Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech, I want to point out that, with both pride and sadness, I am wearing a white ribbon to mark the 12 days of action to end violence against women, ending on December 6. I believe that next week, we will have a day to make speeches as part of a ministerial statement. It is important that we remember these women who were murdered in cold blood in 1989 simply because they were women and they were empowered.
I thank these gentlemen for talking while I am giving my speech. It is not always easy to make speeches when we feel that our colleagues do not respect us, that they do not listen, but above all, that they speak over us. I appreciate the intervention, Mr. Speaker.
We are here to discuss Bill C‑15, the budget implementation bill. I will say that I feel like speaking from the heart because this may be the first time in my career as a member of Parliament that I am totally confident I did the right thing by voting against the current government's budget. There is absolutely nothing in it that reflects my constituents' concerns.
People are trying to figure out who hit the budget jackpot. I will certainly talk about the big winners, but there are more losers than winners. My colleague from Shefford has done an outstanding job as our party's critic for seniors for the past six years, and she has taken every opportunity to point out that the Liberal government has been leaving seniors out in the cold since 2015. I, too, make a point of saying that.
We cannot fathom why the government did not allocate a penny of this budget to boosting old age security for people aged 65 to 74, despite their declining buying power. This is an injustice; it is ageism. The government is acting as though 65-year-olds do not have a hard time putting a roof over their heads or food on the table.
People who receive old age security and the guaranteed income supplement have less than $2,000 a month to live on. The vast majority of them have no private pension fund, no RRSP and no savings to help them. The food bank in my riding has also noticed an increase in requests for food assistance from people aged 65 and over, which is unacceptable. How can we treat our founders this way? They are the ones who built the Quebec of today. It is unacceptable, and I will not hesitate to repeat it at every opportunity.
Another injustice is the whole issue of employment insurance. In 2028, a measure will come into effect concerning special benefits for people grieving the death of a loved one, a child, but that will not happen until 2028. Why wait? Why not bring that measure in right away. A bill on this very issue was introduced last week.
That said, there is nothing to remedy this kind of injustice, this discrimination against women, especially those who are mothers and who, if they lose their job after their maternity leave, are unable to collect any employment insurance benefits because they obviously did not accumulate any hours of work while they were on maternity leave. As far as I know, no man can give birth, and therefore no man can say that he is giving birth in order to get maternity leave.
I find it hard to understand why the government is not taking advantage of this budget, which deals with a million things and is 600 pages long, to include a small line to correct this injustice, this discrimination against women who lose their jobs during maternity leave and who cannot get employment insurance if the position they held is eliminated, for example. It is truly unacceptable.
Who, then, are the big winners in this budget? The big winners are the oil companies. The entire fossil fuel sector is a big winner in this budget, and why is that? Well, let us talk about the backsliding. There are plenty of examples of backsliding. Since the Liberals were re-elected, we have seen one example after another.
Regarding the environment, Environment and Climate Change Canada's budget has been cut by up to 15%. Nature-based programs will be cut by $245 million. Liquefied natural gas production could double. There is also the Pathways Plus project. Today, a new pipeline was announced, even though British Columbia and indigenous nations do not want it. That does not matter, because there is a new law on the books that allows the government to circumvent the rules and laws put in place by the provinces, and even those of the Parliament of Canada. Obviously, that is unacceptable.
It is so unacceptable that the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture has resigned. That is right; he resigned today. He is known as a great environmentalist. When he was minister of environment and climate change, some progress was made. Unfortunately, since the return of the new Liberal government, well, there has been some backsliding. There has been so much backsliding that a minister in the current government has resigned over it. I want to highlight that courageous act, because when you have convictions, you have to stand up for them. The minister probably realized that there is no way to move forward with the current government in place. This position in favour of oil companies and fossil fuels is unlikely to change as long as this government is in power, which is very sad.
On Monday, three UQAM communications students came to my constituency office to meet with me. They were working on a university project that involved creating a podcast, and they chose the environment as their topic. They asked me such great questions. These 18-year-old students, who are just starting their university studies, told me that it seems so obvious to them that we need to disengage from the fossil fuel sector, and they asked me why that was not happening. It was such an excellent question that I want to ask it too. The issue is complex, but they are right. It is all too obvious that we need to disengage from fossil fuels, move on to climate adaptation and find ways to further reduce our environmental footprint.
I told them that some sectors, individuals and businesses get more of the government's attention than others because they have more resources. That is not to say that all is lost, but it does mean that we need to speak up more loudly and voice our convictions more forcefully, because the fossil fuel and nuclear energy sectors have a lot of influence on this government and close ties with it. These students were surprised to hear me say that they were obviously right, but that this sector has had the government's ear for years.
The budget allocates several billion dollars in tax credits and other types of credits to this sector. If there is one sector that is not struggling and that is raking in billions of dollars in profits every year, it is the oil sector. The students had a hard time understanding why, for example, the government has promised to build a pipeline to British Columbia's Pacific coast, in an area with impressive biodiversity. Everyone knows about it; it is well documented. It is going to happen even if British Columbia opposes it. To them, it is obvious, and they wonder how this can happen. These are political games to score points, even if it means jeopardizing a wonderfully biodiverse environment that is carefully protected by an indigenous nation. These are political games to gain support in Alberta. I find this scandalous, and these students are right to have talked to me about it and to have asked these questions.
I will wrap up, even though I could talk for hours about what upsets me about this budget, but before I do, there is one last thing that I want to share. For several years now, I have been fighting to have small fruit producers who make alcohol from pears, currants or blueberries exempt from the excise tax. They are currently not exempt, but those who produce apple cider and mead are. That is thanks to the work of the member for Joliette—Manawan, who fought for this measure at the Standing Committee on Finance three years ago. However, there is something we do not understand. The current Minister of Finance and National Revenue represents a riding that includes rural areas. He is a Quebecker. He knows full well that artisans who produce a few thousand bottles of pear cider are not competing with international producers. They should be exempt from the excise tax.