Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House.
Like my colleague from Mirabel, I too will take this opportunity to wish all the residents of my magnificent riding of Berthier—Maskinongé a very happy national holiday. I am pleased because my colleague and I are often in ideological symbiosis. I, too, made the decision to prioritize the new sector in my riding. First, I will visit the people of Saint-Sulpice and, of course, everyone else, everyone we can go and meet in the short time we have to cover our vast territory.
That said, today we are debating the main estimates and the supplementary estimates. We are glad to be here to talk about spending, state our case and give our opinion. However, we know that the main estimates and the supplementary estimates contain previously announced spending. This is not a new vision. The government is announcing spending adjustments and changes to budget items. Now that there is a new label on the peanut butter jar, meaning the new Prime Minister, we would have loved to know what the vision is and where we are going. We would have liked to make informed, intelligent and sensible decisions about the government's announced tax cuts. People at home are watching us. Ironically, the people at home make budgets. Normal people make budgets. Before they spend anything, they need to plan and know where the money is coming from. People who do not make a budget hit a wall and often have to declare bankruptcy. We hope that does not happen with the government. I repeat: We are running out of time; there are only a few days left, but it would have been a good idea to produce a budget. In the absence of one, we will talk about the main estimates and the supplementary estimates.
I have to say that I am quite supportive of increasing spending in the military sector, in the defence sector. In the last Parliament, it was rather ironic because we usually ended up being the only political party advocating compliance with NATO's request to allocate 2% of the budget to defence. I say it is ironic because we are often asked what we are doing here, since we want independence for Quebec, and we are told that we are here to cause trouble.
This shows that the Bloc Québécois is usually the adult in the room, or the reasonable one. We are the ones who continue to demand a budget, despite the fact that the Conservatives have let us down in the fight. They decided to cave to the government, which is asking us to shut our eyes and vote without knowing what will happen. We are still here, and we are the ones who were here when it was time to talk about foreign interference. We were the ones who were here when the time came to talk about military spending. For that reason, I am pleasantly almost surprised to see these new intentions, because in the world we live in, they are unfortunately necessary.
It needs to be done intelligently. It needs to be done with an eye to the future. The estimates mention increasing recruitment and providing equipment. There is a bit of a concern that the government seems to want to focus on small, quick expenditures in order to make the budget look good. Perhaps it needs to include some long-term vision, like properly equipping the people who defend us. That doubt crept up when I read the documents. Nevertheless, I will not say that we disagree on the principles.
What we are surprised to see in the main estimates is the increase in spending. It is unfortunate that people are not always there; I did not name anyone, so I can say that broadly speaking. They are not always there to listen to our speeches, but sometimes they say things to us, and we would like to be able to respond. They often tell us that they said it during the election, that it is written in their platform, and that we should go read page 1. However, during the campaign they keep talking about, some people said they were going to keep spending increases to 2%. That is what they told us. Now it is 8%. That is not reassuring. Going from 2% to 8% is a fourfold increase. I hope that every little thing will not quadruple all the time, or else things will not balance out at the end of the month. That is why we are calling for a budget. It is so we can know where we are going.
What is sadder still is that the government is making cuts to certain areas. In fact, spending is increasing almost all the time, except at the Canada Revenue Agency, and I did not quite understand why. What is going on? Are we no longer collecting taxes? It seems to me that there are many places where we could invest, including in research to legislate tax havens. However, I do not think the peanut butter label is very interested in us digging into that area. Perhaps it is because, on the back of the label, there are a few investments in foreign countries to save on taxes. I am not saying that anyone has done anything illegal, but when people like that lecture others and then tell us that it is a pension fund when we ask them whether it is moral, I find it hard not to be shocked. We are told that the fund is more profitable because it has not paid taxes, but when money goes to the old folks, they have to pay taxes. What I hear when they say that is that the people, the masses, will pay taxes, while the people at the top do not have to pay because they are planning a better future for us. I find that incredibly sad. However, that is an answer we got. It raises questions about the rest of the shares.
I just mentioned our seniors, and among the areas that have seen the smallest increase are transfers to individuals. The government has decent control over that. That is one area where the government has been able to tighten its belt. The increases do not come as quickly, and that is because these are ordinary people who do not have much lobbying power or influence. That is how it works. Transfers to the provinces and Quebec are not increasing much either. The government is keeping a tight rein on that, too. It has control over spending. It is a good government. However, when it comes to contracts for subcontractors, contracts signed with cronies, that is where spending is increasing exponentially. I could name a dozen scandals. How can we expect the public not to be disillusioned with numbers like that? The sad thing is that not everyone knows what I am talking about. I am not making this up; it comes from the main estimates. These are the numbers we were given.
First, I would like them to be serious and to prepare a budget, and I would like to see serious investments in the future. I have been the agriculture and agri‑food critic since 2019, and I am extremely passionate about it. I cannot help talking about it in every speech, so now is the time to talk about it today. I would like to see more spending in this area. I have said it a few times already, but I will say it again today: 0.81% of the budget is allocated to agriculture and agri‑food. That is not a lot of money. There was a time when it was much more than that. It was 2.6% in the 1980s and 1990s. If we can allocate 2% of the budget to defence, which is something that I agree with, would it not be a good idea for our military to be fed before defending us? If so, we should be able to spend at least 1% or 1.5% of the budget on agriculture and agri‑food and on the people who feed us. We should be able to take care of them properly. We need to stop having bad programs that merely compensate people. First of all, these programs only compensate half of the people who need it and then it takes two years for those who are eligible to actually get their compensation. Meanwhile, the government has the nerve to call them emergency programs. We had to pressure the minister for who knows how long to get a program like AgriRecovery. It makes no sense.
Rather than doing that, we should be focusing on innovation, technological improvement, and research and development. We need a bold approach. Most of all, we need to encourage our businesses to become more climate‑resilient. These would be forward‑looking policies, but this will require having leaders with a vision. I am not sure that we have that.