Alain Therrien

[Democratic Institutions, April 20th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister keeps repeating that he has had no ties to the Trudeau Foundation for the past 10 years. Today, however, everyone is talking about his Christmas trip to visit friends from the foundation, but that is not all.

In 2016, his office directly contacted the foundation, regarding the much-talked-about donation from the Chinese regime. Next, he appointed the foundation's former CEO to look into interference in our elections. Then, he appointed another member of the foundation as the special rapporteur.

Does he not consider this to be a lot of ties to the Trudeau Foundation for someone who is not supposed to have ties to the foundation?

[The Budget, April 19th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I did not address this issue. I think that the member will agree with us. Sustainable development and the green economy are very important to the Bloc Québécois. There is little in the budget in that regard; worse, oil companies are being subsidized, when we should be decreasing oil production to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

One does not need to be a math whiz to understand that the less oil we produce, the less pollution and the lower greenhouse gas emissions there will be. However, when the oil industry is being subsidized as the Liberals are doing and continue to do in this budget, it goes against what the general public wants. They want to ensure a better future for the next generation. I fully agree with the member.

[The Budget, April 19th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my worthy colleague for his question. He makes me dream of independence.

We are talking about the public debt. It is simply unbelievable that there is a fiscal imbalance in Canada. The money is in Ottawa and the needs are in the provinces and in Quebec. There is a consensus on that.

Although the government has the financial means, which, in a way, it has taken from the provinces, it is incapable of balancing the budget. That is very worrisome. No one wins with such a huge debt. It is unbelievable because the fiscal imbalance favours the government, and yet, it still manages to go into debt.

[The Budget, April 19th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, did I say anything about independence? We are a part of Canada while awaiting independence, and we have a situation where there are problems caused in part by the government's inaction. There comes a time when we must ask ourselves if the Liberals are going to wake up.

We are not talking about independence. We are talking about a government that should be focused on the issues that are important to Quebeckers. That is why we are here. If the government wants to know what Quebeckers want and need, it should listen to the Bloc Québécois. What Quebeckers want, as I said, are health transfers and measures to address the labour shortage. It is time to sink or swim, and the Liberals have done absolutely nothing. That is all. All we were asking for was for them to listen to Quebeckers and work to meet their needs. That is all.

[The Budget, April 19th, 2023]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, the NDP is with the government for better or for worse. The government accepts the fact that the west has dirty oil and the NDP agrees. They shrug and they are happy, because they are buddies. To ensure that the NDP will stay with them, the government gave them a $13-billion gift of dental insurance.

Is that bad? Not necessarily, but it depends on how.

I have been in politics for 10 years. I am old now, and I have seen a few bills in my time. I would say I have seen quite a few. I think the worst bill I ever saw in my life was the dental care bill, which was introduced last fall. It was a disaster. I could not believe my eyes. I told myself it was impossible. In the end, I just had to cover my eyes. To me, it made no sense, it was completely ridiculous, but the government was pandering to the NDP. It hurriedly came up with a lot of nonsense, like telling people they would get $650 for going to the dentist, making an appointment or just driving by. Otherwise, they get nothing. It was totally preposterous.

Now, months later, the government has finally realized fraud is rampant. That was obvious. They could have just asked the opposition. We would have told them right from the start. This is cause for concern.

Now we come to the budget. It is stressful to hear the government say it is going to expand the scope of dental care. Not only does this trespass on the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces, it penalizes Quebec and the provinces that offered more generous dental insurance. There was no compensation for that. The message was that if they already had dental insurance, too bad. They would have to pay anyway, for nothing.

At least the bill is not tabled yet. Do we dare hope that the Liberals will respect the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces when they draft it?

When they put their glasses on and settle down to write that bill, I hope they will respect the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces. The Liberals are centralizers. They like to stretch out their tentacles and lay claim to taxes. They like to spend. The New Democrats are Liberals in a hurry. They get up at night to strategize about centralization. They call each other to talk about their dream of a world without provinces. That is their aim. If the two parties get together to cook up dental insurance, I hope they do not forget that the provinces and Quebec exist. That is my hope.

That is my first point, that this dental insurance looks more like majority insurance. My second point is that there are priorities. If we go outside and walk around and chat with people, there are some things we cannot miss. They are so obvious that it seems odd they did not see them. There is nothing in the budget, or very little, and what is there is done wrong. These priorities are not included in the budget, despite what we had hoped.

Health care is a priority for Quebec. We can already hear them saying that maybe the Quebec government is not so good at managing health care, and so on, and yet, all the provinces are having problems with health care. Has it not occurred to the government that perhaps the real problem lies somewhere above the level of Quebec and all the provincial governments? Does it take an honorary degree to understand that the problem might be elsewhere and that the provinces and Quebec all have the same problem?

It is called the federal government.

Everyone was practically climbing over each other to tell the federal government to increase health transfers to the provinces and Quebec. We said we wanted 35%, for starters. In the end, the federal government told Quebec and the provinces that it would give only one-sixth of the amount we were asking for. In the case of Quebec, instead of getting $6 billion, we were told that we would get $1 billion, and there was no guarantee that there would be enough growth to meet even that commitment.

That means that the transfers increased from 22% to 24%. People were clapping and knocking their glasses off in their excitement. One person was even doing cartwheels in the living room while eating broccoli. Everyone needs to calm down. When this government took office, transfers were already at 24% of total health care funding. The government lowered them to 22% and then raised them back up to 24%. What a victory. Great job.

What we are seeing now is that the Liberals are offering only one-sixth of what was requested, even though they say in the budget that the health care system is dysfunctional. They figured that out all by themselves and yet they are only giving Quebec and the provinces one-sixth of what they asked for. That does not make any sense.

Speaking of priorities, housing is definitely one of them. That is a no-brainer. We hear about it almost every day on the news. There is also the labour shortage. The government is saying that we need to find a solution to the labour shortage, but did we hear any solutions out of the mouths of anyone on that side of the House when they talked about the budget? No, we have not.

There is one solution that is pretty simple. The government could tell certain people, like seniors aged 65 to 75, that they could be entitled to exemptions and tax incentives if they returned to work. That is the carrot policy, or the incentive policy, as my colleague said. However, that is not being proposed. What are the Liberals doing? They are making seniors poorer. That is not a carrot-and-stick policy, it is a stick-and-bludgeon policy. They are making seniors poorer.

The first time I asked a minister about what was happening with seniors, he said that if they do not have enough money, then they should go back to work. I wondered if he had skipped breakfast that morning, because he could not possibly have meant what he said. He did, however, because we heard him repeat the same thing later. In any case, my colleague from Shefford will speak at length about seniors and the fact that this issue is missing from the budget.

We might talk about the policy on aerospace, Quebec's primary source of exports. Quebec is one of the only places in the world where it is possible to build a plane from start to finish. There are three places in the world where this is possible, and Quebec is one of them.

I will say in closing that a government is supposed to have a vision to present in the budget. The government is tired and worn out. It no longer has a vision. I wonder what it is still doing here.

[The Budget, April 19th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, first, please note that I will be sharing my time with the member for Shefford.

We got another budget. When I saw the budget, I remembered two things. First, when I was an economics professor at CEGEP and university, I had a tradition. When the budget was tabled, back when I was not in politics, I would take it and do an economic analysis of it. When I saw this budget, the first thing I thought was, thank God I will not have to analyze it in front of 70 students, because there is really not much to say about it, from an economic standpoint. It is devoid of inspiration. It is as if it was as easy for the Liberal government to find inspiration as to do a 5,000-piece puzzle while wearing boxing gloves.

The second thing I thought about was my leader, and what an extraordinary leader he is.

The members opposite are laughing because they know that I am right. I thank them for admitting it.

In 2021, the government kicked things off with the throne speech. It took some time before the House came back; it had other things to do, I guess, but it took a few months before the ball got rolling. The House reconvened. That morning, I was not fashionable, but we were finally back.

Then, there was the throne speech. I will never forget it. The leader stood up and said that the government before us was tired. Let us think about that. The government had just been elected, it gave a throne speech and it was already tired. When I saw the budget, I thought that it was the budget of a tired government.

There are two very striking things in this budget. The first is that the Liberals bought themselves a majority yet again. They had already done it once, but they arranged for their good friend the NDP to support them until death do they part. What do people say when they get married?

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, April 18th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division on this bill.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, April 18th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, today, the Bloc Québécois is defending a bill that all Quebeckers have been waiting for. I think I am right in saying that. We have examples. Some say that the single tax return is a separatist thing, that separatists are secretly gathering power, little by little, and that they need to be stopped. Unfortunately for the people saying these things, such is not the case.

On May 15, 2018, I moved a motion in the Quebec National Assembly that was unanimously adopted. Sitting opposite me was Philippe Couillard, who supported my motion. I think we can all agree that he is about as much of a separatist as I am a Cirque du Soleil contortionist, yet even he voted in favour of the motion.

He did it because it makes sense. It is the right thing to do. It is the smart thing to do. It is efficient and will save us money. For all of these reasons, 75% of Quebeckers are saying that they want a single tax return because they are tired of filing two. Quebeckers also only want one tax collector, and they want it to be Quebec because we trust the Government of Quebec. All of the Quebec statistics show that the Government of Quebec is the best representative of Quebeckers. I am not the one saying that. It is Quebeckers. The question is simple. What do we do with that information? Will the government listen to Quebeckers, yes or no?

The time and money savings are obvious. The Research Institute on Self-Determination of Peoples and National Independence has done scientific research on this. Research exists. Research has been done on this specific issue, not on something that may be close to the issue. We are talking about $425 million in ongoing savings. That is nothing to sneeze at, at a time when governments keep running deficits.

We do not have any money to waste, and now we have an opportunity to save $425 million. Why pass it up? That is the question.

Some will say they are afraid to put these good people out of a job. That would be too bad, because they are skilled and we would hate to see them lose their jobs. We like them. They are our public servants. Of course they are skilled. They are so skilled that we can find a use for them elsewhere in the federal public service.

We are talking about 3,000 people who do the same task that someone else is already doing. The NDP says that we must not put people out of work. After the orange tax comes the orange calculator, but maybe it is too hard to press the buttons. These are 3,000 jobs we are paying for anyway, for work that others are already doing. Ever heard of efficiency? There must not be very many business leaders in the NDP.

I think everyone can understand something so basic. We know the Liberals are against it, because anything that gives Quebec more power makes them nervous. They get antsy. It no longer makes any sense. They do not like it. I do not know why, but they do not like giving powers to Quebec. They are saying that we are already paying for 3,000 jobs, so is there enough room in the public service?

Passport offices are understaffed. People have to line up to get their passports like we used to line up for concert tickets. Do passport offices not need staff? Do immigration offices not need staff?

The immigration department is so understaffed that files are being assigned to people who have not worked there in 15 years. At the Canada Revenue Agency, files are on hold. Does it not need staff? Employment insurance must not need people either, nor the rest of the public service, because the government is giving more than $1 billion to McKinsey and its ilk for subcontracting. Are the Liberals going to tell me that no one can use 3,000 highly competent and skilled workers? Do I look that gullible?

That is the reality. Quebeckers, and consequently Canadians, have an opportunity to make their public service more efficient. The bill's opponents are engaging in idle partisanship but cannot produce a single argument against the incontrovertible logic of the single tax return. I have never heard anything in the House to make anyone have doubts about passing a bill that would be good for the economy and the intelligent management of the public service.

[Democratic Institutions, April 17th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Katie Telford, did not tell us much during her testimony on Friday. It took two hours for the committee to hear that she would not say anything.

She did tell us that whatever she knows, the Prime Minister knows as well, and she said that the Prime Minister pays very close attention to CSIS reports. Therefore, the Prime Minister has known about the allegations of Chinese election interference all along.

If he refuses to launch an inquiry, does he realize that he is sending a very clear message that he has something to hide?

[Democratic Institutions, April 17th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the House voted for an independent commission of public inquiry on Chinese interference, and that is what Canadians want too.

Rather than heeding the consensus, the Prime Minister is hiding behind his special rapporteur and good friend, David Johnston. However, Mr. Johnston is a former member of the Trudeau Foundation, which is itself in the midst of a Chinese interference scandal. That means that a former member of the Trudeau Foundation, which allegedly received money from China, is going to tell the government how to avoid Chinese influence. We cannot make this stuff up.

Does the Prime Minister realize that this undertaking has absolutely zero credibility?