Mr. Speaker, we do not inherit the earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children. It seems so easy for major project proponents to look at a map and draw a line. However, when that line becomes a route and valuable farmland has to be acquired for a project, we often forget where that land came from and who owns it.
If a person gets their car stolen, they are not going to be in a good mood and they might even get really angry about it, but, at the end of the day, they can buy an identical car with the insurance money. However, when a person's land is stolen, destroyed or divided, it is impossible to repair it.
Many countries were colonized by promising people land. Our ancestors left France, England and various other countries to come here and live the Canadian dream. They came to clear and farm large, fertile expanses of land. Throughout history, people valued owning land and farming it above all else. That makes sense. To feed ourselves properly, we have to harvest the fruits of the earth, which give us grain, fodder and vegetables, which then provide us with meat and consumer goods essential to our survival.
These lands were not created by providence. We have what we see today because of the hard work of generations of farmers. If we drive along Highway 132 or Highway 138, we can see the beautiful farms that are there today. They are there because of the hard work of nine, 10 or 11 generations of farmers who cleared every metre of land by the sweat of their brow in order to survive. This land did not just ensure their survival, but the survival of an entire people, the Quebec nation. There is no asset in the world as precious as this one. This is not something to be taken lightly.
We learned early on in school that, sooner or later, land came into play in every war throughout history. Why proceed arbitrarily?
We understand that there are major projects to be completed in 2026 and that they will require large areas of land. There is no getting around that. However, in order for this to work, the government needs to seek advice from farmers, who may come up with solutions themselves. They may have some clever suggestions. They will suggest routes that may interfere less with their farming operations. We should not just be consulting farmers about their land; we should be working with them.
All things considered, we must be very careful. It is certainly possible to lay pipelines on land by negotiating easement agreements. It is also possible to place power lines on land. That is another easement that farmers accept for the good of society. If they agree, we can cross their land. However, it is more difficult when part of the surface area needs to be taken away. Those are precious hectares and acres that divide the land in two or even three, depending on the provisions of the current land titles.
Do we have any idea how many families will actually be affected by the project being presented by the Liberal government? The land is divided on each side of the St. Lawrence River, perpendicular to it, three arpents wide by thirty arpents long, which is approximately 170 metres wide by 1,700 metres long. That is about six lots per kilometre. According to my calculations, we are talking about 1,950 different lots between Quebec City and the Ontario border. At three lots per farm, this could potentially affect 650 farms or 1,000 farming families. That is a lot of farms considering how many remain in Quebec. There is a good chance that this project will undermine the profitability of these farms, whose acreage value continues to grow.
I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my father and mother, Armand and Rita, who were among the last pioneers to cultivate their own land after clearing it themselves.
I saw my father clearing our land when I was young, and I helped him cultivate it. It required a lot of physical labour. I spent my youth working on my land, picking rocks, building fences; I built them and I even took them down. Imagine what it is like to pick rocks all summer long, in 36-degree heat, to get a few more acres of cropland. However, after all that effort, we were able to enjoy the crops and forages that the land provided.
Taking acreage away from a farm and breaking up access to fields is hard for people to accept, especially when it is done without consultation. That is the worst insult to rightful property owners. Expropriation can feel worse than theft. It can feel like betrayal, like the government betraying its citizens and what they hold most dear. The Mirabel expropriations are the Crown's greatest affront to the francophone Quebec nation, almost on par with the deportation of the Acadians.
I have memories from my youth of the Mirabel expropriations. Thousands of families, entire families, including grandparents, children, grandchildren, were evicted from their homes by police at the behest of the federal Liberal government. Men and women lost their land, their homes, their livelihoods. Today, there are up to 100,000 Quebeckers who are descendants of those whose land was expropriated, all for a project with huge ambitions, and look what came of it.
The Mirabel expropriations are truly a dark chapter in our history. Large-scale projects are necessary, but caution is needed to ensure that they are consistent with the reality of our country and its workers. We must always be wary of ideological projects. People need food, housing and transportation. After those things are covered, there is not much money left for anything else. Do my colleagues want to hear something absurd? Only 2% of the land in Quebec is arable, all of it located on both banks of the St. Lawrence River, and that 2% is already threatened by urban sprawl. I ask myself the following question: Do we really want to build a high-speed train that will take away our land and divide it up, in addition to promoting urban sprawl?
High-speed rail is a bad good idea. Are Canada's public transportation systems, such as trains, buses, and planes, really operating at capacity? The question hardly bears asking. If our country really wants to invest between $200 billion and $500 billion in major projects, I have two good ideas. First, in the manufacturing sector, we could work to become more competitive with other countries in the global market and bring back well-paying jobs in the age of artificial intelligence. Second, we could develop our minerals and mines. The Right Hon. Stephen Harper, the former prime minister with whom I had the honour of working, said that rare minerals are a way forward for Canada. Canada should put all its eggs in this big natural resources basket.
In conclusion, my attachment to the land comes from my farming DNA, from my great-grandfather Octave, who settled in my hometown, and from my grandfather Napoléon, who spent his entire life clearing land alongside my father Armand, who was passionate about the land. Now I am the steward of that land, which I am passing on to my son Jérémie so that he can cultivate it in turn, while watching his own son, Octave, take his first steps on the land of his ancestors.
We do not inherit the land from our parents. We borrow it from our children.