Bill C-54

Appropriation Act No. 2, 2023-24

An Act for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024

This enactment grants the sum of $108,700,157,669 towards defraying charges and expenses of the federal public administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024 that are not otherwise provided for.

Opposition Motion—Federal Intrusions in the Exclusive Jurisdictions of Quebec and the Provinces

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Before I begin, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with the excellent member for Carleton.

What I say in the next few minutes is not intended as a personal attack on the Bloc Québécois or its members. There are a lot of very good people in the Bloc. I want to talk about the Bloc today in more general terms.

First off, we fully agree with today's motion. That is how the Conservatives have always done things: We have always respected the provinces' areas of jurisdiction. It is part of our DNA, and we have no objections. However, we do have questions about the contradictions in the Bloc Québécois's behaviour and actions.

First, it is important to understand that the Bloc's primary motivation is separation, or Quebec sovereignty. It is in their policy platform, and they make no secret of it. Everyone knows that the Bloc wants Quebec to leave Canada.

It is also important to understand that the Bloc members were elected by about 30% of the population of Quebec. The other 70%, including my colleagues and myself, are just as much Quebeckers as the members of the Bloc. The 70% of Quebeckers who did not vote for the Bloc also have hopes and dreams for the Quebec nation, just like the Bloc does. It is time to stop playing around and always saying that the Bloc members are real Quebeckers, while members from the other parties are not. That is the message we keep getting here in Parliament.

There is another contradiction. According to the Bloc, and as the Bloc candidate who ran against me in 2021 said publicly, when a member of the Bloc gets elected, they are sitting in a foreign country's Parliament. A Bloc candidate runs for office, gets elected by maybe 30% or 40% of the people in their riding, and tells Quebeckers that they are going to represent them in a foreign country's Parliament. That is always how it has been, and it has been the same story for 30 years.

Now let me get to the most serious contradiction.

The leader of the Bloc has repeated, as his own slogan, that if something is good for Quebec, the Bloc will vote for it, and if it is not good for Quebec, the Bloc will vote against it. That is what the leader of the Bloc Québécois says publicly. As a Quebecker, I can say that that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is truly an approach focused on Quebec's main interests, on co-operation with the Canadian federation. We cannot be against that.

However, we have seen the concrete actions the Bloc has taken when voting on budgets, which are contradictory. The Bloc Québécois publicly says that it votes against all the budgets because they are no good, which is true. The Bloc members vote this way for various reasons, saying that they are against them, so people think that the Bloc Québécois votes against the Liberal government's budgets.

However, there is the important matter of budgetary appropriations. The Bloc Québécois has voted in favour of all the supplementary appropriations, totalling $500 billion, but that is something it does not boast about.

I heard the leader of the Bloc answer a question from my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent on this very topic this morning. He answered that they would not do like in the U.S. and start shutting down the government. That is how he justified approving $500 billion in additional spending. These appropriations added 109,000 public servants to the government apparatus. Among other things, these appropriations were used to give millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, for ArriveCAN.

When a scandal breaks out, the Bloc members are suddenly astonished to discover that they voted in favour of granting the money. In a public exchange, reporters asked the Bloc Québécois House leader a question, and he answered by asking whether they thought that the Bloc members had the time to study every single budget item. Is that not their job? There are 32 of them, and they have their own research teams and staff. What do they do all day? In our party, we scrutinize every budget item. That is why we vote against them most of the time, because they make no sense.

The Bloc says publicly that it votes against the budgets when, in fact, it votes in favour of all the appropriations, while claiming that it has no time to study them. What is the primary responsibility of an elected official? It is to know what they are voting for and to vote against it when it is something that makes no sense.

The leader of the Bloc Québécois often says that the Bloc members are the adults in the room, that they are the best and that they truly work for Quebeckers, yet they voted in favour of $500 billion in additional spending by this government, which, by the way, is the worst government in the history of Canada.

This government has doubled our country's debt, which means that Quebeckers' living conditions are appalling nowadays and everything is much more expensive. Inflation and the increase in interest rates and the cost of living in general, particularly the cost of housing, have skyrocketed, in large part because of this government's mismanagement. The Bloc Québécois approved this reckless spending.

As an organization, the Bloc Québécois is a left-wing, socialist party. We know that. Members of the Bloc have admitted it, have said it. How can they reconcile fiscal responsibilities with always wanting to support socialist, left-wing measures and exponential spending? They cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that they are the responsible adults in the room and then vote with their eyes closed. As the leader of the Bloc Québécois said, the Bloc members do not have time to look at that. It is difficult to vote with one's eyes closed, to vote for spending that just creates problems for Canadians today. In the House, we have done nothing to help anyone over the past nine years. No one has been helped. We just have more problems now than we did in 2015.

Take, for example, the supply vote. Since the new Bloc Québécois leader arrived in 2019, 219 votes have been considered confidence votes, such as votes on budgetary allocations or on motions similar to the one that the Conservative Party moved a month ago. The Bloc Québécois had 219 opportunities to vote against this government that it is criticizing, and we agree with those criticisms. However, instead, the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of appropriations 200 times. They did not support the non-confidence motion and they supported the government. They could have said that they had had enough, but 92% of the time they did not. They chose instead to continue to support this government's out-of-control spending.

I will give an example of this spending so that it appears in the public record. Let us take Bill C-36, appropriation act No. 4, 2022-23. The tenor of the bill is not obvious from the title. If we do not take the time to look into it, we really have no way of knowing what it is about. By way of information, it represents $20.7 billion in spending. Here is another example: Bill C-16, appropriation act No. 1, 2022-23. Our viewers will not know what I am talking about. I am talking about more than $75.483 trillion in spending. There are a lot of things in this bill, like pipelines. The Bloc Québécois voted for pipelines in the north. The Bloc supported the bill, despite the fact that the member for Jonquière rails against the oil and gas industry every day in the House. The Bloc voted for it. They did not know that the bill contained anything about pipelines, because they did not read it.

Here is another example: Bill C-24, appropriation act No. 2, 2022-23. It represents $115.056 trillion and change. By “change”, I mean a few hundred thousand dollars. Bill C-54, appropriation act No. 2, 2023-24, represents $108,700,157,669. These are only four examples from a long list of spending supported by the Bloc Québécois. They can say what they want. They will do a lot of things here and there and say that they are the adults and the responsible ones, but, in reality, they have supported this spendthrift government whose spending is out of control. Today we have problems, and these problems were supported by the Bloc Québécois.

Why did the Bloc Québécois support this government when the Liberals have an agreement with the NDP, which is always there to support the government, no matter what? The Bloc Québécois could have done the same thing the Conservative Party did: vote against the Liberals' nonsense and ensure that the country is truly managed effectively. The fact is that their objective is to get Quebec to separate. The Bloc's actions are meant to give them reasons to say that things are not going well in the other camp.

National Council for Reconciliation Act

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am just pointing out that the member did mention Winnipeg Centre. I assumed the comments were made toward me when he said my riding, but let us leave that.

Going back to what I was saying, the fact that he felt a need to defend himself in the middle of my speech is another example of what I had requested in my point of order, which was for him, through you, Mr. Speaker, to leave his white male privilege at the door and not to tell indigenous women what to talk about when they are talking about indigenous kids.

We are here today because of the violent kidnapping of our kids, which has had lasting impacts on our families. It goes back to the dark cloud our parents and families felt when they robbed our kids, leaving our communities silent. Can members imagine being in a community without laughter and without play? I cannot imagine that and not to have the privilege of being able to raise my son. For no reason other than who I am and where I was born, the government is able to steal my child and to have that legislated. That is why these amendments are so critical to legislation if we are going to reconcile and to honour this new bill, Bill C-29. That is why amending legislation so it is compatible, especially on matters impacting our children, is so critical. I would argue, through you, Mr. Speaker, that the government violating its own law and its own constitution by not ensuring legislation is compatible with Bill C-15, as we saw with the child care legislation in the last session that we managed to get through committee.

Now the government is going against amendments to make the legislation compatible with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and is trying to overturn it in the House. If the Liberal government is not willing to give our kids back when we have more kids in child welfare than we did at the height of residential schools and when we know that 90% of kids in care are indigenous and that all this new adoptive care legislation will probably not apply to 90% of parents, which once again will leave the financial burden on families to care for their children, then the government is not ready to reconcile.

The government took over 13 non-compliance orders in the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling to let them know that it was intentionally racially discriminating against indigenous and first nations kids on reserve on matters impacting child welfare. It finally came up with a settlement that was $17 billion less than what was ordered by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling. Then, I have to listen to the government talk all the time about how it wants reconciliation, when we constantly have to fight for the fact that our kids deserve the same as other kids in the country, and I have to go to committee and fight for the EI legislation.

I would like to, once again, read to the House the amendment that would allow us to uphold Canadian law and that was passed at committee, even though the Liberal members abstained from the vote and outright voted against it during the national child care legislation. They are now trying to overturn it in the House because it was passed at committee.

I will read the amendment, which states:

For greater certainty, in this Part, a reference to the placement of one or more children with a claimant for the purpose of adoption includes a situation in which one or more Indigenous children are placed, in accordance with the customs or traditions of the Indigenous group, community or people to which they belong, with a claimant, other than their parent, for the purpose of giving the claimant primary responsibility for providing their day-to-day care.

I will refer to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the NDP's attempt to make this legislation compatible. It says:

Article 19

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

Article 20

1. Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and develop their political, economic and social systems or institutions, to be secure in the enjoyment of their own means of subsistence and development, and to engage freely in all their traditional and other economic activities.

2. Indigenous peoples deprived of their means of subsistence and development are entitled to just and fair redress.

That would include equal benefits under EI.

It goes on to state:

Article 21

1. Indigenous peoples have the right, without discrimination, to the improvement of their economic and social conditions, including, inter alia, in the areas of education, employment, vocational training and retraining, housing, sanitation, health and social security.

2. States shall take effective measures and, where appropriate, special measures to ensure continuing improvement of their economic and social conditions. Particular attention shall be paid to the rights and special needs of indigenous elders, women, youth, children and persons with disabilities.

Once again, like The Twilight Zone, I am here fighting to bring our kids home. I am here having to plead with the government as to whether it is really ready to reconcile or not. I have been told there is a bill, Bill C-54, that the government will put forward and that it wants to consult with indigenous people. My reply is for the government to find me one indigenous person who would argue against the right for them to raise their children in their own traditions and customs. The kinds of things we have to consult on, basic human rights, being used as a stalling mechanism is another form of institutional racism. I will provide a couple of examples.

How do indigenous people feel about clean drinking water? Let us consult on that for four years. How do indigenous people feel about toilets and how fire trucks are going to get to their communities so their houses do not burn down? The government asks them to say how they feel about that. Find me one indigenous person who feels they need to consult about human rights and life and death matters at every turn. I can provide a whole list. I can give an encyclopedia of them, in fact. I can point out the Indian Act that the government developed without the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples.

I can name a million resource extraction projects where militarized police are smashing in the doors of indigenous women, being called out by the United Nations where there was no consultation, yet when we ask to bring our kids home, when we say we want to uphold Canadian law so this new legislation is aligned with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, something the government is obliged to do, what does it say? It thanks me for my work and says it needs to consult on it.

What do I call that? I call it systemic racism. What do I call child welfare? I call it a pipeline to murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. What do I call that? A pipeline to the justice system. What do I call the sixties scoop? I call it a loss of identity, the disruption of our families that we will never get back and the ongoing genocide of our families.

This is shameful, and I am going to call out this shame unapologetically, because it is time for all governments, without excuse, to bring our kids home, period. It is time for our kids and our families to get the same resources that are afforded to other families in this country.

Do you know what I think the problem is, Mr. Speaker? I am going to be fully transparent here. It is money. Because 90% of kids in care are indigenous, the government is going to fight it every step of the way, like it did the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

Do you know what that tells me? It tells me that we are less than, still, in this country. Our kids are not as valuable. Our women and our 2SLGBTQIA+ people will continue to go missing and be murdered. Why? It is because the government has completed zero calls for justice in 2023.

They finished 13 altogether out of the 81 that they are responsible for as the federal government, yet I had to hear a speech about the dark cloud that I place over their heads. I will tell you something. I will tell you a dark cloud.

I have a friend whose loved one was just murdered in an incident involving grotesque police brutality. That is a dark cloud. That is called systemic racism.

If that is dark, if people say, “Oh, you want your clip, Leah. There, you got your clip, I heard,” and if that is what they think it is about, I do not care. We are going to bring our kids home, and I am going to fight this government or any other government that comes in its place to give us the resources we need to bring our kids home.

I will not be questioned by a member whose riding has the highest number of kids in care in the whole country, justifying and celebrating how well his government is doing, when I am now, once again, fighting his government so that our families do not have to live in poverty. That is disgusting, and it is racist.

Amendment to Bill C-228 at Committee Stage

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to raise this point of order. What I would like to do is just give a brief summary of the issue and give a couple of examples of parliamentary precedent that I think bear on the case and then propose a remedy.

This is with respect to Bill C-228. At committee, an amendment was moved to not only protect the pensions of workers when companies went bankrupt, but to also protect their termination and severance pay. It was an amendment that was agreed to by the bill's sponsor in advance of the second reading vote. It was ruled out of order by the committee chair. That was overturned by the committee itself. Subsequently, in response to a point of order by the member for Winnipeg North, that amendment protecting termination and severance pay was removed by the Speaker as being out of order.

There are a few examples in parliamentary history where amendments that were removed for the very same reason, which was that it was determined it was outside the scope of the bill, have been put back in with the unanimous consent of the House of Commons.

I refer specifically to June 17, 1986, when Speaker Bosley ruled three government motions in amendment at report stage of Bill C-106, at that time, were out of order because they went beyond the scope of the bill. The parliamentary secretary to the president of the Privy Council at that time asked Speaker Bosley whether the motions could be put to the House for unanimous consent. The Speaker agreed, and the amendment motions were reintroduced in the bill with the unanimous consent of the House.

Similarly, on April 28, 1992, the House was about to begin consideration at report stage of Bill C-54. The admissibility of three amendments to the bill, which had been adopted in committee, were called into question on a point of order. The three amendments were ruled out of order by the chairman of the committee, as two of the amendments sought to amend the parent act and a third, like these, went beyond the scope of the bill, but the chairman's decisions were overturned by the committee.

After hearing comments from other members, Speaker Fraser ruled immediately that the inadmissible amendments adopted by the committee to Bill C-54 be declared null and void and no longer form part of the bill as reported to the House. Right after the ruling, the amendments in question were agreed to by the House, once again, by unanimous consent.

I submitted these amendments again for report stage of the bill, which will begin tomorrow, so it is timely that I am raising this point of order now, with report stage of that bill pending for tomorrow, and—