carbon border adjustment policy. Quebeckers will foot the tax bill for Canadians once again.
Industrial carbon pricing is at risk. The government has backpedalled when it comes to energy retrofits and electric vehicles. However, it needs to take action. There are phases in the development of new technologies. The early phases are expensive, and more measures need to be adopted. However, the government is backpedalling on such measures. The government woke up one Monday morning and decided that it is over. The Minister of Finance and National Revenue gave his word to our car dealers that they would be reimbursed for any rebates already given to customers for the purchase of EVs. Then he presented the estimates, but the money was not in those estimates. We had to fight for it.
It is hard to believe that the Prime Minister was once a UN special climate envoy. There are days when I look at him here, in the House, and think how miscast he is. The Prime Minister wrote a book called Values: Building a Better World for All. He spent much of his life talking about important values, claiming that boosting the value of the stock market or the amount of money in our pockets was not all that mattered in life. He said that we needed to stand together and care for the most vulnerable among us, who usually bear the brunt of climate events, as has been shown.
Once he came to power, however, he tossed out all the principles he supposedly held most dear and announced that what we urgently need is pipelines. He told us we need as much gas as possible, as fast as possible. How did he go from an economist known for his ambitious stance on fighting climate change to someone pitching oil today?
As members know, public life has its risks. When someone becomes prime minister or a candidate for party leader, people start to get interested in that person's financial affairs. People found out that the green funds, the environmental funds that the Prime Minister was investing in, were more brown than green. There was some greenwashing going on. Apparently the Prime Minister had an innate talent for greenwashing, as demonstrated by this bill.
We are being told that people are facing flooding, that they are facing droughts, that there is 60 inches of water in their homes, and that people are losing all their childhood mementoes. However, this bill essentially tells us that what these people need is a federal website to give them the weather forecast. People can tell when it is raining.
That is not what people need. They need resources.
There is going to be a budget. The government is jeering at us during question period, saying that we are not going to vote in favour of the budget and that we are going to trigger an election. The Bloc only has 22 members in the House. All we have done is present clear, costed demands. We made six demands.
Quebec's share is one-third of a percentage point of GDP. For the skilled mathematicians across the way, the Einsteins over there, it is one-third of a percentage point of GDP. How much less could we ask for? That is still too much. However, we are asking for that to include investments in infrastructure, resilient infrastructure.
The members for Vimy and Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel on the island of Montreal know that there are challenges related to resilient infrastructure, given the new rainfall levels and the large variations currently being recorded by precipitation gauges.
There are municipal elections coming up, and the Union des municipalités du Québec, or UMQ, and the Fédération québécoise des municipalités are asking for a transfer to Quebec so that that money can be redistributed. Everyone knows that building sewers does not win elections. However, we know that there are significant infrastructure needs. That is one of our budget requests.
The Liberals are introducing a bill with no budgetary impact and no royal recommendation. Those who were asking for infrastructure will not get any money for that because of the passage of Bill C‑5, so they will just get the weather forecast instead. After passing Bill C-5 under a gag order with the help of the Conservatives, the Liberals were in too much of a hurry to build a pipeline.
What can I say? I cannot say that we are going to vote for this.
There comes a point when we have to wonder why this bill does not amend any section of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. We even have to wonder whether it should be sent to committee. What could the committee do with it? Under parliamentary rules, the committee cannot change anything other than the sections of the act that are amended by the bill itself. However, this bill does not change anything. What can the committee do? Should the committee members sit around and twiddle their thumbs?
The member for Terrebonne has not done her job properly. Maybe she did not have enough time. Maybe she was busy doing something else. She is not even giving us the chance to put this bill through a modicum of parliamentary debate. Meanwhile, the budget is right around the corner.
For a long time now, the Bloc Québécois has been calling for an $875‑million increase in the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. That would be a concrete measure that would have a meaningful impact on people's lives.
Do members know that this would cost less than one German submarine, and far less than four? This is one thing we are asking for.
They are asking for a co-insurance program. Insurers are coming to see us. I understand that houses will no longer be built in flood zones, but houses have already been built in certain areas. They will not be demolished, but there needs to be some sort of help to reassure these people, who are generally low-income earners. They do not have an answer to that. They are asking for $500 million for riverbank erosion, and that can be spread out over a few years.
However, here we have a bill that says the federal government will write a report and suggest, in a nicely put together strategy that no one will read, to do what Quebec is already doing. Quebec's environment ministry already has a system that does all that.
In all sincerity, it will be difficult for the Bloc Québécois to support this bill.