Pierre Nantel

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her speech. It is tremendously useful to debate these issues and get away from the overly dogmatic idea of being totally for or totally against oil. It is important to consider the realities of each side.

In my colleague's opinion, what kind of debate could we have in order to obtain information on oil production from the oil sands side?

[Taxation, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the Quebec union of municipalities is troubled about the harm caused by the federal government's reluctance to tax web giants. This week, the Minister of Finance got mixed up again. He was asked about GST, and he answered something about corporate taxation. That is troubling. Canadian businesses are struggling while multinational corporations continue to get a free pass from the government. Everyone should pay their fair share. It is just common sense.

Is this going to be like with pot? Do the Liberals have friends they want to protect?

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, May 4th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Prince Albert for his heartfelt speech. It is clear that he is an honest man who is doing a good job of representing his riding by raising concerns about what he sees as a holdup.

Everyone looked up when the member opposite asked his question about alternative ways of distributing the resource in a more solid, more liquid, or more refined form. That is exactly what a debate like today's is meant to achieve. We can all learn something new. If any other members have similar knowledge, I hope they will share it with us, because the debate on this subject is usually like the blind leading the blind.

My colleague mentioned earlier that our oil is the most environmentally friendly oil in the world. Funnily enough, we are constantly being told the opposite. I do not know how many times I have read that using steam to extract oil from sand produces waste water. I have also read that this steam is generated using natural gas and that the natural gas emissions create a massive carbon footprint.

If there are any alternatives, we should talk about them. I quite agree with him. I am thinking specifically of the work of Paul Painter, who used ionic liquids to separate sand from oil. Let us talk about alternatives before we talk about distribution and increasing extraction.

[Historic Sites and Monuments Act, May 3rd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the bottom of my heart for introducing this bill. It is also heartwarming to see a majority of MPs inclined to support it. I ask the following question with tongue firmly in cheek.

Does my colleague not think that, in a few months or years, people will see how obvious this all was and wonder why we even needed to legislate in the first place?

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, May 3rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague on his speech, his intense passion for the environment, as well his commitment in this crusade to bring awareness to the significance of the challenges we face. Honestly, I did not know that he engaged in the athleticism it takes to spend three weeks in cold water. I congratulate him. I am impressed at his unwavering convictions. I think he does a great job representing the people of his riding for whom these issues are crucial and vital.

In the House, we are having a societal debate and he is right to say that we have run out of choices, we have to identify what is hurting our planet. Obviously this is awful for a province whose economic growth is tied to developing its fossil fuels.

I would like to know whether my colleague believes that it would be a good idea to devote some energy to the task of looking into other job prospects for workers in the oil sands sector.

[Taxation, April 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, it is pathetic when the government resorts to pretending that it does not understand.

Last week, Liberal parliamentarians recommended that the government ensure that web giants collect GST, something that almost every OECD country is doing. I therefore asked the Minister of Finance whether he was going to listen to his colleagues' recommendations. I was told that the government would work with our OECD colleagues. The OECD has been recommending this course of action since 2015. We are not talking about corporate taxes, Mr. Minister of Finance. We are talking about GST.

Are you doing this on purpose or what?

[Taxation, April 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, Europe, Japan, Australia, and several other countries make web giants pay their fair share of taxes. Quebec will soon do the same and Quebec society has been asking the federal government to do so for months now.

Do you know whose name was added to that already long list today? That of the Liberal-dominated Standing Committee on International Trade. The committee just recommended that web giants be taxed and that they charge sales tax. It is high time. I get that we want to talk about taxation at the G7, but when it comes to sales tax we are the last fools to do anything about it.

What are they doing?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, April 23rd, 2018]

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

The Parliament website informs us that the two last bills that the member spoke about are Bill C-377 and Bill C-364, which are between two and four pages. He must therefore have worked hard to prepare the speech he gave today about a bill that is 556 pages long.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, April 23rd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, it seems like those two parties really rub off on each other, sometimes for the better, but more often for the worse. We were given an omnibus bill of over 500 pages, a little strategy that they liked to use. Somewhere in all this mess, there were supposed to be measures to promote gender equality. In reality, there is not a single penny in the budget allocated for that.

I would like my colleague's thoughts on that. Does he think it would have been a good idea to include concrete measures for gender equality in the budget?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, April 23rd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, my colleague is all the more convincing because he is talking so loudly. At least it is entertaining.

I am sure those watching at home must feel sorry for the Liberals because they are constantly being told that they said all kinds of things during the campaign and that they are not keeping their promises, which is true.

A year ago, at the Montreal electric vehicle show, the Minister of Transport promised to establish a strategy for the electrification of transport, but there is nothing about that in this year's budget.

Can my colleague explain why there is nothing in the new budget about the electrification of transport?