Steven Blaney

[Conservative Plan, April 22nd, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, while the pandemic is causing human and social devastation, the Liberals do not have a plan. Actually, they do have one. They plan to max out our credit card and leave future generations up to their eyeballs in debt.

We, the Conservatives, have a responsible plan to create long-term prosperity by recovering the one million jobs that have been lost. We plan to put an end to Liberal cronyism and Liberal friends lining their pockets with taxpayers' money. We plan to work with the provinces to come up with an action plan to finally address mental health issues. We plan to protect Canadians' health by creating a strategic stockpile of essential products and building the capacity to manufacture vaccines at home. Lastly, we plan to protect future generations by implementing responsible measures and balancing the budget over the next decade.

It is simple. I am saying no to Liberal excess and yes to a responsible Conservative plan that will leave no Canadian behind, now or in the future.

[Budget 2021, April 20th, 2021]

With their pre-election goodies, the Liberals are taking seniors for fools. They are dangling $500 in front of them just before the election. However, if seniors are 65, 70 or even 74 years of age, they can forget about it because it is not for them.

With record deficits, no fiscal anchor and a debt ratio that has ballooned to more than 50%, it is obvious that the Liberal credit card is going to blow up at our expense.

After a two-year wait, we were expecting far better from the Liberals, especially with the pandemic, namely real measures to stimulate our economy in a responsible manner and to get people back to work. Instead, the Liberals are creating new programs with a staggering price tag and are putting future generations further into debt. These same Liberals then talk to us about sustainable development.

Seniors deserve better, as do future generations. I can hardly wait for a Conservative government to set things right before it is too late.

[Laurentian University in Sudbury, April 14th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech by my colleague who asks us to show solidarity this evening. We are facing a crisis and unfortunately, I heard my colleague boasting and passing the buck to the provinces.

I will respect the wishes of the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons and ask my colleague a specific question about the situation we are discussing this evening. Does she agree with the proposal by the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario to take the federal funding for French-language university education that was earmarked for Laurentian University and send it to the University of Sudbury instead as soon as possible?

[Laurentian University in Sudbury, April 14th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague, with his usual passion, has shown that tonight's emergency debate on the elimination of French-language programs at Laurentian University is just the tip of the iceberg, and that it is really the decline of the French language in Canada that is extremely worrisome.

I would like to bring the debate back to the situation at Laurentian University. Apart from what he said in his speech, I would like to know whether he agrees that this is a bilingual university in an anglophone setting and, as the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, or AFO, has said, the solution must be to create a francophone institution, eventually with an indigenous component, but with francophones.

Does the member think we need to rethink the governance model and, of course, come up with a temporary solution that I am sure the minister will look into?

I would like to hear the member's thoughts on the governance model he favours for breaking Laurentian University's current impasse.

[Laurentian University in Sudbury, April 14th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for asking her question in French. She is absolutely right in saying that Laurentian University operates at the intersection of anglophone and francophone communities as well as indigenous communities, which we have not talked about yet but are an important component.

Here are my thoughts on colleague's question. Both the indigenous community and the francophone minority are at a disadvantage relative to the anglophone community, which is the dominant community, of course. Solution-wise, it would be great to have an institution that focuses on the francophone and indigenous parts of the equation, which would mean overhauling the governance model so we would have an institution created by and for francophone and indigenous communities.

[Laurentian University in Sudbury, April 14th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I agree that there was no question in my colleague from Sherbrooke's comments.

I will remind her that the Standing Committee on Official Languages is currently studying the federal government's pitiful management of the pandemic, especially from a linguistic standpoint. Her government submitted tons of documents in English only to the Standing Committee on Health, in violation of the act. Instead of patting itself on the back, the government should take a long, hard look at how it is violating the Official Languages Act and showing its contempt for communities by not meeting their number one demand, which calls for an actual modernization of the act and not a white paper that is nothing but wishful thinking and accomplishes nothing.

I would invite my colleague to urge her minister to walk the talk.

[Laurentian University in Sudbury, April 14th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.

We just heard a moving account from a member whose very important community has seen its university put on the chopping block. We also examined this very troubling situation yesterday at the Standing Committee on Official Languages.

For francophone minorities outside Quebec, linguistic institutions are the pillar, the core around which a minority community can flourish. In North America, where English is the dominant language, it is particularly important to ensure that minorities have their own institutions, even in the most remote areas of Canada. Earlier a member referred to Campus Saint-Jean, which is located in western Canada. Other examples are the Université de Moncton in Atlantic Canada, and Laurentian University, which we are talking about now.

Yesterday I had a chance to ask the Minister of Official Languages questions, and I hope she will take part in tonight's debate. She told us she was looking for solutions for Laurentian University. That was yesterday. Today I hope she has had time to think about the solutions being put forward by, for and with the francophone community, including the member of her own caucus who obviously wants to find a solution.

Yesterday the minister presented her white paper to us. This white paper was not without interest, but there was nothing concrete. For five years now, communities have been calling for the modernization of the Official Languages Act and for concrete action.

I have here a news release from the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, which joins the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario in calling on the government to intervene and ensure that the University of Sudbury is able to take over, collect the funding that Laurentian was receiving for French-language university education, and become a university by and for francophones.

There are solutions. My colleague mentioned this earlier this evening. This is a full-frontal attack on an institution that plays an important role in northern Ontario.

What we got from the minister yesterday was, unfortunately, a white paper. A white paper is all well and good, but we want concrete action. This issue needs to be addressed. We also need to address Campus Saint-Jean and the Université de Moncton, but we especially need to address what is going on at Laurentian University. That is what we can see.

We are often asked what the Conservatives think about it, and yet our commitment is clear. Even before the Laurentian University crisis, we had committed to increasing funding for francophone post-secondary education in minority communities and to creating a new funding envelope for that.

Next week, a budget will be tabled. Of course, we are still in a pandemic. In the last few years, we realized that budgets for our institutions—such as the Laurentian University—were not indexed. We asked the minister if she intended to index the funding, but our question remained unanswered.

It is still time to do it and to make sure that funds allocated to the Laurentian University to support post-secondary education in French are used only for that purpose. The AFO is calling for that.

I hope the minister will grant that request from the francophone community, so that funds earmarked for the francophone community in northern Ontario indeed are used to its benefit. Teachers and professors must be allowed to remain active, and important programs in engineering and education must be maintained. We have mentioned in particular the programs for caregivers and for women and men who assist women in giving birth.

As parliamentarians, we have the opportunity tonight to make a statement and to encourage the minister to take concrete action for the Laurentian University community. I want to mention that the government does not need to do that out of charity. Indeed, section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that the government must enforce the right to minority-language education.

The mandate letter of the present Minister of Official Languages reminds her of her duty to enhance the vitality of minority language communities, to protect their institutions and to increase bilingualism across the country. She must protect the institutions of the francophone minority and, of course, the institutions of the anglophone minority in Quebec.

We have an emergency on our hands. We do not want a white paper that might be tabled after the next election. What I would have liked the minister to do yesterday was present her bill and the concrete actions she would be taking, but instead she told us that she would be holding further consultations and that some measures would eventually be taken.

While the minister jabbers on, we are seeing real tragedies happening all over the country, and tonight we are focusing on Laurentian University in particular. That is why, in this time of great urgency, the members of the Standing Committee on Official Languages are unanimously recommending that the government live up to its obligation to provide help, as well as support, to teaching institutions nationwide that teach official languages and enhance the vitality of official language minority communities.

Tonight, we can see how badly Sudbury and all of northern Ontario have been shaken by this crisis. The minister has a responsibility and an obligation to act to support Laurentian University. I hope that she is in problem-solving mode tonight and that she will offer solutions as well as evaluate the solutions that are being put forward.

As I was saying, the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, or AFO, has proposed some very specific courses of action that I would like to share with the House, since we are having a constructive debate.

The AFO is proposing a one-year moratorium on cutting programs. We cannot necessarily react very quickly to this crisis, so there needs to be some breathing room. It is also important that the $12 million in federal and provincial funding that has already been allocated for university education be transferred as soon as possible so it can be used to retain professors and ensure that the students and community that rely on their francophone institution can maintain this connection. This is a shared responsibility between the federal and provincial governments, of course, and the AFO reminds us that the two governments demonstrated their ability to work together on the issue of Ontario's French-language university. We believe that they could do it again for Laurentian University.

This time, we want the minister to take action. I have a lot of respect for her, but she sometimes goes on partisan rants that can get a bit annoying after awhile. I am thinking here of her references to what she calls Conservative cuts.

I want to remind the minister that the program for official language minority communities was in force until 2015 and was part of the roadmap for official languages proposed by the Conservative government, the second iteration of which was developed by Bernard Lord. When the Liberals took office, the communities no longer had access to that program. They had to wait for the Université de l'Ontario français crisis before the minister finally realized that nothing was being done with the program. That is when the minister reinstated the court challenges program.

The communities do not want us to argue semantics. They want action. The minister has been in office for five years. She has the ability and the responsibility to take action, and that is what we expect in the case of Laurentian University. I believe that the Liberal member is going to speak to her personally in order to ask her to take concrete action.

[Laurentian University in Sudbury, April 14th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I extend warm greetings to my colleague from Sudbury. His speech conveyed his commitment to his community and illustrated the challenges that lie ahead.

I want him to know that I graduated from the Université de Sherbrooke, the first private university in Quebec, and I have seen how that institution has contributed to Sherbrooke's development. I certainly understand why he is so concerned about this situation. I look forward to seeing his bill so I can study it and decide where I stand.

In the meantime, we need to address the problems facing our universities. However, there are two challenges here, since we also have to think about our minority institutions. We know how important these institutions are to the vitality of communities, and the member for Sudbury is a living example of this.

I have three questions for him. First, does my colleague recognize that the unique situation of the francophone component of the university requires special attention, and does he recognize the federal government's constitutional responsibilities, particularly under the Official Languages Act and section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

Second, could he talk about his vision with respect to the solutions proposed by the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, specifically, the moratorium? Also, does he think there could be a francophone identity at the University of Sudbury?

Lastly, I would like him to comment on the fact that the university's satellite colleges were shut down two weeks ago, and that does not make any sense. I would like him to comment on all of that.

[Laurentian University in Sudbury, April 14th, 2021]

I am sorry, Madam Speaker.

[Laurentian University in Sudbury, April 14th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

Mr. Boulerice, do you agree with me that even though tonight's emergency debate is about the critical condition and major financial problems that Laurentian University is going through, it is also about the French language being in crisis, as well as the decline of second-language educational institutions and our francophone institutions?

You talked about the Université de Moncton and the University of Alberta's Campus Saint-Jean. Today, we are discussing Laurentian University. Is there not a crisis in the francophone community? The budget is being tabled next week, and action could be taken. However, instead of acting now, Liberals are proposing—