Xavier Barsalou-Duval

[Committees of the House, October 26th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, to answer my colleague's question, I would say that they are in real trouble at the bank. They are really in trouble. I think that they are in such bad shape that there is no way the Canada Infrastructure Bank is going to recover. What my colleague is describing is a bit like the image we have seen.

We see the Liberals giving contracts to Liberal insiders, and they are trying to create programs for Liberal insiders, as we saw with the WE Charity and the infamous McKinsey.

This does not inspire confidence in anyone. I think the best thing would be to start from scratch.

[Committees of the House, October 26th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question, because it gives me an opportunity to respond to an argument he made in his response to a question asked by my colleague after his speech. He said that the Bloc Québécois sees the federal government as an ATM and that we want it to hand over the money without any sense of accountability.

It is an interesting image. It is pretty cute. It is a nice metaphor, I will give him that. The question we have to ask, however, is who puts the money inside the ATM. Well, it is all of us, with our taxes, who fill up the federal ATM. It makes sense to want more control over the spending or our tax money instead of the federal government imposing its own priorities, which differ from ours.

[Committees of the House, October 26th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, today we are debating the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities' report on the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I am actually surprised that we are debating this today, because the committee released its report on the Canada Infrastructure Bank in May 2022, and here it is, fall 2023. It was tabled quite a while ago, and we had the opportunity to debate it well before now.

That said, there may be one thing worth talking about, and that is the recommendation in the report. That may be one of the reasons the Conservatives wanted to have this debate. In many cases, committees produce reports, study issues and make a number of recommendations. In this case, the report on the Canada Infrastructure Bank contained a single recommendation.

I would like to take this opportunity to mention that the Liberal member for Winnipeg North, who spoke before me and who speaks very regularly in the House, does not seem to have bothered to read the committee's report before giving his speech. He said that the Conservatives were against it, and he is right. However, he also said that the other parties should listen to him before taking a position. Perhaps he did not know that the other parties had already taken a position. If there was a committee report, it is because the parties took a position. If there were any recommendations from the committee, it is because the various parties took a position on this issue.

What I can say is that we produced a strong majority report and that the majority agreed on the only recommendation, which was to abolish the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Votes are secret; they are held in camera. How could we get a majority if the government disagreed? It is probably because all the other parties voted in favour of the recommendation. When the report was produced, everyone agreed that it was necessary to abolish the Canada Infrastructure Bank.

To gain a better understanding of what the Canada Infrastructure Bank is and of its raison d'être from the Quebec perspective, we looked at what cities, provinces and the federal government own, respectively, in terms of infrastructure in Canada. We wondered what role the federal government plays when it comes to infrastructure. In short, 98% of infrastructure does not belong to the federal government. Only 2% of infrastructure belongs to the federal level.

Why, then, is the federal government getting involved in matters of infrastructure? There is a fundamental problem here. Some $35 billion has been invested in the bank, but it is not up to the federal government to decide or to dictate to cities and provinces how they should manage their infrastructure, especially since it owns only 2% of infrastructure. It is our cities and our governments, including the Quebec government, that are in charge of infrastructure, so that is where the money should be going. Because of this basic principle, we thought it made no sense to support a federal infrastructure bank, which is ultimately a blatant intrusion in areas of jurisdiction that are not its own.

Nearly all of the witnesses were very critical of the infrastructure bank. The Liberal member who spoke earlier may not be aware of this, but I did not hear many witnesses praising the Canada Infrastructure Bank. In fact, I cannot name even one.

Perhaps the member knows this, because he has been in politics for several years now, but I want to mention that the Canada Infrastructure Bank was part of the Liberals' 2015 election platform. The Liberals could therefore say that they ran for election and put in place what was in their platform. I would like to take that one step further, however, and specify that the infrastructure bank that was put in place and the infrastructure bank that was in their election platform are a bit different.

On page 15 of the 2015 platform, it says that the Canada Infrastructure Bank would provide municipalities with lower interest rates on loans related to the construction of infrastructure and housing. That is interesting because we are talking about the housing crisis right now. However, we would be searching for a long time to find the word “housing” in the documents of today's infrastructure bank, because it is not there. As for the municipalities, the infrastructure bank also does not finance municipal projects at low rates. The Canada Infrastructure Bank's direction has changed over time.

After it took office, the Liberal government decided to set up the Advisory Council on Economic Growth to provide guidance on how to generate more economic growth in Canada. The advisory council was chaired by none other than Dominic Barton, who is known to be a close friend of the Prime Minister. We know that the Prime Minister likes to appoint friends to key posts, as we saw when he endorsed his buddies from WE Charity. I will come back to that later.

During his career, Mr. Barton has also held other positions. It is worth mentioning that he was head of McKinsey. It is also worth mentioning that the Advisory Council on Economic Growth looked into the idea of an infrastructure bank. In fact, that was one of its main recommendations in its first report.

Let us talk a little more about how the advisory council saw the infrastructure bank. I mentioned that Mr. Barton was chair of the Advisory Council on Economic Growth and that he also headed up McKinsey. I should also note that Mr. Barton surrounded himself with several people, including Michael Sabia, who would later go on to play a role at the infrastructure bank.

A board needs a secretariat, people to do the real work, to take notes and keep things running. However, this particular secretariat was not made up of federal officials. It was McKinsey that provided the employees to work on the advisory council's files on a volunteer basis. It was the McKinsey employees who supplied the discussion papers, who took notes on the discussions and who kept the secretariat running.

In committee, Mr. Sabia told us this about the role of the secretariat led by the McKinsey employees:

[McKinsey] essentially act[s] as a secretariat, on a volunteer basis. The concepts and suggestions came from the board members. As you know, an advisory board needs a secretariat, and McKinsey played that role. So they have been very involved in our reports and our deliberations.

Let us not forget that the McKinsey people were working on a volunteer basis. When he came to testify in committee, I asked Mr. Barton whether these people were volunteering for the government or for McKinsey. I asked him whether these people were paid. He said that they were paid by McKinsey, not by the federal government. However, the report was for the federal government. At the end of the day, they were offering pro bono services while being funded by McKinsey.

Was that work truly pro bono? Could it really be argued that McKinsey had no interest in the matter? For example, did it not have an influence over the direction the government took in terms of future economic growth?

The advisory council was designed to advise the government on economic growth, and it was McKinsey's people who had an opportunity to exert their influence. That is my conclusion, because when looking at the now notorious first report advocating for a Canadian infrastructure development bank, it is clear that they are no longer advocating for the 2015 version of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, but rather an infrastructure bank that takes public money and uses it to benefit the private sector, large multinationals and investment funds. They want us to bring the infrastructure projects to them. They say they will finance them. Basically, they want these big funds to participate so their money is poured into our infrastructure.

Clearly this idea has evolved quite a bit from the original one. It is interesting to see this change of direction. Whether we like it or not, the McKinsey people sort of steered the advisory council in that direction. Could it be that the McKinsey employees knew people who got contracts or money as a result? Was it their area of expertise? I think a lot of people already know the answer to that question.

Practically the only difference I saw between the version promoted by the Advisory Council on Economic Growth and the Government of Canada's version was $5 billion. The Advisory Council on Economic Growth recommended an infrastructure bank funded with $40 billion, whereas the government created one funded with $35 billion. Otherwise, they are almost identical.

Led by Mr. Barton, what the Advisory Council on Economic Growth proposed was quickly implemented. In fact, about a month after that was tabled, we were already reading federal government documents that referred to a future infrastructure bank created roughly in the image of the one proposed by the Advisory Council on Economic Growth. Global Affairs Canada specifically talked about it at the Long-Term Investment Summit.

Was this decision made in the best interest of the public? I do not know. What I do know is that the Canada Infrastructure Bank was a disaster. The Conservatives are talking about it today.

The CIB was founded in 2017 and, in 2020, there were virtually no projects in existence. It had no idea where it was headed. It had a hard time recruiting employees. The board of directors was a shambles. No one there spoke French. It was a madhouse. They did not know what to do with it. The CIB was given $35 billion, but they had no direction.

In a panic, they called up Dominic Barton. As mentioned earlier, he had worked on the Advisory Council on Economic Growth with Michael Sabia. Mr. Sabia was then recruited to become chair of the CIB.

In committee, I asked Mr. Sabia how he was recruited, who recruited him, whether he sent in his CV, how this all came about. He told me that he received a phone call from Bill Morneau. I just about fell over. We are told that the CIB is not political, but it was the Minister of Finance who called him directly to tell him that he had a job for him and asked him if he would accept it. Worse yet, it was not even his department. The CIB is not the responsibility of the Department of Finance. It is the responsibility of the Department of Infrastructure.

The minister for another department was calling to tell him he had a job for him. What a wonderfully open, democratic, transparent and apolitical process this was, to be sure. I am being sarcastic, of course.

Mr. Sabia told us that when he became chair of the CIB in 2020, it was not going well, that he was there to put out fires and rescue the CIB.

However, one of his first decisions as chair of the CIB was to award a sole-source consulting contract to McKinsey. Everything is falling into place. Maybe McKinsey's volunteer work paid off in the end. It was a $1.4‑million contract. That is pretty good money. One point four million dollars is nothing to sneeze at.

He gave us an explanation as to why McKinsey was chosen. I am sorry, the document is in English.

Mr. Sabia told us, “the decision taken at the time was to use some of the people from McKinsey who had been involved in the initial thinking around the Infrastructure Bank, to draw on their accumulated knowledge.”

In other words, given that McKinsey knew the CIB so well, it was awarded the contract so that things would go faster. Since McKinsey thought up the CIB, it obviously knew it very well. It had told the government what to do in the first place. McKinsey got the contract, but this time, instead of telling the government what to do for free, it was charging big money. It is as if McKinsey got a second chance to tell the government the same thing, because the CIB did not really exist yet and had not quite taken form—it was spinning its wheels.

It is fascinating to observe that the kind of volunteer work we are talking about is not always completely altruistic. It can sometimes serve private interests. The government does not seem to mind.

I asked Mr. Sabia more questions when he came to see us at committee. The CIB was clearly struggling, but before he became chair of the CIB, he worked at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and one of his projects was the REM. Well, the CIB just happened to invest in the REM. All this starts to get confusing because everything is all mixed together.

The CIB invested in the REM, but before the CIB was established, the federal government had had some money for the REM. The federal government had already invested in the project. It had received a federal grant of $1.28 billion that had been announced by the current government.

That $1.28-billion federal grant magically turned into a $1.28-billion loan. There is a slight difference between a loan and a grant. It started out as a government grant. It became a loan from the CIB. Obviously, Quebec did not really come out a winner because it will pay interest on the loan rather than taking the money to the bank and using it for the project.

I asked Mr. Sabia how that decision was made and what the process had been from one to the other. He replied, “That was a decision made by the government and...the government informed us of that change.”

The government claims that the CIB is not political, and yet it directly informed the Caisse de dépôt of the change. Essentially, the CIB had so little in the way of a track record and so few projects that the government said that it was going to take a project that it was financing, stop financing it and give the money to the CIB so that the CIB could establish a track record. That is basically what happened.

That shows that the CIB is not really useful. It is not relevant. The government is taking projects that would have received funding anyway and funding them through different means, through the CIB. The CIB should have been generating billions of dollars, but instead it is generating $1 for every $8 or $10. The government promised extraordinary numbers, a huge windfall, resulting from private investments from all of these great private firms that are close to the government, but in the end, these much-talked-about investments never happened. Most of the projects that the CIB invests in are public projects, projects by our own governments and institutions, whether it be our municipalities, our cities, our provinces or the Quebec state that we hope to be one day, projects that they want and that are important to us. To find a way to make the CIB relevant, the government decided to send those projects to the CIB, but then it claims that the CIB is not political and that it is far removed from government. However, we all know that the CIB is very political. After serving as chair of the CIB from April 2020 to December 2020, Mr. Sabia magically became the deputy minister of finance from 2020 to 2023. Surely, he submitted his resumé as part of a long, open process. I am sure of it. At a certain point, it gets to be too much. No one believes it any more. That is what I wanted to demonstrate.

Unfortunately, the CIB is a hot potato that the Liberals are trying to justify. They claim it is useful and serves a purpose. However, what the cities told us when they appeared before the committee, and continue to tell us every time, is that they need money to build infrastructure for housing, water and all the municipalities' other needs. They do not need new federal programs that come with all kinds of criteria and standards that no one understands. They do not want to be forced to hire three or four people to analyze criteria every time a new program comes out or have staff work full-time to keep track of any new programs launched by the federal government and assess their compatibility with Quebec programs. At some point it never ends. Cities want to be given money directly and use it to build the infrastructure they need.

We already have a program that works. Give Quebec money so Quebec can invest in infrastructure. It would be so easy, and it works every time. There is another approach we can live with. The gas tax fund works very well. It is not perfect, and it could use some tweaking, but, generally speaking, it works very well. Cities would like to see more money there. Part of the gas tax revenue could be allocated to infrastructure projects. Cities build the infrastructure they need, not what the federal government decides they need. That is different, and it works well. Why not enhance programs like that one, which offer more leeway, through agreements with Quebec for things like the gas tax fund? No, instead the government creates programs by and for Ottawa so it can have the ribbon-cutting ceremonies that party insiders want. At the end of the day, those programs do not work. They are a dead end.

That is what I wanted to lament today. I hope the member opposite understands now why all parties except his voted against this bank.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to see that some government members are defending Bill C‑57. When one has negotiated something, it is important to stand behind it.

This brings me to my question. In Quebec yesterday, the Parti Québécois unveiled its year one budget, projecting that Quebec has the financial capacity to be an independent country. I wonder how my colleague, as a member of the governing party, would feel about negotiating a free trade agreement with Quebec once it becomes independent, so that our two nations can engage in mutually beneficial economic exchanges.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am flabbergasted and discouraged. Earlier, I went to eat, but I had lost my appetite. From the outset, I have been telling myself that, since we are talking about a bill that is consensual, everyone will agree, that we will say that it is good to have free trade agreements, to show solidarity with Ukraine and to strengthen our mutual economies.

However, for some time now, the Conservatives have been talking only about oil, and I am going crazy. I think they could have told us about western beef, British Columbia's tall trees, western grains or Pacific salmon, but all they are talking about is oil and gas. It is as if this free trade agreement with Ukraine is all about selling oil and gas to Ukraine. Anyone who would like to see infrastructure built to transport it there had better be up good and early, and they will find the Bloc Québécois in their way.

I would like my Conservative colleague or one of his colleagues who spoke before him to tell me whether the Conservatives are capable of talking about anything other than oil or the carbon tax. Are there any other topics they are able to address here?

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 24th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague on her speech and my other colleagues on their questions.

Today, we are debating Bill C‑57, an act to implement the 2023 free trade agreement between Canada and Ukraine. I think this is a subject on which everyone in the House agrees. It does not seem as though many members will oppose the bill when we vote on it. However, this is still an opportunity to talk about Ukraine and the importance of free trade agreements, as well as to reflect on those agreements. Obviously, we hope that Ukraine will recover as quickly as possible. I think that having a free trade agreement that normalizes our trade with Ukraine will only help with that.

I am wondering why these free trade agreements are negotiated behind closed doors without any real mandate. The executive branch, or government, is the one responsible for those negotiations, and Parliament can only say “yes” or “no” to the final agreement. Does my colleague think it is right that we have almost no say as to the content of the agreement, whether it is good or not?

I think that everyone agrees that we want a free trade agreement with Ukraine. However, it would be worthwhile for parliamentarians to have more of a say as to the agreement's content. That is why we were elected, to represent the people and defend their interests, but the government is preventing us from doing that to some extent.

[Amendments to the Standing Orders, October 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, this morning, we are debating the infamous Motion No. 79, which was moved by the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona. Let us just say that I was immediately wary when the NDP moved this motion that seeks to make procedural changes. It is important to remember that, not so long ago, the NDP supported the government in the House when the government wanted to make the hybrid Parliament permanent. The NDP agreed that members should be able to stay home all year round without ever coming to Parliament. The NDP even agreed that ministers should be able to participate in parliamentary work virtually without having to show up in the House, without having to answer questions from journalists or members of the House. That is odd.

The NPD has had an agreement with the government for months. From what we have been told, under this agreement, the NDP has promised to support the government on confidence votes so that it can stay in office until the end of its mandate. In return, the NDP can expect the government to implement certain measures and programs of the NDP's choosing. As a result, the NDP now supports the government every time it curtails debate in the House by imposing gag order after gag order on bills that, under normal circumstances, would be studied before taking effect.

As I said, I was very hesitant when I saw NDP Motion No. 79, which deals with procedure. I was wondering what the NDP had come up with this time. I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. I am guessing that the NDP members are tired of being the Liberals' lackeys and cannot take it anymore. They are trying to grow a backbone by putting forward a motion that might switch up the dynamic somewhat.

Before this well-known agreement was forged between the government and the NDP, almost every vote had us questioning whether it would be a vote of confidence. It became the question of the day. Members would wake up in the morning having to vote on a government motion, yet we did not even know whether it was a vote of confidence. Reporters would ask that question of Liberal MPs right outside the House, and every time they would say they did not know. We did not know whether voting for or against the motion would bring down the current government. That is crazy. It goes to show how the current government abused its power. That is not as common now, because the NDP cannot be bothered and always votes with the government.

I was quite surprised to see the NDP moving something that would change procedure and lead to a little less abuse on the part of the government. One of the objectives of motion Motion No. 79 is to keep the government from unilaterally proroguing Parliament without consequence, something that has happened all too often recently. Some prorogations felt like the government was sending MPs home because it no longer wanted them in Parliament.

No examples come to mind, but there could be very good reasons for proroguing Parliament. However, it is not something to be done on a whim. No one can just wake up one morning and shut down Parliament because they do not wish to hear from the opposition. That is not how it works. Voters elect MPs precisely to send them to Parliament. Generally speaking, the party with the most seats forms government, and MPs in the other parties ensure that the government does not do too bad a job by keeping an eye on it and asking questions. That is why people vote.

To prorogue Parliament this way virtually amounts to the government saying that what people voted for does not count. That pretty much sums it up. If the government does not want to be held accountable, it can simply shut down Parliament. We have seen this happen over and over again in our history. While the government might very well prorogue Parliament for legitimate reasons, the examples that come to my mind suggest that it usually happens for the wrong reasons.

Let me start with an example from 1873. Canada was founded in 1867, so it happened not long after that, when the infamous Pacific scandal broke. Who was at the centre of this scandal? It was none other than Sir John A. Macdonald, founder of Canada's Confederation, the same person described by the Minister of Foreign Affairs as someone whose life history was so wonderful it deserved exploring.

She was so proud of his legacy. I never heard her mention Mr. Macdonald after that. I urge her to learn a little more about his legacy, because the Pacific scandal is one aspect of it that was pretty nasty. He even had to resign over the matter when Parliament resumed sitting.

In 2002, the House was also prorogued, this time under a Liberal government. Why was the House prorogued? There was a parliamentary committee that wanted to look into what happened with the sponsorship scandal. That was a good reason to shut down Parliament. The Liberals wanted to make sure that no one would find out what happened with the sponsorship scandal. That was what the Liberals wanted, but it might not have been what ordinary citizens, opposition members and the justice system wanted.

In 2003, again under the Liberals, there was another prorogation, once again because of the sponsorship scandal. This time, the government wanted to prevent the Auditor General from tabling her report in the House. The Liberals did not want to know what the Auditor General had to say about the sponsorship scandal. I have mentioned three prorogations so far.

Then we get to 2008, a bit closer to where we are now. Why did the House prorogue? A coalition of opposition members formed to bring down the government because they had lost confidence in the government. The Bloc Québécois made a commitment to support that coalition without necessarily being part of it. The government decided to prorogue the House to prevent its own defeat.

In 2010, there was another prorogation under a Conservative prime minister. Why was Parliament prorogued? Officially, this was done to allow people to enjoy the winter Olympics. If that is true, then perhaps Parliament could also shut down for a hockey game. If we want people to watch the playoffs, then we cannot keep Parliament open. It makes no sense. It is as silly as that. It was decided that Parliament would shut down for the Olympics. I am not making this up. It is ridiculous.

The real reason is that, at the time, people were wondering what happened in Afghanistan. They wanted to know whether prisoners had been mistreated. We were seeing pictures of what had happened in Guantanamo in the United States, and people were concerned. They wanted to know whether things were being done the same way in Canada and whether things had been allowed to happen like that. Unfortunately, rather than answer those questions and let things run their course, the government decided to shut down Parliament.

The last time Parliament was prorogued, the most recent time, was in 2020. This happened under the same government we have now, the Liberals. They shut Parliament down because of the pandemic. What I find odd is that they also called an election because of the pandemic. They were saying that the government could not operate in 2020 because we were in the midst of a pandemic but that an election could be called in 2021. That is a bit odd. We all know that the real reason was the WE Charity scandal.

People wanted to know why the Prime Minister's friends and family had benefited from public funds. It was a valid question. How is it that the government wanted to give $1 billion to a foundation that was very closely associated with the Trudeau government? In the end, it turned out that the Prime Minister's family and friends were very closely associated with that foundation.

Recent history shows that, generally speaking, prorogation may not be done for the public's benefit, so it would be useful to have a better framework for prorogation, as the member opposite is proposing.

It is a shame I only have a minute left, because I would have liked to talk more about confidence votes. To be honest, it is ridiculous getting up in the morning and not knowing whether we will have a confidence vote that day.

It is sad that the concept is not defined. We do not know what a confidence vote is. It is simply a tradition. It is a tradition to have a confidence vote at budget time and after the Speech from the Throne. It would be good to define the concept a little better so it cannot be abused like the Liberals have abused it. Then perhaps the NDP would not have to carry water for the Liberals as much and could finally show some backbone.

If it helps the NDP show some backbone, of course we will vote in favour of the motion. If it makes future governments be less likely to abuse procedure and provides more transparency for the public, we are going to vote in favour of it for sure.

[Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act, October 19th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the member opposite a question.

I was listening to his speech just now and I noticed its consistency with his party's language. For years now, whenever we talk with union representatives and with workers, they constantly bring up the idea of a just transition. A just transition means ensuring a transition to net zero that allows workers to evolve, so that we can place them in new jobs and equip them with new skills.

However, the government has changed its vocabulary, probably under pressure from the oil companies, but also in keeping with the fact that it hands out billions of dollars to the oil industry every year. Now it is talking about sustainable jobs. Does my colleague opposite consider a job in the oil sector to be a sustainable job?

[Canada—Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, October 16th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, we all know that we are in the middle of a global crisis. We are seeing more and more extreme weather events and natural disasters. We are also seeing a government that continues to argue otherwise, but agrees with the Conservatives that Canada should keep sinking deeper into oil and gas. Anyway, that seems to be the direction the government is taking for now when we look at its public policies.

I would like to ask the minister opposite a simple question because it would be really enlightening for us to understand how he sees things. Does he consider oil and gas to be clean energy?

[Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, October 5th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I was listening to my colleague's speech, after hearing other speeches given earlier by the Conservatives or the coalition. Members advised taking action specifically on the supply side of the housing issue. I think that everyone agrees on the need to address the housing supply. I also think that the government has a critical role to play in this regard, and that it is not doing enough.

However, there are two sides to every situation. The reason a housing shortage happens is because of demand, because people want housing. I never hear anyone talk about that in the House, even though it is being discussed everywhere in the media. Why is there a record number of newcomers, particularly temporary foreign workers, yet no one wants to talk about it in the House? It is something under the federal government's control, after all.