Mr. Speaker, I begin this speech in good spirits because my esteemed colleague and I just did some pretty impressive stickhandling there.
I, too, am pleased to speak about the budget today and provide some explanations to the public. This is important because misinformation is going to circulate and, unfortunately, the two major parties are going to throw around empty slogans. They will say that the Bloc Québécois is only here to vote against everything that is proposed.
As everyone knows, that is inherently false. The Bloc Québécois members are here to represent the interests of Quebeckers. Until we become a sovereign country, there must be enough of us here with significant influence to protect the interests of our people. That is what we are doing, and I think we are doing it extremely well. We are generally respected in Parliament and seen as the adults in the room. We have been over this many times. I will prove my point by explaining why we are going to oppose this budget.
To begin with, we asked for a little more fiscal discipline. We expected serious planning for the future. However, we are being presented with deficits larger than those of the Trudeau era. That is quite an achievement in and of itself.
On top of that, the government is using some pretty creative accounting. We are being told that, yes, it is a big deficit, but really, at the end of the day, it is not all that huge because $45 billion of it counts as assets. We are being told that paying the mortgage is not the same as paying for groceries. We agree on the substance. However, if we take a closer look at the budget, if we read the fine print and really look at the details, it becomes clear that this budget is a sham and a scam. That is what my colleague was explaining earlier. The Liberals would have us believe that transfers to the provinces are expenditures on federal government assets. Come on. That is the first point I wanted to make.
Let me turn to what the Bloc Québécois is calling for. My colleague spoke in detail about seniors and old age security. Once again, the answer we got was no. However, I want to reassure the people watching us at home that we will never give up on that, not until we get it. We will continue to ask for that. That is the first reason we are saying no to this budget.
Next, I want to talk about the carbon tax and the robbery that occurred during the election. The government took money from Quebeckers to buy votes in the rest of Canada with cheques for a carbon tax that had not yet been paid. What makes this move all the more despicable is that we, in Quebec, are still acting responsibly. We still have a carbon exchange that is working well, and its alleged impact on grocery prices is not real. What the Conservatives keep saying about that is untrue.
The proof is that the federal carbon tax was scrapped in the other provinces and yet grocery prices did not go down. What better proof could there be that the slogans we have been hearing for months are empty?
In the meantime, our money was used for a rebate for people in the other provinces for a carbon tax that they had not paid. This was done to buy votes just days before the election. I fail to understand why the media and society at large did not protest louder. We see egregious things like that happen when we sit in Parliament.
Let us talk about loans for first-time homebuyers. The budget offers something, but it is not quite what we wanted. We need to do better to help people.
We asked for transfers for housing, social housing in particular. The last time there were federal transfers for social housing, it took three years for Quebec to get its money because the federal government kept trying to attach strings to it. That does not bother the other provinces because they think that their government is the federal government. They accept that the money they are given comes with strings attached. In Quebec, we are the distinct society that everyone here refuses to recognize. Some will say that Parliament did recognize it, but it was an insignificant motion that means absolutely nothing. Just look at the actual Constitution. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the referendum, many people will say that Canada is the best country in the world. If it were the best country in the world, it would not have left one of the two nations out of the Constitution for more than 30 years. This goes back to 1982. It is awful. Sometimes we get tired of hearing these platitudes.
With regard to infrastructure transfers, the government is investing a measly $9 billion. Since my colleague already talked about this issue, I will just address it briefly. This amount is not enough for infrastructure from coast to coast to coast, as the Liberals like to say. If that money is divided up fairly, there will not be much money for anyone. It might be enough to feed the parking meter, but I am not even sure about that.
There is nothing in this budget for indigenous housing. Although we live in a G7 country, there are indigenous reserves that still do not have clean drinking water as we speak. That is appalling. Meanwhile, the Liberals are giving pretty speeches about how happy they are with the budget.
My colleague spoke at length about ending oil subsidies, so I will just go over that quickly. I cannot understand how elected officials can sleep at night when they are refusing to increase old age security for seniors aged 65 and older, while handing out fiscal goodies to oil companies that make billions of dollars in profits. Then they go on and on about the equalization program, but they are looking at it in isolation. Quebeckers receive the least per capita, but this is always presented in a populist way that makes people think that Quebec is getting tons of money. I would like to remind members that we are paying 22% of the oil subsidies. There is no reason why Quebeckers should be giving gifts to western oil companies. When will the government understand that?
Now let us talk about welcoming asylum seekers. Quebec took in 50% of the asylum seekers from among Canada's 10 provinces and three territories. The federal government is not even willing to reimburse our expenses. We were welcoming and generous. We welcomed people and we took care of them, yet the government refuses to reimburse the $700 million we spent on doing that. That is not right.
Employment insurance has not changed. Health transfers are not keeping up with inflation. This means that they are making cuts. Now the Liberals would have us believe that they are generous and kind, that they are being good to us.
We proposed bringing back the wage subsidy support program that was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, because it worked well, but the Liberals are not interested. We have forestry and aluminum companies laying people off, and we are afraid of losing that legacy knowledge. At the same time, they are changing the temporary foreign worker program too abruptly—I am choosing my words carefully—which means that our businesses, our SMEs, for which there is absolutely nothing in the budget, as my colleague pointed out, are being forced to let go of skilled, trained, experienced employees who have learned French and whose children go to school here. Employees have to leave because new ones have just arrived and the quotas have been exceeded. Can they not get three years to adjust? These are all things that make us want to sigh.
Let us talk about agriculture. This is an issue that I have been raising here since 2019 and that is very important to me. There are some minor items in the budget, and I will be a good sport about them. I think that modernizing the Canadian Food Inspection Agency can only be a good thing. However, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency lacks the resources it needs to be more effective. We are currently working on this. There is a lack of resources for the next generation of farmers. Farm Credit Canada could finance 40-year low-interest loans, which would cost the government nothing.
Our beef farmers in Quebec are having a hard time rebuilding their herds right now because the price of calves has gone up and financial institutions are reluctant to lend them money. A financial institution is not a charity. Sometimes financial institutions try to pass themselves off as such, but they exist to make money. They look at risk. They tell the farmer that the price of calves has gone up, but that by the time the farmer wants to sell the meat, the price is not going to be as high, so they do not want to provide financing. Is that not the role of the government?
The government is going to ask us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. However, Quebec will produce about half as much beef next year because farmers cannot afford to rebuild their herds. Then the government will make speeches about how the people who feed us are doing such an extraordinary job. Can it please be consistent?
For example, we requested an exemption from the excise tax on alcohol, such as mead. There was a comma missing in the paragraph when it went to committee, because it was drafted so quickly. Berry-based alcohols are not included. We have been asking for this for a long time. The former finance minister was from Toronto, so her lack of awareness was understandable, but the current Minister of Finance represents the riding right next to mine in Mauricie. He comes from the countryside, from a rural area. He should understand that agricultural producers need a break.
Regardless of any sops they throw our way, we have a moral obligation to vote against this budget. Since the government is proposing tons of negative measures while dismissing all of our requests, are we going to vote for the budget if it offers to throw in one of our long-standing minor requests as a small favour? Certainly not.
I ask members to vote against this budget because it is bad, unreasonable and disrespectful of future generations.
