Alain Therrien

[Privilege, February 7th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to return to the question of privilege that was raised by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle yesterday regarding who was responsible for inviting Yaroslav Hunka to attend events with the President of Ukraine during his visit to Canada in September 2023. I must say that I agree with the House leader of the official opposition on this issue.

Here are the facts. On the afternoon of Monday, February 5, The Globe and Mail reported that the Prime Minister's Office had invited Yaroslav Hunka, a former soldier of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS who received ovations in the House of Commons during Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit on September 22, 2023, to a reception that was held in honour of the Ukrainian President that evening in Toronto at the Fort York Armoury. The article also stated that the Prime Minister's invitation had in fact been sent by Canada's protocol office four days before the reception.

However, when the Prime Minister was repeatedly asked about it in the House in the week following President Zelenskyy's visit, he blamed the Speaker of the House without taking any responsibility himself. He said on September 27, 2023, that the Speaker was “solely responsible” for inviting and paying tribute to former Nazi soldier Yaroslav Hunka. He said, “we all recognize that the former speaker of the House made a serious mistake.” He also said, “the Speaker of this House of Commons invited an individual without apparently doing that Google search, but it is not up to the government of the day to oversee or to have a veto power over those who the Speaker or, indeed, members of official parties choose to invite into this House.”

The then speaker took full responsibility for this situation and decided to resign from that role. Two weeks ago, in an interview with CTV News Northern Ontario, he explained that it is actually the Prime Minister's Office that approves invitations for major international events organized on Parliament Hill, such as President Zelenskyy's address during his visit to Parliament in September. Let me quote him directly: “Normally, it goes to the Prime Minister's Office, and they go through it with a fine-toothed comb, and then the invitation goes out from protocol.”

According to House of Commons Procedure and Practice, it is appropriate to raise a question of privilege when the House has been misled following statements made in the chamber by one of its members, whether they are a member of Parliament, a minister or the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's statements on September 27, 2023, seem to meet the three criteria set out in previous rulings by Speakers of the House under similar circumstances.

First, the Prime Minister's statements were misleading, in that they implied that the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office did not know Yaroslav Hunka and had nothing to do with inviting him to the House when members of all the opposition parties were attempting to find out exactly what role the PMO or the Prime Minister himself had played in inviting Mr. Hunka during President Zelenskyy's visit. As a matter of fact, acting on behalf of the Prime Minister, the PMO itself had invited the Ukrainian former SS member to a reception that very evening in Toronto.

Second, the Prime Minister must have known that those statements were misleading because he would be hard-pressed to claim that he was not aware that the PMO had extended such an invitation on his behalf.

Third, it seems entirely reasonable to believe that the Prime Minister intended to mislead the House because, at the time he made those statements, since the entire world was focused on the Parliament of Canada, the Prime Minister had every reason to hope that he would not be held responsible and that the blame would fall on someone other than himself.

In his apology on September 27, the Prime Minister described this mistake as a “horrendous violation” of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust and said it was “deeply, deeply painful for Jewish people...Polish people, Roma people, 2SLGBTQI+ people, disabled people, racialized people and the many millions who were targeted by the Nazi genocide.”

This demonstrates how seriously the Prime Minister was taking this matter. Anyone in this situation would have every reason to hope that they would not be associated with this mistake and not be held responsible.

In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois is of the opinion that there is a prima facie breach of parliamentary privilege and that the matter must be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for study.

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, February 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, that great relationship exists only in his imagination.

Toronto got $143 million to house future asylum seekers, but all of Quebec got only $100 million.

On top of that, none of Quebec's demands have been met: The $470 million debt has not been repaid, there is no plan to distribute newcomers across the provinces, and there is no visa requirement for Mexicans, no promise to process claimants' files more quickly, no commitment to approving work permits within reasonable timeframes, no one answering the call when the Liberals are asked to do their job. They are always there to lecture, but never there to work.

When are they going to wake up?

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, February 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to asylum seekers, the Liberals are laughing at Quebeckers.

Not only has the Liberal government yet to reimburse the $470 million it has owed Quebeckers since 2021, but to top it off, it plans to give Toronto $143 million to house future asylum seekers while allocating only $100 million for the whole of Quebec.

This file has been nothing but one injustice after another. Ottawa is not reimbursing what it already owes Quebec, and now Quebec will not even get its fair share for the future.

Enough is enough. The Liberals have made fools of Quebeckers long enough.

Where is our $470 million?

[Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, February 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Motion No. 86. We have been talking about electoral reform for a long time. Many political parties have pledged to reform the electoral system in all sorts of ways, or said, before forming government, that they were going to undertake public consultations leading up to this reform. Unfortunately, for reasons we need not go into here, this never happened. Several parties abandoned this electoral promise, among many others, after getting elected.

The motion proposes an original approach that may lead us down a different path from the one we have taken in the past, which has led us nowhere since we are still having the same debate. It is about creating citizens' assemblies that would prompt reflection and bring forth a proposal for electoral reform. It is a very democratic way of bringing citizens together to propose solutions.

There are elements of the motion that I would like to talk about. First, it says that election results often do not reflect the will of the voters. All anyone has to do is look at the election results we often get in Canada, the provinces and Quebec, to realize that the party that got the majority of the power did not get the majority of the votes. Some people say, and I have heard this in my riding, that they did not vote for that, and that the government does not deserve that much power, since most of the population did not support it. That is something to think about.

Voter turnout is in decline. When we talked about Chinese interference last year, the opposition parties agreed, followed by the Liberal Party later that summer, that civic engagement is important and that the Chinese interference problem had had an adverse effect on voters' confidence in the electoral system. The Bloc Québécois said that it was extremely important to eliminate this sword of Damocles that is Chinese interference in order to build people's confidence in the electoral system. It is by building confidence in the electoral system that we will improve voter participation in the electoral process.

The motion lauds citizens' assemblies, saying that they are independent, non-partisan and representative. That means that they will be inclusive. Obviously, we are talking about the voting system. Within this process, we are encouraging people to think about electoral reform and to propose solutions, which is an important step. We need more than people just saying that we need to do something different: We need people to propose alternatives.

We find this approach interesting. I am therefore announcing right now that the Bloc will vote in favour of the motion.

I heard my Conservative colleague's speech. The debate is interesting and we need to keep it going precisely because we are parliamentarians, representatives of the people, and not everyone agrees on electoral reform. I heard my Conservative colleague say, in short, that we would need a referendum, that people would have to really participate in the debate by indicating their agreement or disagreement. We agree. However, my colleague said that that was simple, that it was an extremely simple process. It is true that it is simple. However, just because something is simple does not mean that it is the best option.

That is why we are giving this further consideration. The Bloc agrees with this way of doing things, and we think that the advantage of this approach is that it takes things out of the hands of politicians, because, historically, that has never worked. The motion proposes that this study and reform be put into the hands of citizens, those who we seek to represent and who we want to be properly represented by our electoral system. We are therefore inviting these people to hold a citizens' assembly on changes to the electoral process.

The motion also talks about diversity, and I agree with that, but there is one small problem. Actually, the Bloc Québécois thinks it is a big problem. The motion talks about all sorts of factors to consider when it comes to ensuring that the citizens' assembly is inclusive, but nowhere does it mention that the Quebec nation must be represented on a pro rata basis to its demographic and political weight. There is nothing in the motion about that. We are therefore asking our colleagues to make sure that the Quebec nation is properly represented so that the Bloc Québécois can consider this approach to be successful.

As I mentioned, this is a sensitive issue because the voting system is the cornerstone of democracy, so this is an extremely important study. There is no perfect electoral system. For example, France has a completely different system from ours and the French are not necessarily more satisfied with their system. There will always be plenty of critics, and that is also the case in other countries. What is the solution?

It is important to note that, when political parties take office, they completely switch gears. Here is what this government said in the 2015 throne speech after taking office:

...the Government will undertake consultations on electoral reform, and will take action to ensure that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.

This is an example of how, unfortunately, none of the political parties can be trusted. The Bloc Québécois is perhaps the one exception. That said, we will never be at the helm in this Parliament. We can hardly afford to leave it in the hands of political parties. After the throne speech, a special committee on electoral reform was formed: 57 meetings were held, 196 witnesses appeared and 567 participants took part, only to achieve absolutely nothing.

Given that impasse, it is worth considering a citizens' assembly. It could be a solution. However, the Bloc Québécois does not want to see this happen all willy-nilly. Obviously, we want there to be a referendum, as my Conservative colleague proposed. We also want Quebec to maintain its political weight and we want the Quebec nation recognized, as the House voted in favour of by a large majority. All these criteria must absolutely be met for the Bloc Québécois to eventually support a bill that would lead to this possibility.

That was the Bloc Québécois's overall thinking on citizens' assemblies.

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, January 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals knew that increasing immigration levels would exacerbate the housing crisis. They did it anyway.

Today, the consequences are blowing up in their face and there is no sign of them rectifying the situation, which they seem incapable of doing.

No, on the contrary, in 2024, the number of immigrants will increase to 485,000 and in 2025, to 500,000. Even in the middle of a crisis, they continue to increase immigration targets against the advice of their public service and economists.

When will they do the responsible thing and adjust immigration levels to integration capacity?

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, January 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Prime Minister said that “immigration levels are based on our capacity to welcome and integrate newcomers.” Unfortunately, that is entirely untrue.

As early as 2022, his public service warned him that if he raised his immigration targets, he would worsen the housing crisis and other things. The Prime Minister went ahead and did it anyway. Now he has to fix a situation caused by his poor judgment.

On November 1, the Prime Minister promised to review his immigration targets as early as 2024 on the basis of intake capacity and after speaking with Quebec.

Will he keep his word?

[Committees of the House, January 29th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I did not say anything of the kind. I will continue.

There are two fundamental rules for a good Speaker: good judgment and non-partisanship. What I am saying is that between the time when the report was tabled and today, new information has come to light. That is why the Bloc Québécois thinks that we should redo the work.

I have a question for my colleague. At the meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, was there an opportunity for the Speaker to do the honourable thing? Did he have an opportunity to do that?

[Committees of the House, January 29th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, ever since the member for Hull—Aylmer was elected as Speaker, he has been making missteps. Historically, this has never been seen before in the House.

I was there when the Speaker appeared before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I listened to what he had to say. At that time, we did not know that he had attended Mr. Fortin's cocktail fundraiser for the Quebec Liberal Party. I think that, given the discussions we had in committee, he should have mentioned that. He should have done the honourable thing, but he did not. Between the time when we received the committee's report on the many events that took place involving the Speaker and today—

[Points of Order, December 12th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I would have liked to be part of the debate on the earlier point of order to talk about Standing Order 18, which the Conservatives mentioned and which, according to them, prevents members from reflecting on a vote.

We cannot criticize a vote, but we can talk about it. We can talk about the position a member took during a vote. The member for Winnipeg North did not criticize the vote. He simply pointed out that the Conservative Party took a particular position on a particular vote.

The House should not oppose what the member for Winnipeg North said. That is why I am rising. I want to add my voice to what was said earlier about the standing order the Conservatives mentioned.

[Points of Order, December 12th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I would like to comment on the remarks made by the member for Winnipeg North, who referred to the nature of the Conservatives' vote on one of the aspects of the many votes that were held in the House on Friday. He simply mentioned the Conservatives' vote.

The Conservatives mentioned Standing Order 18, which says that no member may—