Debates of June 4th, 2025

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Jagsharan Singh Mahal, Conservative, Edmonton Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, Conservatives are all about common sense. They are strong advocates for strong paycheques so that Canadians will not be worried about paying their mortgage or about getting groceries for their kids. We will work hard on those principles, and we will make sure that we hold Liberals accountable for that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for St. Albert—Sturgeon River, Ethics; the hon. member for Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, Oil and Gas Industry; the hon. member for Niagara Falls—Niagara-on-the-Lake, Housing.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, you have handed me a golden opportunity to say hello. You know how much I appreciate you, and I am delighted to see you again. Congratulations on your election to this position. Please know that you are in my thoughts. I also congratulate all my colleagues who have been elected.

It is true in life, it is true in love, it is true in general, but it is especially true in politics: One should never take anything for granted. Over the past few months, we have learned that we cannot take democracy for granted. I am a sovereignist, a separatist here in the House. Our voices must be heard. It is a voice from Quebec. We are lucky to live in a democracy. We are lucky to be able to share these ideas and debate them. It is a great privilege.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all 82,525 voters in the riding of Mirabel for their trust. I include those who voted for another party, those who did not vote and their children, those who will be voting in a few years, those to whom we must leave a clean and healthy planet and a healthy environment. We do not count them in our voters, but they exist.

I would like to thank out supporters, because before being members of Parliament, before being elected, we are first and foremost political advocates, carriers of a cause and ideas that we hold dear. We devote a great deal of our lives to them. However, there are costs. A few minutes ago, my wife texted me to tell me that my six-month-old boy had just sat up for the first time. I was happy, but it shows how much we sacrifice to be here, for our ideas. This work must be respected. I would like to thank the campaigners, everyone who supported me and, of course, the citizens of all the municipalities in my riding and their elected officials. We have worked on many files, but some are not finished. I will continue to carry them. I carry them with me, in my heart, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I will be worthy of them. Being the member for Mirabel is one of my greatest honours in life. It is hard to find the words to express how fortunate we are to be doing this work.

There was talk of elections. Everyone knows that there was an election recently. The circumstances were unusual, with the arrival of Donald Trump, tariffs and a new Prime Minister with new polls. Under those circumstances, we were told that we needed an election quickly. What did the Liberals do? They found a new leader and formed a new cabinet, including some ministers who were around for the length of a reality TV show.

One of the ministers who had been around longer was the Minister of Finance. He was told to draft a budget because that is all he has to do. He was told to work on the budget because we were going to have a new government and a new Parliament, and we could not table estimates without a budget. Why? It is a matter of transparency. In our work as elected officials, especially in opposition, our main tool is information. The government has the information, such as the budget forecasts, the deficits, the debts, the revenue; when we are not given that information, we cannot do our job.

They are not even doing the bare minimum of what needs to be done in the first week of a sitting, yet the Liberals tell us there is a precedent. Earlier, I heard the member for Winnipeg North talk about Stephen Harper as though he were a disease in need of a cure. That is the precedent he gave for not tabling a budget. At the time, Mr. Harper's government had just arrived after years and years of Liberal governments. The senior public service had been appointed by the Liberals. There was no cabinet. These people had not sat in the House. There was no global crisis. What is more, the election was not called because a budget needed to be tabled. That is not what happened. That is the precedent we are being given for not tabling a budget. This is a 10-year-old, worn-out government, repackaged under a new name and with a new CEO. That is what we have.

The Liberals had time to table a budget, or even just a budget statement. It could be something shorter. The previous finance minister got us used to shorter updates.

I worked with the Minister of Finance and National Revenue when he was industry minister. We worked on his Bill C‑27 on artificial intelligence. He is a brilliant man and a pleasure to work with. We call him the Energizer bunny because he is super energetic, but his drawback is that he has a tendency to not finish what he starts. I think that in some drawer in his office there is a half-finished budget. He has certainly started working on it. Why will he not table it? It could be a budget statement.

Instead of doing that, the government is turning into an oil projects department. Maybe in the end, it will be all about vacuum cleaners. I guess we have to wait and see, because it changes all the time. The risk is that we are being told that, in two years, we will be able to approve all sorts of projects that will quickly save the economy. We are told that the projects are going to go ahead and that is the only way we are going to get by.

We have seen this strategy before. It was called the Canada Infrastructure Bank. That bank had the same mandate for the same projects, and the provinces were all in on it. Everyone was happy. Supposedly, many projects were going to be implemented, including public transit projects. However, things went so wrong that when the minister appeared before the committee, we asked him why he was not changing the name of the bank, since it was no longer even a bank and was not building any infrastructure. That is how badly it was working.

The Liberals say they are going to approve everything in two years. They are introducing a huge bill that could infringe on the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces in many ways. We will have to study it. In short, that is the Liberal plan. No budget is being presented, and no budget forecasts are being made. Bankers are not what they used to be.

What immediate action do we need to take to protect our economy? We must fully protect supply management through legislation. That is what we need to do. There has been progress, but the Liberal discourse has me worried. We know that, in the beginning, the Prime Minister was new to this, that he was taking one step forward and one step back. He was being advised and sometimes he listened to the adviser and sometimes he did not. We are not sure what happened, but in the beginning, he said he would protect supply management. I believe that is his intention. I want to believe it. He told us that we do not need a bill. Then he realized that Parliament exists, even though it is not always obvious that he knows that. He realized that a bill had already been drafted, that a bill was already ready to go and that it was two senators short of being passed.

During the leaders' debate, he said that the Liberals would vote for the bill. Now, the Liberals are back in the House saying that they will protect supply management, but not through legislation. They came up with new reasons. Yesterday in the House, the Liberals gave us new reasons not to fully protect supply management through legislation.

The first reason they gave us is that there is no point in doing this through a bill, because bills can be undone. Someone can introduce another bill and undo the first one. Imagine if I took my car to a mechanic, and the mechanic refused to repair it on the grounds that it would break again eventually. That is pretty much the same thing. While we are at it, we might as well stop regulating firearms and stop amending the Criminal Code. What are we here for as legislators if not to pass legislation? This is what they tell us every time. The Bloc Québécois has introduced this bill 13 times. If the government had said yes the first time, we would have the bill by now.

The second reason they gave us for not protecting supply management is that it would take time to get through the House and that, by the time the bill received royal assent two years from now, the negotiations would be over. Still, the government claims that in just two years, it can build an energy corridor in a country the size of a continent, make major infrastructure investments, build a port way up at Hudson Bay and launch a major federal project office, while consulting all indigenous peoples.

It says that, yet it seems that two years is not enough time for this same government to move fast enough to pass a bill that has already been drafted, introduced, put on notice and passed. Apparently, the government lacks faith in its senators. The Americans will respect this legislative approach because U.S. negotiators are appointed by Congress. The bulk of negotiations are handled not by politicians, but by professional negotiators within the departments.

That is a good thing, considering that the last time Liberal politicians went down to Mar-a-Lago to negotiate with President Donald Trump, they were treated to a T-bone steak with ketchup followed by threats of annexation. The task needs to be entrusted to non-elected professionals who are required to perform their work transparently and appointed by Parliament. The Americans will respect that. The matter is urgent.

No matter what their reason is for not supporting a bill to protect supply management, it is basically an admission of failure. After all, the Canadian government is not going to be the one deciding what is on the table. When two people negotiate, if someone puts something on the table, it stays on the table. Now they are telling us that if supply management is on the table, they will hold out. However, the last three times they told us they were going to hold out, they did not, and nearly 20% of our market was sold to the Americans for compensation. Having a business' list of customers sold off in exchange for a cheque, which is what they did to our dairy farmers, is not a career plan; it is a retirement plan. We need to protect our supply management system.

They talk about creating one economy out of 13. As we know, that is the Liberal line they keep repeating. The Prime Minister's cabinet prints that in bold and underlined and they repeat it. What problem do we have with that? What problem does the National Assembly of Quebec have with that? That rhetoric suggests to Quebeckers and people from the other provinces that if the provinces and Quebec do not give up their jurisdictions and do not allow Ottawa to walk all over them, then they are rejecting the others and engaging in protectionism. The Liberal government makes it sound like there is a guard at the Quebec border with a fleur-de-lis on his face and a blue cape at his back monitoring the containers, examining them gun in hand and sending them back to Manitoba. I have the data in front of me. Quebec's biggest trading partner is Ontario. Our imports and exports are higher with the rest of Canada than they are with the rest of the world, including the United States. There is free trade, but let us not forget that even the Supreme Court, in Comeau, said that if we had perfect free trade within Canada, that would prevent the provinces from regulating in a way that protects the public. Saying that it takes just one economy is just cheap rhetoric to tell people to give up their jurisdictions, allow pipelines through, or they will be seen as Trumpists and just as bad as the orange man to the south. That is what we are being accused of. If they want us to work together, then this sort of rhetoric needs to stop. They cannot tell us that they want everyone in Canada to sit at the same table and work together and celebrate the good times all while they keep up the rhetoric of creating one economy out of 13.

What do we need to do to address the crisis? We have been saying it for a long time: We need to be competitive. We need to be more productive. We need to invest in training. We need to invest in education, modernization, automation, home automation and artificial intelligence. We need to invest in our universities, our CEGEPs, our vocational training programs. We need to do all kinds of things to make Quebeckers and Canadians produce more per hour worked. That is what we need to do. It is also the solution to the labour shortage. That is the job of Quebec and the provinces, but there is a specific agreement with Quebec on workforce training.

The same goes for taxation. If we want to attract investment, we need a competitive tax system, we need to be able to offer export assistance programs, and Quebec has a role to play in that. Quebec knows what it is doing. It is a geographic reality. Canada is a big country, and Ottawa is far away. It is a geographic reality. How can we ensure that the provinces and Quebec can do their job so that we can move on to the economy of tomorrow? They need to have the means. The reality is that in Quebec's public finances today, health care eats up approximately half of the Government of Quebec's program spending. Technology is costing more and more, the population is aging, infrastructure is failing and, as health care takes up more and more room in the Government of Quebec's program spending, there is less and less money for the children I mentioned at the beginning of my speech. They are the ones who cannot vote yet, the ones who are going to work, study and grow in the most competitive economy in the history of humanity. There is no more money for universities, for CEGEPs, for vocational training, for assistance to businesses, for support, for adjusting our tax system. It is a tragedy.

When we say that we need higher health transfers and that the deal with the federal government is that 35% of health costs should be paid for through unconditional transfers, that is what the funds are for. The government tells us that health transfers have increased. Granted, an agreement was entered into with the federal government, but the amount is not enough. When the Prime Minister met behind closed doors with the provincial premiers in Saskatoon, was he aware that each and every one of them has called on the federal government to increase those health transfers to 35%? That could be done over several years if the government budgeted for it. It can be done, preparations can be made, but evidently the government does not budget. That is what it is for. It is for the economy of tomorrow.

What is the government doing instead? It is talking to us about pipelines, oil and gas, when our energy security is already taken care of. As for the plan for one economy instead of 13, the economic benefits were calculated by the Montreal Economic Institute, or MEI, though they were not verified. Between 1999 and 2019, the MEI defended the oil and gas industry 97.5% of the time during its media appearances. This information comes from a doctoral thesis. I am one of those people who reads them. The MEI said that climate science was mafia science. While we do not know who funds this institute, some people assume that it is backed by oil companies. Here is why: At the time of the energy east pipeline, the CEO, who is one of the highest-paid non-profit CEOs in Canada, complained that TransCanada was not giving him money. Perhaps he held off complaining about the others because they were giving him money.

The other study that was held up as proof that this plan will have infinite benefits was done by the International Monetary Fund. It is an econometric, statistical study. It was very intelligent, a well-crafted academic document that was summarized by the National Bank of Canada and published widely during the election campaign. It made the rounds. Those folks engaged in a thought experiment and asked themselves what Canada's GDP would be if there were no more provinces and no more geographic borders. According to HEC Montréal's Centre for Productivity and Prosperity, the main reason people in Newfoundland do not do business with people in British Columbia is not because we have 13 economies instead of one. It is because those two places are as far apart as Quebec is from Venezuela, which is something to consider if they want to build a pipeline. That is the situation.

There is one last thing I would like to address. We have to promote Quebec's businesses and business sectors. Why does the auto sector get $4 billion the moment they say “ouch”? Why has oil become a “nation-building project” when we do not have a national aerospace strategy? Why are we one of the only countries in the world capable of manufacturing an aircraft or a helicopter from A to Z, in a long-cycle, high-value-added industry, where more than half of the research and development jobs are in Quebec, and yet we have no government strategy? Why is Bombardier is able to produce reconnaissance planes that are purchased by a number of countries, but Canada chooses to pay more to buy from Boeing? That is what it did a few months ago, without going through a call for tenders, to buy aircraft that were about to become obsolete. The other countries that are buying this military equipment from Bombardier are asking us why our own country is not buying it. Why is there no strategy? We asked the then minister of industry, but he did not know. The Liberals will not tell us. There is no strategy for this long-cycle industry. Do they realize how privileged we are to have such an industry here? This industry is present in my riding, Mirabel, and in Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, whose member is playing on his phone. Do the Liberals realize what a privilege it is to have such an industry in a country the size of Canada, which, given its GDP, should not even be part of the G7?

I believe there is a lot of work to be done. There are intelligent people with good ideas on both sides of the House. That is a good thing because the government is a minority. I, personally, am all in favour of cross-party collaboration. However, we are going to have to share ideas. We will need to go beyond rhetoric, pipelines, “one economy out of 13” and other things that, frankly, make no economic sense. I think I am qualified to speak on that.

I am now ready and more than willing to take questions.

[Madeleine Chenette, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to welcome my colleague and neighbour from Mirabel.

I am also glad to hear him say that it can be a privilege and a source of pride to be part of the G7. Then again, I was a little hurt to be described as “repackaged”. I stand here as a proud new member of the Liberal Party and the Liberal government. I do not really think of myself as repackaged. This is who I am, a fresh, new member.

That said, I share my colleague's point of view. When it comes to rhetoric, we need to tread carefully. The same can be said about political activism. We need to listen to all citizens, not just our own supporters, and in his case, not just those who support the rhetoric we sometimes hear from the Bloc Québécois.

I am appealing to my colleague because, given the major projects on the table, we will definitely need to work closely and collaborate with Quebec, Ontario and the other provinces on a multitude of projects that will have a significant impact on our economy.

Can we count on my neighbour's co-operation? Will he work with the rest of Canada and with his neighbour on these projects?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague. She is my neighbour, so we are bound to run into each other.

It is funny because during the election campaign, someone new arrived in the region. We looked into it. We saw that early in her career she was at a large consulting firm that practised tax evasion. We wondered if she took part in that. She did not so we did not give her a hard time about it. That said, we found out that she spent her entire career appointed by Liberals in all sorts of embassies, all sorts of organizations, so maybe repackaged is not quite the right word. We could talk about it more over a beer. I imagine we do not live far from one another.

That is always the way with the Liberals. We are asked if we want to collaborate, provided we vote with them. We are asked if we want to collaborate, provided they do not table a budget. We are asked if we want to collaborate, provided we do what they say. The government is in a minority. We have always collaborated. We have always worked in a spirit of openness.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh.

[Jean‑Denis Garon]

Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North will be able to ask a question since there will be another round.

We can collaborate, but they need to understand that in my speech I talked about major priorities that would help Quebec's economy, Canada's economy in general. There was no mention of that in the Speech from the Throne and saying so does not amount to political activism.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on being re-elected once again.

The House has already passed a motion, actually an amendment, to the throne speech, asking for a budget to be produced this spring.

What are my colleague's thoughts on that and what would his constituents, the people of Quebec, generally think about the government not providing a road map or a budget to show how it will get things done to build this nation of Canada and to build Quebec?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, time is running out to introduce a budget. The Liberals have pushed things far enough, and it is hard to backtrack. There were no pre-budget consultations. Now they find themselves having to draft a budget without having heard from anyone. They spent their campaign scaring people.

The solution is a budget update. At the very least, we need to know where we are at with revenue and spending. How much revenue will tariffs generate? How is the government going to pay for tax cuts? We need a summary document that would enable Parliament to do its job properly.

I think the government can provide a pared-down budget while we wait for the fall edition. As I said, I am pretty sure that the Minister of Finance had already worked on this. I am guessing it is in his top drawer, but at some point, the Prime Minister and advisers told him to hide it away until the fall.

I am fairly confident that it could be done pretty quickly.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is nice to see my two neighbours here in the House. That is the first question I will ask.

I am pleased that you decided to run again, because you had decided that you would not. I get the impression that you are elevating the debate in the House. It was a pleasure to hear you speak.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

I would remind the hon. member to speak through the Chair. We do not speak directly to other members.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to see him; that is my first question.

There will be a very important vote shortly. The major aerospace companies are located mainly in my colleague's riding. I am thinking of Safran, L3 MAS, Airbus, Bell and its helicopters.

Right now, we are in a tariff war. I would really like my colleague to tell us whether he will support us in our various options for reaching an agreement.

Will he support us through this whole tariff war?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is funny because, over the weekend, I thought I would get my colleague's cellphone number to say hello, since we are working on a joint file in a municipality. I would like to take this opportunity to tell her that I know she is very much appreciated.

Now, to answer the question more specifically, I would say that that is precisely the issue. My colleague is asking me whether I will vote in favour of the throne speech.

I read the throne speech. Perhaps she can tell me which page mentions aeronautics. There is no policy on it, and there is no mention of it. All the aeronautics companies are in my riding, but I am being asked if I will vote in favour of a throne speech that makes no mention of that field.

That gives me pause, and it underscores the importance of the Bloc Québécois in the House.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his passionate remarks.

When I hear the member speak about his riding, I cannot help but think that he understands my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith very well. We, too, are concerned about our jobs. We feel very far away from Ottawa, and we wonder how the government is going to put meat on its slogan of creating one government out of 13.

Canadians want us to work together in this House, and I am wondering whether the member can shed any light on how we might work together to convince the government to deliver for Canadians and to deliver the things that we need for our ridings.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, when my colleague was asking her question, she made a slip of the tongue that I am going to keep and reuse. Instead of saying, “one economy out of 13”, she said, “one government out of 13”. She said that the Liberals wanted to create one government instead of 13, and not one economy. That is what they are trying to do.

Canada's nature and geography mean that there will always be multiple economies. There is a Texan economy, but it is in the United States. There is a Californian economy, which has a carbon exchange with Quebec, but it is also in the United States. There are distinct economies.

What the Liberals are trying to do is walk all over Quebec, centralize everything and form one government instead of 13.

Generally speaking, that is bad news for the economy.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Mirabel for his presentation.

I thought that his focus on the Trojan horse that is one economy out of 13 was interesting. The Liberals claim that they have changed, that they have turned over a new leaf. However, if we look back over the history of governments in the House, whether following the events involving the Patriotes, the world wars, the 1980 referendum, the 1995 referendum or COVID‑19, governments have consistently taken advantage of a crisis to advance their efforts to centralize power and extend their tentacles.

Now they have a crisis. Are we once again witnessing a centralizing offensive ultimately designed to pursue the same course as the one steered over the past 10 years? In other words, this government's thinking is much the same as it has always been over the past 10 years, except that now they have an excuse.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will quickly read the Supreme Court decision in R. v. Comeau:

The need to maintain balance embodied in the federalism principle supports an interpretation of s. 121 that prohibits laws directed at curtailing the passage of goods over interprovincial borders, but allows legislatures to pass laws to achieve other goals within their powers, even though the laws may have the incidental effect of impeding the passage of goods over interprovincial borders.

Why am I reading the Supreme Court ruling? It is because the Supreme Court says there are barriers. It is true that Quebec introduced its own bill to break down some barriers. It is true that some regulations do create barriers. However, it is not true that every regulation adopted by a province's executive or legislature for a specific reason is a barrier, that it is its main purpose.

Right now, what the Government of Canada is trying to do is indirectly grab all of the regulatory power that is needed at times to maintain and strengthen Quebeckers' vision for society, particularly when it comes to the environment.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

It is my enormous pleasure to rise in this House to respond to the Speech from the Throne. However, before I begin, I want to thank the residents of my constituency of Davenport for their faith and trust in me. I am enormously grateful that they have re-elected me for a fourth term to serve them as well as serve our great country.

I give a special thanks to my incredible team and my created family. There is no way I could do this job without their love and support.

Davenport residents came out in full force to vote in this election, because they are worried. They are worried about the threats by the President of the United States to our sovereignty, to our economy and to our future prosperity. They also know that the world is a more dangerous and a more uncertain place than at any other point since World War II. They feel that Canada is facing challenges that are unprecedented in our lifetimes, and so they voted for a leader and a party with a plan to make Canada more economically resilient.

We have a plan to unite our country, and to defend and secure our country. We have a plan to turn the challenges that we face today into incredible opportunities so that Canadians can face the future with confidence, strength and the resources we need to succeed and prosper in the 21st century.

Canada is the greatest country in the world. We are a strong and brave country, and our potential is unlimited. We are also a country that is in crisis, and we must act urgently and immediately to ensure that Canada remains strong and free.

Key segments of our plan are outlined in the Speech from the Throne, and I will highlight some that I believe are particularly meaningful to the residents of my constituency of Davenport.

At a time of global uncertainty and economic threats, Davenport residents are very happy that part of our plan is to ensure a more resilient Canada, one that is anchored in our own internal economic strength. We have virtually everything in this country. We now need to eliminate the roadblocks and ensure the resources to build us up.

How do we do this? Our Prime Minister is clear: We will have one Canadian economy, not 13, which is what we have now. We will eliminate interprovincial trade barriers. Our federal government has promised to pass legislation to remove all remaining federal barriers to internal trade and labour mobility by July 1. The impact will be the freer movement of people, goods and services across our country. This will also allow our small and medium-sized businesses as well as our innovators to expand and grow across our country, which is something Davenport businesses will be very happy and very excited about. Best of all, lifting these barriers has the potential to add $200 billion to our economy each and every single year.

Second, we will unite the country by investing in nation-building projects, primarily infrastructure, transportation and supply chain corridors. This would mean more supply chain options in Canada, which would mean more railroads, ports, highways, etc. The focus will be on projects of national significance and projects that will connect Canada, which will deepen Canada's ties with the world and will create high-paying jobs for generations of Canadians. Of course, all of these projects of national significance will have to ensure meaningful consultation with indigenous peoples, and all projects must adhere to our climate commitments. Best of all, Davenport residents are so excited by the ambition of our government. We truly believe that if we implement these measures and more, we can become not only a resilient economy, but also the strongest economy in the G7.

As our Speech from the Throne says, the economy is only truly strong when it serves everyone. Many Davenport residents, like so many Canadians, are having such a hard time making ends meet, and so we are responding by introducing a middle-class tax cut, which will save two-income families up to $840 a year. Our government has also committed to continue to fund programs that we introduced over the last almost 10 years. This includes national child care, national dental care, pharmacare, the Canada child benefit and the Canada disability benefit. All these programs and more are life-changing programs that the residents in my constituency of Davenport love. I know they will be delighted that we will continue to support them.

Our Speech from the Throne also contains a clear commitment for our government to build more housing. We are located in downtown west Toronto, and Davenport residents are worried that they are not going to be able to continue to live in the city that they love, that their kids and their grandkids will not be able to live in the city where they were raised. Our government has committed to a number of measures that will greatly benefit Davenport residents. We are going to provide more support for Canadians who are trying to buy homes. We will cut the GST on homes under $1 million for first-time homebuyers, which will deliver savings of up to $50,000. We are going to lower the GST on homes between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Davenport is a multi-ethnic working-class/middle-class riding, and most of our homes are in these price ranges, so both of these measures are very welcome and will be very helpful. In addition, we are spending a lot more to build houses.

Our federal government has committed to double down, with an ambitious new housing plan that will double the rate of homebuilding in Canada. We have learned a lot over the last few years about what worked and what we can do better. Based on this data, we have announced the most ambitious housing plan since World War II. These measures will include the creation of “build Canada homes” to accelerate the development of new affordable housing. We will invest in innovation. We are going to invest in the growth of modular and prefabricated housing. We will increase the financing for affordable home developers. We will eliminate red tape and development costs by cutting municipal development charges in half for multi-unit housing.

All of this will rapidly increase housing supply and bring housing costs down. Members will be happy to learn that our additional funding and ambitious housing plan will use Canadian technology, Canadian skilled workers and Canadian lumber. All these measures, in addition to the ones we have already had in place over the last seven to eight years, will go a long way in ensuring greater housing supply and affordable home prices for the residents of my riding of Davenport and, indeed, for all Canadians.

Community safety is vitally important to Davenport residents. For us, there are way too many American handguns on the city streets of Toronto. While the numbers have gone down, we still have far too many car thefts in Canada's largest city. I know that Davenport residents will be happy to know that our government, just yesterday, introduced Bill C-2, which would enhance security at the border.

When passed, CBSA officers who work at our borders will have new powers to stop stolen products, like cars, from leaving our country. They will also ensure the deployment of more scanners, drones and helicopters, additional personnel and canine teams, which will help stop guns and drugs from coming into our country.

Finally, our government has committed to toughen the Criminal Code, to make bail harder for repeat offenders charged with violent crime and/or major offences.

We have made serious commitments to spend more money to protect Canada's sovereignty. We have to do more to secure borders, to secure the Arctic and to secure Canada from coast to coast to coast. We have made a commitment to fulfill our NATO commitment of 2% of our GDP and we will achieve this with haste. I also believe that we will commit to even greater NATO spending, but we have to wait for NATO meetings in June for the total number and commitments.

In conclusion, Canada is in crisis. It is time for Canadians to continue to stay united. It is time to build a resilient Canadian economy, to invest in national building projects and to spend less but invest more. It is time for us to secure our borders and protect our sovereignty, to build more affordable housing and put more money in the pockets of Canadians. These measures and more, as well as working together, will continue to ensure a prosperous Canada, the strongest economy in the G7 and an economy that truly serves everyone.

Canada is the greatest country in the world. We are a confident country with an ambitious plan. We are indeed a country that is strong and free.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague says that the Liberals ran on a plan but Canadians are still waiting to see it. The new Prime Minister came in with the weight of big promises, fiscal discipline, economic competence and leadership in uncertain times, but since then, spending has jumped 8%. There is still no budget. Canadians are facing real struggles and they deserve more than campaign slogans. Canadians deserve a government that takes its responsibility seriously, and that starts with a budget.

Will the Liberals bow to the will of the House and produce a budget before this spring, as we all voted for?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, as the hon. member knows, we do have a plan. We were discussing that plan with provincial and territorial leaders earlier this week. We have talked and have agreed that we are going to have one Canadian economy. We are going to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers. We are going to ensure the free movement of people, goods and services. We are going to invest in nation-building projects. We are going to determine what those projects are. We are going to continue to invest in Canada. We are going to continue to invest in Canadians, and we will have a strong country, strong and free.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am inspired by my colleague from Mirabel, who talked about how proud he was to see his six-month-old son sit up today. Family is so important to both of us. Personally, I am very proud of my three-year-old daughter, who is full of energy. I am trying to help her grasp ideas in children's literature. That brings me to my question.

Earlier, a Conservative member made an interesting slip of the tongue. She talked about creating one government out of 13. That is indeed the government's vision. When people talk about one single economy, not 13, that means they really want to centralize things. When I look at everything the government wants to do, it reminds me of The Tortoise and the Hare. It is sometimes better to take more time to hold consultations than to move too quickly. That is what we learned from The Tortoise and the Hare.

In financial matters, let us not take our cues from Harry Potter books. We do not need a magical budget or a Harry Potter budget. We need a rigorous framework, which might include tabling a budget statement that would give us an overview of the state of public finances.

I have asked two questions in one, so I would invite my colleague to answer one, the other or both.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, when we talk about having one economy instead of 13, from my perspective what we are talking about is something I think many Canadians have been hoping we would do for a really long time, which is to ensure that we have a very strong internal Canadian economy, that we have such a strong foundation and economy that we are able to withstand a lot of the uncertainty and unpredictability in the world.

The more we eliminate interprovincial trade barriers, the more our small, medium and large businesses are able to expand and grow across our country to create high-paying jobs and to ensure that all our kids and grandkids have great-paying jobs both now and into the future.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec Centre, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague from Davenport on her re-election. I had the good fortune, just a short while ago, to see her at work in her community, in her constituency, where she was present and powerful. I am not at all surprised that she has been re-elected. As I recall, we visited a dental clinic together. We talked about the importance of dental care for the people in her riding.

What does the member think about the Canadian dental care plan expanding to cover adults aged 18 to 64?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member's words were kind. I invite him to come back to my great constituency of Davenport any time. He was very popular and very well loved.

I will say that the dental care program is one of the life-saving programs in my community. I have a largely working-class constituency, so a program like the national dental care program is a life-saver for many of them. The fact that it has been extended now to all Canadians who qualify and are eligible under the criteria is, I think, going to save them money. Again, it is going to ensure that we are providing the support Canadians need during this time of high prices.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my dear colleague, the member for Davenport, for giving me the opportunity to respond to the Speech from the Throne.

We had an amazing experience at the opening of this Parliament: the visit by our King, King Charles III. I agree with the main theme of the Speech from the Throne, which is the need to build Canada strong. However, there are some details that were not mentioned in the Speech from the Throne.

I look at it and think, yes, of course, let us build a stronger Canada. It was the moment of the November 2024 election that made everyone realize the U.S. had once again put someone in the White House who showed no shame whatsoever about ripping up any agreement he had already signed, and who was prepared to break all sorts of laws and make all sorts of threats against us.

It was December 3, 2024, when then prime minister Justin Trudeau asked Pierre Poilievre, me, Jagmeet Singh and the leader of the Bloc Québécois to meet him to talk about what we could do as individual leaders of opposition parties working with the then prime minister to create a team Canada approach to deal with the threat. I signed up, and so did everybody else. We said we could all stand together. It made me proud to be Canadian that the leader of the official opposition, the leader of the New Democratic Party, the leader of the Bloc and the leader of the Green Party could all say, with the Liberals, "how do we work together?". We continue that effort.

That was the one time we met in person. We continued, by the way, in early January and early February, meeting on Microsoft Teams to continue the effort of working together. Now we have a different effort, and I hope we can still work together, because it is terribly important that we stand united and are not bullied by what we could say right now is one of the world's champion bullies. He is not the only one. Vladimir Putin is competing for world champion bully. There are others.

As far as the Speech from the Throne is concerned, there are some things I completely agree with. There are also, as I said, some details.

It is clear that our economy must change. It is not just about our economy, but perhaps also our culture as a country that is not really a country. There are 13 countries in our united nation.

We have a sense that there is less solidarity, I think, among the 10 Canadian provinces, three territories and the federal government than we find within the 24 separate sovereign nation-states of the European Union, at least within the oral history of my childhood with parents who were very much affected by the Second World War. The members of the European Union that now work so well together were, not that long ago, at war with each other. How is it that we, as one country, not only do not act like a country a lot of the time but also do not think like a country.

We need to start thinking like a country, acting like a country, because we are facing challenges. The threats are real. There are fundamental threats to our country and to our civilization.

I agree that we need, as the Speech from the Throne says, the largest transformation of our economy since the Second World War. We need it quickly. Over hundreds of years, Canadians have been known to be, and our economy has been somewhat limited to the idea of, a raw-resource colony, not just for other countries but increasingly for transnational corporations around the world that own a lot of our resources. From hewers of wood and drawers of water, we have become scrapers of bitumen and wasters of water.

We need to take action to put an end to this system of exporting raw resources instead of value-added products.

We could be doing more with our raw resources to make sure that we do not rip and ship, shipping out raw logs and shipping out unprocessed bitumen, failing to gain the opportunities of extracting value before we send our raw resources to other countries, where they get the jobs and we get the waste and pollution that is left behind as they take the resources for their benefit. This is an opportunity where we could actually rethink our economy and rethink the way we act together.

As the Prime Minister has said repeatedly, we can stop thinking about ourselves as 13 separate economies and think of it as one economy. What kind of economy is that? I am certainly hoping that we start thinking about a circular economy. We have signed on to numerous international agreements where that is a goal: that we want to be the kind of country where we are resilient, resourceful and sustainable and that we lift everybody up and leave no one behind. These are things we can do now, and it is terribly important that we actually do them.

I have a question about the Speech from the Throne. I am a little concerned because there is not a single reference to the Paris Agreement in this speech.

There were two passing references. The words “climate change” appear, not in full sentences, but they do appear twice in the document. However, there are no commitments, not even the minimum we had planned for meeting our international, legally binding obligations under the Paris Agreement. Of course we know that, while King Charles III read the speech, it was written by the Prime Minister.

These were words I would have liked to have seen in the Speech from the Throne. They were also written by the Prime Minister:

The carbon budget to limit temperature rise to below catastrophic levels is rapidly being exhausted.... If we had started in 2000, we could have hit the 1.5 degree C objective by halving emissions [in other words, cutting them in half] every thirty years. Now, we must halve emissions every ten years. If we wait another four years, the challenge will be to halve emissions every year.

That is from page 273 of the Prime Minister's book Value(s). He wrote it, and it was published in 2021, so we have waited four years. It appears that the Prime Minister understands we have to cut our greenhouse emissions in half every year. This is a very steep challenge, and as he put it in Value(s), which I read and enjoyed, “the carbon budget to [stay] below catastrophic levels is rapidly being exhausted”.

He is not saying that this is a political commitment that somebody before him, as prime minister, took on and he is not very interested in it, although we might think that from the lack of details about what kind of climate action we are talking about in the Speech from the Throne, and why now we are suddenly finding it acceptable that everybody talks about expanding oil and gas as though that were a nation-building project as opposed to a sunset industry.

We want to protect the workers and the communities in those industries, but we have to actually be looking at what is a nation-building project that protects our future. We desperately need an east-west, north-south electricity grid so we can make good use of, and share across provincial boundaries, energy and electricity that is far cheaper than what many provinces now have. Their consumers are stuck with bad decision-making by their provincial utilities.

There are huge opportunities before us. It is, as the Prime Minister says, a “hinge moment” in our history.

We must do more and we must reduce greenhouse gases to protect our future and our grandchildren's future.

I would just like to say that I will vote in favour of the Speech from the Throne, but I wait with bated breath to find out what the government actually thinks is a climate plan, because so far all it has done is cut the one measure that was working.