Mr. Speaker, I am rising today in the House to speak to Bill C‑4.
It is interesting because we are still in the early days of this Parliament, which is often the time when we assess a government's priorities, by observing the first steps that it takes. Usually, after an election, a government seeks to implement its priorities.
Our first disappointment in looking at this government's priorities, Bill C‑4 notwithstanding, is the matter of the budget. The government spent the whole election campaign saying that we were in the midst of a crisis, that it had a plan, that it knew what to do and that it would explain to us how to solve the problem. However, now that the election is over, a question remains: Where is that plan? The government does not have a plan and it does not have a budget. It does not know where it is going. That is the reality. It is sad to see that this was a sham, especially since businesses are suffering right now.
ArcelorMittal, a steel manufacturer in my riding, has 1,500 employees and is receiving no federal assistance. We asked the government how it planned to deal with the crisis caused by the dreaded U.S. tariffs that are now being increased to 50%. We were told that it had held discussions. Unfortunately, that will not save the jobs of people who will be laid off. It will not add any shifts for people on reduced hours. It is not going to solve the problem. Of course the government is talking to the Americans, but it seems to me that the 25% tariff has been in place for months. The 25% tariff has been in effect for three months now. It has just been increased to 50%, but no additional support had been provided before that. There is something wrong with this government. It always says that it is there for Canadians, but when real problems arise, it is not there to solve them.
Today, we are talking about Bill C‑4, but I wanted to point out the current government's lack of priorities to address the real problems at hand. Nevertheless, the bill does contain some good things.
First, there is the tax cut. As we know, during the election, the Conservatives and the Liberals fought over who would offer the biggest tax cut. The Bloc Québécois said it was somewhat skeptical of that, but not because we are opposed to tax cuts, quite the contrary. Everyone would be happy to pay less tax, myself included. However, the question is whether that is a priority at this time. Is that really where the money should be invested first? Will that have an impact on our public services? Will it put us further into debt? Do we not risk falling short of what we need to balance our budget at the end of the month?
The fact is, we do not know, because the government did not present a budget. The proposed tax cut will bring the rate for the lowest tax bracket down by 0.5%. That will apply to about 22 million people. This seems like a good idea because it targets taxpayers in the first tax bracket. However, only those with a taxable income of at least $57,000 will derive maximum benefit from the tax cut. The reality is that people who earn around $60,000 will benefit the most. Those people are obviously not ultrarich, but the ultrarich will also benefit because this measure is good for everyone. It is not highly targeted, so it will be very costly. It will apply to everyone from millionaires to people with low incomes. Moreover, people who do not pay taxes or who have very low incomes will not benefit at all.
This measure is going to cost $26 billion over five years. Is that the best use of public funds? We do not know because the government has not presented a budget. We do not know the federal government's financial situation. We do not know what cuts will have to be made to make up this $26-billion shortfall. What we do know is that this government was already running a deficit, and had run massive deficits in the past. Where is the money going to come from? Are they going to run even bigger deficits or are they going to reduce transfers to the provinces? That is a good question.
In Quebec, we have problems in our health care system. It is important to invest in the health care system and that does not seem to be the federal government's priority. Health transfers are not keeping pace with the rising costs. The question is where is the government going to make those cuts to balance the books.
Another important question is whether the government will respect the opposition's proposed amendment to the Speech from the Throne. The Liberals bragged about getting the throne speech and the ways and means motion adopted. Now they think they can do whatever they want. No, that is not how it works. It is a bit like presenting an action plan at a shareholders' meeting. The shareholders might approve the plan in principle, but propose two or three changes. That is what just happened in the House. The House is prepared to adopt certain measures, but the opposition is calling on the government to table a budget because we want to know where the government is headed.
However, we have not received a response to this. The only response we have heard so far in the House is the Prime Minister saying he was taking note. I am pretty sure that, when he worked as a banker, if he had gone to a shareholders' meeting and said he was taking note of what they were saying, he would not have kept his job for very long. The reality is that he is not above Parliament. He is an elected member, as we all are, and the majority of elected members decide. He is not a dictator, is he? He was elected precisely to stand up to someone south of the border who is often described as a dictator. I am not saying that he is one, but it is important to keep a close eye on the situation. I find that saying he is “taking note” is pretty arrogant for someone who has just taken office and still has not told us exactly where he is going. Basically, he is asking us to write him a blank cheque so he can do whatever he wants. That is pretty much the message we got in the House, which is troubling for the future because, of course, he is serving as the Prime Minister elected to this place by Canadians. We live in a democracy. We are not talking about Louis XIV here. Still, we have no budget and no road map. We have a government that is flying blind and by the seat of its pants. We have a taxi driver who wants us to pay the fare before we even start the trip, and we do not even know where he is going to take us.
The second thing in this bill is the GST new housing rebate for first-time home buyers. That is not a bad thing. Almost everyone in the House actually agrees on it. At least, the Bloc, the Liberals and the Conservatives have all said there should be a GST exemption on first-time new home purchases. The only difference between the parties was the cap for that exemption. In the Bloc Québécois's election platform, we talked about $750,000. If I am not mistaken, the Liberals talked about $1 million or so in theirs. The Conservatives went a little higher. What we see here is amounts ranging from $1 million to $1.5 million, with a full GST rebate on the amount up to $1 million and progressively less as the home price goes up to $1.5 million. There is no set amount between the two. We looked at the market in Quebec, where regular people are not buying million-dollar homes, although prices in some Montreal neighbourhoods are very high, and we think $750,000 would have been reasonable. Nonetheless, we understand that the market in the rest of Canada is different.
This might be more appropriate for the market in the rest of Canada, especially in this inflationary context with very high rents and home prices and significantly higher interest rates that make it harder and harder for people to buy a first home. I was a first-time home buyer not that long ago, and lots of people I know had a hard time buying a home. Other people would like to buy a home, but they cannot.
Will eliminating the GST on new homes be enough? First, people have to want to buy a new home. As we know, new homes are often more expensive. It will not automatically help everyone. On the contrary, people might want to save money by buying an older home. Second, we have to wonder whether there might be a different or complementary method of helping first-time homebuyers. In the Bloc Québécois's election platform, we proposed that parents, who do not necessarily have the cash to help their children, should be allowed to use their RRSPs to enable their children to buy a first home using the home buyers' plan, or HBP. Under the plan, children would reimburse their parents over a period of 10 years, for example. It would have no effect on taxation, since parents will still have to pay tax on the money from their RRSPs when they retire later on. It is a mechanism with zero cost to the government that would have given younger generations access to home ownership. We find it hard to understand why a similar measure was not included in the current bill.
The third matter that I am going to talk about is the worst. It has to do with the carbon tax and it is really disturbing. I feel like Quebec has been bamboozled. The government agreed to axe the carbon tax because it was unpopular and the Conservatives did not like it. Then the Liberal government morphed into a Conservative government. For four years the Liberals walked around in orange suits only to hang them up and trade them in for blue suits. People voted against the Conservative Party. The government they ended up with has a Conservative Party agenda. We are in a tough spot. Our environment is in a tough spot. The problem is that Quebeckers are the ones who are going to be penalized. We are already being penalized because the government took Quebeckers' money to hand out cheques to the rest of Canada. The government owes us $800 million. We have a fake $3.7-billion carbon tax rebate that was given to Canadians. Quebeckers have been—
