Parliamentary Speeches
473 speeches by Christine Normandin — Page 5 of 10
Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, Canada did not reduce its greenhouse gas emissions last year. On the contrary, they increased by 2.1%. That is according to the Canadian Climate Institute. That increase is almost entirely down to one sector, a sector whose five biggest companies made $200 billion in profits last year. This sector receives billions of dollars in subsidies to create less pollution, yet it continues t…
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Madam Speaker, we now know that the ministers do not really seem to be informed about what is happening. It is common knowledge here that everyone works via text messaging, because texts are practical. When the recipient sees the message, the system tags the message as “read”. We can even see what time the message was read. Would it be possible for the government to implement the same kind of syst…
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Madam Speaker, the Minister of Public Safety was completely unaware that Paul Bernardo was being transferred, even though his office knew about it for three months. He told us that the problem has been solved because he instructed his office to keep him informed. The same thing happened with the Prime Minister regarding China's threats against an MP. He had not been made aware either, but everythi…
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Madam Speaker, we often like to say in the House that good intentions do not necessarily make good bills. I will not impute bad intentions to anyone with regard to this amendment. On the contrary, I think it comes from a good place. However, by setting a fairly strict obligation in its application, we may be losing some flexibility. The Senate means well, but ultimately, this could cause other pro…
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Madam Speaker, I mentioned at the end of my speech that adding another amendment raised some concern. What is that going to accomplish? That is ultimately the question. I am not against ideas being debated or everyone being able to express their point of view, but the way that it is done is sometimes problematic. Is this a way to delay passage of the bill? If so, it is absolutely deplorable. It ha…
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Madam Speaker, one of the analyses I did in my first speech on Bill C‑9 was under section 99 of the Constitution, which addresses judges' security of tenure. Different jurists and analysts who worked on the bill mentioned that this principle of immovability was respected. The foundation of the analysis process for misconduct is that it is to be done by peers and a judge must not be removed for min…
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Mr. Speaker, my colleagues must realize by now that the Bloc Québécois will not give up. Public trust in democracy is at stake. The people are calling for an independent public commission of inquiry. Its commissioner must be approved by the House. The commission will have to report on its work, not in five years, not in two years, but in the next few months. We realize that this is an immense task…
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Mr. Speaker, an inquiry into Chinese interference must be launched before we rise for the summer. It takes a lot of time to investigate, and we have wasted too much time already. If we want to reassure the public, we need to shed light on the interference that occurred in the last election before another one is called. That is the only way to convince the public of the integrity of the next federa…
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to hear from the minister, and I commend the fact that he is with us so late tonight to debate his motion. The Bloc Québécois will support this motion because we are satisfied with the work that has been done. However, I would like to make a small clarification, and this is what I would like to hear the minister talk about. We agreed to the amendment to delet…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I would like him to answer the same question I asked the Minister of Justice. Do we not run the risk of limiting the number of candidates who could be added to the list of judges and laypersons if we strike “as far as possible” from the sentence about selecting candidates who reflect diversity, especially given that there is a shortage of judges?…
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Madam Speaker, even though it is late, we are wrapping up our work and we may be a little jagged, it is a pleasure to speak to the return of Bill C‑9 as amended by the Senate. This all feels a bit like groundhog day. I was rereading the notes from my last speech on Bill C‑9 and they begin with a reminder to wish everyone a merry Christmas. In my notes, I was talking about the fact that I had spoke…
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Madam Speaker, I understand that clause 84 seeks to create a roster of people who could sit on various panels. Since we do not know in advance which judge may have to make representations before these panels for various types of misconduct, we would want to have a roster of people who have many different qualities, including being bilingual, because there may be French-speaking and English-speakin…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. He said it: This bill has been in the works for a very long time and has been the subject of a lot of work, particularly by the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. The bill has been amended, improved and enhanced. The member is somewhat disappointed tonight to see yet another amendment from the Conservative side that risks delaying its adoption. …
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately, I think we have seen abuses of process in the past. The case of Justice Michel Girouard was an example. By eliminating some recourse to common law courts, we can avoid not only appeals, but also everything that is incidental to an appeal. There are various dilatory measures that can be taken in the case of an appeal in a common law court. That is what is being minimiz…
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Mr. Speaker, I will begin by letting you know that I will not be sharing my time with any of my colleagues. I therefore apologize profusely because you are going to have to listen to my voice for about 20 to 30 minutes. I will try to make it as pleasant as possible. Today we are talking about making a hybrid Parliament a permanent thing for centuries and centuries to come. As people often say, not…
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Mr. Speaker, if the member for Winnipeg North had been paying attention to my speech, he would know that I talked about the Trudeau senior government's passage of time allocation in the part of my speech about how things are being done, not the part about the substance of the motion. We can agree on the merits of time allocation. Perhaps discussions with the parties could have resulted in an agree…
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Mr. Speaker, there were a lot of elements in that question. It makes me think of things I wanted to say, but did not. There are other things that could have been considered for the balance between the work we do in the House and the work we do in our ridings. One example that readily comes to mind is the parliamentary calendar. We sit 26 weeks a year. Is it necessary during this time of year to ha…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. I am sorry that I misquoted him. He has become a member of the big club of misquoted members. I believe we are all unwilling members of that club. On the issue of protecting interpreters, if it had not been urgent and if we had had this discussion about the substance and form, we could probably have put in place more mechanisms to pro…
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Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, there appears to be some asymmetry in the measures that the motion sets out for the changes they want to make to the rules of procedure. The in-person attendance obligations for the government side are being watered down. In contrast, the opposition side is facing the exact same prepandemic obligations when it comes to being able to thwart certain governme…
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Mr. Speaker, let us talk about Chinese interference, or rather, let us talk about those who are the victims of it, those who the government refuses to talk about. Let us talk about the defenders of democracy from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Solomon Islands. Let us talk about the Uyghurs and the Tibetans. Their representatives all rallied with the Bloc Québécois to demand a public and independent inquir…
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Mr. Speaker, the situation speaks for itself. No pro-democracy groups and no representatives of the victims of the Chinese regime support the government's initiative. None. The government would know that, had its special rapporteur taken the time to talk to them before publishing his report. They are all calling for a public inquiry led by an independent commissioner with the power to issue a summ…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent speech and his hard work. International humanitarian aid represents 0.3% of Canada's GDP, despite the government's commitment to increasing that figure to 0.7% of GDP. This bill could have been passed long ago, because lives that depend on it. My questions for my colleague are the following. Does this not give the impression that, in internationa…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, since we are on the second hour of considering Motion No. 63, it is important to remember when the first hour occurred. It was in December. It is said that six months is an eternity in politics. I think we had a clear example of that today. In that first hour of consideration of the motion, we did not yet have the revelations from The Globe and Mail and Global News on Beijing's interf…
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives spoke a lot today about how they want to scrap the safer supply initiatives that have been put in place. Unfortunately, there are situations where those drugs are being resold so that the user can buy fentanyl. If we want to be able to implement support measures to help people recover from addictions, then we need to make sure that they stay alive first. What we wa…
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Madam Speaker, since the beginning of this debate, the Conservatives have been saying that Bill C-21 will either ban hunting rifles or that it will allow the Prime Minister to ban hunting rifles. It would be one or the other in the best of all possible worlds. The truth is, it is neither. I would still like to hear my colleague's thoughts on the second part. If I understand the Conservatives' argu…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to hear what my colleague from Winnipeg North has to say about this. Tonight, people in the House keep complaining that the Conservatives do not understand the bill. In fact, they understand it very well, but they are twisting it, saying that the government is going to ban hunters' guns. However, if the government had done the job properly from the start and consulted w…
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Motion No. 79, moved by my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona, whom I thank, by the way, for his excellent speech. Despite the fact that I still consider myself a young politician, perhaps less so in age than in years of experience, I feel that I have learned a lot about procedural matters during my three and a half years in office. I had the pleasure of partici…
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Mr. Speaker, it is hard to follow the Liberals when it comes to the Century Initiative and their goal of increasing the Canadian population to 100 million people. They say they reject the initiative, and yet they refuse to support our motion to reject the initiative. They say they deny the initiative's target of 500,000 people per year, and yet their own target for 2025 is 500,000 people. The Libe…
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Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to believe the Liberals when they say that they did not take a page from the Century Initiative, because their immigration targets are identical. However, we will give them the benefit of the doubt. We do not yet know the Liberal targets starting in 2026. Perhaps they will not copy the Century Initiative targets after 2025. Can they promise Quebeckers that their target…
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Madam Speaker, first things first. The fact that there are so many newcomers whose status is irregular right now only proves that the immigration system does not work, and yet the Liberals want to put more people into it. As for the regularization of undocumented workers, people who already contribute to the economy, I think that it is a path we must consider. To deal with the labour shortage, whi…
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Madam Speaker, first I want to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Mirabel, who seems to enthusiastically agree, which is good, because it means that I will not have to give a 20-minute speech when I have prepared a 10-minute speech. As I have often stated before when rising in the House, I would like to be able to say that I am pleased to rise today. Un…
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Madam Speaker, there are two things. One of the problems with mass immigration is that when we try to look for top-notch people, we drain their countries of origin of the brains they need as much as we do. The other thing is that we are talking about francophone immigration. That is great. We can welcome francophone immigrants. As I mentioned in my speech, however, the resources are not available.…
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Madam Speaker, if it is so simple to bring in French teachers, why has Ontario not already done so? One has to wonder, but there is clearly no acceptable answer because there are no francophone teachers. Even if those who settle here are francophone and do not need to be francized, the government is still losing sight of the problem of anglicization and language transfer toward English. That probl…
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Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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Madam Speaker, the answer is no but, in any case, I do not think the question is that relevant given the debate today. The questions I am hearing from all sides concerning specific members just lead me to reiterate that this debate is becoming far too partisan, which serves no one, and certainly not democracy. That is why I urge all members to vote for the motion, because the main thing it is call…
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Madam Speaker, as I said, I do not claim to be inside the government's head, nor do I wish to be. That said, I will reiterate what I said at the beginning of my speech: The longer this drags on, the dirtier it gets and the more it becomes a partisan issue, when that is not what democracy should be. The longer the House continues to refuse to hold an independent public inquiry, the longer we will b…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to start by saying that I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot. I will not keep the members on tenterhooks any longer: The Bloc Québécois will be supporting today's motion from the Conservatives. As we know, when things drag, they tend to pick up dirt, and right now everything is turning into a crisis. The longer this dr…
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Madam Speaker, I do not claim to be inside the government's head, nor do I wish to be. That said, I—
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is blaming CSIS, but he has been ignoring their warnings for years. Even before the 2019 election, CSIS warned him that a Liberal candidate was possibly being supported by China. He ignored that. CSIS later warned him that the same Liberal member was discussing the two Michaels with Beijing. He ignored that. In 2021, CSIS warned him that China was threatening an opp…
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Mr. Speaker, a new development has surfaced. The Prime Minister claims that CSIS made the decision not to inform the opposition member that he was the target of threats from China. Richard Fadden, a former CSIS director, demolished this excuse in The Globe and Mail. Mr. Fadden explained that not only would the memo that the media found have been sent to the Prime Minister's office, but it would al…
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague’s premise, except perhaps that I believe the Bloc Québécois was the first to point out the importance of an independent public inquiry. There are several things that can be done and put in place, including the creation of a foreign agent registry, which has been called for since November 2020. We have been told that consultations to set up such a registry a…
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Mr. Speaker, when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, informed the Prime Minister in 2019 that a prospective Liberal MP was receiving support from China, he kept it secret and did nothing. When CSIS informed him in 2021 that an opposition MP and his family were being threatened by China, he kept it secret and did nothing. The Prime Minister keeps things secret when it serves the L…
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Madam Speaker, in Quebec, French is declining as the language spoken at work. French is declining as the language spoken at home. The proportion of people whose first official language learned is French is declining. In short, French is declining across Quebec. However, the Liberals' official languages action plan invests hundreds of millions of dollars in promoting English in Quebec. The entire p…
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Madam Speaker, I do not need lessons from anyone when it comes to being open-minded. We heard a real gem from the Minister of Official Languages yesterday. She said her action plan does not provide funding for English, it provides funding for the vitality of Quebec's English-speaking community. That changes everything. Nearly 30% of people mainly use English at work in Montreal. Meanwhile, the use…
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for his speech. My colleague from Joliette mentioned, in a question posed a little earlier, that Revenu Québec had done a much better job than the CRA on tax evasion by recouping significant amounts, which was one of the arguments used by the Bloc Québécois to justify giving Quebec full taxation powers by implementing a single tax return. I w…
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay tribute to a man who is bigger than life, Mr. Alain Gingras. Alain has been involved with the cadet corps since 1990 and distinguished himself as a volunteer during the 1998 ice storm. In 2009, he joined Council 3206 of the Knights of Columbus, which would elect him Grand Knight in 2013. His work since then has been nothing short of extraordinary. He works hundreds…
Read full speech →Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this last Friday before the break to speak to Bill S‑202, which would create the position of visual artist laureate for the House. I want to draw some parallels to something similar that we are already familiar with and that my colleagues mentioned, the position of poet laureate. I will even refer to some speeches that were made at the time. We will go back to 2…
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Madam Speaker, the minister was really pushing it when he told the media that this was an opportunity, that this was good news for Quebeckers. I think we can all agree that no one here is in favour of any type of billing, but we need to remember that Quebec needed $6 billion in new investments just to begin repairing our health care system. The federal government gave Quebec just $1 billion, one-s…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
Madam Speaker, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights examined the issue of coercive and controlling behaviour in intimate relationships to explore the possibility of considering such behaviour to be a criminal offence. This was done in connection with Bill C‑247, which was introduced in 2020. Members will recall that that bill died on the Order Paper when the government called an elec…
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Madam Speaker, the federal government has just announced $82 million in cuts to health care, half of which will affect Quebec. We are losing out on $41 million because of the minister, and that money was earmarked for our health care system. Has the minister been to a hospital lately? Has he turned on his television or read a newspaper? Health care centres everywhere are in crisis. It is extremely…
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