Pierre-Luc Dusseault

[Excise Tax Act, November 2nd, 2017]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-383, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (psychotherapeutic services).

Mr. Speaker, today I have the honour to introduce my private member's bill, which would amend the Excise Tax Act in order to exempt psychotherapeutic services delivered by a psychotherapist from the goods and services tax.

Once passed, this bill will ensure that psychotherapists are treated the same as their fellow practitioners in other health care fields who do the same kind of work and who are exempt from the excise tax.

I urge the government to get behind this very simple but very necessary bill to rectify this blatant tax inequality. The government says that Canadians' mental health is a priority, so this is an opportunity to do something good for Canadians' mental health and for tax fairness in Canada too.

I hope that the government will get behind this bill. I am prepared to give the Minister of Finance my bill if he wants to include it in his next budget implementation bill. I would be pleased to provide him with a copy of the bill.

I am grateful to the people who are working on this issue and who have been calling for tax fairness for psychotherapists for a very long time.

(Motion deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Cannabis Act, November 1st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I am a bit surprised to hear my colleague's comments.

The health problems associated with the use of marijuana are very real and have been documented. My colleague mentioned that. The same is true of alcohol and tobacco, whose effects have also been documented . However, we have never heard the Conservatives saying that the use of alcohol and tobacco should be made a criminal offence.

I have a very clear question. What does my colleague think would be the best strategy for effectively meeting the objective of reducing marijuana use?

[Cannabis Act, November 1st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech in the context of this debate. I would like to talk about how the government has treated the provinces throughout the marijuana legalization process.

Does my colleague think that the provinces' reaction to his government's marijuana legalization agenda and the burden they will have to bear in terms of regulation, distribution networks, and costs to the health care system are appropriate?

Does he think the government is going in the right direction? What does he think is the best way to resolve this situation, which the provinces see as problematic?

Here in Ottawa, we are amending the Criminal Code, but the provinces feel that it is all moving too quickly and that they will not have enough money to deal with the tremendous burden being downloaded onto them.

[Cannabis Act, November 1st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and for his knowledge on this matter.

He was very involved in the study of this so-called legalization of marijuana bill, if I can call it that. My colleague mentioned that the possession of more than 30 grams of marijuana will be an offence under the Criminal Code, and that anyone in possession of more than the limit set by the government will be liable to imprisonment. This is the equivalent of saying that being in possession of more than 100 litres of alcohol is a crime. Fortunately, this topic is not being discussed here, since we do not want to go back to prohibition days.

I would like to know whether the government plans on fixing this flaw at a later date and to truly legalize marijuana.

Does my colleague think that marijuana is truly being legalized, when there is still a Criminal Code offence for marijuana possession?

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

I have a question for him about the air passengers' bill of rights, which does not really amount to much in the legislation. It is not even described in the bill. We know almost nothing about it. It will be determined later by the Minister of Transport when he decides to publish regulations on the matter.

What does my colleague think of the government's boasting about its much-discussed air passengers' bill of rights in light of the empty shell that we ended up with? We have no assurance that this bill of rights will actually protect Canadian consumers.

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments.

The Lac-Mégantic derailment is before the court in Sherbrooke. This criminal trial against three employees of MMA, the owner of the railway at the time, is bringing the railway safety management system's flaws to the fore. One of those flaws is that employees report any problems they see with equipment to their superiors within the company. In the case of MMA, the major problem was that one of the heads of the company failed to keep a locomotive that he knew had mechanical problems off the rails the night of July 5 to 6, the night of the tragedy.

Does my colleague think that the bill before us addresses the serious problem of self-reporting and fixes the safety management system that trusts companies to identify and correct problems themselves? Does he believe the bill will fix this clearly problematic situation?

[Canadian Heritage, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is not listening at all. It is simple. The government kept members of the advisory committee in the dark about the negotiations and agreement with Netflix. The committee never discussed this agreement.

I imagine that the government must have been afraid of hearing that it was the worst idea in the world for our cultural sovereignty and for tax fairness in Canada. The experts on this committee have been clear: the Internet giant must be subject to the same rules as Canadian companies and it should not get a free pass. It is simple.

Why did the Prime Minister create an advisory committee and conduct consultations if he just keeps ignoring them?

[Criminal Code, October 24th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I was looking forward to asking one of my Conservative colleagues a question about their rationale for opposing the legalization of marijuana.

My question is quite simple, and will only take a few seconds. Based on their rationale for prohibiting marijuana, I am wondering if we can expect that the Conservatives will again be calling for the prohibition of alcohol in the next election.

Are we to understand from my Conservative colleagues' speeches that alcohol will soon be prohibited in Canada?

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his contribution to this debate. While I do respect him, I am disappointed that he does not see how important this ethical issue is. He wants to talk numbers, and he is so excited about them that he is blind to the importance of ethical issues to our society, our democracy, and the House of Commons.

He repeatedly said that we could have talked about this or that other thing today. He seems to think the question before us and ethical issues in general are trivial matters. In his opinion, a minister who pockets thousands of dollars a month through a company governed by laws the minister himself introduces, is of no importance to Canadians and is merely a distraction.

I would like my colleague to at least acknowledge that ethical issues are important to our society, particularly when it comes to ministers and public office holders, who make decisions every day and must be held to the highest ethical standards. Can he at least talk about how important he thinks that is?

I would also like to know what he thinks of the fact that the minister misled his own caucus, the House of Commons, and Canadians about the blind trust.

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

I thank my colleague for his question about what my constituents think and want.

Of course my constituents were pleased to hear that the government is finally going to keep its solemn promise to lower the small business tax rate to 9%. It is about time. The government has already wasted two years in which it could have made good on that promise. It dragged its feet. The small business tax rate was already set to drop under legislation passed by the Conservatives in 2015. It was set to drop to 9% in 2017. However, it is now 2017 and the tax rate is still at 10.5%. Business owners are obviously frustrated about this because the Liberals made a solemn promise. They are halfway through their term in office and they have to decide whether they will keep that promise.

My colleague seemed to imply in his question that there is no cause for concern regarding the finance minister's situation, but that is not so. Small business owners in my community are telling me how out of touch the Prime Minister and the finance minister are with the reality of SMEs. The Prime Minister and the finance minister do not seem to realize what an SME is or what everyday life is like for SMEs. That is what I am hearing. The Prime Minister and the finance minister are out of touch and simply do not understand. That is why they are making mistakes. The tax reform has been a fiasco because they do not know what an SME is. They do not understand. That is what I am hearing from my constituents.