Parliamentary Speeches
799 speeches by Alexandre Boulerice — Page 9 of 16
Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, which I found to be very compassionate, because it focused on the people who have had to be evacuated because of the wildfires and whose lives have been turned upside down. There is one thing that I think we do not talk enough about and that is the loss of expertise necessary to build water bombers in Quebec and Canada. Canadair and then Bombardi…
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Mr. Speaker, we have seen the images of New York's Statue of Liberty completely shrouded in smoke from Quebec's wildfires. It is astonishing to think that 128 million people in the United States are under air quality advisories. The air quality index for New York City peaked at 413 on a scale of 0 to 500 by the end of the day on Wednesday. Figures like these have not been recorded in 20 years. Cli…
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Mr. Speaker, that would be more believable if the Liberals had not bought the Trans Mountain pipeline and approved the Bay du Nord project. Listening to the Liberals, it sounds as though everything is sunshine and lollipops. The problem is that the sun is hidden by the smoke. It is getting harder and harder for the Liberals to keep pretending everything is fine when the entire country is burning. …
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her work and her speech. We have an excellent motion before us today. However, based on experience, I fear that the Liberals will vote in favour of this motion and then do nothing. In other words, they are all talk and no action. What would my colleague like to see the Liberal government do once this motion is adopted?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent motion. I have just one question. Did the leader of the Bloc Québécois read the motion before my hon. colleague moved it? The leader of the Bloc Québécois, when he was minister, was very much in favour of developing oil on Anticosti Island. He circumvented BAPE three times on development projects. He authorized McInnis Cement, one of the most p…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague from Mirabel seems to be extremely concerned about what is happening with the NDP in Alberta. I find that really interesting. I would like to bring his attention back to the environment and to what is happening in Mirabel, more specifically in Kanesatake, where, for years, there has been an illegal dump. Foul-smelling, toxic water is leaking from that dump, and it is ha…
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Madam Speaker, I think it is very important to rise in the House to speak on this extremely important issue. I have the pleasure of following the leader of the NDP, who gave a truly inspiring and highly informative speech. I think that it should be shared with all parliamentarians and all Canadians and Quebeckers as well. We are currently seeing, experiencing and feeling the impact of the climate …
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Madam Speaker, it is pretty funny to hear the Liberals tell us that greenhouse gas emissions went down in 2020-21. Something happened during that time: the COVID-19 pandemic. The economy slowed down to roughly zero. Of course greenhouse gas emissions went down. There was no economic activity. Now that the pandemic is over and economic activity has resumed, greenhouse gas emissions have increased. …
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond for his extremely relevant question. The NDP is indeed proud to have secured gains that will benefit Quebeckers, such as dental care for seniors and teenagers and housing for indigenous communities. We are making progress on these fronts, but we are also continuing to put pressure on the Liberal government and to condemn oil subsidies. Under the ag…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. It is quite true that Canada, under the Liberals, ranks 58th out of 63 countries when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I agree with him that this is an admission of failure. However, we cannot blame this solely on the carbon tax or the price on pollution. It is a good tool, a market-based tool, that provides incentives to pollute …
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. Indeed, having accessible and affordable day care is so important for families, and especially to mothers. We went through it in Quebec, we saw it. Quebec was a pioneer, a trailblazer, with its network of child care centres. That has provided immeasurable services to families. The NDP is very proud to have worked on this bill to improve it. It was …
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for another inspiring and enlightening speech. I think she is absolutely right. As I was saying, the Quebec model of early childhood education centres, the CPEs, has helped people enormously. It is a great social benefit for families in Quebec. What does my colleague think about the fact that an agreement has been reached between the federal and Qu…
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Madam Speaker, in Quebec, we have experience with day cares that are public and accessible to families who have less money. Is the system perfect and are there always enough day care spaces for everyone? The answer is, of course not. Is that a reason to do nothing and to leave it all up to private, for-profit day cares that cost a fortune? The answer, again, is no. The framework must be set up, an…
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Madam Speaker, in the budget implementation bill, there is something very near and dear to the hearts of NDP members and to all progressives in this country: access to dental care for the poorest, the disadvantaged and middle-class families. For the first time, people who have previously been unable to afford it will have access to dental care. I want to ask the member this: If he votes against Bi…
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Madam Speaker, this budget is far from perfect. There are big gaps we are very worried about, but there are still major gains for ordinary people. It will come as no surprise to my colleague that this budget expands dental benefits for children aged 12 to 18 and for people 65 and up, as well as for everyone earning less than $70,000 a year or whose household income is less than $90,000 a year. Thi…
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Madam Speaker, I do not often agree with my colleague. However, she raises an important point, which is the budget's inadequacies when it comes to housing. The NDP sees that there is a housing crisis. We want social and affordable housing. We want co-operative housing. The budget is far from perfect, and we would have done things differently. However, there is something in there that the NDP is ve…
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Mr. Speaker, people across the country are hurting because of the housing crisis. They are paying exorbitant prices or are being forced to move. The Liberals are not building enough social or affordable housing and are not investing enough to maintain existing housing. Yesterday, the NDP leader and I visited an affordable housing complex in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce that had to condemn and close entire …
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to announce that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley who, I am sure, will teach us a lot about this very important issue. The planet is burning. It is not a metaphor. Global warming and climate change are real. This is affecting people. It is killing people. It is making people sick and forcing people to leave their villages and t…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent for his speech. Unfortunately, it does not surprise me. I still cannot believe the Conservatives would refuse to use the tools of the market and the capitalist system to change the behaviour of individuals and companies. I agree with the NDP caucus that this tool must be used, but it would work a lot better if the government did not simu…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very interesting and specific question. Yesterday, I attended an event organized by Stop Ecocide Canada, a group advocating a new legal concept of environmental accountability. An American was there to talk about responsible investment funds and the use of tax measures to effect change. He spoke about the social, environmental and public health impacts t…
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Madam Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his question. This is a complex issue because we have different systems. Quebec has had a carbon exchange in place for a number of years now. The funny thing is that the carbon exchange was implemented by Jean Charest when he was premier of Quebec, and he recently ran for Conservative Party leader, so that idea came from someone within their o…
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Madam Speaker, I want to quote a document, which reads as follows: “We’ll finalize and improve the Clean Fuel Regulations to reduce carbon emissions from every litre of gasoline...we burn, turning them into a true Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Our improvements will include: Basing our Low Carbon Fuel Standard on British Columbia's policy to achieve a 20% reduction in carbon intensity for transport fue…
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Madam Speaker, I am always surprised by the Conservatives' rhetoric as the planet is literally burning. Canada is ranked 39th for per capita greenhouse gas emissions but 10th among countries for greenhouse gas emissions. If we want to abide by the Paris accord, the average per capita emissions around the world should be two tonnes per year, and yet each and every Canadian emits 17.5 tonnes. Does m…
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Madam Speaker, when it comes to climate, the Conservatives are dinosaurs. I think that they like oil so much because it is the remains of dinosaurs. They must feel at home there. What does my colleague think about the Liberal government, and especially the Minister of the Environment, who make grand speeches at COPs but then sign an order authorizing a project like Bay du Nord?
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Madam Speaker, I am always a bit shocked to see the Conservatives, who believe in the free market and capitalism, refuse to put a price on pollution, when that consists in using market rules to change people's behaviour. I find that to be inconsistent with their philosophical framework. In fact, my colleague is saying that if the rest of the world does not take the initiative, we should not do any…
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Madam Speaker, I found the speech by my Liberal Party colleague fascinating. He seemed to be suggesting that the Liberal government's record on greenhouse gas emissions is a good one. However, in 2021, greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2%. In fact, greenhouse gas emissions have gone up by 14% in Canada since 1990 despite the climate emergency. Why is his government not doing better? It is inca…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the NDP to address the question of privilege raised by the member for Durham this morning. We in the NDP are extremely concerned about the situation facing the member for Durham, the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, our colleague, the member for Vancouver East, and, potentially, other members. In a ruling delivered on September 19, 1973, Speaker Lamoureux stated…
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Madam Chair, I thank the Minister of Finance for being here. It is an exercise that not many people know about, but it is very interesting for parliamentarians on both sides of the House. My first question is the following. Recently, I met with people from ACFAS who were concerned about the fact that scholarships for post-graduate students at the master's and doctoral level had not been indexed si…
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Madam Chair, I hope that will result in action on that front. I believe that students deserve better than what they are getting at this time. Let us talk about the issue of housing, which is perhaps what most concerns the people I represent in my riding of Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie. Many people are waiting for social housing. Social housing is the best way to reduce the cost of rent and to lift pe…
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Madam Chair, speaking of implementation, I would like to ask a question about the national housing strategy, which was established by the Liberals after a Liberal government stopped investing in affordable social housing in 1994. How many housing units were built as part of the national housing strategy in 2022?
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Madam Chair, the answer is that we do not know. We do not know how many housing units were built under the national housing strategy. The housing advocate appointed by the Liberal government told us in her last report that there are no numbers. Meanwhile, in Quebec, 37,000 people are waiting for social housing, including 23,700 in Montreal alone. Is the Minister of Finance prepared to commit to re…
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Madam Chair, in that case, I hope we will see more money for the national housing strategy, because right now, it is not delivering results, and people in urban and rural areas are suffering. For the first time, the Canada Revenue Agency calculated the tax gap, meaning the difference between the amount of tax that individuals and businesses should be paying and the amount of tax that is actually r…
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Madam Chair, I am not sure there is anything to be proud of when the Canada Revenue Agency tells us that the tax gap is between $18 billion and $23 billion. That is the amount that we collectively lost last year. That means we should be able to afford public universal pharmacare insurance. We should be able to pay for everyone's dental care. We should be able to reform employment insurance. Why ar…
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Madam Chair, I have one last question. We are seeing absolutely obscene wealth gaps in our society. Mr. Weston, the owner or CEO of Loblaw, earns 431 times the average salary of his own employees. We in the NDP have a proposal to cap it at 50 times the average employee's salary. Are the Liberals prepared to listen to our proposal to limit the wealth gap between employers and employees?
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Mr. Speaker, I have a concern. We do a lot of work with environmental groups. It is good to have legislation that recognizes a citizen's right to a healthy environment. We support that principle. However, what happens if the Liberal government then goes on to approve oil and gas projects that will jeopardize that right to a healthy environment and exacerbate the climate crisis? I would like to hea…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, which, as always, was passionate, well illustrated, and provided some really good arguments. We are probably experiencing the sixth mass extinction event for the species on our planet. I would like to ask my colleague a very specific question, since we are debating an environmental bill that protects species. Everyone is familiar with the monarch b…
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Mr. Speaker, important things are happening here in Parliament, but important things are also happening in society. On behalf of the NDP, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the sudden passing of the Quebec actor Michel Côté and to offer our condolences to his family and friends. This is an immense loss for the Quebec theatre community and the artistic community. I am sure my colleague sh…
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Mr. Speaker, an environmental disaster is unfolding in Kanesatake. Toxic water leaking from an illegal dump is spreading across Mohawk territory and draining into Lac des Deux Montagnes. The smell is terrible. The damage is real. Community members are fed up. They are being intimidated and left to fend for themselves. Federal action is urgently needed. Will the Liberals listen to the community of …
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am not an expert on Manitoban history, but we do need to be somewhat careful. I think there was a time when the majority of people in Manitoba spoke French, before French was banned from being taught in schools. We have to put things in perspective, from a historical point of view. Today, it is true that there is an interest in French and immersion classes. It has even…
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Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to say that I have the honour and pleasure of sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Vancouver East. Today we are seized with a motion that opens up a debate, which is clearly necessary and could very well be done for any public policy. A discussion of immigration, immigration levels, integration capacity, language, living together and living in…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his incisive question. I, too, can provide a quote. I really enjoy Gilles Vigneault's music, and a line from one of his songs goes, “and these people are of my people”. I think this is important in the debate we are currently having. We are dealing with real people and we have to treat them as such. This is not about good Quebeckers versus evil immigrants. It …
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Mr. Speaker, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve is one of the neighbourhoods hardest hit by Montreal's housing crisis. However, the Liberal member for this riding, who is also the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Housing, refuses to meet with the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve housing committee. Not only that, but she has not provided the organization with any Canada summer jobs positions that would enable it…
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Madam Speaker, we are debating a matter of life-saving importance. It is a public safety matter. For better or for worse, the issue is complex and emotionally charged. My colleague talked about the process and the fact that so-called alternative facts may have been spread over social media by certain members of one political party. Three parties came to the House with a reasonable proposal that wo…
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Mr. Speaker, May 15 marks the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the great Palestinian catastrophe, an event that is etched in the memories of Palestinian families around the world. From one day to the next, thousands of men, women and children were driven from their homes. The first refugee camps appeared. Many of those camps still exist and have transformed into small towns. Obviously, the situation…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from La Prairie for his speech. I always learn new turns of phrase from him. This time, it was, “It is about as easy as eating an apple through a tennis racquet”. I had not heard that one before. I would like to make it clear that the NDP obviously supports our Conservative colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills and his family, who are in an extrem…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I really appreciated his reminding us that the opposition is important to democracy and to Parliament, although I do not remember him saying anything like that when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister. Things were different then. What is going on right now is very troubling. Every day brings new revelations. The member for Wellington—Halton Hills a…
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Mr. Speaker, I imagine that just like everyone else you have a good appetite and enjoy a good meal. I also imagine that you like to know what is in your food. This will no longer be the case because of the Liberal government. The Liberals gave in to the financial interests of the industry, which wants to secretly introduce new GMOs into our food. Voluntary transparency no longer exists. It is an i…
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Madam Speaker, I am going to paraphrase an expression to avoid using unparliamentary language. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. There is something here that looks a lot like foreign interference, and the facts are piling up. After everything we have learned in the last few weeks, should there not be an independent, transparent inquiry …
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With regard to immigration and housing: (a) what measures does the government have in place to address likely increases in refugees seeking to cross our borders due to climate instability, and what provinces have been consulted on these measures; (b) broken down by department and year since 2013, what is the name of all reports commissioned by the government assessing refugee migration due to clim…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, even though I am diametrically opposed to the vision he is proposing. It was a classic demonstration of neo-liberalism, which demonizes the state, regulations, public services, social programs, the social safety net and environmental protections and portrays them as barriers. It was reminiscent of old Regan- and Thatcher-era speeches. It is all a…
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