Alain Therrien

[Democratic Institutions, June 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, it is important. The parties need to take the high road. There are members among us who are knowingly or naively working for other countries. That is not nothing. Do they realize how serious that is?

I am appealing to the Prime Minister and the leaders of the major political parties. If anyone sitting here with us is under foreign influence instead of the influence of their constituents, they have no business being here and they must leave.

What is the government doing to make sure that happens?

[Democratic Institutions, June 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the tentacles of foreign interference have extended into the House. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians has confirmed that members of Parliament are working under the influence of foreign powers in the very heart of our democracy.

The committee is bound to secrecy. Political parties are not bound to secrecy, and they are certainly not forbidden from taking action. I do not want to hear a list of what the government has done in the past to deal with foreign interference. Obviously, that has not worked.

What is the government going to do today?

[Official Languages, June 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to French, the Liberals are a horror show.

It starts with the Prime Minister, who wanted to make Gatineau bilingual. Then there is the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, who thinks that people who worry about the decline of French are being extreme and are full of the s-word. Next, there is the member for Mount Royal, who said that it was a disgrace to apply Bill 101 to federally regulated businesses. On top of that, there is the member for Saint-Laurent, who thinks that Bill 96 will prevent anglophones from getting care. It is nonsense.

Why are the Liberals systematically incapable of talking about the French language without going off the rails?

[Official Languages, June 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, although the member for Alfred-Pellan has been criticized for suggesting the idea of promoting English as an official language of Quebec, he is not the first Liberal MP to come up with it.

In fact, none other than the Prime Minister himself raised the matter back in 2016. At the time, he was objecting to the prospect of the city of Ottawa being designated bilingual because Gatineau, right next door in Quebec, was a unilingual French-language city. He opposed bilingualism for Franco-Ontarians unless Quebec stepped up and made English an official language. In fact, he had to apologize and admitted that he was being cheeky.

Will he ask the member to do the same?

[Health, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal members from the Outaouais are right. There is not enough money for health care in the Outaouais, but they have no one to blame but themselves. There is not enough money on the north shore. There is not enough money for Quebec as a whole. That is their fault. They voted for it. They did not speak out against federal underfunding of health care. They did not go against their boss, who refused to increase health transfers. They did not stand up for citizens who were told to go to the private sector for treatment. They were too busy looking for jobs as ministers and chairs. Now they are waking up. They need to look in the mirror. Should these visionaries really be lecturing people?

[Health, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, and then there was light. The Liberals from the Outaouais have finally clued in to the fact that the health care system is in crisis. They have written to Quebec asking for more money for health care. Where were these visionaries when Quebec was warning of a $28-billion annual shortfall? Where were they when the Prime Minister, their boss, was fighting the provinces to not increase transfers by a single penny? Where were they when their boss imposed a cut-rate agreement on Quebec? Why did those visionaries personally vote against our motion for a sustainable increase in health care funding? The Liberals have been underfunding health care since 2015. Are they at least a little embarrassed about that?

[Privilege, May 28th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, this is an important debate on the fate of the Speaker, which is a must in a democracy like ours. The Liberal Party clearly wants to muzzle Parliament on this issue. That is really something else.

We have a Speaker who is rewriting the history books. Instead of muzzling Parliament, the government might win more respect from everyone here if it kindly asked the Speaker to simply step down, as the vast majority of people here think he should.

[Privilege, May 27th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, my colleague knows the answer.

This behaviour is unacceptable. There is no doubt in my mind that if this person were in the Quebec National Assembly, they would have had to resign. There are others who have had to resign for lesser errors.

However, I do not want to imply that the National Assembly is better than the House of Commons, and I say that with all due respect. What I am saying is that what happens in the National Assembly should also happen here. I still have confidence that the House will realize that this Speaker can no longer continue in his position and that the House of Commons deserves better.

[Privilege, May 27th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I understand my colleague's question, but he is the one who did not understand my answer. I will explain again.

The Speaker of the House must take care to remain neutral. It is part of his job. He must guard his neutrality jealously, because it is one of the two pillars of his position. He has to keep an eye on everything involving himself and his events. That is his job. No one should ever have reason to think that he is being partisan. He must be as pure as the driven snow.

He organized an event to be held in June. The Liberal Party of Canada came streaming in and sent out a message to the public about a Speaker of the House event, while also bashing the Conservative Party. It took six days for the Speaker to clue in. How come our party and plenty of other parties clued in, but it took him six days? It is part of his job, after all.

He has proven time and time again that he is not neutral and that he lacks judgment. I like him a lot, I think he is nice, but unfortunately, this afternoon, I must add that he is incompetent.

What more will it take?

[Privilege, May 27th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the video is no minor error. He is dressed in the Speaker's robes, he is talking to his buddy and he is being filmed in his office. While it may seem harmless, we can agree this was his first mistake.

However, when he went to see MNA André Fortin, a member of the Liberal Party of Quebec, was he kidnapped in the night and taken to a back room for the photo? When he went to Washington for a partisan meeting, the same thing happened again. Did he get lost looking for his car keys and somehow end up there? Come on.

For six days, no one knew what was going on. The Speaker and his team were in their office, counting their fingers and toes, oblivious that a text bashing the Conservative Party of Canada had been written for the Speaker's event. Did no one clue in?

Mistakes can happen, but eventually it gets to be too much.