Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, but today I am talking about those who are in it to fight. Let us think about the Afghanistan era. When we were in government, our soldiers urgently needed proper equipment. The Conservative government was able to provide that equipment, purchase the planes to deploy the troops, and supply everything needed for ground combat in Afghanistan. I was…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. As I said in my speech, military personnel are in a controlled environment. The government has complete control over the environment. Then why is it that this government decided not to increase spending on military housing for its defence team? At some point, if rents increase, salaries have to increase. If we can maintain the environment by keep…
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Mr. Speaker, interest on the debt is exploding. The debt will continue to rise as long as spending remains out of control. The Bloc Québécois continues to support these centralizing Liberal policies, which are driving up the cost of living. For example, on December 13, the Bloc Québécois voted in support of over $20 billion in spending. When will the Prime Minister, supported by the Bloc Québécois…
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Madam Speaker, when I give a speech, I usually say that I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to a subject. Today, however, I cannot really say that I am pleased. I would like to begin with a brief look back in time. The date is August 2, 2015, when the election was called. We learned in the weeks following the start of the election campaign that the Conservative government had left a budget …
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Madam Speaker, on the contrary, I would have liked to see the Prime Minister, when he was leader of the Liberal Party in 2015, fulfill his promise and spend his $10-billion deficits in the first and second years on infrastructure. I would remind my colleague that it was Denis Lebel, a member of the Conservative government at the time, who announced the Champlain Bridge infrastructure project in Mo…
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Madam Speaker, that is not a hypothetical question: we are going to come to power next year, while remaining very humble. I think that Canadians have understood that after nine years of this government, it is time for a major change. As far as the capital gains tax for businesses and individuals are concerned, I think this needs to be analyzed. More and more financial analysts are looking at this.…
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the Conservative government left a $1-billion surplus in the lead-up to the 2015 election. Over the past nine years, the country's debt has doubled. The government no longer has money to subsidize existing social programs, yet it is adding new ones by interfering in provincial jurisdictions. It is all ma…
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Mr. Speaker, the media are reporting that a Montreal police officer had to open fire at a car thief as he drove the stolen vehicle in the officer's direction. Car thieves are growing bolder. They have no fear of the justice system. That is why the Conservative leader introduced a common-sense plan last February that includes longer prison sentences for auto thieves. Will the Prime Minister listen …
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Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, I think that the Minister of Justice is forgetting that car thieves and other criminals in Montreal are not afraid because of Bill C‑5 and Bill C‑75, which deal with catch-and-release. They know that there will not be any consequences. If they are arrested, then they will be immediately released. That is what Bill C‑75 does. Can the Minister of Justice or the Prime Mi…
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Madam Speaker, I love to see my colleague get carried away and shouting, but I will not let it get to me. Canada is clearly the laughing stock of the world on a number of fronts right now. More specifically, investors are extremely reluctant to come to the country, given the government's tax policies. Many companies have no interest in setting up shop here. The Minister of Innovation, Science and …
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Mr. Speaker, if we want to lower inflation and enable the Bank of Canada to reduce interest rates, we have limited options. We need to cap spending by applying the dollar-for-dollar rule. If we spend a dollar, we have to find a way to save a dollar. It is simple. That is how ordinary Canadians manage their household budgets. That is how every minister in this government should run their department…
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Mr. Speaker, we are calling for three things today. It is not complicated. One of the three things the Conservative Party is calling for is to build homes, not bureaucracy. The government insists on announcing inflationary measures that are costing Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars and only serve to increase inflation and the cost of living. Even David Dodge, the former Liberal governor of th…
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, rents have doubled and the dream of home ownership for our young people is dead. Food banks are reporting record demand. Everything he touches turns bad. He is ruining everything in Ottawa, and now he wants to impose his incompetence on Quebec with his centralizing pre-budget announcements. Does the Prime Minister understand that his meddling …
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Mr. Speaker, how can we trust them? When it comes to any federal responsibility, like border management, managing our military, ArriveCAN or employment insurance to name just a few, it is apparent that everything goes haywire with this government. Now he is adding insult to injury by encroaching on areas of Quebec jurisdiction. Does the Prime Minister understand that he will just make the situatio…
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Mr. Speaker, over the past week, we have seen nothing but photo ops. It is worth reminding the minister that the current programs are being announced as if they are brand new, but they have been around since 2017. Since 2017, practically nothing has been done with these programs. Once again, the Liberals are resorting to photo ops in an effort to raise their profile, but it is not working. All we …
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Mr. Speaker, last week I was in Trois‑Rivières, a city with a vacancy rate of 0.4%. A new report by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, shows that construction is going to plummet over the coming year. CMHC therefore expects that demand will drive up the cost of housing. That is outrageous. Does the Prime Minister realize that people are going to end up on the street because of h…
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Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, Quebec imports food from the rest of Canada. The farmers who grow the food pay the carbon tax. The food processors pay the carbon tax. The carbon tax that is paid by those who transport and process Quebec's food has an impact on the price. People will not see any mention of the carbon tax on their grocery bills. However, maybe an $8 bunch of celery would only h…
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Mr. Speaker, of course I speak with my constituents. They elected me because most of them feel pretty much the same way I do. People are really fed up with the Prime Minister and his government. Every time I meet with people in Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, they ask me when this Prime Minister is going to leave. They want him to go because they are fed up. That is what people tell me every tim…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Foothills. In exactly one hour, a vote will be held here in the House. It is a very important vote that millions of Canadians and even millions of Quebeckers have been waiting for. I will read the motion to clearly indicate what we are calling for today and what the vote will be about. That the House dec…
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Mr. Speaker, I was trying very hard to figure out where my colleague was going with all that. First of all, the carbon tax is a tax plan, not an environmental plan. Second, my colleague from Montcalm just said that the government's official dance partner is the NDP. I mentioned in my speech that I do not understand why the NDP continues to support the government, but that is their problem. What I …
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Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday morning, as I was reading my newspaper, I came across some disturbing news. The member for Brossard—Saint-Lambert, who is also the Assistant Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, invited the director of two organizations accused of hosting illegal, Beijing-controlled police stations in Brossard and Montreal to a partisan cocktail party last February 20. To make matters wo…
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Thornhill. As the Conservative Party of Canada's political lieutenant for Quebec, it is a privilege for me to rise in the House this evening to pay tribute to an outstanding Canadian and a proud Quebecker. I am speaking, of course, about the former prime minister of Canada, the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney. February 29, 2024, will go down in …
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Mr. Speaker, auto theft in Toronto has nearly doubled over last year, and 2024 has only just begun. Where do the stolen vehicles go? They go to the port of Montreal. I would like to commend the efforts of Sûreté du Québec police in February. That said, the federal government must do more to help them. That is why our leader has proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to bring back tougher sentenc…
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Mr. Speaker, former judge Jacques Delisle was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife in 2012. The ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. In 2021, federal justice minister David Lametti intervened to order another trial. He believed there had been a miscarriage of justice. However, a Criminal Conviction Review Group report released on Thursday makes no mention of …
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Mr. Speaker, is the minister aware that, on March 31, 2019, the Ebola and Nipah viruses were sent to Beijing on Air Canada? Does the minister know that? Does he know that viruses that are used as weapons of war were sent to a country that is building an arsenal of biological weapons? We know that Dr. Qiu conducted joint research with Major-General Chen Wei of China's People's Liberation Army. Does…
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Mr. Speaker, does the minister know that the Prime Minister has said that he admires China's basic dictatorship? Does he also know that the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg is working on some of the most dangerous viruses in the world and that the scientist who was fired shared sensitive intellectual property and dangerous pathogens, such as the Ebola genetic sequence, with the Chinese…
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, we read the documents concerning Winnipeg's National Microbiology Laboratory, and the worst is confirmed: There was indeed infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party. Based on its own assessment, the Liberal government allowed a person who is “a very serious danger and a realistic and credible threat to Canada's economic security” to access and compromise the level 4 lab. …
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Mr. Speaker, what is clear to us is that, in November 2022, the government voted against the proposal to ask the Auditor General to conduct an investigation. The Liberals were not the ones who helped discover what had happened with ArriveCAN. At the time, some 10,000 people were forced to quarantine because of a tool that did not work. Can the Prime Minister confirm this time that he will not obst…
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Mr. Speaker, while the common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, this Prime Minister, backed by the Bloc Québécois, is not worth the cost. Speaking of crime, today we learned that the RCMP is going to conduct a full investigation into the ArriveCAN scandal. Even so, we also need the House to support our motion, as the Auditor General of Canada…
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Mr. Speaker, I will answer my colleague by saying that, with respect to the issue being discussed today, the Bloc Québécois voted for the appropriations, knowing full well that they were intended for ArriveCAN. There were two separate appropriations of $12.5 million each. That is why it is so strange to see the members of the Bloc Québécois react by saying that what they voted for is scandalous. T…
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to answer a question about Phoenix. It is true that it was the Conservative government at the time that launched the project, because it would take time to change the payroll management system. However, let us recall that the Liberal government came to power in fall 2015 and that, in March 2016, it decided to activate the Phoenix system despite the fact that the deputy mini…
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Mr. Speaker, the RCMP commissioner was clear this morning. He wrote to the Leader of the Opposition to confirm that a full investigation will be conducted into the ArriveCAN affair. What is more, we learned from the RCMP commissioner in committee that the Prime Minister obstructed the investigation into both the SNC-Lavalin affair and the Aga Khan affair. Can the Prime Minister confirm that he wil…
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Mr. Speaker, today we are introducing a motion for debate in the House. This motion invites all sitting members from all parties, the 338 members of the House of Commons, to do some serious soul-searching. Let us think back to the pandemic. Let us think back to the report that the Parliamentary Budget Officer released after the pandemic. He said that there had been $500 billion in COVID-specific s…
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Mr. Speaker, to answer my colleague's question, I have here the transcript of a committee meeting that I attended on June 16, 2021. At that meeting, I asked a question about an April 2020 memorandum indicating that Treasury Board would be relaxing the rules for awarding contracts to speed up the process during the pandemic. In June 2021, the worst was over. We were regaining control. I asked the c…
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Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that if someone wants to be clear, then a simple yes or no answer would do. We even learned yesterday that, of the $60 million, GC Strategies received $20 million, and that there was not even any paperwork to confirm whether anything was requested or ordered. What is more, GC Strategies got to insert clauses into its own contract. That is unbelievable. If the government…
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Auditor General of Canada confirmed what everyone was expecting, and that is the worst. The ArriveCAN app was supposed to cost $80,000 but instead cost $60 million. She cannot even be sure that it did cost $60 million. It may be worse than that. The record-keeping was so abysmal and there is so much information missing that she cannot even confirm the exact cost. Now Ca…
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Mr. Speaker, today we have seen the Auditor General's disastrous report on the ArriveCAN app, which confirmed an outrageous lack of oversight and transparency. According to his mandate letter, the former president of the Treasury Board was supposed to “raise the bar on openness, effectiveness and transparency in government.” The member for Québec's primary responsibility was to review expenditures…
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the minister that he was the president of the Treasury Board of Canada. It was his responsibility to ensure that taxpayers' money was properly managed. I would also like to remind him that, during the pandemic, 23 businesses with no name received hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts. On the Government of Canada website, they were designated by the letter…
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Madam Speaker, medical assistance in dying is a very thorny issue. Each of us in the House has our own opinion on it. Yesterday, in the Les coulisses du pouvoir interview on Radio-Canada, he said that the nasty Conservatives on the religious right were against advance requests and were keeping the House from moving forward. I checked this morning with our House leader; that is not true at all. We …
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years under this Prime Minister, the number of auto thefts in Canada has skyrocketed, and this can be directly attributed to the Liberals' soft-on-crime policies. While the Prime Minister prefers to hold summits and have discussions, for the past three days, the Leader of the Opposition has been proposing common-sense solutions to combat this scourge. First, we will amend …
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Madam Speaker, as I said in my speech, the Bloc Québécois members initially voted in favour of Bill C-5, but then realized that it was creating problems. They changed their minds and supported my bill, Bill C-325, and I thank them once again. As far as resources are concerned, the Leader of the Opposition made our case in Montreal this morning. I was with him. We went to the port of Montreal to ma…
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Madam Speaker, quite honestly, I do not know what my colleague is talking about. I am not familiar with the amendment. I do not want to give him an empty answer or say something stupid. If I had an answer, I would give it to him, but I do not.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years under this Prime Minister and this government, auto theft has doubled in Montreal. Furthermore, the Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for controlling our borders, including ports. The Port of Montreal, however, has only five Canada Border Services Agency officers on duty to inspect the huge volume of containers transiting through the port on their way to f…
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday our leader proposed other measures to fix this government's mistakes, like fixing the Criminal Code by bringing back tougher sentences. Three auto thefts would get a minimum of three years in prison. It is pretty simple. Also, by finding savings elsewhere—yes, we can save money; our leader has found savings—we can purchase 24 scanners that would be installed at the ports to …
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to our opposition motion and a very serious subject. Auto theft is a problem that is happening right now, and I do not know whether my colleagues are aware of this, but Canada has the highest rate of auto theft in the world. We are the number one exporter of stolen vehicles. Is that something we want to see? No, not at all. It is important to unde…
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Madam Speaker, I see that is the question of the day and I will answer it with a question. Why, under the Conservative government, did auto theft go down by 50%? Why were there no problems at the border? Why did we not need resources from the Border Services Agency to go to Roxham Road, for example, after the Prime Minister's famous tweet that invited everyone to enter Canada? The Liberals created…
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Mr. Speaker, what we know right now is that under this Prime Minister, Canada has become the biggest exporter of stolen cars around the world. This morning, our leader proposed solutions to undo the damage caused by Liberal legislation. For example, we are going to deter car thieves by putting an end to house arrest and increasing jail time for these criminals. That is just common sense. Will the …
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years under this Prime Minister, auto thefts have increased dramatically in Canada. They have gone up by more than 100% in Montreal alone. Our ports, the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency and the Criminal Code all fall under federal responsibility. Instead of taking action, however, the Liberal government has committed to holding a summit to discuss this further. Wha…
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Mr. Speaker, what Canadians and Quebeckers know is that Christmas is coming next week. They also know that they do not have enough money to buy groceries, so does the government really think that they have enough money to buy their children presents? That is what Canadians and Quebeckers have come to realize after eight years under this Liberal government. What is more, on the other side of the Ho…
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Mr. Speaker, the media is reporting that requests for food at a Quebec City food bank, La Bouchée généreuse, have doubled in the past two years. After eight years in power, this Liberal government's legacy is going to be a Canada where people go hungry. The leader of the Bloc Québécois calls himself the adult in the room, but he likes to insult the other party leaders. On top of that, he is callin…
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