Jean-Denis Garon

“Mr. Speaker, I begin my speech in good spirits, thanks to the wonderfully quick wit of the member who spoke before me. I am also going to follow in my colleagues’ footsteps, because I too have prepared some brief remarks about our representatives in Quebec City that I want to give before starting my speech. We found out who will be in cabinet yesterday. The riding of Berthier—Maskinongé is a little smaller than my colleague’s riding in the Gaspé; we did not get four ministers, but we did get three, which is not bad at all. I am very proud that Elsie Lefebvre was elected in Berthier. She is my own MNA, because that is where I live. Maxime Laporte is the MNA for L’Assomption, and Isabelle Blais is the MNA for Maskinongé. I would like to welcome them. We are going to have a great working relationship over the next few years. I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge Élodie Murphy‑Gauthier and Jean Pellerin, who were elected in the Mauricie region. I endorsed several candidates in the Mauricie region. I want to send a shout-out to René Branchaud. We came very close. I would like to tell my friend that we will meet again next time. I am certain that he will be there and that it will work out. I would be remiss if I did not mention my former colleagues as well. Simon‑Pierre Savard‑Tremblay was my comrade-in-arms for several years on our supply management bill. I really enjoyed working with him. I have no doubt that he will do an excellent job as a minister in Quebec City. Of course, I must mention our former House leader, Alain Therrien, who is an inspiration to all of us. If there is one person who really helped me manage the unmanageable and deal with the frustrations and the lack of control over our environment that we sometimes feel as new members, it is him, so I tip my hat to him. We are very proud of him, and we are sure that he will do a bang-up job. I will now address the crux of today’s issue. It is simply outrageous. The government really needs to stop pretending. I have not been in such a good mood lately. I will tell the House what happens when I am not in a good mood. This is a very personal part of my life that I did not expect to talk about in the House, but I cannot pretend. That is not in my nature. When something is bothering me, the people around me immediately ask what is wrong. They ask me what is going on. In life, I do not pretend. I simply cannot do that. I think it stinks when people pretend. That is polite enough language for me to say in the House. It really grinds my gears. I am tired of watching the Liberal government pretend that it thinks culture is important. Amid artful gestures and eloquent speeches, they will roll out a dreamy outdoor backdrop complete with just enough breeze to tousle the hair, and they will announce how generous they are for giving $600 million to the desperately needy cultural sector. Meanwhile, just a day earlier, they will have robbed that same sector of more than $2 billion because they lacked courage, bowed down and surrendered. That expression of the Prime Minister’s, “elbows up”, also applies to someone lying prostrate on the ground with only their elbows sticking up. That will not stop the United States from using us as a doormat. I have quoted Pierre Falardeau several times in the House, but I really like this quote. Falardeau used to say that someone who stands up will be hated but respected, while someone who prostrates themselves on the ground will just be used as a doormat. That is not the exact wording, but my colleagues get the idea. I would rather stand up and have people hate me but call me “sir”. I think that Quebeckers prefer that, as Canadians do. Maybe we should stop taking everything lying down. This is what we have been seeing from the very beginning. What is more, the Liberals have the nerve to stand up and ask what the Bloc Québécois is complaining about. They did it earlier during oral question period. They say they have made a major $600-million announcement. The whole bunch of them are patting themselves on the back and looking all proud. This will seem like a sound bite, but it is important to know the backstory. Where will that $600 million come from? It will come out of our pockets. The levy stemmed from a decision made by the CRTC. By the way, people may not know this, but the CRTC is supposed to be independent. It can receive general guidelines coming from the political sphere, but then its members, who are all thoughtful individuals, sit down and analyze the situation. The CRTC came to a conclusion. It saw that the media landscape was changing. A lot has changed in the last 10 or 15 years. We know that. Very few people now subscribe to traditional television. Traditional media outlets are forced to contribute to the system. Online media outlets contribute nothing but get most of the advertising revenue. That is the situation. I do not always applaud the CRTC’s decisions, but that one made a lot of sense. It said that they had to pay a minimum percentage. It was increased from 5% to 15%, but that was not enough. Web giants would have to invest in the creation of French-language content to the tune of 30%. We certainly applauded that. How did the Prime Minister respond? He said that it had to be scrapped or else Donald Trump would get angry and not give us anything. I challenge the parliamentary secretary, who is listening to me, to rise later and tell me what they got from the United States in return. Since the 2025 election, when our saviour, Mr. Canada, the man who was supposed to get us out of this mess, was elected, we have not gotten anything. I have no objection to grand speeches being given on the international stage. The case for the role of middle powers can be a compelling one, particularly when it comes to bilateral and especially multilateral relations in international forums. That is why we look forward to the day when Quebec can take its place among them and bring its own voice, political clout and vision to the world. Some ideas make sense, such as strengthening ties with Europe. We have been advocating that for a long time. It would be particularly worthwhile when it comes to environmental and trade standards, as the proposals that we put forward in committee are often blocked by members from the other Canadian provinces. I served for many years on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, and I believe that we could learn a great deal from European policies. That would be quite interesting. Ultimately, however, what matters is action. Governments are not judged by what they say. They are judged by what they do and by what they have done. The government announced $600 million in funding taken from taxpayers’ pockets. I want to point out what happened just before that. By overturning the CRTC’s policy, it deprived the media sector of more than $2 billion. Let us dig just a little deeper. I know that may be difficult for some members here, but let us try. Let us go back to the day before yesterday. The Liberals scrapped the digital services tax to please the orange man. We got nothing in return. This time, it was worth more than $7 billion over five years. Now they have the nerve to stand up, look at us and smugly say that they are being generous to the cultural sector. That is rich. This week, I took part in a press conference with the House of Commons interpreters, translators and terminologists. They are in contract talks. The same government that says culture, the French language and official bilingualism are important wants to cut 25% of the Translation Bureau’s resources over the next five years. The thing is, the Translation Bureau’s budget is a tiny fraction of the total federal budget. It is $160 million. This is a joke. Francophone elected officials like us know that working in the Parliament of Canada is a huge daily challenge, because 90% of everything that happens here is done in English. That is fine; it is their language and their right. We have a right to work in our language, too. We have a right to quality interpretation. These are qualified professionals who are currently being treated with disdain. They are being told that artificial intelligence will replace them. I hope everyone saw this morning’s article about how AI translated TB, the abbreviation for the Translation Bureau, as “tuberculosis” in French. That is the big joke of the day. The worst part is that the English terms “should” and “must” both get translated into French by the same word: “doit ”. Imagine what the courts would do with those two words in a piece of legislation. I hope that the judge would not say what I have heard before from a clerk at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, namely that the English version takes precedence. I hope that does not happen, because that is not supposed to be true. The two official languages are supposed to be equal, truly equal. The government needs to stop messing around when it comes to culture. Everyone needs to stop messing around. Let us find a way, stand up to the United States and accept the fact that we need these giants that make profits here to pay their fair share.”