Xavier Barsalou-Duval

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, something struck me earlier in my colleague’s speech.

We are studying a motion to recognize the constitutional amendment requested by Saskatchewan to make a company, Canadian Pacific, pay the taxes it should pay like any other good corporate citizen.

However, in my colleague’s speech, most of what he said was about how important he thinks oil transportation is. I am trying to understand whether he thinks that rail transportation has other, more valuable and more important purposes than transporting oil.

[COVID-19 Protests, February 7th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech, and I very much enjoyed its tone. His tone was different from the one we heard from the Prime Minister and some government members, who used a very combative tone, one that we obviously do not support.

I sensed some goodwill on the part of my colleague, who said he himself had been vaccinated and was explaining to people why he had chosen to do so. I also sensed a concern on his part about making the right decisions from a health standpoint and about bringing people together so that we can move forward and end both this occupation and the pandemic.

Since we want to de-escalate the current crisis, I was wondering if he and other members of his party would be willing to meet with the protesters or occupiers to encourage them to leave Parliament Hill and make sure we can put an end to this occupation.

[COVID-19 Protests, February 7th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague opposite's speech.

I was pleased to hear him say that some people who went to protest were well meaning and well intentioned. Since the beginning of this crisis, I have had quite the opposite impression, namely that the government did not want to recognize, hear or see that there were people with things to say, that people were fed up with the health measures and were finding them hard to deal with, and that some people needed to express that.

Instead, the Prime Minister said they were whiners, which added fuel to the fire. It was almost as though he wanted the situation to deteriorate so that he could demonize those opposed to the rules. I am wondering why he could not have shown some leadership in this situation.

We have a government here in Ottawa that talked a big game but failed to take action. By contrast, the Government of Quebec did not really say much but actually did something.

Did my colleague learn any lessons from that?

[COVID-19 Protests, February 7th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, from the start of this emergency debate, we have heard many of the Conservative members stand up and speak out against the government's lack of proactivity, and rightly so. We agree with them on that.

However, one thing is unclear. What is the Conservatives' actual position? Where exactly do they stand in all of this?

My partner works in the health care industry. She is a nurse and, everyday, she has to call people who contracted COVID-19 to tell them what they need to do so they do not spread it to other people. She is frustrated that the situation has not been resolved. She is worried that the health care system will end up in a worse predicament than it is in now.

In that respect, we see that the Conservatives seem to want to get political mileage out of the fact that people are fed up with the public health measures. I would really like to understand what message the Conservatives have for the people who are protesting outside right now.

Are they telling them to stay? Are they telling them to go home? Are they telling them to follow the health measures?

I would like to understand how the Conservatives want to get through the pandemic and what message they have for the protesters.

[Marguerite d'Youville, December 15th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, on October 15, 1701, in Varennes, new France, Marguerite d'Youville came into the world. This year marks the 250th anniversary of her death.

Despite a difficult childhood, an unhappy marriage, the birth of six children and financial problems, this widow was always kind and supportive to her fellow men and women.

A woman of action and conviction, in 1737 she founded the Sisters of Charity, also known as the Grey Nuns, to care for widows, orphans, the sick and the elderly. Ten years later, she was recognized for her administrative and leadership skills when she was placed in charge of the Montreal General Hospital. In 1765, she even acquired the seigneury of Châteauguay and was able to help the colony thrive.

Nowadays, we can still find many traces of her presence, including an RCM named after her in my riding. Her remains are preserved in the Basilica of Sainte-Anne, and she was even canonized in 1990. I invite everyone to visit the permanent exhibit devoted to her at the Saint Marguerite d'Youville Shrine.

[Criminal Code, December 13th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I first want to congratulate my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord for his very clear and very informative speech on the Bloc Québécois's position. Above all, he demonstrated that we are open to debating Bill C-5.

However, the problem is that nothing is happening right now, and we would like to know why. The situation is urgent, because people are being killed every day in Montreal and even elsewhere in Quebec. It seems that the government is just twiddling its thumbs while all this is happening, because it is not responding, even when called upon to do so by various levels of government and by our party.

As a former section president of the Quebec bar and now the Bloc Québécois's justice critic, I would like my colleague to explain the government's failure to take action.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, June 18th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his rather technical question. If I can provide him with a more general answer, I would say that some provinces are very frustrated and have a lot of demands related to the equalization problem, or equalization program, rather. Pardon my mistake.

These provinces would probably have fewer problems if they could raise taxes high enough to meet their financial needs. Often the problem results from the fact that a government makes tax cuts before realizing that it can no longer afford to pay for services. That might be the answer.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, June 18th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. She was not very specific, so I do not quite know how to answer. Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to answer at this point.

However, with regard to the agricultural model, I can say that, in the past, we were very disappointed to see the federal government sacrificing Quebec at every opportunity in matters involving international trade.

Quebec has an agricultural model that works. The COVID-19 crisis strengthened Quebec's resolve to promote local agriculture and family farms and to take another look at our vision of agriculture so that we can eat high-quality, locally produced food.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, June 18th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, my colleague asked an excellent question.

The phone calls, emails and Facebook messages have been pouring in non-stop. For years, when I have been out speaking to people, both young and older retirees have been telling me that a 50¢ increase in their pension is ridiculous. They feel like they are being made fun of.

Seniors are very frustrated at being disrespected and mistreated by this federal government when they have contributed to society all their lives. It is insulting to receive a 50¢ increase as a result of indexing. That is a joke. What will 50¢ buy in 2021?

Every senior needs support, and the government should listen to them.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1, June 18th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I seem to have gotten cut off for a moment. I think a member had their microphone on, and a meeting host put everyone on mute to turn the member's sound off. I think that probably put me and the Chair on mute. I could be wrong. I am not a tech expert, but that would be my guess.

What I was saying was that we would have expected the government, upon winning a minority, to make an effort to negotiate with the parties, to present a budget and to make concessions. Instead, it dragged things out and took advantage of the pandemic to avoid presenting a budget, to avoid being held accountable and to do whatever it wanted. Once the pandemic arrived, the government came to us with piecemeal legislation that we always had to vote on quickly. We then noticed all of the holes and all of the problems these programs had.

It is now June 2021 and we are hearing all kinds of rumours about a possible election. Meanwhile, we are still on this government's first budget. That speaks volumes. We agree that that is not much of a record, that it is not very impressive.

Let us also talk a little bit about the way this crisis was managed, the way we experienced it as parliamentarians and the way the population saw it. I am not sure that the Liberals were the great champions they sometimes claim to be.

In fact, when looking at the situation, we see that they took advantage of the crisis to try to give contracts to their friends. They arranged for a nice wage subsidy and included a special stipulation saying that political parties would be eligible. That is about it. They arranged things and no one seemed to be aware of it. However, at a certain point, we realized what was happening. We wondered how the Liberals could take advantage of the wage subsidy when their coffers were already full. It was the same for the other parties. The Bloc Québécois is the only party that refused to take advantage of the wage subsidy.

The Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, two political parties that are far from lacking in funds, took advantage of the pandemic to get rich and fill their coffers, at the expense of people who were in need and who needed the support of the government.

We will not stop reminding the House of this, even though the government may not like to hear it. We are going to repeat it because we know that the public is eventually going to have to vote and pass judgment.

We also saw a company being incorporated and, practically the very next day, magically receiving government contracts at prices that were frankly pretty high. First of all, the company did not manufacture equipment or respirators. Second, the people linked to this company were former Liberals.

We saw the WE Charity program brought in, again in a rush. The government claimed it did not have the expertise or staff to run a program. In the end, we realized that this charity had dubious practices. For example, it might get four or five different donors to fund the same project and just change the name on the plaque out front. We discovered that some people in the organization were particularly close to the Liberals and that the government was going to put the group in charge of distributing about $1 billion in grants for “paid volunteer work” without a competition and without consulting anyone. It is a weird story, and I think that many people had a hard time following the government's reasoning, the Liberals' reasoning. It is so hard to explain. We still have a hard time explaining it. The whole thing was called off when the parliamentary committees started looking into this infamous program, which seemed tailor-made for a group that had ties to the Liberals.

There were other problems that may not have bothered people in the rest of Canada very much, but that certainly bothered people in Quebec. In the middle of the health crisis, when people were a bit worried and stressed out, we sometimes wondered if we would be able to get all the products we needed. Some products on the shelves were dangerous and came with no instructions. Some products had no information on them.

In times of crisis, governments show their true colours, and we certainly saw the Canadian government's true colours. As it turns out, French is a frill for the Canadian government. It is a cute little language that the government likes to trot out from time to time to placate francophones whenever we make a fuss, but when the rubber hits the road, French gets tossed aside. That is exactly what happened with product labelling during the crisis.

We also found out how the federal government was managing its medical equipment. When the emergency supply warehouses were opened up, it turned out that the masks were past their expiry date, and lots of the gear in the federal stockpile was no longer usable. Panic ensued, and the government scrambled to bring in equipment from all over the world.

A similar fate befell our vaccine production capacity. We realized it had become all but impossible to make vaccines here. It is possible, but our capacity is greatly diminished. Why? Because Canada has chosen to outsource everything over the years, often at the expense of our local industries.

As I mentioned earlier, some programs had some deficiencies, like the CERB, which created disincentives to work. Many people decided to stay at home instead of going to work, even though there was a need on the ground.

The government decided not to close the borders, even though it was well known that the virus was entering from other countries. It did not come from within Canada. Some people were getting cheques to quarantine after going on holiday, while others had no access to any assistance.

The government felt sorry for the airlines. Yes, they needed help, but ordinary people were not getting refunds for their plane tickets. Their rights were completely violated.

On top of that, the government has taken to lecturing Quebec on how it has handled the crisis. After everything I just pointed out, in my opinion, that is the worst. There is nothing worse than a government that comes along and tells Quebec what to do in its areas of jurisdiction, that gives lessons on how Quebec should manage its health care system when it is incapable of managing its own jurisdictions.

I will conclude there.