Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to take part in the debate on the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne.
As whip, I have been deeply involved in all the negotiations to keep Parliament up and running during the pandemic. Parliamentary committees were resuming their full range of activities and four committees were doing important work on the WE scandal when the government decided to prorogue and hit Parliament's off switch, so to speak, to put the brakes on that work because it was the third time an ethics scandal was cramping the government's style.
As a result, we awaited the Speech from the Throne. We wondered what would happen next and how the government would position itself to respond to the pandemic, not to mention all the challenges coming our way after the pandemic. How would the government restart the economy? How would it do a better job of helping people with serious problems? We had high expectations.
Yesterday I was in the House all day and I listened to every speech by every parliamentarian, especially the speeches from the government members. When I was listening to the Prime Minister I was shocked, surprised and upset to see the arrogance, contempt and lack of respect the government has for the provinces.
I felt like I was truly in the right place and that I had truly chosen the right party to represent Quebec because the Bloc Québécois is a party that wants Quebec to be the master of its own destiny. Today what we are seeing and hearing is a contemptuous government that is telling Quebec that it is not up to the task, that it is unable to manage its public services and health care, and that funding would be conditional on certain actions.
The federal government is telling Quebec to provide the support and home care and it will pay for it, otherwise there will be no funding. A Canada-wide standard on long-term care facilities is being brought in and Quebec is expected to comply with it or there will be no funding. We call that blackmail, contempt and arrogance. I cannot support this and neither can many other people.
Before becoming an MP, I was a manager in the Quebec public health network, so this is in my wheelhouse. I managed public housing. I managed housing spaces for seniors in public facilities. I can say for sure that if you speak to anyone in Quebec who manages CHSLD spaces, whether intermediate resources or family-based resources for seniors, if you ask anyone, whether a manager, caretaker or a recreation leader, no one would say that the solution to the problem in long-term care centres is Canada-wide standards. No one would say that. No one would even think that.
Everyone in Quebec knows what it will take. It will take more staff, more nurses, more PSWs, more maintenance staff and more nursing assistants. That can be achieved only when we have the financial resources to pay consistent, decent salaries.
My colleague from Joliette was clear, as were the provinces, before the throne speech. Health transfers must be able to meet the provinces' needs. The president of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec does not call the Prime Minister of Canada to ask for a solution when nurses are exhausted. She calls the Premier of Quebec. The premier tries to do the best he can, with the tools, means and money he has available, but it is not enough. Quebec needs increased transfers on an ongoing basis.
I must admit that yesterday I was insulted to hear the government use the fact that the army came into just a few long-term care homes to justify why it wants to fund specific actions, projects or programs. I want to point out that back home in the Montérégie-Ouest CISSS, we did not have any deadly outbreaks or any soldiers in our long-term care homes.
This approach of funding by program is nothing but mumbo-jumbo. One could just as well call it “health and social services”. This approach dictates what to do, how to do it and what the standards are. Anyone who goes along with that gets a cheque.
It is disrespectful to treat the provinces in this way. Each province has its own way of doing things, its own reality and knows how to meet the health needs of its clientele. Since it is on the ground providing services, it knows it is doing its utmost given the lack of tools and the funding that should be coming. Health Canada is already having difficulty doing what it has to do. Therefore, I believe that we should let the provinces do their job and meet the needs of their citizens based on their own realities, as the premiers have requested. In health care, a one-size-fits-all system does not work across Canada. As we are seeing, we are in the midst of a pandemic and each province has a different experience of the crisis. This also applies to the distribution and provision of services.
I am a little emotional when talking about it because this confirms for me my sovereignist convictions. In life, when things are going well for me and my team, I rarely agree to take orders from someone who knows nothing about what I am good at.
Quebec has the tools, the brains and the best practices. For anyone who does not know, Quebec has long recognized aging in place as the best practice. We know that when seniors stay at home longer, they get sick less, they are better supported, and it costs less. Housing them in public institutions is expensive. We know all that, but we need financial resources to help our seniors stay at home. They want and need to age in their homes, not in a public institution.
We do not need a Prime Minister who announces that he is going to give us money, but only if we spend it on aging in place. We do not need him to tell us that, because it is an insult. I am thinking of my colleagues who do not have time to watch my speech today because they are busy meeting needs on the ground. They are appalled to hear that this government's magic solution is to impose Canada-wide standards on us. The same thing goes for mental health and child care. It is an insult, and I take it very personally.
Curiously enough, this proves that the federal government considers the provinces to be its subjects. It tells them that it will decide when they get money and what they get to spend it on. Otherwise, they get nothing.
How long did it take to negotiate the social housing agreement between Quebec and Ottawa? Three years.
All of the social measures set out in the throne speech and the federal government's encroachments on provincial jurisdictions will take years to negotiate with Quebec. No Quebec premier, regardless of which party is in power in the Quebec National Assembly, whether it be Liberal, CAQ, Québec Solidaire or PQ, will let anyone tell them what to do. No premier will agree for the funding to be subject to specific conditions that infringe on Quebec's jurisdiction.
That means that the measures we are seeing in the throne speech are all hot air. There is nothing there that can be accomplished in the short term, even though the situation is urgent and even though there are things that could have been and could still be done, things that the federal government is not doing.
Businesses in my riding are calling me about the Canada emergency business account. They cannot get in touch with Export Development Canada. They wait for days and days for someone to call them back. They have called up to three times, applied online three times and still do not have an answer. We got a memo from the minister's office that said that the EDC is completely overwhelmed and that the response time is five to six days. However, if business owners do not answer when the EDC calls, then they end up back in the queue and have to wait another five or six days. Is that how the government is restarting the economy and supporting our businesses?
The ball is in the government's court. It is the government's responsibility, but it is not implementing the measures needed to support our SMEs, and that is serious.
The same is true when it comes to immigration. People are are waiting for their work permits and their sponsorships, because the immigration department is completely dysfunctional.
