Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my friend from Repentigny.
Today's debate makes me think of Back to the Future, a movie that was popular when I was a kid. The characters used a car to go back to the 1960s. A few years later, Hollywood came out with Back to the Future Part II. The movie was no good, but at least they thought of using a car to propel themselves into the future. That is not the case in Ottawa. Here, the Conservatives keep wanting to bring us back into the past. Their car has just one gear: reverse.
The motion essentially proposes three things. The Conservatives want to put an end to the transportation electrification initiative, scrap the rules that require manufacturers to make electric vehicles available and eliminate the measures that encourage consumers to choose electric vehicles. By the way, in 2025, 43% of the zero-emission vehicles sold in Canada were purchased by Quebeckers. I am not sure why the Conservatives want to punish Quebeckers with their motion today, but that is the way it is.
In addition, 22% of new vehicles sold in Quebec in the last quarter were electric. That is a good thing. Every litre of gas put into a car is money that leaves Quebec. That money is transferred directly from Quebec to Canada, particularly to the west. Conversely, every kilowatt of electricity put into a vehicle is money that stays in Quebec, creates jobs in Quebec and funds Quebec's own government, schools and hospitals. This is not only an environmental issue; it is an economic issue. If only for that reason, the Bloc Québécois would be justified in opposing the Conservative motion. This motion goes against the interests of Quebec.
However, that is not all. The Conservatives also want Canada to import Donald Trump's policies on pollution and climate change. Their way of resisting Donald Trump is to imitate him, to quietly turn Canada into the 51st state. As I was saying, their car is in reverse.
That is not all. They want to set our trade relations back to 1965. This seems like a good time for a little history lesson. Ontario's auto industry developed in the early days of the automobile in the 1920s and 1930s. My colleagues may recall that the United States introduced very high tariffs after the crash of 1929 under the controversial Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.
The rest of the world, including Canada, adopted reciprocal tariffs. Since American cars were subject to high tariffs, American industries began assembling cars in Canada for the Canadian market. That is how Ontario's auto industry developed. However, it was not very efficient. Automakers had to do everything twice. The same model would be assembled in two plants: one in Canada and one in the United States. Cars were more expensive and fewer models were available. Such was the price of protectionism. That is why the auto industry demanded an end to this system.
In the late 1940s, automakers began calling for free trade and an end to tariffs, but Canada refused, fearing it would lose its industry. That brings us to 1965, the year referred to in today's motion. Under the auto pact, Canada agreed to lift its tariffs, but on condition that tariffs would only be abolished for companies that maintained a Canadian production level comparable to our share of the North American market, around 10%. The auto industry operated under this protectionism-lite, known as managed trade, for 23 years, until the 1988 Canada‑United States Free Trade Agreement.
It sparked a rather heated debate at the time. Ontario was opposed to free trade, which it saw as a threat to the auto pact. Turning down a free trade deal with the United States was the 1980s version of “elbows up”. On the other side, Quebec, led by Jacques Parizeau, Bernard Landry and the steelworker union, supported free trade. For us, it was a way of gaining access to the world, rather than being locked up inside Canada. We know what happened next. The agreement was signed. It later became the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which then became the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA.
Today, the wealth gap between Quebec and Ontario is half of what it was back then. It is important to remember that, in 1965, Quebec was mainly exporting raw materials. Our leading manufacturing industry was textiles and clothing. That meant low wages, occupational illnesses and a third-world economy. As for the idea that today's motion will help make Canada great again, things were not so great in Quebec.
I want to emphasize that today's motion is ill advised when it comes to trade. The Conservatives are eating out of Donald Trump's hand. Under CUSMA, the three North American countries must sit down together on July 1, but that is all it provides for. If the three countries agree to change the agreement, then it could be changed. If they do not agree, then it will remain as is. That is the current situation.
Obviously, if the U.S. Congress decides to vote in favour of withdrawing from the agreement, then it can do so and give six months' notice at any time. Does anyone in the House seriously believe that the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, which require a 60% margin, will vote in favour of that?
In the U.S., treaties are ratified and terminated by elected officials, not the President. Donald Trump does have power over how treaties are implemented, which does give him the ability to create chaos, but he cannot change or terminate treaties. Only Congress can do that, and it has never given any indication that it intends to so. It is quite the opposite, actually.
Now today's motion is playing right into Donald Trump's hands by proposing to replace CUSMA with the auto pact. I have to say that I do not really get this. Does it mean that everything is fine and we do not need to do anything? No, on the contrary.
We are currently in a crisis. It is global, and we are right in the eye of the storm. Then again, crises are periods of accelerated change, and accelerated change can bring opportunities.
The 1973 oil crisis, when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries turned off the tap, put an end to the American auto industry's monopoly over the continent. The three-ton gas guzzlers that got five miles per gallon became obsolete. Japanese cars arrived en masse and were here to stay. There was another oil crisis in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution and the bankruptcies of Chrysler and American Motors Corporation. We are seeing something similar today. The world is realizing that dependence on oil goes hand in hand with instability, and this realization will certainly have lasting effects.
Yesterday, I was reading an article by historian Nils Gilman in Foreign Policy magazine. He said that the new Cold War would be different from the previous one, which pitted capitalism against communism. The two competing models today are the petrostates and the electrostates. They have two different development models, two different types of infrastructure, and two different supply chains.
Donald Trump's United States is a caricature of a petrostate, anxious to make the age of oil last as long as possible. The same could be said for Canada. When Canada says it wants to be an energy superpower, it is referring to oil and gas, but that is a pointless choice. Oil is a non‑renewable resource and climate change is real, whether or not people are willing to admit it. Then there are the electrostates, which are shedding their dependence on oil and switching to less unstable and more sustainable economic development. Europe has chosen this model, but there is one problem: That leaves it dependent on China, which currently controls the entire supply chain for that new economy.
That is where Quebec comes in. The new clean economy is really our strength. We do not have oil; we have renewable energy. We have everything we need to become one of the main links in the electrostates' new supply chain. That is where our future lies.
My colleague, the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue, who was the Bloc Québécois industry critic before me, understood that. His region sits on rich deposits of critical minerals. When the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology undertook a study of batteries and the modernization of the auto industry, it became clear that there were two opposing models.
The first one involves subsidizing the auto industry to help it modernize. That is what Ottawa did when it spent over $30 billion, more than 90% of which went to Ontario for projects where Canada had no real comparative advantage, except in winning a subsidy race with the United States. The results are clear today. However, there was another option. It would have been possible to support the development of an entirely new market: the processing of an existing resource. In this area, we have a comparative advantage. In fact, we have a unique asset: the resource itself. It is an asset that would have made us indispensable in the new economy, but that was not the choice Ottawa made. Our projects ended up underfunded. Many collapsed. Quebec lost money. Canada and its petro-state policy represent a missed opportunity for Quebec.
Yet the current context gives Quebec the opportunity to take full advantage of its own strengths and to reconnect with its true nature. Quebec is the bridge between America and Europe. We are that bridge through language and culture, as we know, but we are also that bridge economically. While Quebec attracts only 9% of American investments in Canada, it represents 40% of European investments. The trend is the same in trade, even if it is less pronounced. We can move away from the oil-based development model and resolutely choose a sustainable economy. If we commit to it, we can give Europe the ability to abandon the petro-state model without becoming dependent on China. We can be the new economic Eldorado.
Unfortunately, Canada has chosen the petro-state model, which is not our own. When the government talks about being an energy superpower, it is referring to oil and gas. These are two things that Quebec would be wise to get rid of because they are making it poorer. The government is talking about pipelines so expensive that they will only break even if they operate at full capacity for 20 years, locking the next generation into this outdated model.
When the Conservatives ask us to import Donald Trump's policies, they want to lock us into that model and throw away the key. That is not where Quebec's future lies. The Bloc Québécois will vote against the Conservative motion today.