House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2025, with 42% of the vote.
Questions Passed as Orders for Returns June 3rd, 2024
With regard to Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members based out of Canadian Forces Base Valcartier (CFB Valcartier), each year between 2016 and 2024: how many CAF members out of CFB Valcartier have been discharged, in total, and broken down by release category (voluntary, compulsory, medical, etc.) and by reason (service completed, misconduct, etc.)?
Mental Health and Addictions May 30th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions doubled down and said that her deadly experiment of legalizing hard drugs in British Columbia was a success. For the minister, success means a 380% increase in the number of drug-related deaths.
In 2023, the mayor of Montreal reiterated her radical request to legalize hard drugs like heroin and crack. This morning in committee, Montreal's regional director of public health very clearly said “yes” to replicating the B.C. model, even though it has been a dismal failure.
Can the minister reassure Quebeckers and tell them that she will never replicate her hard drug experiment in Montreal?
Mental Health and Addictions May 28th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, the Journal de Montréal reported that there are people doing drugs next to an elementary school in the Saint‑Henri neighbourhood of Montreal. Parents have to step over people who are shooting up in the street. They are traumatized. They are worried for their children.
Can the Prime Minister confirm that he will not accept the City of Montreal's request to legalize the use of hard drugs in public spaces?
Carbon Pricing May 27th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, we know that the minister often spends time at the university. He still has a job there. It looks like he is expecting to get a new job after the next election.
I would also remind the minister that no one in Quebec receives a compensation cheque. The excise tax, the GST and the 19¢-per-litre gas tax need to be axed for Quebeckers, since they do not get reimbursed for them. Will the minister agree to axe the federal taxes for the summer so that Quebeckers can go on vacation and pay 19¢ less per litre of gas?
Carbon Pricing May 27th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, after nine years of this Liberal government and its out-of-control spending, Quebeckers are facing a full-blown cost of living crisis and are in desperate need of relief. That is why we are calling for the elimination of federal taxes on gas to lower prices at the pump.
We need vehicles to get around during summer vacation, but instead of supporting us, the Bloc Québécois thinks everywhere is like Plateau‑Mont‑Royal and everyone can just take the bus. Will the Prime Minister agree to our request and axe the federal gas tax for the summer?
Roger Barbeau May 27th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to pay tribute to the exceptional commitment of Roger Barbeau, a citizen in my riding of Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.
An accomplished businessman in the shoe industry, Mr. Barbeau founded the first Caisse Populaire in Saint-Émile in his home in 1959. With the tireless support of his wife Aline and his sons Blaise and Gervais, he devoted much of his life to the service of his community while promoting the values that were so dear to him.
As a prominent member of the Knights of Columbus for more than 55 years, he was the embodiment of that organization's spirit of fraternity and solidarity. He was a model for us all, thanks to his compassion for the least fortunate and his commitment to the principles of charity and goodwill. He inspired those around him with his kindness, wisdom and ability to reach out to those in need.
I would like to thank Roger Barbeau for everything he has done and for everything he is. His legacy will live in our hearts forever.
Business of Supply May 23rd, 2024
Madam Speaker, I will not answer on behalf of the Quebec government, but I can say that relations between the Quebec government and indigenous people are going very well. This is the place, I think, where treaties and ways of working with indigenous communities are among the best in Canada.
Business of Supply May 23rd, 2024
Madam Speaker, what is clear for the Conservative Party is that we must respect jurisdictions. Health transfers must be made to the provinces. The provinces are the masters of health care management.
We have no place interfering in provincial business, because health and education are provincial matters. Because Quebec is a big boy or a big girl, depending on how one looks at it, Quebec is capable of managing health care. On the federal side, we transfer the funds and we do not have to interfere as the Liberals do.
Business of Supply May 23rd, 2024
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague. She confirms precisely what we have been saying: the Bloc Québécois voted for these budget appropriations, while there is an official agreement between the NDP and the Liberals. In the circumstances, it is impossible to defeat a budgetary vote.
The Bloc Québécois could have taken the time to work, study the credits and say they would not vote for them for such and such a reason, but no. These MPs voted as a bloc for each of the $500-billion items. Let them stop trying to be the adult in the room again. There was an agreement on the other side. The government could not fall, even if we voted against it. The Bloc Québécois could have stood with us and said it was against the current government's extravagant spending.
Business of Supply May 23rd, 2024
Before I begin, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with the excellent member for Carleton.
What I say in the next few minutes is not intended as a personal attack on the Bloc Québécois or its members. There are a lot of very good people in the Bloc. I want to talk about the Bloc today in more general terms.
First off, we fully agree with today's motion. That is how the Conservatives have always done things: We have always respected the provinces' areas of jurisdiction. It is part of our DNA, and we have no objections. However, we do have questions about the contradictions in the Bloc Québécois's behaviour and actions.
First, it is important to understand that the Bloc's primary motivation is separation, or Quebec sovereignty. It is in their policy platform, and they make no secret of it. Everyone knows that the Bloc wants Quebec to leave Canada.
It is also important to understand that the Bloc members were elected by about 30% of the population of Quebec. The other 70%, including my colleagues and myself, are just as much Quebeckers as the members of the Bloc. The 70% of Quebeckers who did not vote for the Bloc also have hopes and dreams for the Quebec nation, just like the Bloc does. It is time to stop playing around and always saying that the Bloc members are real Quebeckers, while members from the other parties are not. That is the message we keep getting here in Parliament.
There is another contradiction. According to the Bloc, and as the Bloc candidate who ran against me in 2021 said publicly, when a member of the Bloc gets elected, they are sitting in a foreign country's Parliament. A Bloc candidate runs for office, gets elected by maybe 30% or 40% of the people in their riding, and tells Quebeckers that they are going to represent them in a foreign country's Parliament. That is always how it has been, and it has been the same story for 30 years.
Now let me get to the most serious contradiction.
The leader of the Bloc has repeated, as his own slogan, that if something is good for Quebec, the Bloc will vote for it, and if it is not good for Quebec, the Bloc will vote against it. That is what the leader of the Bloc Québécois says publicly. As a Quebecker, I can say that that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is truly an approach focused on Quebec's main interests, on co-operation with the Canadian federation. We cannot be against that.
However, we have seen the concrete actions the Bloc has taken when voting on budgets, which are contradictory. The Bloc Québécois publicly says that it votes against all the budgets because they are no good, which is true. The Bloc members vote this way for various reasons, saying that they are against them, so people think that the Bloc Québécois votes against the Liberal government's budgets.
However, there is the important matter of budgetary appropriations. The Bloc Québécois has voted in favour of all the supplementary appropriations, totalling $500 billion, but that is something it does not boast about.
I heard the leader of the Bloc answer a question from my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent on this very topic this morning. He answered that they would not do like in the U.S. and start shutting down the government. That is how he justified approving $500 billion in additional spending. These appropriations added 109,000 public servants to the government apparatus. Among other things, these appropriations were used to give millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, for ArriveCAN.
When a scandal breaks out, the Bloc members are suddenly astonished to discover that they voted in favour of granting the money. In a public exchange, reporters asked the Bloc Québécois House leader a question, and he answered by asking whether they thought that the Bloc members had the time to study every single budget item. Is that not their job? There are 32 of them, and they have their own research teams and staff. What do they do all day? In our party, we scrutinize every budget item. That is why we vote against them most of the time, because they make no sense.
The Bloc says publicly that it votes against the budgets when, in fact, it votes in favour of all the appropriations, while claiming that it has no time to study them. What is the primary responsibility of an elected official? It is to know what they are voting for and to vote against it when it is something that makes no sense.
The leader of the Bloc Québécois often says that the Bloc members are the adults in the room, that they are the best and that they truly work for Quebeckers, yet they voted in favour of $500 billion in additional spending by this government, which, by the way, is the worst government in the history of Canada.
This government has doubled our country's debt, which means that Quebeckers' living conditions are appalling nowadays and everything is much more expensive. Inflation and the increase in interest rates and the cost of living in general, particularly the cost of housing, have skyrocketed, in large part because of this government's mismanagement. The Bloc Québécois approved this reckless spending.
As an organization, the Bloc Québécois is a left-wing, socialist party. We know that. Members of the Bloc have admitted it, have said it. How can they reconcile fiscal responsibilities with always wanting to support socialist, left-wing measures and exponential spending? They cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that they are the responsible adults in the room and then vote with their eyes closed. As the leader of the Bloc Québécois said, the Bloc members do not have time to look at that. It is difficult to vote with one's eyes closed, to vote for spending that just creates problems for Canadians today. In the House, we have done nothing to help anyone over the past nine years. No one has been helped. We just have more problems now than we did in 2015.
Take, for example, the supply vote. Since the new Bloc Québécois leader arrived in 2019, 219 votes have been considered confidence votes, such as votes on budgetary allocations or on motions similar to the one that the Conservative Party moved a month ago. The Bloc Québécois had 219 opportunities to vote against this government that it is criticizing, and we agree with those criticisms. However, instead, the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of appropriations 200 times. They did not support the non-confidence motion and they supported the government. They could have said that they had had enough, but 92% of the time they did not. They chose instead to continue to support this government's out-of-control spending.
I will give an example of this spending so that it appears in the public record. Let us take Bill C-36, appropriation act No. 4, 2022-23. The tenor of the bill is not obvious from the title. If we do not take the time to look into it, we really have no way of knowing what it is about. By way of information, it represents $20.7 billion in spending. Here is another example: Bill C-16, appropriation act No. 1, 2022-23. Our viewers will not know what I am talking about. I am talking about more than $75.483 billion in spending. There are a lot of things in this bill, like pipelines. The Bloc Québécois voted for pipelines in the north. The Bloc supported the bill, despite the fact that the member for Jonquière rails against the oil and gas industry every day in the House. The Bloc voted for it. They did not know that the bill contained anything about pipelines, because they did not read it.
Here is another example: Bill C-24, appropriation act No. 2, 2022-23. It represents $115.056 billion and change. By “change”, I mean a few hundred thousand dollars. Bill C-54, appropriation act No. 2, 2023-24, represents $108,700,157,669. These are only four examples from a long list of spending supported by the Bloc Québécois. They can say what they want. They will do a lot of things here and there and say that they are the adults and the responsible ones, but, in reality, they have supported this spendthrift government whose spending is out of control. Today we have problems, and these problems were supported by the Bloc Québécois.
Why did the Bloc Québécois support this government when the Liberals have an agreement with the NDP, which is always there to support the government, no matter what? The Bloc Québécois could have done the same thing the Conservative Party did: vote against the Liberals' nonsense and ensure that the country is truly managed effectively. The fact is that their objective is to get Quebec to separate. The Bloc's actions are meant to give them reasons to say that things are not going well in the other camp.