Mr. Speaker, let me start off by staying that history is repeating itself. Once again, we have before us a legislative measure in the grand tradition of predatory federalism, which has no use for Quebec and the provinces and considers the Quebec nation and the provinces to be mere branch-plant economies.
What is the purpose and intent of this bill? During the election campaign, the Prime Minister told us that he was going to propose robust legislation to resolve the tariff crisis. The idea behind this measure is to build Canada. I am not surprised that he used the idea of building Canada, because the former leader of the official opposition spent three years telling us that Canada was broken.
What does surprise me is that my Conservative colleagues decided to support the government and its gag order. That is pretty ironic considering that, during the election campaign, I heard Pierre Poilievre say that, if a Liberal government were elected, inflation would be so high that people would be forced to hunt for food. I am teasing, but I will stop there because I do not want to be too hard on Mr. Poilievre, who is probably watching at home.
The government's intention is to provide a legislative response to the tariff crisis. Bill C‑5 does anything but respond to the tariff crisis.
First of all, I would like to consider the definition of a project of national interest. My colleague from Pierre‑Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, who did excellent work on Bill C‑5, tried to introduce an amendment that would have allowed us to define what constitutes a project of national interest. In my opinion, that amendment was not accepted because the government quickly forgets that there is more than one nation in Canada. There are the indigenous nations and the Quebec nation. Since the government is quick to forget, I wonder in which nation's interest these projects will be carried out. They will certainly not be projects that are in Quebec's interests, since the amendments that would have required the government to get Quebec's approval were rejected, as were the amendments that would have required approval by indigenous nations.
Clearly, the bill in its current form is aimed at defending the interests of the Canadian nation. I am not trying to be flippant, but these interests often coincide with the interests of the oil and gas industry. We will come back to that later.
I was talking about the government's objective and the situation we are in, which leads me to a very basic question: In what way does this bill support Quebec's economy? In what way does it address the crisis that Quebec is facing right now, namely, the tariffs that are being imposed mainly on the aluminum industry? Frankly, it does not address that at all.
In my opinion, we have to differentiate the bill's objective from the situation we are in. The situation is the tariff crisis. The government's answer gives it a way of reducing the regulatory obstacles it is facing, especially for oil and gas projects. Even if the Liberals do not want to say so, this bill will, above all, facilitate new oil and gas projects.
Let me give you an example that occurred this week and that I found just appalling. I asked the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons if he did not find it outrageous that the government had paid $34 billion for the Trans Mountain expansion, knowing that the Parliamentary Budget Officer had stated that that oil and gas infrastructure would have to be used to maximum capacity for 40 years for it to be cost effective. I asked the government leader if he did not find that outrageous. His answer was that we will build Canada the way Robert Bourassa built Quebec with Hydro-Québec. What incredible irony.
Do members know how much money the federal government put into Hydro Québec? It did not contribute one red cent. Quebeckers paid for the biggest energy infrastructure in Quebec. They never got any support from the federal government. The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons has the nerve to use that as an example. To him, building Canada is doing what Robert Bourassa did. There is a disconnect. I think that my colleague should take a history lesson to better understand Quebec's economy.
I have been saying from the outset that the government's goal was to respond to the tariff crisis. How does this bill respond to the tariffs affecting Quebec? The answer is that it does not respond to those tariffs in any way. Let me prove it. Quebec is affected by the 50% tariffs on aluminum. When we talk about aluminum, we have to make the distinction between producers of primary aluminum and aluminum processors.
The United States currently consumes four million tonnes of aluminum per year. Of those four million tonnes, 3.3 million tonnes come from Canada, mostly from my region, Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, and also from the north shore. The government says it wants to carry out major projects, in other words, infrastructure that would require the use of more aluminum. I cannot imagine what magic trick the government thinks it can pull off to replace a market of 3.3 million tonnes of aluminum per year. We will never consume that much in Canada.
This week, the government decided to propose some measures that I described as impotent, saying that they would impose certain quotas. That might work for steel, but it does not apply at all to aluminum. This bill will therefore have no impact on the tariff crisis affecting the aluminum sector.
It gets even worse. In 2019, during the CUSMA negotiations, a Canadian negotiator candidly told us that the government had dropped the ball. The only industry that would not be protected under the 2019 CUSMA was the aluminum industry. Steel had some form of protection. The Bloc Québécois speaks from experience because this was the first fight that we waged in the House when we came back in 2019. We wanted to make sure that the aluminum industry would be protected. This is an ongoing issue that proves that the government never pays attention to Quebec's industries.
The same is true for the forestry sector, which has been paying countervailing duties since 2017. Ten billion dollars in countervailing duties is currently being held captive in the United States, including $2 billion from Quebec. The federal government has always refused to implement a liquidity program that would have helped people in the forestry sector. It has always refused to implement that measure, so much so that today we are seeing many small sawmills in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, on the north shore and in the Gaspé Peninsula shutting down, which jeopardizes the economic vitality of the regions of Quebec. Instead of implementing measures that would have supported the Quebec economy, what the government is proposing is Bill C‑5, a measure that will help it build pipelines.
I will wrap up by saying that the history tends to repeat itself. I remember another crisis we went through in 2008. We all remember the 2008 crisis. The government responded quickly by announcing an $8-billion investment in the auto sector. We realized only later that it was far from a loan; it was a gift that had been given to the auto sector. The government never wanted to put a penny into the forestry industry in 2008.
Now history is repeating itself. A bill is being proposed that does not meet the expectations of Quebeckers. Once again, this is predatory federalism. No measures are being proposed to support the economic pillars of Quebec, and the government is trying to ram this down our throats by imposing closure. To me, that is far from a triumph.