Joël Godin

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, October 31st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I appreciated my colleague's comments.

At the beginning of her speech, she said I needed a history lesson. However, if I need a history lesson, perhaps she needs one in socio-demographic phenomenon, and perhaps she needs to brush up on her economics. When the Conservative government decided to raise the age of retirement from 65 to 67, a measure that had been spread out over several years, it was about planning for the future.

Now the Liberal government is restoring the retirement age to 65, but it is beginning to realize that it does not have enough money, so it is introducing a carbon tax and raising CPP premiums.

Can my colleague clarify how she sees this? I genuinely do not understand the direction this government is taking, while its members attack me and say I need a history lesson.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, October 31st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I promise to address my remarks to you.

I would like to thank my excellent colleague from Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix for her comments.

As fathers, we have a family budget. All things being equal, if we spend $40,000 more than we have, and if we have no plan to balance the budget, what happens? Bankruptcy. The country will probably not go bankrupt, but it will lose its rating, which will result in investment instability. Nobody will want to invest here anymore. Small businesses are nervous, so they will keep their money in their pockets. That is the threat hanging over Canadians' heads.

On this Halloween night, I hope the Minister of Finance is not dressed up as a ghost. I hope he is working on tomorrow's economic update. I would ask him to take things more seriously and be more responsible, and I would like him to make job creation a priority for Canada's small businesses.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, October 31st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I thank my excellent colleague from Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia for the good question.

What I want to say about our record over the past 10 years is that it was a successful one. We left the house in order. We left a $2.9-billion surplus.

It is being said that the economy has stalled, and it is not the Conservative Party, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois, the future Liberal, or backbenchers who are saying it. Do my colleagues know who is saying that? It is the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, and the Bank of Canada. They have said that, right now, Canada is a difficult place to invest. The situation is fragile.

It is not complicated. When you make a personal budget—

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, October 31st, 2016]

I thank my colleague, Madam Speaker.

Let us talk about families. The Liberals say they want to help families. Some help. They took away the tax credit for kids who participate in sports. They would rather parents keep their kids inactive at home. Their thinking, their beliefs, their policies are just unbelievable.

These are artists, people, kids whose talent we want to develop. As a father, I want my son to play hockey and I want my daughter to dance, but the credit is gone. How is the government going to support Canadians and give them the tools to help them motivate their children to play sports and take dance classes? The Liberals took the credit away. What a great way to motivate kids. What vision.

The Minister of Finance was in such a hurry to help our Canadian families that he introduced a program to tell Canadian families hoping to buy their first house that they cannot do so right away and will have to keep working hard, trust the Liberals, and save more so they can maybe buy a house someday.

This is preventing young families from achieving their life goals and from dreaming. When a society stops dreaming, it means it is suffocating. This measure is unacceptable. The government introduced this measure because there was a problem in urban centres like Toronto and Vancouver. I have a great deal of respect for our big cities like Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. I have no problem with them, but the Liberals need to stop choking our regions and start taking care of families.

This government is currently telling Canadian families that they need to be careful with their budgets, not waste money, and be responsible. Meanwhile, the same government is currently wasting taxpayers' money. It is spending $44 billion. Experts estimate the deficit will be about $40 billion, and there was about $2.9 billion to $3 billion to begin with. That adds up to $43 billion. Sorry, I was off by $1 billion, but that is no big deal, because according to the Liberals, that is only 30¢ these days. What they are doing is unacceptable. They lecture Canadians, but then spend themselves. Where is their credibility?

I was silent for the past few seconds on purpose. Silence can speak volumes and I am speechless. This government is inconsistent, and it has no vision and no plan. It wastes and borrows money recklessly and then asks people in our regions and Canadian families to tighten their belts.

In closing, I am going to jump ahead two pages and conclude with an acrostic of the word “Liberal”:

Lacking a plan and vision, this government spends recklessly.
It is irresponsible and has the same roots as the party caught with both hands in the cookie jar.
Beguiling, all this smooth talk makes him just “in” right now, but as the saying goes, he is all talk and no action.
Election promises made to Canadians have been forgotten by this smooth talker. In my book, honesty went out the window with nanny-gate.
Reality is the world the rest of us live in, while they plough ahead in the name of investment supposedly for the future of our children and grandchildren. I would say they are taking on debt at the expense of future generations.
At this rate, I can tell the House that in four years, the deficit will be $160 billion.
Loco Locass should sing their famous song Libérez-nous des libéraux to protect our country from the catastrophe that awaits us under the federal Liberals. There are three more years to go.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, October 31st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, today I join my voice to that of my colleagues as we continue our dutiful work of adequately informing Canadians on Bill C-29, which seeks to implement the series of budgetary measures and tax changes announced in budget 2016, tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016. In so doing, we want to present Canadian taxpayers with the real, alarming, and absolutely catastrophic economic situation the Liberal government has willingly and irresponsibly put us Canadians in.

It is unbelievable that after being in power one year, this government has spent the Conservative government's surplus, which was $2.9 billion in March 2016. The Liberals lied to all voters of this beautiful country when it told them that, if they voted for the Liberal Party of Canada, they would be choosing a government that would run a slight deficit of $10 billion in the first year and that in four years it would balance the budget. Today, October 31, 2016, that is a lie. According to its budget for year one, the government expects to end the fiscal year in March with a deficit that is not the same, not double, but triple the deficit forecast in the March 2016 budget. That is huge — about $30 billion. The experts, whom I trust much more than this government, are forecasting a deficit of between $34 billion and $40 billion.

Our Prime Minister said that he has no idea of just how big the deficit is going to be. He is the prime minister of one of the most beautiful countries in the world, Canada, and he does not know when the wasteful spending will stop. I hope members will realize that that is irresponsible.

Tomorrow is All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, and the Minister of Finance is going to unveil his economic update. Will he resurrect valiant Canadians of generations past, the ones that built our beautiful country? Will he tell them that the Liberal government is destroying Canada, this beautiful country that our dearly departed built by the sweat of their brow? Stay tuned.

For several months this government has been boasting of having put in place the largest infrastructure program to help our businesses create jobs. Today, we have a 7% unemployment rate. Let us ask them the question. What was the unemployment rate last year when the Conservatives were in power? It was 7%. What is the supposed benefit of the astronomical cost of the infrastructure program? There is none. It is unacceptable to make people believe that they are creating jobs.

The Liberals doubled the size of the summer jobs program last summer. They poured twice as much money into the program. They have plenty of money; they print the stuff. What happened? The unemployment rate is the same as last year. If they had not doubled the budget for the summer jobs program, what would have happened? Quite simply, unemployment would have gone up. I am not an economist, a tax expert, or a numbers expert, but I am a common sense expert, which is why my constituents voted for me.

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, October 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, as an aside, my esteemed colleague's French is very good. I congratulate him and very much appreciate that he is speaking French. We are proud to live in a bilingual country here in Canada.

Speaking of comprehensive criteria and application packages, I have here a list of the various committees and municipalities. I have one in particular in which all the criteria were met: criminal, medical, and security. From what I understood from his response, this means that we should have an answer very soon. I therefore invite the minister to go ahead and let the committee know in the coming days.

My hon. colleague mentioned how honourably Canadians responded to this crisis. We must encourage Canadians' humanitarian qualities. We must support them. I find it unacceptable that the minister has said that it is because of the generosity of Canadians that his department is swamped. Tonight I learned that he has assigned additional staff to deal with this. That is good. Now, when will be able to respond to our generous—

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, October 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, this evening, I was hoping to speak to the Minister of Immigration, but I see his parliamentary secretary will be representing him. I am therefore very pleased to speak to the member for Parkdale—High Park, and I thank him for being here this evening.

I would follow up with him on the arrival of refugee families. Various communities in my riding have been awaiting their arrival since January 2016. I would like to remind the minister that, in my riding of Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, community groups responded to the government's call for assistance and mobilized to properly prepare for the arrival of refugee families.

Sponsoring committees were set up in Pont-Rouge, Saint-Ubalde, Saint-Basile, Donnacona, Portneuf, and Cap-Santé. Many generous people gave of their precious time and worked long and hard to raise a significant amount of money in order to be able to absorb the cost of housing the refugee families for a year. That was a government requirement.

In one case, people rented a house in February and made the necessary arrangements so that the home would be ready when a young family arrived. At the time, that family had a 20-week-old baby. By now, that baby will be needing a whole new wardrobe.

These people worked extremely hard to collect money and, unfortunately, have had to give these items to other families in the community and purchase new ones. It is unfortunate because the sponsorship groups are impacted by this government's inaction, as shown in this example.

This government has been in power for more than one year. During the last election campaign, it had a sense of urgency with respect to bringing a large number of refugees to Canada. We remember little Aylan, whose photo made headlines around the world. The NDP and the Liberals pounced on it as though it were a good news story. It was so urgent that it is no longer on the government's to-do list. The government failed the community groups that were mobilized. This government abandoned the honest people in our regions after the October 2015 election. That is another broken promise.

Last spring, I asked the Minister of Immigration many times, in writing and also during statements and question period in the House, why he did not show any empathy and why he was not keeping his promise to ensure that refugee families were brought to Canada. Sponsors had been anxiously waiting for them to arrive, not just in my riding, but across Quebec and Canada.

The response to the many inquiries by my office to that of the Minister of Immigration is always the same: we are working on a plan to try to continue bringing more refugees to Canada, but we do not have any arrival dates; things are proceeding, but given the nature of the file, everything is confidential.

The minister even criticized Canadians for being too generous.

Therefore, I am asking the government to expedite the process and to give a clear answer: will the refugees be brought in, yes or no? If yes, when?

It is unacceptable that we are given that kind of answer and that Canadians are being blamed for their generosity.

[National Defence, October 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, earlier, the Prime Minister talked about looking into it, so let me try again. Thousands of Quebeckers watched J.E. on TVA yesterday. The program told the story of Canadian veterans who were discriminated against because they were homosexual.

The Prime Minister received a letter from former Canadian Forces member Lucie Laperle, a resident of my riding, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, on March 21, but there has been no response from the Prime Minister. Seven months have gone by.

Why has the Prime Minister not replied to this veteran?

[Canada Pension Plan, October 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague whom I have the privilege of working with to represent the Quebec City region. My colleague is from a Quebec City riding. I do not want to cause any confusion. There is the riding of Québec, Quebec City, and the Province of Quebec. I want to thank my colleague for the question.

We are drowning in broken promises. Those members over there were elected on their promises. They fooled environmentalists, they fooled economists, and they fooled families. The only plan they have, and I dare not say it in the House, is a plan for something down the road that we will discuss when a certain bill comes before us in the spring. That is the only plan they have. That is not reassuring for the Canadian families who are working so hard every day to earn money.

I hope they will be given the chance to do what they want with the money they save. Give them the tools to do more. If they do more, there will be more and that will allow us to provide better social programs to Canadians.

[Canada Pension Plan, October 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question.

I have to say that I simply do not feel secure with the government across the way. I do not believe in the current government's economic strength. I am afraid. I do not trust it. It is putting a plan in place that looks 40 years into the future, when we need to live in today's reality.

Today's seniors deserve to be properly treated. We worked very hard on that, and we will continue to do so. I encourage the Liberal government to do the same thing.