Alain Therrien

[Climate Change, February 15th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order, in response to a question from my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean, the Minister of Immigration said that the Bloc Québécois wanted to deport immigrants in Canada.

We are all parliamentarians. We know that words have meaning. When we talk about deportation, we are talking about crimes against humanity. When we talk about deportation in Canada, we always think of the deportation of the Acadians.

[Public Services and Procurement, February 15th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are still trying to find excuses when they should be trying to find who is responsible.

All these contracts need to be investigated, but the CBSA also needs a major cleanup. It boggles the mind that an $80,000 app could turn into a $60-million scandal without anyone raising any flags.

It boggles the mind that public servants went to dinners and whisky tastings with contractors without their supervisors blinking an eye. This looks like a systemic issue.

Will the government put the CBSA under administrative supervision? It is long overdue.

[Public Services and Procurement, February 15th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the $60 million that was wasted on the ArriveCAN is just the tip of the iceberg.

We now know that GC Strategies, a company of two guys in a cottage, snagged 140 contracts worth $258 million under the Liberals. Under the Conservatives, these same two crooks snagged nine contracts worth $3.6 million using the company name Coredal. Imagine. Twenty departments were involved and $260 million in IT contracts were awarded to guys who do not even do any IT work.

Seriously, when will there be a thorough investigation into the awarding of all of these contracts since 2010?

[Suzanne Bellefleur, February 14th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, February 24 will be a special day in the life of one my constituents. Suzanne Bellefleur will be celebrating her 100th birthday.

The Bellefleur family is indispensable to our community because they helped to shape the city of Saint‑Constant. Saint‑Constant was founded in 1744, but it has changed a lot over the generations of the Bellefleur family, from the first Bellefleur who settled there in 1762 to today's generation, including Ms. Bellefleur's father, Réal, who even served as mayor from 1943 to 1945.

Ms. Bellefleur married Camille Beauvais in 1943 and gave birth to five beautiful children. In addition to doing a fantastic job in her role as a mother, she was also involved in many organizations, such as Entraide Familiale, the seniors' club and the Canadian Cancer Society, all while helping her husband manage the family business.

Ms. Bellefleur has lived a very full life, and it is fair to say that she wears her 100 years with grace. I wish her a happy 100th birthday surrounded by loved ones. She deserves it. Happy birthday.

[Justice, February 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, by agreeing to this closure motion to push back medical assistance in dying until 2027, those three parties are abandoning those who are suffering. They refuse to listen to the consensus in Canada. They should listen to the consensus in Quebec. They can do that by creating an exemption for Quebec.

Quebec is ready. Quebeckers are ready. The National Assembly is unanimous: Quebeckers want advanced requests to be authorized. Even the Conservative members from Quebec agree. However, they are unable to convince Conservative Canadians. To the Conservatives, Quebec is not worth it.

Will they do it or not?

[Justice, February 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, not everything was perfect when Quebec introduced MAID. However, because people were suffering, we focused on the elements on which there was consensus. We wanted to move forward. That was the compassionate approach, and that is the approach that is missing today in Ottawa.

There is consensus in both Quebec and Canada. People suffering from diseases like Alzheimer's should be able to make advance requests. Why not move forward on that front, where there is consensus, instead of punting the issue of medical assistance in dying down the road until at least 2027?

Do patients deserve to be abandoned until 2027?

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I must commend the hon. member on her efforts and the quality of her French. I humbly salute her. I have never been to Edmonton's French quarter. Maybe one day I will go if I am invited.

I must say that it is important that the francophonie be preserved, especially in cases where it is concentrated in neighbourhoods, cities or regions. When we talk about adding resources so we can take in more people, what I want is for every immigrant who arrives here to be able to reach their full potential.

If we want high integration capacity, we need a lot of resources. As I was saying earlier, resources are scarce. Those resources can only go so far. When we talk about land or infrastructure, for public transit or other purposes, the limitations eventually become fairly obvious.

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, quite simply, Canada operates with two levels of government that often fight over jurisdictional issues. In the case of immigration, both levels of government are involved.

To simplify this situation and cut out some of the public service without cutting services, which would be better, responsibility for immigration needs to be transferred to Quebec.

I would go even further. If we want to have a more effective and more responsible public service, if we want to have the same number of services with fewer public servants and therefore save money, then Quebec's independence is a must.

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member, who is from a neighbouring riding, for that question.

Yes, we often get this kind of request. I would say we need to show respect for the people who are making these requests. We should be able to support these people as a condition for welcoming them, and I think this work is generally done quite well. Sometimes it takes a long time, but my office is often able to solve these kinds of problems and make people happier. That much is certain.

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Saint-Jean.

I am very pleased to rise today to speak to an extremely important issue, a sensitive issue if ever there was one, and I would say that the Bloc Québécois was pretty much the first to raise the integration capacity limit when we began talking about immigration thresholds. As we know, it was a sensitive issue back then. People called us xenophobic. They said we did not like immigrants, and they even called us racists. Obviously, at times all Quebeckers were labelled as such.

However, we need to have a respectful debate in the House on such an important matter. I know that having a respectful debate with the Minister of Justice is like trying to catch a fly with chopsticks. We will still try in the future. By that I mean that the minister himself is not behaving in an extremely honourable manner, despite being called honourable. We would like a respectful debate.

They kind of thought we were out to lunch at a time when, in the context of multiculturalism and a postnational Canada, people were praising mass immigration. We said that maybe people should listen to us and think about integration capacity. Since then, National Bank economists Mr. Marion and Mr. Durocher have said that population growth is too high compared to absorption capacity. That sounds a bit like what we were saying, that the demand for housing was much higher than the supply, that there were shortages.

Some people say that a country's production, its GDP, is the most important thing. Obviously, if Canada's population continues to increase, the GDP will increase as well. Are we really richer? What actually reflects the wealth of a country, a people, the individuals who make up that nation, is GDP per capita. In Canada, GDP per capita has stagnated for the past six years. We are not getting richer. Why is that? Because our production capacities are not high enough in terms of fixed capital to enable newcomers to bring high productivity. We are limited. That has to do with integration capacity.

Soon after that, CMHC said that there was a housing shortage. It said that 3.5 million units needed to be built by 2030 because of immigration, which is extremely important. CMHC said that immigration was leading to housing problems for the entire population. When we talk about housing supply and demand, we never talk in terms of the demand arising from one particular thing or another. “Demand” refers to the sum of people who want a place to live, a home. It is not broken down into parts. It hardly takes a Ph.D. in mathematics to see that the more people who come to this country, the more the demand for housing rises. That is a no-brainer. The point is to underscore or identify the upward pressure on demand, which leads to a problem that will eventually exacerbate the housing crisis.

Immediately after that, CIBC said that CMHC is already behind the times and that five million housing units will have to be built by 2030. That is more than double the current supply. The University of Waterloo goes on to say that immigration lowers wealth and the per capita GDP. This information comes not from the Bloc Québécois or our leader, but from the University of Waterloo. Then TD Bank chimes in, saying that immigration is causing a sharp increase in demand which, combined with the central bank's interest rate increases, has caused supply to fall, resulting in a shortage of 500,000 housing units in two years.

It is not the Bloc saying this. We are no puppeteers. We do not have puppets all over the place, with a complex network of strings that we would be pulling. We are not the ones saying this. It is TD Bank, National Bank, CMHC, CIBC. Finally, this government's own public service rang the alarm and warned that the immigration policy was making the housing shortage even worse. What was the government's response to that? The Minister of Immigration said that they were going to bring in immigrants who would build their own housing.

Does he realize Bob the Builder is a cartoon, not real life? Does he understand that Bob's little hard hat is not real? That is not how things work. People cannot show up here with good intentions and say they will build their own house. They need land, for starters, and there is no more land around Montreal because of agricultural zoning. People have to find land, but land is hard to come by. They may have to go further afield. Where I live, some people have land, but they no longer have drinking water. That means infrastructure has to be built.

What is Bob the Builder, with his uniform and his toolkit, supposed to do if there is no drinking water? He cannot build a house. He may have no choice but to build one outside the greater Montreal area, but if he wants to work in Montreal, he has a transportation problem, an infrastructure problem. What is he supposed to do, hop on a dragonfly? He has to get to work.

These are all things that the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and the federal government do not seem to understand. They are ideologues. That is the problem. They are out of touch with reality. They have absolutely no idea what the integration capacity is.

Housing is part of integration capacity. Yes, we can play around with the supply a little, but the demand for housing has skyrocketed because of the Liberals' immigration policies. They also do not manage health care or education. They are not responsible for educating people or providing them with health care services. They have absolutely no idea what that involves. When it comes to French and teaching immigrants French, their policies are making the situation in Quebec worse. In order for immigrants to integrate, they need to speak French.

Those are the realities that the federal government is unaware of. The Liberals should be consulting the provinces and Quebec about those things, but no, they will not. They cannot consult because they know everything. Ottawa knows best, apparently. Since they know everything, they do not need to talk to anyone. However, when it comes time to pay, they do not do so. They pretend they have a hearing problem and look completely taken aback. They are surprised that they have to pay. They have a $470-million debt because Quebec is welcoming their asylum seekers. I say “their” because those asylum seekers are the federal government's responsibility, but the federal government is not paying back its debt.

I imagine that the immigration minister's accountant gets nervous when he sees him coming, thinking to himself that the minister may not be repaying his debts. I do not know. That is not the way to go about making a name for himself or the Prime Minister. He should be more careful.

I have some impressive figures here. In 2023, Quebec had to create 1,150 French-language training classes just to educate newcomers. That is the equivalent of building 50 elementary schools in one year. Those are the kinds of integration issues we are talking about. These people must be integrated. They deserve to have a happy life, one filled with joy and happiness, one that will allow them to flourish.

The government based its decision on McKinsey. The member for Beauport—Limoilou asked Mr. Barton the following:

[Y]ou said earlier that you were concerned about the French issue.

In the Century Initiative and the growth council reports, which of the recommendations address the protection, development and promotion of French in Quebec and Canada?

Here is what Mr. Barton, from McKinsey, had to say:

I think the focus, again on the growth council, was just on economics. It wasn't thinking about the social context. It was on productivity.

Since then, economists have proven that productivity does not increase with increased immigration.

With that, I want to leave the House with this thought. We have a responsibility. We must be compassionate towards the people who arrive here. We have a duty and a responsibility. We must welcome them intelligently. To do that, we must have the necessary integration capacity.