Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is completely cutting Quebec out of decisions that affect it. It happened with Bill C-39, and it happened again this morning with the tax cut for businesses. Christine Fréchette says that she was never consulted about this tax cut that will blow a $1-billion hole in Quebec's public finances every year. In the middle of an election, all the parties are finding out that they will have to prepare a budget on October 6 with $1 billion less to work with. The Prime Minister's stubborn insistence on flying solo is plainly detrimental to the governance of Quebec. Is he going to keep on behaving as though the Government of Quebec does not exist?

Madam Speaker, that was not the first time I have stood up thinking it was my turn to speak. Sometimes we get a bit rusty after going on vacation or being away for a while. As members may know, there are no surprises with me. I always like to start a parliamentary session by telling the Speaker that I am happy to see her. Our Speaker is glowing today, and it is great to see her here in such good health. I am delighted to see her in the chair, especially since we are kicking off the parliamentary session with a pretty important bill. This bill is very short, and we are familiar with it because we already passed a previous version in April. The government simply wants to extend the fuel excise tax suspension for a few more months. I want the government to know that I believe the work we do as parliamentarians is important. I think it is important for us to examine this measure in committee and to hear from witnesses. It is important for us to question how effective this measure is. It is important to consider alternatives to this measure. This is not the only measure with the potential to help lower costs for consumers, farmers and people along the distribution chains. That is why it is important for us to do this parliamentary work. I was a little worried that the government might try to fast-track this bill by imposing closure and saying that the bill made sense, that it was not controversial, that we did not need to do our duty as parliamentarians and that we had already passed it in April. It is vital to remember the importance of the opposition's role. This is especially true in a Parliament with a growing majority. It is also vital to remember the role of civil society and the importance of hearing from witnesses. There are people in civil society, people in the private sector, academics and researchers who, in many ways, are much more knowledgeable about this tax mechanism than the Minister of Finance himself is. The government should have the decency to invite those people to talk to us about the tax. What is really going on with gas prices and the gas tax? I talked about that during the debates we had before the summer recess and the by-elections. Speaking of the by-elections, I would like to welcome my new colleague, who happens to come from my home region. He should know that there is a Garon Street in Chicoutimi that was named in honour of my grandfather. I never knew him, because he passed away a long time ago, but I am confident he would be a sovereignist today. Anyway, that is a whole other debate. When I spoke about gas prices in April, I decided to concentrate on a fairly stable indicator, namely the price of a litre of unleaded gas—which was a major issue at one time—at a self-service station over the past 25 years. To account for inflation, I adjusted it using the consumer price index. I found that, over a 25-year period, the price of gas, on average, has not gone up, which is quite surprising. In real terms, the price at the pump has gone up, but everything else in the economy has gone up as well. When we factor in inflation, the price remains fairly stable at about $1.60. Even though the long-term trend is flat, the price of gas fluctuates significantly. It can go from $1.60 to $2 to $1.40. Over the past 25 years or so, the price of gas, in real terms, has fluctuated significantly but has remained fairly stable. For 80% of Quebeckers and Canadians, there has been a significant real increase in purchasing power. What that means is that people's wages and incomes, even after adjusting for inflation, have increased faster than the cost of living. What happens when the wealthiest 80% of Canadians experience a significant increase in their purchasing power and see, in real terms, gas prices remain stable but fluctuate slightly? We get an increase in the number of kilometres driven per person, an increase in household fuel consumption, an increase in average vehicle size and an increase in the number of vehicles per household. In the Montreal area, during that period, the number of motor vehicles grew faster than the population. I am not sure whether the 80% of people with bigger, gas-guzzling vehicles are the ones who should be given priority and given immediate relief through a gas tax measure, especially since it is unclear whether this measure would also support the energy transition. This is something we should discuss with witnesses in committee. We know that this is a government that has abdicated its climate responsibilities and abandoned its greenhouse gas reduction targets, so I am not sure whether the people in that 80% are the ones who should be receiving the most immediate assistance. The other 20% of people are struggling to make ends meet, are living paycheque to paycheque and may be dealing with unforeseen circumstances, such as a breakup or a move. Often those people have to have a car because they can no longer afford to live in major cities and urban centres, where housing has become very expensive. Even though the price of gas has remained relatively stable over time, when adjusted for inflation, these people are very vulnerable to fluctuations in gas prices. For a household that is struggling to make ends meet, it is a big deal when gas goes from $1.68 a litre to $1.75. It might mean skipping meals, making the kids do without, not buying as many clothes or cutting back spending on vacations, education or school supplies. That is the issue. That once again brings us back to the question of whether this measure is helping those who really need it. This measure benefits 100% of people who use gasoline, including the Conservative members who pull into the parking lot in trucks 10 times bigger than my car. The government is spending money on everyone to help the 20% of people who really need it. We need to rethink this approach. Would a targeted transfer not be more appropriate? I know that the Minister of Finance increased the GST credit, which was good. Nobody took issue with that last winter or last spring. He changed the name. I do not remember what he called it, but the words “Canada Strong” must be in there somewhere because that is what they call everything. He bumped up the benefit that goes to these people, the folks who need it most. This transfer payment, this GST credit—the Canada groceries and essentials benefit, I believe it is called—is income-tested and adjusted based on family size according to the same criteria as those used to calculate family benefits, making it possible to direct support to the people who need it. What does that mean? It means that with $1 of public money, we can help someone in need five times over. I think this is a conversation we need to have. When someone goes to a gas station, they take money out of their pocket and pay for a litre of gas. There are two ways to help: either increase the amount of money in their pocket, or bring down the price of gas—or at least keep the increase in check. I do not know what kind of reasoning led the government to conclude that the only way to help the poorest people was simply to manipulate the rising price of a litre of gas. If the government believes that people need more help, I think that the grocery benefit might be a good option. It is worth discussing, especially since there is this myth floating around that a one-cent reduction in the excise tax translates to a one-cent reduction in gas prices. That is not true. When the excise tax is reduced, people along the distribution chain, like the distributor, the refiner or the gas stations themselves, pocket the difference. There is definitely no guarantee that it will end up in consumers' pockets. Why is that? It is because consumer demand for this is often fixed. People have to get around, especially the 20% who are struggling the most and need help the most. These people have to get from point A to point B. They have to go to work. They have to go grocery shopping. These people need to fill up their tanks, and they will do it. They will fill up at $1.68, $1.72, $1.80 or $1.85 per litre. They will do it even if it means going without something else. Retailers know this, and the oil industry knows it. In economics, this is called inelastic demand. That means the retailer knows they can pocket the excise tax reduction because people are going to fill up anyway. That is what we are seeing. Gas stations have public relations teams. Of course, they lower prices for a day or two. Then people forget. After that, they blame Iran and raise the price. We are beginning to see studies on other countries that have used the current government's method to put money in people's pockets. David Byrne is a world-renowned researcher in industrial economics and, more specifically, in competition issues related to gas prices. That is his specialty. I do not know what led him to focus on that, but he has devoted his whole life to it. He started studying Australia's data and realized that the mechanism that Canada is using was not actually benefiting the poorest people. The benefit was spread out through the entire chain. Does the government think retailers need help? Perhaps. Does it think gas stations need help? Perhaps. It obviously thinks oil companies need help. It spends its time giving them public money and subsidies. That is about the only thing it is interested in, other than travelling. The idea that debating the bill today means we are going to debate assistance that will end up in the pockets of the people who need it most has yet to be proven. We need empirical evidence and data. We need proof that that is the case. The Bloc Québécois has been calling for an increase in old age security for years. Seniors are often on fixed incomes. They too are dealing with inflation. They too have to travel. They too have problems, because taking public transit often becomes challenging with age. They need to go out to receive health care services. We were told that seniors 75 and over would receive an OAS increase, but not seniors aged 65 to 74. They are somehow a less important, second class of seniors. At the time, the Minister of Finance and his predecessor told us that there was no money for that; it was too expensive. As I recall, the cost was between $3.8 billion and $4 billion a year. There was no money to help out seniors. How much does today's proposed measure cost? I looked at the assessment. It adds up to $5.3 billion. Today, we are talking about $5.3 billion that will probably fall seriously short of helping the people who need it the most. Furthermore, if the excise tax reduction does affect the cost of gas, it will also go to fill up people's Hummers. Does this mean that the whole thing is bad? No, it means that it may not be targeted enough, that it may not be the only mechanism available, and that it is very expensive. It also means that the government has the money to do this. It also means that there is another way to use these funds. The issue is not whether we can afford $5.3 billion. We probably can. The question is, what are we forgoing? There are seniors tuning in today. They have been asked to tighten their belts ever since the Liberals took office. I mean when they really took office, back in 2015, because that is when it started. That is what seniors are being told. There are seniors in all our ridings. Madam Speaker, I know seniors in your riding who are telling me the same thing. In short, the government will be telling them that it actually can come up with $5.3 billion. It is important for us to do our jobs as parliamentarians. I am not making some grand speech today to say that everything is wonderful or terrible; rather, this is a call for cooler heads to prevail, a call to study this measure. It is a call to say that this does not actually need to be rushed through, that the government does not always have to forge full speed ahead, that it does not have to circumvent committees and that we do not need to cut corners on the parliamentary work we are being paid to do. We heard from witnesses when we first studied the bill. Many people said their piece. There is no unanimity in Quebec. I am not saying that everyone is against it, and I am not saying that everyone is in favour of it, but there is clearly a conversation in Quebec about the usefulness of this measure. There obviously is one. There were pre-budget consultations. The budgets come out in the fall. That was done in June. There was work done in August, with our colleagues on the Standing Committee on Finance. Some witnesses appeared. They were diligent people such as Luc Godbout, who holds the research chair in taxation and public finance at the Université de Sherbrooke. It has long been recognized that these folks see it as their duty to keep the public informed, and they take that duty very seriously. Luc Godbout said: ...in our opinion, the federal fuel excise tax exemption seems ill-advised from a public finance standpoint. It would be better not to extend this tax holiday and to maximize the chances of restoring the tax as it was and eventually indexing it. The other issue is that the gas tax, when adjusted for inflation, goes down if it is not indexed. Its impact on our wallets has been shrinking over the years. That is what has happened over time. Luc Godbout went on to say: I would remind you that a tax holiday of this nature benefits higher-income households more than low-income households. So in order to facilitate the reintroduction of the tax, consideration should probably be given to putting it into a community development fund or some other fund dedicated to that. I think it is important that these folks appear before the committee. It would be worth asking them what their analysis is based on. It would be worthwhile to hear from other parties who hold opposite views. If we question the measure, we are accused of being against Canada and against families and not wanting to help Canadians. I should hope that we are better than that in this Parliament. There are other people who appeared before the committee. In its pre-budget submission, Alliance Transit stated: Following the recent abolition of the carbon tax, this new tax break does nothing for families who do not own a vehicle or for those who have purchased electric vehicles, and there are many such families in Quebec and major cities across the country. This tax break is also costing Canada a significant amount of money, when those funds could be put to better use fighting poverty and maintaining our infrastructure, which is in a sorry state. This measure is unfair and short-sighted. Who are the members of Alliance Transit? I have a whole page of organizations that endorse its message, including Accès transports viables; Équiterre; the Réseau des centres d'expertise de mobilité, formerly known as the ACGDQ; the Regroupement national des conseils régionaux de l'environnement du Québec; Trajectoire Québec; Vivre en ville; Ville en vert; Vélo Québec; Nature Québec; and Les oubliés de l'autobus. That is a lot of people. What these people are saying is not based on ideology. It is based on facts. We know that. Young people learn this at university in their undergraduate studies. They are taught that just because consumers are theoretically getting a tax break does not mean that the person running the business and managing the tax break, which is the gas station in the case of the excise tax, is not going to pocket some of the money. What needs to happen? First, we need to have a broader conversation. The Liberals are here, and they are listening. Never again will the Liberals be able to say that increasing OAS for seniors is too expensive. Never again will they be able to tell us that this is a poorly targeted way to help because OAS decreases as income rises. It is more targeted. The Liberals need to tell us whether this increase is going to become permanent. Economist Milton Friedman once said that nothing is so permanent as a temporary policy. They did it once. Now they are doing it again. Will it still be temporary in a few months' time if there is another war? Will it still be temporary if the situation in Iran keeps dragging on? How does this fit into the budget? How will the government inform taxpayers? It made an announcement in the middle of summer, tabled a notice of ways and means and is trying to rush it through. At what point will they renew the measure next time, and based on what criteria? Does the Minister of Finance simply lick his finger, hold it up to the wind and decide to renew it? Are there any criteria? What are they? Has anyone measured the impact? Do we know if there are any consequences? Has the government hired researchers to figure that out? What studies has the Department of Finance carried out since April to demonstrate that this measure will actually put money in the pockets of those who need it? I think this Parliament needs to consider legislation like this, especially since it is already in effect and is already subject to a notice of ways and means. We are not blocking it. This Parliament just needs to determine whether, under the current circumstances, this is the right way to invest taxpayers' money.

Madam Speaker, first of all, we are certainly going to vote to send it to committee. We do not want to see the bill defeated; we want to send it to committee. That is our job. Considering that the member was Speaker of the House himself for a brief moment, he is well aware that this needs to go to committee so that we can perform our parliamentary work with diligence. Members will recall that we voted in support of this measure last April. What I am saying is that here, unlike Quebec City, we implemented and applied it. That is why we need to know where it stands. Now, I may be mistaken. The member may be monitoring things even more closely than I am. All parties in the Quebec National Assembly have a plan to balance the budget, yet here we are talking about $5.3 billion while the government keeps digging itself into a deeper fiscal hole year after year. Trump is not the only cause. My colleague opposite saw that. The hole is getting deeper by the year. If the federal government had a plan to return to a balanced budget, if public finances were healthier, if things had been managed differently in all the years since 2015, this would be an entirely different conversation. I think that the parties in Quebec City that are proposing this or other measures have included it in a comprehensive framework to fight poverty and help people with the cost of living. That is exactly what we are asking for. What we are saying is that it must be part of a whole. I think all the parties in Quebec City that are proposing this or other measures have made the effort.

Madam Speaker, I am going to set the petty politics aside and focus on the first part of the question. I made a joke about Hummers, but it is important to understand the purpose of this measure. The goal is not necessarily to help everyone who drives. The goal is to use the excise tax—to lower it and potentially lower the price of something that people buy, namely gas—to leave more money in the pockets of those who need it most. That is my understanding of the purpose of this measure. From that perspective, the question is not whether people are free to buy whatever vehicle they want, or whether people who own Hummers are bad people. I just wanted to point out that when we lower the price of gas for everyone, if it actually goes down, that also benefits people who would not otherwise benefit from a more targeted measure. I am merely calling on everyone to keep an open mind, to consider alternative policies or at least a range of policies that this could be part of. I think this definitely needs to be considered. As for who is implementing whose policy, I can barely keep track of who is in which party in this Parliament. The floor crossings are never ending. Things get tossed to the Senate, then they get tossed back. I cannot keep track anymore. I do not even know which party's platform is which. I do know that the Bloc Québécois's position has not changed.

Madam Speaker, that is certainly an interesting question that deserves careful consideration. I believe we would be remiss if we did not examine such policies. However, at the core of what my colleague is saying is the fact that these problems are chronic. What is happening geopolitically is becoming more and more entrenched. Lack of competition in the gasoline market, in retail gasoline sales, is a chronic problem. Refining margins are a chronic issue. These things are chronic. Now we find ourselves with just two weeks' notice that we are going from one temporary measure to another. Consumers do not know what will happen with this measure a few months from now. Will it be permanent? Will it be temporary? What other supports are there? Which measures can be made permanent? Will it be gone for good, and so on? The takeaway from our colleague's remarks is that we need to have a thoughtful conversation about structural, long-term measures if the problem becomes permanent. That is the one debate we are not having at the moment.

Madam Speaker, my message is that I am calling on parliamentarians to do their job and to slow down a bit. As I said, this bill is an example. There is a ways and means motion. The measure has been applied. We know that it will be applied. We know it because it is pretty obvious. We know how people will vote. We know that it will be applied. What we are saying is that, despite that, we cannot cut corners in carrying out intelligent parliamentary work. It is not just for us as members of Parliament. It is for civil society, as I said. There are people who understand these issues and who are doing research on it. Universities and research centres are full of people who are just waiting for politicians to listen to them so they can help us come up with better policies if a geopolitical situation like the one we are facing today arises again. We owe it to them. When debate is cut short, when things are rushed or when the work of committees is bypassed, it is not so much parliamentarians who are affected. We are made of strong stuff, we have thick skin. They are the ones we are undermining, and I think they deserve better.

Madam Speaker, I certainly think that the federal government should mind its own business, and I certainly think the policy is worth examining. I believe it is going to pass. That goes without saying. My colleague says that this money will go into the pockets of all Canadians. I spent 20 minutes explaining that this might not be entirely true and that it should be quantified. My colleague wants us to work together, but it is that type of rhetoric, that type of line recited from memory for the media, and that sort of triviality that undermines our parliamentary work. It is going to pass. The Conservatives will vote in favour of this policy. Most people here will vote for the bill; we know that. Now, we need to look further ahead. What will we do next time? What will we do if the situation in Iran is not resolved in six months' time? That is the real question, and that is why we have parliamentary committees.

Mr. Speaker, equalization is intended to level out disparities in fiscal capacity. For a fairly long time, Quebec's ministry of finance used to publish what was known as the update on federal transfers. It revealed that almost the entire difference in fiscal capacity between the so-called “rich” and “poor” provinces could be traced back to non-renewable natural resources. What happens when federal money is invested in oil? The provinces that produce the most oil get rich, while Quebec grows even more dependent on equalization. I would like my colleague to explain for me how that can be a trap.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge all the brave men and women who are here tonight and who will be staying up late. I was joking around earlier with my colleague and neighbour, the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles. All kidding aside, I think that she knows that I really like her. I mentioned behavioural issues because she was talking really loudly. However, we really like hearing her voice. That said, she still plans to support a closure motion. She is still going to vote in favour of it. This is not the first closure motion that we have debated. As Parliament winds down for the summer, ever since the government managed to scrape together a majority by poaching members from the Conservatives and the NDP, it has imposed closure on not one, two, three, four or five bills, but nine. The government is likely going to keep Parliament in session until very late this Friday. That is okay because it is our job to be here. However, this is happening because the government is not communicating with the opposition parties properly. It is not managing its work in the House properly, and it is having a hard time setting its priorities. The government has even introduced closure on Bill C-22. This is a bill that could be highly detrimental to Canadians' privacy and that will, in a sense, give the police access to our phones and our private data. Everyone understands that the legal framework needs to evolve, but imposing closure on this today is not something we were expecting. This is preventing serious parliamentary work from being carried out, yet I do not believe there was any real urgency. This is not the economic update. This is not tax legislation. The same thing happened with Bill C-30. The government turned up in committee. I agree that not all the proposed amendments were sound. However, when the first Conservative amendment was moved, after barely two minutes of debate, the government made its position very clear. Through the member for Whitby, it made it known that no amendments would be tolerated, that the government now had a majority and that, ultimately, committee time serves only a superficial purpose. The government is muzzling debate on important issues. One example is Bill C‑30. Right now, the government is telling us that it was elected, that it has a job to do, that it has an agenda. The new government, which is now almost 11 years old, says it was elected with a job to do. Now, the government is changing the law on pesticides to allow cabinet to make decisions that go against the science on pesticides. I am sure that there are plenty of great people in cabinet. However, there are no pesticide specialists or scientists who have conducted studies on the subject. The Green Party member came to talk to us about this in committee. She clearly explained that, when it comes to pesticides and the environment, this bill is the most regressive and the most damaging to human health and safety since possibly the 1970s. That was not in the Liberals' election platform. Privatizing airports to funnel money into their so-called sovereign wealth fund, which does not have a single penny in it, was not part of their campaign platform. Allowing air passenger complaints to be outsourced to private sector companies chosen by the Minister of Transportation, who is himself buddies with the airlines, which may even choose the companies that will handle complaints about them, was not part of the Liberals' platform. Even though filibusters may sometimes be necessary in cases of parliamentary deadlock, members of Parliament must still be allowed to do their jobs. They must be given the chance to do their jobs. Closure is a measure of last resort that is imposed when there is a genuine deadlock. After all, there is a reason why it exists in the rules. However, it is not meant to be imposed eight, nine, 10, or 11 times in two or three days simply because the government has not done its job properly. I said it was not doing its job properly, so I will give some examples. Bill C-26 is one such example. Then there is Bill C-31. People need to understand that when a bill is introduced, opposition members must study it. To study it, they must be able to ask public servants very technical questions to have the bill's clauses explained to them. This is called a technical briefing. These briefings are generally provided shortly after we receive the bill, so that we can do our jobs. When the Liberals imposed closure on Bill C-31, we had been asking the Department of Finance for a briefing for three weeks. We had not received a reply. Eventually, we were given a briefing on a Thursday, I believe, while everyone was attending committee meetings and almost none of the critics were able to attend. The following Monday, the Liberals introduced a closure motion. They claim that there is filibustering happening and that closure motions are necessary, but that is simply not the case. Now, we are in the same position with Bill C-26. We agree that Bill C-26 provides for unconditional payments to Quebec. This is rare; we welcome it and believe it is a sound approach. However, we have been asking for a technical briefing on Bill C-26 for about two months now. For two months, we have wanted to study and understand it, and now we are being hit with time allocation. We finally came to understand it during consideration of the estimates. I was there for consideration of the estimates, and so was the Minister of Finance. There were many questions about this. At this point, we are taking the minister's word for it that he has reached an agreement with Quebec and that, based on this agreement, Quebec will receive its share of the funds, no strings attached. However, we had no way of knowing this from reading the bill. I had to stand up in committee of the whole to ask the Minister of Finance whether he intended to transfer the funds to Quebec with no strings attached. Only once we got answers in committee of the whole were we able to continue our own consideration of the bill. The bill states that the “amount of each payment is to be determined by the Minister”. This means that, once Bill C‑26 is passed, the Minister of Finance can get up tomorrow morning and decide how much to pay each government. He has the right to do whatever he wants with this money; it is at his discretion. The bill also states that amounts are to be paid out “at the times and in the manner that the Minister...considers appropriate.” Now we find ourselves in a situation where we have a vague bill, and we are realizing, after months, that the intent is there, that negotiations are happening, but also that our questions were legitimate. What is more, the explanations we got so we could understand this bill came from a press release. We had to pore over the press release to try to understand the government's intentions. It was almost like analyzing a religious text. Despite all that, we are in favour of Bill C‑26. However, the government is telling us that there is interference, that there is work to be done, that they need to move quickly, that this is very important and that the opposition is blocking the process. That is not what is happening in this case. What we have here is a case of poor management of House of Commons time and poor management of committees by the office of the government House leader. I should point out that Quebec is the only province with permanent social and community housing construction programs. In Quebec, the definition of “social and community housing” differs from the definition of “affordable housing” used by programs in the rest of Canada. When it came to programs managed by CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, with the possible exception of the rapid housing initiative, Quebec rarely received its share because these programs focused on high-rise apartment buildings in cities in the rest of Canada. During the minute of time that I have left, I wish to say that under the current circumstances, with the construction and community ecosystems that are familiar with Quebec's programs, what is being done here today is important. It is important to recognize that the most effective approach for these programs is to take 20% or 22% of the amount and pay it directly to Quebec. I will end by saying that this would prevent the Liberals from doing what they did with Canada's national housing strategy, in other words, setting tons of conditions like the Trudeau government did and ending up in negotiations for three or four years, while we miss out on tens of thousands of completed housing units. We are pleased that the minister has agreed to pay Quebec its share. We are convinced that it will lead to housing starts on the ground and benefit Quebeckers.

Mr. Speaker, as I said, this is one of those rare instances where Quebec will get its share of the cash, and it is a sign of recognition that the federal government is not good at this, not good at building things. The federal government is not on the ground; it is a government that is far removed from immediate matters. This is a case in point, where Quebec must negotiate with Ottawa and go cap in hand to get its own money and put it into its own programs, which are already working. That was the case with the national housing strategy when it was still around. Negotiations went on for three and a half years, while housing was being built everywhere else. An agreement was eventually reached, and only then did housing units begin to be built. This dates back to the Trudeau era, and these housing units are just now being announced. It is not so much that we are in favour of the federal government getting involved. We are in favour of the federal government writing a cheque. Quebec is the only province with permanent programs to build social community housing. It is important to recognize that the federal government is not good at this, but that Ottawa unfortunately has the financial resources. It takes a cheque.

Mr. Speaker, I explained that in what my colleague referred to as my wonderful speech. I explained that, when we were looking at the estimates, I asked the Minister of Finance a question, and he answered it. I asked him whether he had negotiated with Quebec and whether he was committed to ensuring that Quebec would receive its share of funding with no strings attached. What we understood from the minister's answer and from our interactions with the department is that the government was taking into account the unique nature of Quebec's housing construction ecosystem this time and for this particular bill. The Bloc Québécois always asks the government to send Quebec transfers with no strings attached, and we make a huge fuss when the government refuses to do so. However, when the government decides to transfer the money with no strings attached, when it recognizes that the matter falls under Quebec's exclusive jurisdiction and that Quebec is better at managing it, then we support the government. Then, the other nine provinces and territories can figure out the rest on their own.

Mr. Speaker, that is a complicated question. There are all sorts of sovereign wealth funds. Every country has them. Norway's fund is used to accumulate oil revenues to benefit future generations, but above all to invest the money abroad in order to avoid Dutch disease. The same goes for Saudi Arabia. Also, China has funds that are used to influence geopolitics. However, all the funds that actually work share one characteristic, and that is that they contain money. In our case, under sections 91 and 92 of the Constitution, natural resources are the exclusive property of the provinces. If there were sovereign wealth funds, they would be held by the provinces. This whole thing was just another excuse to make an announcement and slap “Canada strong” on something. In the end, it serves no economic purpose. That is why it was very poorly received by economists, commentators and people who will not benefit from it directly. The government looked a bit foolish because of it.

Madam Speaker, I am not sure there is any point in asking my colleague a question. He is just going to stand like he did before and say that the government has a job to do for Canadians and that it is going to do that job, whether it was elected to do it or not. I would like to remind him that we debated another time allocation motion not so long ago. At the time, I was asking questions of the minister responsible for Canadian heritage, who was defending that time allocation motion. I explained to him that, ever since the Liberals got a majority, they have been using it to hold in camera meetings at the expense of Driver Inc. victims and to quash investigations into the conflicts of interest of the Minister of Finance and his wife. Do members know what the Minister of Canadian Heritage said to me at the time? He asked me whether I thought he wanted to be here, because he had been forced to come and defend something that is indefensible. I will conclude my comments by saying that I serve on the Standing Committee on Finance and that I participated in the study of Bill C-30. As soon as the Conservative Party presented its first amendment, the Liberals clearly indicated that they were going to oppose any and all amendments because they have a majority. They did not even wait an hour to make that clear. They said it in the very first minute of the meeting. The Liberals were asking for a special report on specific changes to the Canada pension plan. I tried to negotiate a solution myself. Officials told us it was doable, but the Liberals refused. The reality is that the government is trying to curtail debate, whether it is a minority or a majority. Circumstances do not matter, and this government has decided that it will make all the decisions. According to the government, in a democracy, the opposition serves no function. I will say it again: I think Parliament is better than what the Liberals are doing with it.

Mr. Speaker, before speaking to Bill C-30, I would like to take a moment to talk about a colleague. As we know, politics is not always easy on the politician's loved ones. It is not always easy on their family. No matter what party they belong to, a life in politics comes with a heavy personal toll. Last Monday, we learned that the MNA for Mirabel, Sylvie D'Amours, who is not part of my political family, was leaving politics after three terms. I want to take a minute to pay tribute to her. For 12 years, she has made many sacrifices to serve her constituents. I have gotten to know her family—her husband and some of her children—and I know that, in her own way, she has always cared deeply about her community—

Madam Speaker, it is a shame that I was interrupted. I was saying that she cares about her community. She is a wonderful person. I hope she enjoys a rest, and I wish her every success in her future endeavours. I think that it is well deserved. I think that we should take time to acknowledge the work of elected officials from all parties who are close to their communities. It is very important to me to do this today, especially since this may be the last time that I speak in the House before we adjourn. Now that that is done, we are discussing closure. Madam Speaker, I should say that I would like to share my time with the member for Rimouski—La Matapédia. Closure is being imposed. Today, we are once again faced with a government that has decided to shut down debate and impose its agenda. This is the second time in a very short period that closure has come up, along with super closure. Last time, I said that the government had bought itself a majority. Since getting that majority, it has used it to go against the interests of taxpayers and the public in many respects. For one thing, it used it to impose closure on the Driver Inc. issue. This was at a time when the chair of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities was attending events organized by the very people at the centre of this scandal, which has cost lives. The government used its majority to halt debate on an ethical issue involving the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, whose wife is Alto's vice-president. I am not saying that anything inappropriate happened, only that the matter deserves some discussion. Closure has been imposed on several bills by a government that is having trouble managing its agenda. That is what has happened here, with Bill C‑30. The Liberals are going to keep saying that Parliament is at a standstill and that the opposition parties are to blame. The government was a minority during the 44th and 45th Parliaments, and back then, the Liberals kept saying that the opposition parties were using their majority to paralyze the work of the House. Now we are dealing with a majority government that constantly chooses to shut down debate and impose its agenda. I am the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Finance. I attended the debate on Bill C‑30. Did things get out of hand? Was there filibustering? Of course there was, as there often is. However, when the Liberals say that there were 30 hours of debate and that the opposition filibustered for 30 hours, some clarification is in order. Starting from the very first amendment, the very first minute and even the very first second of the committee meeting, the Liberal Party decided to block everything. The Liberals made this very, very clear to the committee: No amendments would be allowed, and the bill would not be discussed. This was clearly stated by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the member for Whitby. If I recall correctly, the first amendment was intended to obtain more detailed data on the Canada pension plan. Since I am from Quebec, my public pension plan is with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, so none of this concerned me personally. However, I thought it was reasonable. Officials were at the meeting in person. They told us it was possible to make a change to make it entirely feasible, but the government said the data would never be available. That is when we realized that the government was going to hold this up until the very end and that it did not want to debate the matter. The Green Party member, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, attended the full 30 hours of committee meetings. She was waiting for the opportunity to debate the issue of pesticides. The fact is that the government is using an omnibus bill to grant itself the power to authorize any pesticide. The Green Party member stayed until she was completely exhausted and, after seeing the government's behaviour, she realized that she would not have the opportunity to debate this. Why, then, is this being blocked? It is being blocked because the government does not want Bill C-30 to be debated. My colleague from Rimouski—La Matapédia is going to talk about pesticides. We have known for years that the process for approving new pesticide formulations needs to be expedited. The scientific analyses need to be conducted more quickly. The process needs to be more efficient. That is what the industry is calling for. It is asking for things to move faster. However, no farmer has ever asked the government to approve any old pesticide behind closed doors without any scientific analysis. The agricultural industry has never asked for that. To avoid debating the subject, the government decided to block its own bill, like it did when it had a minority. When it comes to air passenger complaints, what the government is doing under division 17 is serious. From now on, air passenger complaints will no longer be dealt with by a public entity. If the Minister of Transport, who is not known for his transparency, so decides, air passenger complaints could be dealt with by private companies chosen by the minister himself, perhaps after a phone call from the airlines, rather than through a more transparent system. The government is cutting public service jobs. We understand that the it wants to reduce day-to-day government spending, but what good does that do if it ends up costing the government even more to have private companies do this work and there is a complete lack of transparency? The Liberals are blocking their own bill because they do not want to discuss this. The same goes for its “sovereign wealth fund”, which is a misnomer. According to La Presse, it is a wealth fund with no wealth. The government is giving itself the authority to conduct all sorts of studies and analyses with a view to possibly privatizing our airports, some of which have serious governance issues. Perhaps it wants to privatize them to fill this fund with money. Is that the case or not? It is hard to say, because today we are going to pass a bill without debate, without a proper clause-by-clause review, without parliamentary scrutiny, without expert testimony, without witnesses, and without sufficient parliamentary time. People need to understand that when there are tax measures in an economic or budget update, they take effect when the notice of ways and means is tabled in the House. That means there is no rush. We are dealing with a government that has made up its mind. The parliamentary secretary told us earlier that the government had a job to do, that Canadians had elected it to do that job, and that it would run roughshod over us if necessary to get it done. Some members rightly asked where, in the election platform, it was stated that a public servant could approve any pesticide or that complaints from airline passengers would be outsourced to the private sector. We hear that Air Canada was already ready to implement this law before members of Parliament had even seen it. Where in the Liberal election platform was there any mention of the possibility of privatizing airports? Nowhere. I said this last week and earlier today when I asked a question. I get the impression that the Prime Minister thinks of himself as the CEO of Canada. He sometimes forgets that he is the Prime Minister. I wonder if he knows where Parliament is on a map. It is a fair question, and I am asking it. No one knows. I know that Parliament deserves better than what the Liberals are currently doing. I would like to repeat that, when the government was in a minority, it kept justifying its constant need to limit debate by claiming that the majority opposition was preventing business from moving forward. Now the Liberals have a majority. Members of the committee can attest to the fact that Bill C-30 is being blocked by the Liberal Party, which clearly told us that no amendments would be allowed. That is a very disturbing approach to democracy.

Madam Speaker, it is a question of dynamics. When the government arrives at committee saying that it has a majority, that it has a bill, that it is not going to accept everything, but that it is willing to discuss certain issues, things start moving again. When it starts a committee meeting by telling everyone else that all their amendments have been thrown in the garbage, that the government has the power to say no, and that the other members are free to carry on and filibuster because, ultimately, the government has time allocation on its side, that creates a certain dynamic. Is it true that the Conservatives debated amendments—not all of which were particularly sensible—for some 30 hours? That is absolutely true. I will give the parliamentary secretary that much. However, could things have been handled differently from the outset? Personally, I tried. My colleague is referring to comments that were made on the record. Everyone can watch the videos where I said that a compromise needed to be reached, that civil servants were telling us it was possible and that we could move on. If the government had listened, it might have avoided seeing several amendments to the amendments tabled, not all of which were very useful, but which were tabled out of frustration. I believe that the government definitely shares responsibility for that.

Madam Speaker, this is indeed a situation that concerns us. A closer look shows that all of this plays right into the hands of the airlines. A commissioner who receives complaints needs to be given the necessary tools to make progress and process complaints. The government should not take away or withhold resources from the commissioner, only to finally say that the system is not working and that the work needs to be outsourced. Complaints must be handled with full transparency. Air passengers are families and individuals who pay to go on vacation and to travel and who are victims of injustice under the law and the regulations. They have a right to timely compensation, but they also have a right to be assured that the process is fair and transparent. That is a far cry from what is in place now. Can such assurance be provided? It might be possible. Would a parliamentary debate have perhaps provided that assurance? The answer is yes. However, the reality is that by the time the study of Bill C‑30 is complete, there will not be time for us to ask the right questions and get to the bottom of things for the benefit of the public. Today, we are under a guillotine. The bill will be shoved down Parliament's throat, and all these questions will remain unanswered.

Madam Speaker, we made sure that the House recognized that the air passenger complaints issue had nothing to do with budgetary policy. The same goes for pesticides: They have nothing to do with budgetary policy. There should be a separate vote. In the face of all of these obstructionist tactics, we need to take the high road during debate and stick to the facts. I abstained from voting on all these dilatory motions. I abstained from voting because I thought that they were ridiculous, and it is true that it was a waste of time. Now, I think that the member from the Green Party has some valid points to present to the committee. I think that she has the right to speak and that her concerns align with ours in many respects. I hope that she will have an opportunity to speak to this during the time we have left for debate under the closure motion.

Mr. Speaker, hundreds of farmers from Mirabel braved the rain today on Parliament Hill. They came to tell the Liberals that they are not happy with Alto's high‑speed train project in its current form. It is too bad that the minister did not come out to meet with them. He could have answered all the questions that Alto has been refusing to answer since January. If the Liberals think they are going to be able to forcibly expropriate land in Mirabel yet again, our farmers proved today that they have another think coming. Will the government finally respect our farmers, meet with them and answer their questions?

Mr. Speaker, this proves that the debate on high‑speed rail is not over; in fact, it has only just begun. We had set out four conditions: social licence, an independent financial assessment, no infringement of people's rights in the event of expropriation, and genuine consultations. They have scored zero out of four. It is no wonder that farmers are protesting. Alto is already on their land, carrying out tests, and when the landowners say no, Alto wants to send in drones. I am offering to drive the minister to Mirabel so that he can come and answer their questions. He can even choose what music we listen to in the car. When do we leave?

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have been shouting themselves hoarse trying to convince us. Is there a recession or not? They want to launch a technical debate on this issue, yet the whole thing obscures the real debate, which concerns purchasing power and Canadian productivity. We have a problem: We are not growing. We have a productivity problem. Do the Conservatives not think it might be more effective for the House to debate fundamental problems rather than definitions?

Madam Speaker, anyone who has ever been a teacher knows that repetition is a teaching tool, so I am going to repeat the question my colleague from Rimouski—La Matapédia asked. Is spending $34 billion of public funds on a pipeline inflationary? Is spending $34 billion of public funds on a pipeline inflationary? Is spending $34 billion of public funds on a pipeline inflationary? Is spending $34 billion of public money on a pipeline inflationary? I know the Chair can sometimes lose patience with us, so I will not repeat it a fifth time. The question is clear. Is spending $34 billion of public money on a pipeline inflationary, yes or no?

Madam Speaker, I would like to extend greetings to my colleague. We work very well together on the Standing Committee on Finance. As he said, he spent 20 years in banking. I would like to know whether he and his fellow optimists believe that spending $34 billion on a pipeline for the dirtiest oil in the world and funding a new pipeline forms part of what he referred to in his comments as Canada's strategy to become a clean energy superpower. I would like to know whether the optimists consider that to be clean.

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House, but even more so when it is before you. I will take a second to say that we obviously need to build a strong Quebec, and to build a strong Quebec, we need forward thinkers. I saw a lot of young people this weekend when I did the rounds of Young Entrepreneurs Day. I know there are young entrepreneurs in every one of our ridings. I also wanted to take a second to acknowledge all elementary and secondary students and graduates. It is exam time for them. I know it is June, the sun is shining and they want to go outside. I want to tell them that they need to keep studying and working hard, that they are our future, that I am thinking of them and that I will wish them a great summer when school is out. By studying hard, they will be better equipped to weigh the facts, so they might spread less disinformation than is often found in Conservative motions and in Liberal speeches like the one we just heard from my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou. I just asked the member for Beauport—Limoilou whether he considers pipelines carrying the dirtiest oil in the world to be clean energy. He replied that, no, in order to make something clean, we have to get our hands dirty, because to make something clean, we have to accept mess. The government wants to use the dirtiest oil to produce clean energy. Now those folks want to stand up in the House all day and say that the motion before us is nothing but disinformation. Clearly, the level of debate here is often pretty low. There are tons of nuances in the kind of debate we are having today on the motion before us. This Conservative motion is actually pretty similar to the one they moved last week on the last Conservative opposition day. They start by saying that we are the only G20 country in a recession, that everything is broken and that we need to put an end to inflationary spending. The last time I gave a speech, I explained that it might take a few months to find out whether we are in a recession today, once the data is revised and the next quarter or two of data comes out, given that we are in an unusual situation. There are clips of Conservative MPs talking about us. They call us the “Liberal Bloc” and say we deny the existence of a recession. I am not saying that everyone should take a course in economics, but these people have never taken one in their life. They studied kinesiology, and now they are going on social media to educate us about what a recession is. The problem is that while definitions are being debated, substantive issues are not. We are not debating the fact that we have a problem with very weak growth, endemic for a number of years now. We are not debating the fact that more of the past five quarters have been negative than positive. We are not debating the fact that, for the least wealthy 20% to 25% of people in our economy, the cost of living has risen faster than their purchasing power. We are not debating the fact that yes, these people need help and yes, it takes benefits. We voted for the new benefit, which the government says is intended to help with grocery bills but which is actually an enhanced GST rebate. We support that. However, it is not sound policy to constantly add new benefits and increase the tax burden when the government is unable to generate growth, negotiate a free trade agreement with the Americans, or even tell us what the negotiating strategy with the United States would be. We can debate what does or does not constitute a recession. The C.D. Howe Institute council that dates recessions in Canada says that there must be at least one quarter of negative growth, that the decline in that quarter must be significant and that it must be sufficiently widespread across the economy. Last week, Desjardins' chief economist said that 50% of sectors are affected. Normally, we say it is a recession when 60% of sectors are affected. It is a matter of the council's judgment, but that does not detract from the fact that things are not going well. The Liberals keep telling us that they are creating jobs. That said, governments always boast about creating jobs. I would invite everyone here to take a look at the work of Nicolas Petrovsky‑Nadeau, an economist who studied in Quebec and who I believe is currently working at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He explains how many jobs must be created each quarter to stop unemployment from rising. Just because jobs have been created, that does not mean that the government has succeeded. The Liberals are saying that they did better than analysts predicted. Of course they did. What is the best way to manage expectations? It is to keep them really low. When analysts think that we are going to do extremely poorly and things do not turn out quite as badly as they thought, then we end up doing better than predicted. That is what the Liberals are bragging about. However, we will be voting against this motion because, once again, the Conservatives have failed to define what constitutes inflationary spending. I think the chief government whip is not listening because I am speaking French. He does not even have his earpiece in. When we speak French in the House, nobody seems to listen, except you, Mr. Speaker, because your French is very good and we appreciate that. I listened to what the members for Whitby and Beauport—Limoilou had to say, but now that I am speaking, they are patting each other on the back, chatting, joking and laughing. The funny thing is that I am making fun of them and they do not even realize it. They are not interested in what is happening in the House of Commons. That member is a Liberal House officer, the whip, the guy who is supposed to be responsible for Liberal party discipline, but he is not listening. This Conservative motion contains disinformation. We do not know what inflationary spending is, but there is still a grain of truth to it, namely the assessment that the Canadian economy is in poor shape. I have spoken about the issue of growth. We have a persistent growth problem. The government disagrees. It tells us that, according to certain IMF forecasts, we will be the best in the G7. However, that has not happened yet. If the Liberals had done a good job, they would be talking to us about the past few quarters. Instead, what they are telling us is that they have done such a poor job in recent quarters that they are going to rely on a forecast from the IMF that is actually quite old. Let us wait and see what happens with those forecasts. In the same speech, the member for Whitby told us that his government outperformed the forecasts, but that it was still bad. Now the Liberals are telling us they will be the best in the G7 because there are forecasts. That is brilliant. The Liberals have mastered the art of twisting the numbers until they say what they want them to. We know what confessions under torture are worth. They are worth next to nothing. The government is breaking down the GDP even though it has not yet started trade negotiations with the United States. Granted, Donald Trump is not easy to work with. However, the government does not have a strategy. We are trying to find out what the strategy is. We, the separatists in the Bloc Québécois, were criticized during the election campaign for saying that we would work with the government on its strategy to normalize relations with the United States as far as possible. We are looking for the strategy. There is no strategy. Since the Prime Minister has been in office, since the arrival of the so-called new government, exports have steadily declined quarter after quarter. The decline has exceeded 4%, quarter after quarter, since the first quarter of 2026. That is because we do not have trade agreements. What are the Liberals doing to hide this? They tell us that they have increased our exports to Europe. When we break down the figures, we realize that it was basically a large volume of aluminum sent to Europe, at fairly high prices, that changed the statistics. We do not have a trade agreement. Why not hold an opposition day on that? That is something the Conservatives should consider. What is more, there is no reliable fiscal anchor. We do not even know how to assess the government's performance anymore, because the government no longer knows what to compare itself to. Previously, we had the debt-to-GDP ratio. The government told us that this no longer works, so it became the deficit-to-GDP ratio. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has also weighed in. By the way, the Liberals chose her themselves and unilaterally imposed this decision on the House. There was no consensus on this appointment, particularly because of the way it was made. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is clearly competent, but the government appointed her unilaterally. Now she is saying that the government will not be able to meet its fiscal anchor every year. Luc Godbout appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance. I think it was last week. Luc Godbout holds the research chair in taxation and public finance at Université de Sherbrooke. His team does extraordinary work, they are recognized and they are non-partisan. They are not a bunch of bozos from the opposition who do nothing but complain, as the members on the other side of the House like to say. The witnesses told us that they do not understand what the government's fiscal anchors are and that we need to have some. They told us that they cannot even say whether they are good or bad because the Liberals change the rules whenever they feel like it. That is a valid point in the Conservative motion. What else is in the motion? It talks about inflationary and non-inflationary spending. That is just political rhetoric. What else did we learn from the representatives of the Université de Sherbrooke research chair? They said that our spending is in a shambles. A budget is drafted and presented, appropriations are voted on, and then we find ourselves in a situation where the Minister of Finance suddenly decides, on a whim, to add a new benefit, a new scheme, a new payout. Everything has been so poorly planned that even academics can no longer keep track of the deficit over the course of the year. That is a problem. It is a planning problem. It is a rigour problem. In the last budget cycle, the Minister of Finance decided to present a budget in the fall instead of in the winter. He was not ready, so he changed the provisions before the update, which means that the Standing Committee on Finance is still studying one budget bill anther another and can no longer keep track of them. That is mismanagement. What did Mr. Godbout, the research chair and professor at Université de Sherbrooke, say when he when he came to testify? He told us that the government needs to be clear about what constitutes capital expenditures and what constitutes operating expenditures. The government is making up its own rules, and they do not comply with generally accepted accounting principles. In the budget, it is classifying security at FIFA matches as an investment. We need clear rules because the government is disguising operating expenses as investments. According to the professor from Université de Sherbrooke, the government is giving tax credits to companies that might invest and calling that an investment. That is not how any public accounting system in the world operates. Even in the United Kingdom, where investments are accounted for separately—where there is a balance sheet, a statement or some sort of equivalent in the public accounts—nobody does this. That is mismanagement. I do not know what the Conservatives call inflationary spending, because anything can fit in that category. I asked one Conservative MP a question earlier. I asked him whether spending $34 billion in public funds for a pipeline was inflationary. He practically turned himself inside out rather than answer my question. The Conservatives do not want to answer. What is inflationary spending? Does inflationary spending include a 10% increase in the OAS for people between 65 and 74 years of age, victims of Liberal discrimination who are suffering due to the increased cost of living? We do not know. Furthermore, I notice that no one seems to have a solution. No one is suggesting solutions. The government tells us that everything is fine and that the IMF thinks that everything will be fine. Well, we are proposing solutions. Last week, during the last opposition day, the member for Whitby told us that opposition members never do anything but complain. However, after the unions, the FTQ, the Syndicat des métallos and the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec, we were the first to say that a wage subsidy was needed in response to the new tariff calculation method that the U.S. administration introduced in April. A wage subsidy is needed to protect businesses that are captured by the new tariff formula and that cannot increase their inventories any more. That is one thing. The employment rate is doing well because companies are accumulating stock, but that will not last forever. When these companies run into problems, we will need to maintain the employment relationship so that employees do not have to rely on employment insurance, so that they do not go work for competitors and so that we can free up some margin in the actuarial calculations that are used to balance the EI fund. Given the tariff crisis, we must ensure that we do not have to increase EI contributions for companies that may be struggling a bit right now. These are the kinds of solutions that we are proposing, but we are essentially being told that we do not want to build Canada strong by building pipelines and we never come up with any solutions. I understand that the government signed a separate infrastructure agreement with Quebec. We are pleased about that. The Liberals have been telling us for years that certain conditions must be met and that we were wrong. However, now they have signed a separate agreement and everything is fine. Instead of going with a non-existent high-speed train with a business plan that does not make any sense and that heartlessly expropriates people's land, as Alto is currently doing, we are asking for more funding for public transit. That is a solution that would help relieve congestion on our city highways. That would be a good idea. Let us talk about the forestry industry. The Saint-Michel sawmill just closed down. For years, these people have been facing tariffs that make no sense. They have been forced to pay countervailing duties that get tied up in the United States. These companies win their cases in court 10 years later. They get their money back, but by then, they have gone bankrupt. However, this is an asset. We are telling the government to buy back these countervailing duties. It is an asset that would not even be counted toward the deficit, and it would give these businesses some breathing room and liquidity. The response we get is that the government has already done everything it could. It grants loans to businesses on the verge of closing, but it refuses to implement this measure. Then it criticizes us for not coming up with proposals. The government wants to build a strong country, but Quebec and the provinces also have responsibilities. Think of the hospitals with leaky roofs and the infrastructure. The governments of Quebec and the provinces are closer to the people than the federal government is. The influx of asylum seekers has exceeded Quebec's capacity to accommodate them and has cost $733 million. The National Assembly has unanimously called for this amount to be repaid to Quebec. Why has it never been repaid? That would also give people some breathing room. After all, people do not just pay federal taxes. They also pay provincial taxes. When the provinces are financially squeezed, it does not help taxpayers. When a sick person has a hard time getting the services they need, that does not help them either. When teachers cannot be recruited, that does not help children. Another thing that Ottawa needs to do is transfer the money that is owed to Quebec. The Liberals say that they are investing, that it is important to boost productivity and adapt to climate change. The government wants to buy pipelines and, at the same time, it is closing the Department of Agriculture research centres in the riding of the Minister of Government Transformation. These centres are designed to support climate change adaptation, develop new species and boost agricultural productivity. There is a unanimous consensus in the agricultural sector. These research centres are vital to the future of our food. They are being shut down to save what amounts to practically 0% of the federal budget, yet still, they are being shut down. I am not going to talk about the Governor General, because not everybody likes that, but everyone knows what I think of the role. The Bloc Québécois is putting forward proposals to help our businesses. Take the example of an aerospace policy. The government has a nature policy, an energy policy and policies for just about everything, yet Liberal MPs from my area are going around saying we do not need an aerospace policy and that the government is handing out subsidies. These things take time. The aeronautics and aerospace sectors operate over decades. We need to connect the military, the civilian sector and everyone's needs so that we buy our own products. The government is saying that we do not need a policy. It is time to buy aircraft, and he is off in Sweden trying to convince someone to open a factory here rather than ordering planes, yet we are told we do not need a strategy. The government is also telling us that the industry is not asking for it. However, the Standing Committee on Finance heard from the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, or AIAC, and its representatives told us that we need an aerospace industrial policy. They made that clear to us. If we had one today, the government would not be doing the tango with every company in the world to determine which aircraft to choose, because the orders would already be coming in. That is what would happen. I am not saying that everything the Liberals do is bad. The productivity superdeduction is a good measure, and I think it should be expanded. I think the government has picked the winners, but its fiscal situation has become so bad that it cannot afford to do that anymore. That is a problem. Some good things have been done, but it is not enough. I hear the government saying that all the opposition does is complain, shout and spread disinformation. Do members know how difficult it is, politically, to say that we know the recession will be coming in the future? It would be easy to say we are in a recession, like the Conservatives do. Do members know how difficult it is politically for us to remain rigorous, to stand our ground and to keep things in perspective? We are doing that. When we do that, the government is happy. When we propose solutions that come from the front lines and the industry, in the same speech, we become the whiners of the minority opposition that the government no longer listens to. Now that they form a majority, I am asking the Liberals to dial down the arrogance and smugness. They have to stop saying that they are the best thing since sliced bread and start considering the good ideas coming from the other side of the House. I have very good relationships with the other members of the Standing Committee on Finance. I see the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin walking into the House. I think we have ideas to contribute, but the government needs to be at least a little receptive.

Madam Speaker, this issue has to do with the business of supply, because we just voted supply for the project. With Bill C‑15, the Minister of Transport callously decided to make people along the Alto corridor second-class citizens. He decided to take away their recourse and their right to question the need for expropriation for a train. Through his actions, the Minister of Transport is destroying what little social licence there was for this project. People in my riding are being harassed by Alto. There have been unauthorized drone flights. Now they have stopped because they were not allowed in the first place. People from Alto are knocking on doors without identifying themselves and without offering a business card. There are people in my riding who have been expropriated once already, who are familiar with expropriation and whose family or friends dealt with family tragedies such as suicides, broken families and depression. This is not ancient history. The last five pieces of land expropriated following the airport saga were only given back in 2024. That is what is happening with a train that does not exist and that has no business plan or cost-benefit analysis. Bill C‑15 is an injustice. The people of Mirabel think that we need to scrap this project and start over from scratch.

Madam Speaker, it appears that we were not watching the same election campaign. When I was campaigning last year, I did not see the Prime Minister spend 30 days campaigning on the idea that he was going to strike a deal with Indonesia. That was not what the Prime Minister was saying during the campaign. He said that 80% of our trade was with the United States, that he was the best person to negotiate with Mr. Trump and that Mr. Trump would respect him. That did not happen. Afterwards, the government started saying that we have free trade agreements with all the G7 countries, but the Prime Minister did not sign any of those agreements. I am in favour of diversifying trade. It is a good thing. Our agreement with South Korea was signed by the Conservatives. The reality is that the current Prime Minister campaigned on the promise that he would be able to quickly get the United States to sign an agreement, and that did not happen. Do the Liberals have a strategy? It is possible that they do, but given the government's level of transparency, we are unaware of what that strategy is. If the Liberals want help, if they want us to work with them, if they want ideas and if they think we are smart enough to collaborate with, maybe they should tell us what is going on rather than keep us in the dark. More and more things in this government are becoming concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office. It is worrisome, because we thought that the concentration of power in the PMO became a thing of the past with the end of the Trudeau government.

Madam Speaker, it is true that the government has become increasingly arrogant since it bought itself a majority. First, as we saw during the consideration of all votes, the Minister of Finance has not answered a single question in his political career. This did not begin last week. Let us consider Driver Inc. People have died because of these truckers. Children have died. During the debate in committee on Driver Inc., the Liberals voted in favour of holding the meeting in camera, and we learned that the chair of the committee is attending events put on by those responsible for Driver Inc. With Bill C‑30, which is currently before us, they are relaxing the laws on pesticides. They are hiding that in a budget bill. We learned that the Minister of Health is participating in events put on by pesticide companies who have been pushing for this for years. Parliament exists for a reason. It deserves better than what the Liberals are doing to it. I believe in the work of Parliament. We are working hard in that regard. We read the bills. I am in contact with the parliamentary secretary and the member for Whitby. We have ideas. We submit amendments. However, the current government has decided that, now that it has a majority, it is free to do away with democracy in this place. I think that says a lot about the Prime Minister, who sees himself more as a CEO than as a prime minister.

Madam Speaker, the devil is in the details. We need to look at the numbers and break them down a little. During question period, the Prime Minister stated that average wages have risen faster than inflation. However, we need to look at the people at the bottom of the ladder. Being rich in Canada today is not an issue. They can still afford to buy big cars. They can even afford to pay $2 a litre for gas. They can still go to restaurants. The problem is that things are stagnating for the 20% to 25% of people who live from paycheque to paycheque. Those people have not seen an increase in their purchasing power. This government has been in power for 10 or 11 years. We all agree that the previous prime minister was not much of an economics guy. Even his finance minister ran away, which says a lot. This government keeps doling out benefits and new cheques without acknowledging the problem. It is fine to help people in times of crisis, but when we see that 20% of the people in this country are getting poorer and losing purchasing power and the government simply hands them a cheque, that is hardly a vision for society. It is just making people lose faith in our institutions. That worries me.

Madam Speaker, there is no business plan. We ask questions and Alto responds by spending millions of dollars on advertising instead of giving us the facts. For the first full year of operation, according to McGill University researchers, Alto is overestimating the number of passengers by 15 million per year. According to the McGill University study, over the years and in today's dollars, more than $50 billion will have to be spent on subsidies, just to keep this project going. The government is going to have to pay 15% of the project's costs up front. The government is going to have to expropriate more land than they need so they can sell it back to developers to fund 15% of the project's costs. That is if there are no cost overruns, and there will be cost overruns. Let us see how they work. Let us see how they approach people. Aside from the expropriations, my constituents and all Quebeckers and Canadians are right to be worried about Alto when it comes to their taxes.

Madam Speaker, I thank all of my colleagues for contributing to the debate on this important motion. I am not saying that everything in it is right, nor am I saying that everything in it is wrong, but it is an important motion. Before I begin, I want to say that we have concerns about the impact AI will have on our lives. Just today, in fact, I think we saw an example of how AI can insinuate itself into parliamentary debates. The government whip stood up and read us some AI text from a source that cannot be verified. There is no way to tell if it is true or false. Then there is the member for Whitby, with whom I get along very well. We do not agree on everything, but we have a good working relationship. He studied philosophy. He is a philosopher, yet he stood up in the people's assembly and, with a philosophically straight face, said that, if AI suits his partisan agenda, AI is right, and that is just the way it is. Personally, I believe we are capable of having healthier debates in the House, especially since this is a technical debate, a debate on numbers, and since we might end up having to meet somewhere in the middle. With respect to this motion, what will ultimately determine how we vote will probably be the accuracy of the facts cited. According to the motion, we are in a recession. We have had two consecutive quarters of negative growth. There was a significant contraction of 1% in the last quarter, followed by a quarter for which we have only preliminary data. We know the data will be revised, but for now there was a very slight decrease of one‑tenth of a per cent. First of all, I do not like the term “technical recession”. I was talking about this yesterday with the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, who says we are not in a recession. He is not saying that the economy is doing well. He is saying that we are not in a recession, as if that is some sort of award, as if he could skate off with the puck by saying that we are not in a recession and that that is their objective as a government. In an economy, the aim is not to avoid a recession; it is to achieve real growth that increases people's purchasing power and raises living standards. I do not like the term “technical recession”. Think about having pneumonia. Can someone have technical pneumonia, but not pneumonia? Can someone have a bout of the technical flu, but not the flu? That is not how it happens. Either we are in a recession or we do not know yet and we will find out later. There are symptoms. It is a bit like psychiatry, in that there are clinical criteria. Sometimes, not all of the criteria are met. Sometimes, no one is sure of the diagnosis and it gets figured out down the line. However, one thing is certain: Things are not going well. The Liberals are telling us that we are not in a recession. I would like to send a message to the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. GDP data is constantly being revised. Right now, the growth is negative, but perhaps it will become positive when we look at future versions of the data. That is what the Liberals are telling us. They are saying to wait for the forthcoming data. However, when the data for the past few quarters was revised, positive quarters became negative. In the second quarter of 2025, the GDP dropped by 0.2%. The data for the fourth quarter of 2025 was also revised, but not in the government's favour. When the data is revised and things are worse than we thought, the Liberals should be taking some of the blame for that, but they are not. How do we know if we are in a recession? First, it is not up to Statistics Canada, the government or us to decide that. In the United States, the National Bureau of Economic Research is the one that decides whether the country is in a recession based on a set of criteria that is generally in keeping with two consecutive quarters of negative growth, but the criterion is not two consecutive quarters. In Canada, we have the Business Cycle Council at the C.D. Howe Institute that has its own criteria. To determine whether we are in a recession, we need to assess the extent of the variation in the GDP. In this case, Canada saw a contraction in the first quarter, but it was very small. We need to look at the duration. There can be a recession with just one quarter of contraction. If the economy were to plummet by 30%, then we would not have to wait for the next quarter to see that we are in trouble. It depends on the specific circumstances. It depends on the extent of the slowdown. We want to know how many industries are affected. We want to know whether there has been a significant impact on GDP across many industries. Are we in a recession or are we not? No one knows. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals can say for sure. This is an absolutely absurd debate. More than that, this debate is obscuring the fact that the economy is not doing well. It is appalling that we would spend a whole day wondering whether we meet criteria 1, 2, and 3, whether we will meet them in two months, or whether the first month of the second quarter is positive or negative. It is appalling because no one believes the Canadian economy is sustainable in its current state. I think this is a distraction from the real debate. However, it is reasonable to fear a recession because, while the unemployment rate is high, it has remained stable. The employment rate has held up relatively well, but it is fragile. That is true, and it is one of the criteria for a recession. As we can see from the GDP data, Canadian companies that are having trouble exporting have started to increase their inventory. What does that mean? It means that warehouses are filling up. They have not laid anyone off yet, but there are closures. There are significant impacts on businesses. However, some companies have decided to maintain shifts, not lay everyone off and build up their inventory. Warehouse space is finite. They cannot keep stockpiling goods indefinitely. What this tells us is that when it comes to exports, trade and negotiations with the United States, we are sitting on a ticking time bomb. The state of inventories is critical. For the same reason, the economy occasionally recovers after a recession, but without adding any jobs, because businesses start selling off the inventory that was sitting in their warehouses, without rehiring people. There may be early signs of a recession without any job losses because our businesses are resilient and do not want to lose their workforce straightaway by laying people off. We have talked about the importance of the wage subsidy in maintaining employment relationships for people who are being laid off. These days, if a company lays off its workers, someone else will poach their expertise. Of course, the Prime Minister has been telling us for a year now that the situation will soon be resolved. However, once the situation is resolved, the businesses will not be able to get their employees back. As I was saying, there are warning signs. I listened carefully to the member for Whitby. It is not always easy, but I did it. He broke down the GDP for us. He told us that investments are ongoing thanks to their superdeduction. In reality, the superdeduction is the chantilly cream of fiscal policy. It is not a superdeduction. Are members familiar with chantilly cream? It is whipped cream with a bit of sugar mixed in. The pretty name is just to make it seem more appealing. The same goes for the superdeduction. It is not a superdeduction. It is the same accelerated depreciation found everywhere, including in the United States. On top of that, they have picked the winners. Some companies are telling us that Canada has a digital sovereignty problem. They say that they want to get into fibre optics because the Minister of Finance forgot about fibre optics in these sectors, because he picked the winners. Now, the government is telling us that it is a superdeduction. It is not a superdeduction. It is accelerated depreciation. He talks about it like it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, an unprecedented novelty, as if accelerating depreciation were a generational change. It is taxation 101, and it shows that this language is just hype, just rhetoric. The minister's parliamentary secretary told us that investment has increased and that consumption has held steady. It is true that household consumption has held steady. That is because we are showing solidarity. The Prime Minister is doing something that is taught in a first-year university course. It is called stimulus measures. When people are struggling, cheques are sent out to support consumption. This adds to the government deficit and will have to be paid back at some point. It is working for now, but sending out cheques is not a recipe for success over the next 10 years. What we need is growth. Government spending is also helping to offset that. Procurement is starting up, but these government expenditures are not a recipe for growth. What is wrong with the GDP? Let us break down the GDP figures. I see the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin: He knows this, because he breaks down these figures. He is a bit like me: He loves this sort of thing. What is driving the weakness in GDP is exports. We are in the midst of an export crisis. If I may coin a term for educational purposes, it could almost be called an “export recession”. This highlights the importance of our relationship with our American neighbours, as well as the importance of improving that relationship, even though they are not always easy to deal with. We may be negotiating trade agreements with the White House, but we do business with companies across the United States that still value their relationship with us, and it is with those companies that we trade. We need to strengthen our relationship with them. This shows how important it is to launch these negotiations with the United States. Mexico has already started. Formal negotiations have begun. When the Prime Minister was elected, he told us he was the best negotiator in the history of humankind, that he needed to be elected, that he would perform miracles and that the negotiations would go smoothly. That is what he told us. Since then, we have observed that the things that win votes in Canada hurt our relationship with the U.S. Some very harsh remarks have been made. I do not like Donald Trump any more than anyone else does. I do not think that what he is doing is acceptable. However, it is clear that the Prime Minister himself chose to damage his relationship with with U.S. in order to win votes in Canada, and that comes with a high cost. We have a breakdown of the data. No matter which way we analyze it, the absence of a deal and the absence of negotiations are having a critical impact on Canada's economy and on exports. Funnily enough, the member for Whitby was explaining all the components of GDP earlier, but he skipped over the one that is in crisis, so let me give my colleagues the numbers. Last quarter, compared to the same quarter last year, exports fell by 4.1%. That is a 4% drop. That is huge, and that is the problem. Things are only getting worse. The negotiations are not starting. Are we in a recession today or not? That is not the question that matters. What matters is that the plane has crashed nose first and people are wondering if it has hit the ground yet or not. That is exactly what is happening in the House. Canada's real exports, after correcting for inflation, fell by 4.1% in the first quarter. The quarter before, they fell by 2.9%. The quarter before that, they fell by 2.3%. The quarter before that, they fell by 3.5%. All of these figures are in comparison with last year. Keep in mind that we always receive the statistics a little later and that the quarter has only just begun, but the figures I just cited essentially cover the Prime Minister's entire term in office. How do we define the Prime Minister's term? He took office in the midst of a tariff crisis, that is true. He did not create it, that is true. He could not negotiate everything in the first week, that is true. However, in every quarter of his term, we have neither an agreement nor any negotiations. Our relations are deteriorating, and things are falling apart. Nearly 80% of our exports go to the United States. I understand that the Prime Minister is out and about with his address book, travelling and striking trade deals, and that is fine. However, it is wrong to believe that we should completely set aside our relationship with the Americans. That would be economic suicide. That is literally what the Prime Minister is doing. That is what we are seeing with the 4.1% drop in exports. That is what we should be discussing today: that figure, and that figure alone. It is always difficult to talk about the economic situation in Parliament. However, let us be honest. When jobs are created, the government often claims that it has created them. Most of the time, that is not true. There are cyclical factors. There are international factors. Governments do not necessarily create jobs. Likewise, a recession is not always a government's fault. I will give the example of the Harper government in 2015. After Stephen Harper became prime minister, there was an energy crisis that led to a crash in oil prices. That was in no way the federal government's fault. Later on, Canada found itself in a recession. That was not Prime Minister Harper's fault. The job losses and decline in investment were the result of a situation that the government had to address. In that case, it was not the government's fault. Most of the time, that is how it is. However, in this case, the government is playing a special role. The government is describing the situation as though it is not responsible for it. The government is telling us—

Madam Speaker, the government keeps saying that it is trying to control what it can, but that there is very little that it actually can control. It is going to pay out benefits and put together a package of stimulus measures, as if this could go on forever. The government keeps saying that it is not to blame. However, in this case, the government messed up, because the Prime Minister was elected on the solemn promise that he would be better at negotiating with the Americans than anyone else on the planet. That was his promise. Today, exports are tanking. I see that as a serious problem. The Liberals are going to stand up. I know it. I see the MPs on the other side; we are starting to get to know them. They are going to tell us that per capita GDP is rising and that they have put an end to the per capita recession. However, when we told them, over the last two years, that per capita GDP was falling and that the average Canadian was becoming poorer, they told us we were anti-immigration racists, that it made no sense to speak out against immigrants, that they were the ones who would be looking after us in long‑term care. Now, all of a sudden, we are supposed to be talking about per capita measures. They can go back through the Hansard and see that I have been talking about per capita figures for a long time. What happened? The Liberals reduced immigration levels. They used to be under the thumb of the person who is now their ambassador in Washington, someone involved in the Century Initiative group. These people had decided that there would be 100 million Canadians by 2100 and that they had to get to work immediately, without co‑ordinating with the provinces to ensure that these people would have access to services, that immigration would be successful and that everything would run smoothly. I am in favour of immigration. I met the love of my life thanks to immigration. That is not the issue. We want integration, housing and so on, but the Liberals are cutting all that stuff. The population is declining, and they are proud of that. They say per capita GDP is growing. Economists are usually happy when GDP is growing because it indicates increased productivity, but in this case it is what we call a denominator effect. GDP is divided by the number of people. The Liberals are reducing the number of people, which means there is a chronic productivity issue, yet we are supposed to be impressed with them even though they attacked us relentlessly when we said the same thing three years ago. The same goes for housing. I do not necessarily agree with everything in the motion. I do not think that we will support it considering how it is worded. The government knows full well that it is not going to build 500,000 homes in three years. It knows full well that housing was under pressure. As the latest data show, in the greater Montreal area, for example, we have almost reached a break-even point, with a vacancy rate of around 3%. There is a connection. The important thing is not the identity of the people in the housing, it is the number of people compared to the number of housing units. The number of housing units has to increase in proportion to the number of people to avoid creating pressure. The Liberals will say that housing prices are dropping because of Build Canada Homes, something that no one has figured out yet. We do not understand how it works. The Crown corporation signs agreements and makes announcements, but no housing has been built. The Liberals will boast that their policies are working. We have been telling them this for years. Earlier, the member for Whitby told the Conservatives that they never suggest anything and that all they do is complain. We have been proposing ideas for successful and well‑thought‑out immigration for years and we were called racists. Today, they are going to say that all we do is complain, and yet the Prime Minister is incapable of negotiating a trade agreement, the Saint‑Michel sawmill in Saint‑Michel‑des‑Saints is about to close and our furniture industry is in crisis. The Liberals will tell us that exports to Europe have increased. Indeed, aluminum smelters are sending aluminum to Europe that they are not selling to the United States, and that is what is inflating the data. That is exactly what is happening. No, we are not getting any results. The Liberals laugh at our proposals, but when we ask them to create a wage subsidy to free up the employment insurance system—whose actuarial structure cannot withstand two crises within seven years, including COVID-19—they should listen to us. When we tell them to reform employment insurance as well, they boast about having implemented yet more temporary measures. People are living in uncertainty. When we have had pilot projects for 15 years, perhaps it is time to assess whether they have worked and to move toward reform. Launching one pilot project after another is not policy. It is improvisation. We are also asking that the government purchase a portion of the countervailing duties paid to the United States on behalf of the forestry industry. This would be an asset for the government that would provide liquidity to players in the forestry sector, enabling them to maintain their operations and deal with the unjust situation the Americans created. What am I doing? Is this just whining? We are asking them to ensure that health care funding increases keep pace with the 6% rise in system costs. It is 5% this year and will drop to 3%. What is this? Is this just whining? Are they telling us that rebuilding a hospital creates fewer jobs than a military base? To kick-start the economy, some choices need to be made. The government pulls out its numbers, they break down the GDP and they tell us that everything is fine. They say that they are doing everything right and that it is not their fault when things are going badly. However, when things go well, they say it is because of the policies they implemented four or five months ago. I call on all government members to show a little more humility, because we have a long way to go in this matter.

Madam Speaker, we sometimes get asked what the Bloc Québécois would do if we were in charge of the negotiations instead of the Prime Minister. Personally, I cannot promise miracles. We have always said that we would support the Prime Minister once he has a clear and intelligent strategy that he shares with us. After more than a year, that still has not happened. I have the figures for the last five quarters. In the first quarter of 2025, there was 0.7% growth; that does not get us very far. There was a decline in the second quarter of last year, followed by a slight upturn in the third and a decline in the fourth. That means we are arguing over whether we have 0% growth or a 0.1% decline. Things are not looking good. The problem is exports. When the companies that are showing a bit of resilience are no longer able to keep stockpiling inventory, there is going to be a problem. These figures do not take into account the new tariff calculations announced in April. The effect of that announcement is going to be felt gradually. Quebec is being hit the hardest. This new calculation is not yet included in these statistics. It is essentially a new calculation for tariffs on steel, aluminum and a few other goods. On the other side of the House, those who think that everything is fine, those who think that we have come through this and that we are more resilient, they need to bring their rhetoric into line with reality, regardless of how today's Conservative motion is worded.

Madam Speaker, I would like to say two things. My colleague, who knows I hold him in high regard, thinks that we do not have enough time for debate. I suggest that he go and talk to cabinet and tell them to stop imposing gag orders because we are not short on time in the House. They are the ones who do not want to debate. They have a caucus meeting tomorrow morning. I think that the member should strongly argue his point. If I could support him, I would, but I have no intention of crossing the floor. When it comes to private investment, we have issues with stagnation, competitiveness and productivity. It is true that there are issues that need to be addressed. However, while private investment is factored into GDP today, it is one of the main drivers of future growth. It is true that certain factors remain constant. It is true that the Prime Minister is doing what is taught in a first-year economics course. He is saying that the economy is not doing well so we are going to spend and do what we always do in a crisis. That is undeniably Canadian and that is what is taught in school. However, exports are a key issue. We cannot allow our exports to keep falling by 2%, 3% or 4% year after year, quarter after quarter. This decline in our exports is not slowing down. It is getting worse and we have not yet seen the full impact of the tariffs announced in April. In my opinion, that is the only thing that we should be talking about today, nothing else.

Madam Speaker, no government in Canada has ever argued that diversification is a bad thing. I believe it was Stephen Harper who signed our free trade agreement with South Korea, was it not? I would have to check. I think it was. Governments have signed free trade agreements. Government members go around saying that Canada is protected, that it has the most bilateral agreements with G7 nations. Of course, the government has always sought to diversify trade. However, we have to consider the reality of our geography and interdependence with certain industries. Canada's automotive industry cannot exist without the U.S. market, which is close by. We need to do both. The Prime Minister is pitting the two against each other. He is turning the diversification strategy into rhetoric which, in my view, is damaging our trade relationship with the United States. That relationship will one day be restored. This situation is getting to the point where the human impact—the impact on families and jobs—is very real. The government cannot spend its time simply sending out cheques in an economy where exports are declining, especially for Canada, which is a small open economy dependent on its exports, regardless of where it exports to.

Madam Speaker, there is growth, wealth, income and the way they are distributed. The Bloc Québécois's approach is quite simple. We note that fiscal capacity and room to manoeuvre are concentrated in Ottawa. Education, child care, health care, social services and municipalities—which are facing a homelessness crisis—fall under provincial jurisdiction or are directly provincial responsibilities. If we want a more just, more inclusive society with greater social mobility, transfers need to increase, and Ottawa needs to stop trying to create a social safety net managed by Cúram, that is not even capable of issuing cheques. That is our view. As for the circular economy, we need an economy that is more environmentally friendly and generates less waste. We need an economy that takes all these issues into account. Twenty or 30 years ago, we were filling landfills. Today, we realize that what we threw away were resources that can be recovered and given value, provided we create a market for them. In my opinion, that is an approach for the future.

Madam Speaker, free trade allows us to specialize in the things we do best. It is not a contest to see who is the best and who is not. What I was trying to illustrate is that diversification has always been a constant battle for successive federal governments. The miracle that this Prime Minister is promising is decades in the making. The thing he is promising to deliver within three years in order to win votes is not going to happen within three years. It is something that happens gradually. I think he needs to work on improving his relationship with our neighbours to the south.

Madam Speaker, I understand that members want to debate the content of Bill C‑31, but I want to remind everyone that we are in fact debating a time allocation motion on this bill and the decision to allocate a specific amount of time for debate on it. I have a question for the minister. Why did we have to spend more than three weeks asking officials from the Department of Finance for a technical briefing on a 300-page bill of which certain divisions, like division 17 on air passengers, have nothing to do with budgetary policy? Can the minister please explain why, for three weeks, we were unable to ask officials questions in order to do our parliamentary homework? There was radio silence. The minister's response was essentially that we should just read the bill ourselves, since we are a bunch of lazy bums. That level of arrogance is typical of this government. Personally, I am acting in good faith. I do read the budget document. We spend a ton of time on it. It is highly technical and legislative. We did receive a briefing from officials, but we only received it a few hours before the government imposed time allocation. I am therefore asking the minister whether he considers it acceptable that it took three weeks before we received a response to our request for a briefing and that his government imposed time allocation right after that. I am also asking him whether, for future bills, he thinks it would be appropriate to provide the opposition with a timely response so that it can perform its work constructively and properly debate all the legislative issues involved in bills.

Madam Speaker, with all due respect, sometimes very smart people, like the minister, say things that are far below their level of intelligence. The minister's answer to my last question falls into that category. I will explain why. The minister is telling us that three weeks is not much time to read 300 pages and that we were short on time. He is wondering why the government would give us a technical briefing when three weeks is not much time to read 300 pages. Now, he is rising in the House to move a motion to reduce the time allotted for debate so that we cannot debate this bill. We will have just a few hours to debate it. He thinks that three weeks is not enough time for the opposition to read the bill properly, and yet he thinks we can debate it properly in just a few hours. I would like to know whether the minister realizes that he is contradicting himself. Does he realize that his government's decision to wait three weeks to give a technical briefing and then impose time allocation is indefensible? Is he aware of how arrogant his government is, the government on whose behalf he is speaking today in the House of Commons?

Madam Speaker, typically, we used to be able to count on the Conservatives to champion decentralization and the protection of provincial jurisdictions, sometimes even at the cost of cutting transfers to the provinces. I just heard what my colleague said. He literally said that, in areas of jurisdiction that fall exclusively under the provinces and Quebec, like professional associations, showing leadership at the federal level means making threats to the provinces, imposing conditions on them and ultimately telling them that if they do not do what the Prime Minister wants on a Tuesday morning, their funding will be cut. Has the Conservative DNA changed over the past few weeks?

Mr. Speaker, we have a Conservative colleague who has come right out and asked us here in the House why it is easier for a company in southern Quebec to do business with New York state than with British Columbia. I think there is a reason why geography must remain a compulsory course for high school students. It is very important. The answer is that there is a continent separating Quebec and B.C. and, when it comes to interprovincial barriers to trade, some members of my colleague's party have described bilingual signage and French-language signage as barriers to interprovincial trade. When I hear the Conservatives saying that the Prime Minister should threaten the provinces, that he should tell them to get rid of anything that people in western Canada see as a barrier or else the provinces will face the Prime Minister's wrath, I think we have heard better arguments in the House. Members can see that the lights are out behind me, and there is a reason for that. It is because this is a dark afternoon for Parliament, because we are seized with Bill C-31, a very technical 300‑page bill with many amendments that are questionable or that need to be clearly debated in the House. However, the government is asking for carte blanche. It is telling us that it is going to impose time allocation and rush through this debate. Why is the government doing that? It is because this government has become arrogant. It secured a majority with 50% plus one, because that is enough for the Liberals here. This government is imposing closure motion after closure motion. It is shutting down committee work and ordering in camera proceedings on the Driver Inc. issue, when the chair of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities has been attending events put on by some of the organizations behind this scandal. What the Liberals are choosing to do is to put an end to debate. In addition, in terms of what happened with Bill C‑31, I consider it to be an injustice to parliamentarians. We had requested a technical briefing on this 300‑page bill. It is a lot of work for the party critics, because it is a bill that discusses everything and nothing, not only the budget, as the Speaker confirmed in his ruling on the point of order I had raised regarding division 17. We asked for a technical briefing. We did not get a response. A week went by. Two weeks went by. Three weeks went by. We finally got an answer last Thursday, with a technical briefing organized at the last minute, when a number of critics could not even participate because their committees were sitting. Today, we are told that we are going to rush through debating this bill, even though parliamentarians have not been given the tools they need to study it. When we were debating time allocation earlier, the heritage minister was here. He was the one doing the government's dirty work for today. The heritage minister is the one discussing the budget today. That seems to be the arrangement. The heritage minister told us that we did not need a technical briefing. People can go look at the blues. They will be outraged that this is happening in the House of Commons. He told us that we did not need a technical briefing, that 300 pages is a long read and that three weeks is not enough time to read it. Today, he comes back and tells us that the government is going to impose time allocation, that we are going to debate all of this within a few hours and that that is plenty of time for us. I know that the heritage minister is smarter than some of the things he says in the House make him seem, but that does not mean he is entitled to treat us like idiots. That is a problem. What is the problem with this bill? We could spend hours discussing that. This bill expands subsidies to the oil industry and allows hydrogen produced from methane to be classified as clean hydrogen, whereas in Quebec, for example, hydrogen must be produced from renewable resources to be classified as clean. We recently had industry experts in to testify during the pre-budget consultations, and they clearly explained to us that—from a scientific perspective, as accepted by the industry—hydrogen produced from methane does not qualify as clean. Why is the government hiding this in a 300‑page document that will see virtually zero debate in the House? It is because it is in cahoots with the oil companies and is subsidizing them. The member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie just quit over this, and now here it is in Bill C-31. It deserves some debate, at the very least, especially because we know this bill is going to pass now that the Liberals have a majority. All we are asking for is a debate to share the views of those who elected us and who disagree with this, but we are being denied that debate in a democracy. Some measures are designed to give the government more power and allow for less transparency. Some measures limit who can file complaints with the procurement ombudsman and restrict the complaints that can be reviewed, at a time when spending, particularly military spending, is set to reach record levels and procurement will play a greater role than ever before. What does that mean? It means that the government does not care about protecting citizens, which is the whole point of having an ombudsman. For the government, an ombudsman is a problem. Obviously, the Liberals are not going to abolish the position, but it is like they are plucking every feather from a duck's wings and telling it that it should still try to fly. That is what they are doing. That is exactly what they are doing. That is a problem, and it deserves to be debated. Division 17 will be voted on separately and has nothing to do with the budget. It was not in the budget speech. It was not in any document. To reduce the backlog of air passenger complaints, the Liberals are allowing the minister to have complaints handled by private companies that could potentially be chosen by the airlines. There may be an issue of parliamentary privilege here, because we hear that Air Canada was getting ready to select companies before we parliamentarians even saw the bill. The issue here is no longer just about moving closure, cutting off debate or bypassing committees. The issue is that airlines may have seen a bill before we, the elected members, did. I understand the seriousness of what I am saying, but that is what we suspect. Here is the context: President Trump increased tariffs based on a new formula in early April. They now stand at 25% on a wide range of goods, and 25% of Quebec's exports are affected. Quebec is the hardest-hit province. However, when the Liberals tabled the budget update, they failed to take that into account. They used the wrong figures and calculations. They announced no measures to help the businesses that would be affected by this new tariff formula. We had to wait weeks, and the Prime Minister actually learned about it from us, during question period. I am not joking. We were the ones who informed the Prime Minister, in April, that the formula had been revised. The first time, he was taken aback. The second time, he told us he would provide a response during the budget statement. There was nothing when the budget statement was tabled, and we had to wait. There is nothing in any of this about enabling companies that will have to temporarily halt production due to these tariffs to keep their workers on the payroll. These workers will end up relying on employment insurance. Given the fund's actuarial rules, EI cannot withstand two shocks at once. That is why we are calling for a measure that costs the same amount, namely, wage subsidies, which will ensure that EI can continue to be appropriately managed without raising contributions for businesses that need something other than higher taxes these days. We have been ignored. There is nothing about EI reform. We are just lurching from one temporary measure to the next. There is nothing for seniors. There is nothing for the forestry industry, nothing about buying back the countervailing duties that are paid to the United States in advance and that will eventually result in a victory for our timber exporters years from now. During those years, our forestry companies have no cash flow. We are asking the government to purchase this asset, which is money tied up in the United States in the form of countervailing duties, to give them some breathing room. It is an asset. It does not even count toward the deficit. It is an asset. There is nothing about this. There is nothing about Quebec's request for $733 million for the influx of asylum seekers. There is nothing about the $814 million stolen from Quebec. There is only more and more subsidies to oil companies. What is this bill, then? It is an incomplete and ill-conceived bill with so much potential for controversy that the government wants to avoid debate. There is no clear indication that it will be passed before we leave. This bill could be passed in the fall, so there was no need for a closure motion. We have a government that is being run like a business and that is trying to reduce government accountability and transparency. I stand with all those who think that Parliament deserves better than what the Liberals are currently doing.

Mr. Speaker, questions like that are a waste of time. Even a bad 300-page novel will have seven or eight good pages. That does not mean the whole book makes for pleasant reading. That is the government's same old strategy. It throws a few good things in with a bunch of unacceptable things. Backbenchers stand up and cry foul when we vote against the bill as a whole. If they think it is so important that we vote for the bill, let them ask for a separate vote on those items.

Mr. Speaker, if we had had more time to debate this bill, we could have discussed the parts that should have been removed. That would have made the member for Acadie—Bathurst happy. We could have discussed the parts that could have been voted on separately. Since the member for Acadie—Bathurst is going to vote in favour of time allocation, we will not be able to do so. However, all joking aside, time allocation does serve a purpose. The government usually begins by letting things take their course. We have debates, and legislation moves forward, but all of a sudden, a roadblock springs up. Opposition parties sometimes act in bad faith. At some point, since the government has budgetary responsibilities, it will have no choice but to impose time allocation to move the process forward in the face of the opposition parties' bad faith. That is what it is for. That is why this standing order exists. In this case, however, the government introduced a bill, denied the opposition parties a technical briefing, did not put the bill on the agenda for debate, and then suddenly on a Friday morning, it announced that it was going to limit debate because nothing had been done for three weeks and time was now of the essence. That is not how time allocation should be used.

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy hearing the member talk about aeronautics and aerospace. There have been developments. We are happy to see that. For years, the federal Liberal government has refused to have an industrial policy on aeronautics and aerospace. We do not have one. There are even members from my region who go around telling unions that people do not want one, that it is pointless and that even the industry does not want one. However, we heard from the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada at the Standing Committee on Finance last week. They said that they wanted and needed a civil and military strategy, because there was none, and that a procurement process was not enough. On the day the government needs to order aircraft, it is unacceptable to have to decide whether to import them from Sweden, order them from the Americans, or open new factories. That is what happens when there is no strategy. I think there are some fundamental questions that need to be asked, because we have an electioneering government that goes from announcement to announcement, and there is never any thought about the long term, particularly in the case of the aerospace industry.

Madam Speaker, as my colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île said, a lot of climate policies have been walked back. The government ended the carbon tax and, for all intents and purposes, the industrial carbon tax. It is also allowing hydrogen made from methane to be classified as clean hydrogen, granting new oil subsidies, and so on. Despite all this backtracking, including the funding for new pipelines, the government is telling us that it will be able to fulfill its obligations under the Paris Agreement as early as this year. Bloc Québécois members play fair. We criticize, but we ask for figures first. We are asking the government what figures it is basing its claim on. However, there do not seem to be any figures. I would like my colleague to tell me one thing. She was recently a member of the NDP caucus, and I think she was interested in these figures when she was a New Democrat. Now that she is a new member on that side of the House, is she pushing for those figures to be made public?