Ziad Aboultaif

[Business of Supply, June 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about government policies and how these policies are not serving the average Canadians. In the meantime, he and his party keep supporting the same government. Canadians are listening and wondering what is going on here. Why would the NDP members blame the government and complain about the government while they keep supporting the same government?

[Pharmacare Act, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the NDP is gathering, as a price for this, a one-week extension of the election so its leader can collect his full pension. That is what they are getting in return, and it does not matter what Canadians get, as long as the NDP leader—

[Pharmacare Act, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, with the thinking mode the NDP member is in this evening, there is no way we can have a reasonable conversation. As well, his suggestion about the 18,000 people in my riding is as if I do not know my riding or the people who live in Edmonton Manning. The member chose to be fooled by the Liberals, but we are not fooled, and Canadians will not be.

[Pharmacare Act, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the hon. member, who I do respect a lot, I did not suggest what he just said.

What I was saying is, if there is a gap in the system, the gaps can be filled in many different ways, and we need to solve the problem rather than giving a big promise that we know is not going to be delivered upon. That is the fundamental issue. There is no way I can speak in the House and not mention the difficulties Canadians are going through these days. There are the increased use of food banks, higher mortgage payments, high taxes and all the inflation issues Canadians have to deal with. It is a stop at the perfect time and position to be able to address that and remind ourselves about the disaster the Liberal government and the Liberal-NDP coalition have put Canadians through.

[Pharmacare Act, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand on behalf of the people of Edmonton Manning tonight.

When a bill is brought before committee, I expect that during the study done there committee members would be able to make amendments that would improve the legislation. Sadly, that has not happened with Bill C-64, the pharmacare act, which is probably because the legislation is so flawed that nothing can fix it. The only proper fix is to bury it.

I wish that tonight we were debating the merits of a proposed national pharmacare program. Many Canadians would like to see such a thing, although they might not be so enthusiastic once they saw the price tag. The only resemblance the bill before us has to pharmacare is in the name. If we had asked Canadians what they expected to receive from the NDP-Liberal coalition besides ever-increasing taxes, high inflation, sky-high crime rates and housing shortages, they would probably have said, “Well, at least they have promised pharmacare.”

If we had asked what that meant, they would have said, “free prescription drugs for everyone: drugs to treat heart disease or cancer, life-saving drugs and maybe penicillin to treat any number of less serious illnesses”. Instead, what the government is offering is a pledge to consider funding contraceptives and diabetes drugs. It is not a pharmacare plan; it is an empty promise. It is not what anyone was expecting, but it is no surprise. It is not as if the Liberals really want a national pharmacare program. If they did, they would not have needed the NDP to push them into creating the bill before us.

The Liberals' plan is empty and it is pretty simple. They want to delay as much as possible to convince the NDP that a plan is coming and that therefore the incompetent government must be propped up. I have to give the Liberals credit for their political skill in this matter. They have the NDP so completely fooled that the government faces no chance of defeat no matter the scandals and no matter how much Liberal polices are hurting Canadians. The NDP is blindly accepting a Liberal promise, apparently unwilling to admit that they have been fooled.

I think it is safe to predict that when Canadians go to the polls, whether it is in October 2025 or earlier, the NDP will not be able to point to a functioning pharmacare program, not even the limited one that the bill calls for. However, the promise will have accomplished its purpose: keeping an undeserving government in power. It is the Canadian electorate that will hold both the NDP and the Liberals accountable for their actions. It is the Canadian people who will elect a Conservative government that actually cares about serving them and does not just care about political power.

The bill is being shoved through in haste by a government that is so desperate for approval. The Minister of Health is assuring Canadians that the pharmacare plan should not jeopardize the drug coverage that millions of Canadians have through private insurers. I am sure he is well-intentioned when he makes that statement; he may even believe his words, but good intentions are not reality.

The CEO of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association says that the bill could indeed cause disruption for those who have existing drug plans. Either he is right or the minister is right; it cannot be both. Given the Liberal track record, I suspect the minister is indulging in some wishful thinking, which is not surprising from a government that thinks budgets magically balance themselves, something that has not happened under the current Prime Minister.

By using time allocation, the government is rushing the bill through the House without opportunity for proper scrutiny, which is no surprise. Despite having had two years to figure out how they were going to implement their deal with the NDP, the Liberals put together the legislation at the last minute.

It is window dressing, designed not to define pharmacare, but to keep the government in office for a few more months to deny Canadians what they want most, which is an end to Liberal overspending and incompetence.

The proposed bill is a promise, and Canadians know what happens when Liberals make promises. They have made promises in the past nine years. The reality is that, when the Liberals make a promise, things always seem to get worse. They promised affordable housing, and housing costs have doubled under their watch. They promised that the carbon tax would not cost us anything, and we find now that 60% of families are paying more than they collect. The Liberals promised that taxes would go down, and taxes have gone up. They promised safe streets, and then delivered crime, chaos, drugs and disorder. It is no wonder Canadians are afraid things will get worse when the Liberals promise pharmacare.

If the government were serious about helping Canadians, it would have gone about things differently. It would have consulted with the insurance industry, found out what the private insurance sector was offering and what the non-profit sector was providing, examined existing provincial coverage, and discovered if there were gaps that needed to be addressed. Instead, the Liberals decided to rush blindly ahead.

Canadians know the government is not worth the cost. That has been proven time and time again over the past nine years. Is this pharmacare program worth the cost? An honest answer is that nobody knows because the minister cannot tell us how much it will cost. Any numbers he tosses around are more wishful thinking than reality.

Canadians are struggling and looking to the federal government for help. Inflation eats away at their paycheques. Every trip to the grocery store, it seems the prices are going up. Liberals' catch-and-release bail policies are turning violent offenders loose to commit yet more crimes. Despite an ever-increasing carbon tax, the government has no plan to balance its books.

The Liberals apparently have no desire to fix the problems created by their wasteful spending. They believe that water runs downhill but never reaches the bottom. They know they will not be in government when the bill for this mismanagement comes due. Food Banks Canada's 2024 poverty report card shows that almost 50% of Canadians feel financially worse off compared to last year, while 25% of Canadians are experiencing food insecurity.

The cost of living has become so high that food banks have seen a 50% increase in visits since 2021. As a direct consequence of the government's inflationary spending and taxes, millions of Canadians are struggling to keep their heads above water, yet the Liberals ask us to take on faith that they know how to set up and run a pharmacare program without turning it into a disaster.

This is the government that spent more than $50 million on an app that was supposed to cost $80,000, and it cannot tell us how or when that cost overrun happened, or who is responsible. Why should Canadians trust it to run anything?

The good news is that this is not a serious piece of legislation. As I said, the Liberals have no idea what they are doing and no real intention to institute a pharmacare program. Bill C-64 is a public relations exercise with which they hope to fool the NDP and Canadians into thinking they are doing something to help people. Given the Liberals' track record, I doubt many Canadians will be fooled.

[Privilege, May 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for a wonderful speech about a very important issue. When the government gave all these excuses, I do not know how Canadians felt, but we definitely know how we felt as parliamentarians sitting in the House. We got those threats from around the world, and the government did not move on it or take the issue seriously.

What message is the government sending to parliamentarians, to politicians and to Canadians?

[Privilege, May 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the government sat on the information without even bothering to inform the very people who were affected by such an atrocity and such a danger and threat.

What does that tell Canadians, parliamentarians and people who want to be involved in politics? Could the hon. member comment on the message the government is sending?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1, May 7th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, my question for the member from the Bloc Québécois is this: How much extra hydro energy does Quebec have, and what does it do with the product?

[Committees of the House, May 6th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, it has been long overdue for the government to act on some serious issues such as this one. There is enough indication by CSIS, by Finance Canada and by our security forces that this is very serious, and it must be dealt with at the highest level of responsibility by the government. We will be waiting, after the vote, for the government to tell us the plan for how it can do this, how it will list the IRGC as a terrorist organization and what the mechanism is to be able to free up Canadians and to protect Canadians on this soil.

[Committees of the House, May 6th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, we have had experience here with Montrealer Zahra Kazemi, the execution of wrestler Navid Afkari and the example of lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. There are so many examples of how far this regime is willing to go in order to punish the people who say no, those who are looking for freedom, for a better life for their own peers, inside and outside Iran. We know about the suffering and the fear; many do not even want to go back to visit with their parents or their families back home, and they fear that the regime has agents on Canadian soil and other international grounds to go after their own citizens who speak of freedom. The regime has no limits whatsoever regarding who they want to reach and how far they are willing to go. That is why the problem is at our doorstep right now; we must, for once, protect Canadians on Canadian soil. We need to protect our own people, our own house, because that is the minimum the government and all of us can do.