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Alexis Deschênes

Bloc Québécois 12:00 p.m.

“I want the government to help one business in my riding. These companies are sad - make it better.”

Gérard Deltell

Conservative 12:00 p.m.

“Thank you for standing up for businesses in your riding. I think the government should help businesses by finding markets and reducing taxes. Giving out subsidies won't help. The government should help businesses have more money to invest in the future.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question and for standing up for the businesses in his riding and in his part of the country. He does a good job of representing those people, unlike what we have seen over the past 10 years. I want to point out that we think that all natural resources should be developed properly. The best way for the government to help businesses is to find markets for them, support them in their search for new markets and reduce the related tax burden. Giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars and subsidies is not going to help. Instead, the government needs to help businesses develop markets and ensure that they have more money in their coffers so that they can invest in the future with the help and support of governments. The government needs to give them more room to act by opening up markets. Canada has representatives around the world, so lumber from the Gaspé region could be sold around the world.

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Kelly McCauley

Conservative 12:00 p.m.

“The Liberals say Canadians have never had it so good. But people are going to food banks. Crime is bad. Our economy is shrinking. Lots of Canadians don't have enough food. Do you think Canadians have it great, like the Liberals say?”

Gérard Deltell

Conservative 12:00 p.m.

“I appreciate my friend's work. But the Liberals made big promises. The Prime Minister said he knew how to fix things. He hasn't delivered.”

Pat Kelly

Conservative 12:00 p.m.

“Canada is the only G7 country in recession. The government blames international events, but all G7 countries face the same events. Canada has the worst household debt and housing affordability in the G7. The government has no plan to reverse this. They had a balanced budget and approved pipelines in 2015, but they squandered it. The Prime Minister claimed to be the man for a crisis, but it was an illusion. The responsibility for this lies on the government's mismanagement.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to speak to opposition motions. Today Conservatives call on the House to recognize that the Liberal Prime Minister has given Canada the only recession in the G7. It is so sad that it has come to this and that we have to call on the House to recognize the sad fact that Canada is in a recession and is the only country in the G7 for which that is the case. Why is Canada alone in the G7? The government has blamed international events and continues to blame international factors for Canada's poor economic performance, but I point out to the House that every other G7 country faces the same international factors. The Liberals cite war in Ukraine, in the Persian Gulf and in Iran, but this affects all countries. They talk about the trade war that we certainly do not want and did not ask for in Canada, but I point out that the United States is tariffing itself. It faces tariffs. It has made the decision to make its own citizens pay tariffs on what it imports, yet it is not in a recession. It is Canada alone among G7 countries that is in a recession, so we have to look at other factors driving this. The Conservative motion calls on the government to recognize that Canada has the worst household debt in the G7. There was devastating testimony at the finance committee about a month ago. Equifax and TransUnion, two of the businesses that track consumer debt behaviour, informed the committee that indebted Canadians are getting deeper in debt. They are going further into debt, and the credit balloon is continuing to expand but not with additional players. It is not that Canadians are buying homes for the first time, or this kind of thing, and becoming new participants in credit. No, indebted Canadians are getting deeper in debt. They are coping with this not with higher salaries and higher incomes to pay their debts. They are stretching out their payments, refinancing their loans, skipping out on essentials, cutting back on other expenses and exhausting their savings. This is not sustainable. This is not going to give us a consumer-led recovery, because consumers are tapped out. In fact, Food Banks Canada just released a report that says that among lower-income Canadians, food, other essentials and housing combined are more than 100% of the average household budget. People at the lowest levels are the people getting deeper in debt. They cannot afford food. They cannot afford gasoline. They cannot afford housing. They are coping with it by exhausting any savings they might have and getting deeper into debt. Affordability is part of the crisis that we find ourselves in. With respect to housing, we call upon the government, in the motion, to acknowledge that we have the worst housing affordability in the G7. A first-time homebuyer, a young person or young family hoping to establish a new household and buy a home as part of a long-term financial plan or as a way to put down roots in a community, has not have a hope under the government. The Liberals have presided over the astonishing run-up in the cost of housing that has shut out a generation of young Canadians from home ownership and traps people in rents that they are increasingly unable to afford. Rent has more than doubled under the Liberal government. Even though rents have been coming down for the last 18 months, as it has pointed out, they are still more than double what they were when the government took office. We see housing as unaffordable. The Liberals have killed the dream of home ownership for a generation of Canadians. They have created a country in which one's ability to become a homeowner is really tied up in the question of whether or not their parents were homeowners and are able to share their equity with their children by refinancing their own home, lending them the money, co-signing, or all the different things. I was in the mortgage industry, and for the entire length of my career, a normal person with a normal, proper job who wanted to buy a home could save up the down payment over a period of a year or two and could come in, qualify for a mortgage and buy a home. That is simply impossible now in almost all of Canada's major cities. It is a real shame. We heard testimony to that effect at the finance committee. Our motion calls upon the government to present a plan to reverse the situation we are in. The Liberal government squandered the opportunity it had when it was first elected. Let us go back in time for a minute to 2015. In 2015, when the government was sworn in, it had a balanced budget and a conditionally approved pipeline to the west coast. Literally days after the government was sworn in, it cancelled the northern gateway pipeline. If that pipeline had been built, it would right now be pumping 525,000 barrels a day to world markets. Let us think of the economic activity just from that one project alone. At today's prices, that is nearly $50 million a day. Let us think of the tax revenue foregone by the government. Let us think of the paycheques that do not exist from all the jobs that would go into the production and transmission of 525,000 barrels a day at today's prices. The Liberal government blew it, and that was just one pipeline. There was also not yet an application, but there was an intent to build an east coast pipeline as well, and the government chased off that project when it started musing about changing, even before it put in Bill C-69, which really nailed the door shut and made sure no pipelines would ever get produced. What the Liberal government has done is it squandered the opportunity. There were years when there was a strong world economy in the early years of the Liberal government, and the Liberals blew it. They still ran up deficits. They spent the cupboard bare in times of relative prosperity globally. Ever since then, they have been less able to cope with crises and have left us where we are today, extraordinarily in debt with a $67-billion deficit that the government just tabled and fiscal anchors that have been just cut loose. They announce one and then they abandon it. The Liberals have presided over a productivity crisis that, two full years ago, the senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada said was a break-glass emergency. Well, the Liberals did not break the glass and deal with the emergency. They have just fumbled along right up to this very day. The Prime Minister told everybody, about 15 months ago, that he was the man for a crisis and that he was the person who would have a deal with Trump's America by July 2025. The Prime Minister said that this was the time for prudent fiscal management and that as a banker he had the skills to manage the national budget. He said that he was a man for a crisis. It was all an illusion. Here we are now at a time when we are in a recession. We are the most indebted country in the G7. We have food bank usage that is off the chart. We have housing that is staggeringly unaffordable. We have the same global concerns as every other country, but we are the one that is in a recession. The responsibility for that lies on the Prime Minister, and the 10 and a half years of financial and economic mismanagement that has occurred under the Prime Minister and the government's watch.

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Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Liberal 12:10 p.m.

“I want to defend the Prime Minister's record. The economy is doing better since he started leading. Conservatives are exaggerating how bad it is.”

Pat Kelly

Conservative 12:10 p.m.

“I want to attack the out-of-touch claim that Canadians have never had it so good. The average net worth increasing could just mean a few very rich people got richer. Many typical households are actually deep in debt and struggling with bills.”

Mario Beaulieu

Bloc Québécois 12:15 p.m.

“I want to challenge Conservatives about the cost of their proposal to eliminate fuel taxes. They should be willing to cut oil subsidies too to make up the lost money.”

Pat Kelly

Conservative 12:15 p.m.

“I don't want to cut all oil subsidies. I want the government to stop adding more regulation that prevents oil projects. That would help the economy more than subsidies.”

Dan Muys

Conservative 12:15 p.m.

“I want to blame the Liberals for the middle class suffering. Canada used to be the most prosperous and now people have too much debt. I think the government must be the reason.”

Pat Kelly

Conservative 12:15 p.m.

“I want to blame the Liberals. They became government in 2015. Everything was good before then. Anyone could succeed if they worked. The Liberals destroyed that. They spent too much.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is possible because there was a change of government in 2015, and the new government blew it. It really is that simple. I mentioned some of the other advantages, from a government point of view, that the Liberals inherited from the previous government, in fact from previous governments. There was a decades-long running consensus around fiscal discipline in the House, and the Liberals blew it. They inherited, yes, what The New York Times described as the world's most prosperous middle class. This was a country where people could get ahead if they just did the work. A normal person could go to school, get a job, save a bit of money, buy a house, put down roots and start a family in a nice, safe neighbourhood. That is the country the Liberals inherited, and they blew it.

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Taleeb Noormohamed

Liberal 12:15 p.m.

“I don't want to talk about numbers. Numbers are bad. I want to talk about people and their feelings. There are sad people. I won't say they're wrong to feel bad. That would look uncaring. But I will blame the Conservatives. They're bad. They don't have real plans. Only we have real plans. Here are some programs and spending I like. These are good things. I want to be associated with good things. Companies are investing in Canada. That's proof everything is working great. Don't listen to Conservatives. They're mean. They'll take away your programs. We won't. We're giving you things. If you're impatient for results, that just means we should spend more faster. Don't look at bad numbers or question if our approach is really working. Look at our good intentions and all the things we're associated with. The other guys are just fearmongers. Ignore them.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Madawaska—Restigouche. I would like to begin where this motion does not. I will not begin with the numbers, but with the people this motion is supposed to be about. Somewhere, today, there is a parent at a kitchen table, running the math on a mortgage renewal for a second time because the first answer could not possibly be right. There is a young person in the same house who did everything they were asked to and is now looking at the cost of a home and wondering whether this country still has room for them. I am not going to tell either of them that these things are better than they feel. They are actually not, and we all know that. That worry is real, and it deserves a serious response, which is exactly what this motion is not, so this is where I part ways with the member who put this motion forward. The Conservative Party offers that family a story that all of this is the fault of one or two people, conjured in a single year, and that the cure, which the member just spoke about, is to simply tear things down. It is a tidy story. It asks nothing hard of the party that is telling it. It is a bid for power and a social media clip dressed up as an answer, but it is wrong. It is wrong about how we got here, and it is emptiest precisely where it ought to be the fullest, which is on what they would actually do instead. The members opposite are just about everything they are not and have no ideas about what we should be doing. Let us give that family an honest answer. The pressure did not arrive all at once. It built slowly over decades, through what successive governments of all stripes and at all levels chose to do and, far more often, chose to put off. There were too few homes built year after year, infrastructure was deferred and deferred again and productivity was left adrift while other countries pulled ahead. The one I know best is that, for decades, we let it become too hard to build big things in this country. Governments left the walls standing between our provinces so that it stayed easier to trade with another country than to trade with one another. None of it was inevitable. It was the accumulated cost of choosing not to act. The bill for everything that was waiting came up at the very moment the global economy was being torn up and rewritten. There are tariffs at levels not seen in generations and supply chains are fracturing under conflict in Europe and the Middle East. The Prime Minister has called this what it is: a rupture, not a transition. I did not come to this chamber as a political staffer. I did not grow up in politics. I came from building companies and creating actual jobs. I know what it takes to start something, to make payroll and to scale a business past the point that it is fragile. I know the patterns the members opposite never name. In this country, we generate world‑class research. We build competitive firms and then, sometimes, we watch the industrial scale, the intellectual property, the jobs and the talent migrate somewhere else. This pattern is not a law of nature, but a result of choices. This is a government that has finally made the other choice. It has chosen to back our champions, keep our IP here, keep jobs here, build talent here and let Canadian companies scale without having to leave Canada to do it ever again. We have made it easier to build big things again with the Major Projects Office so that nation-building projects stop dying in the queue. Ground has already broken on projects, like the port expansion in Montreal, which will move Canadian goods to the world for decades, and there are four major projects in my own province of British Columbia. The One Canadian Economy Act tears down the internal trade walls I just described. We have a productivity superdeduction so that businesses can write off investment right away and have a reason to make it here. We have a plan to unlock $1 trillion in investment over the next five years. We have $6 billion and 100,000 new skilled trades workers through team Canada strong so that we have the hands to build what we approve. We have Build Canada Homes, which is not another task force, but an actual builder with more than 7,500 homes already under way in this country. Here is how I know it is working. It is showing up in my own province. Anglo Teck is choosing Canada as its headquarters, bringing blue- and white-collar jobs to British Columbia. Torys is opening up a new office in Vancouver. Lululemon is keeping its headquarters in British Columbia. These are companies that could plant their flag anywhere on earth, and they are choosing here because they see what British Columbia and Canada have to offer. They are betting on our prosperity. They would not place that bet on a country in decline. The Conservatives are gleeful about the fact that there are challenges in this country. They propose no solutions and they continue to tear down, but what the rest of the world is seeing, through foreign direct investment, companies moving their headquarters here, talent coming to this country and researchers coming to this country, is that this is the place to build a future. That is because we have a Prime Minister and a government that are focused on that, know what it takes to build big things and are prepared to do the heavy lifting to get it done. The wider proof is real. Wages have outpaced inflation every single month this government has been in office. Foreign investment, as I said, is flowing to us faster now than it is to any of our closest peers. It is at an 18‑year high. Canada has now surpassed the United States as the most attractive market in the world for infrastructure investment. Our economy is now projected to grow the second fastest in the G7 this year and next. To me, this is not the portrait of a country in retreat, but a country that has decided to build again. The member opposite asked the government to “immediately...reverse all the economic policies” that got us here. I would ask him to be honest about what that actually means. Does it mean reversing the Major Projects Office? Does it mean eliminating the superdeduction that rewards firms for investing in this country? Does it mean eliminating the work to tear down the walls between our provinces or the $6 billion for 100,000 new tradespeople? While he is at it, let him tell that family at the kitchen table which of their savings he means to take back. Is it the national school food program, which his own party has called “garbage”? Is it the child care that his party leader calls a “slush fund”, which has benefited people in his own riding? Is it the dental care that seniors in his communities are currently benefiting from? Are those the programs he would choose to roll back? To the Conservatives, the help that gets a family through the month is a line item that they sneer at. It is something to be looked down upon. To us, it is precisely the point. It is lifting families up so that they can build success. We cannot rip out the scaffolding and claw back what families are counting on and call that a plan to build. I understand the impatience. After this many years and decades of building too little, Canadians have every right to be impatient, but impatience is not a reason to stop building and tear out the scaffolding. It is a reason to build faster. A family having a tough time does not need a politician to name their fear back to them, only louder. They have lived that fear. They do not need it performed as political theatre. The young person wondering if there is room for their future in this country does not need another performance of outrage from the members opposite, which has, sadly, become the only thing they seem to know how to do. Young people need us to build something worthy of their trust, and that is what our government has chosen to do. In times of crisis and in times of difficulty, Canadians expect us to come together and build big things. They expect us to put aside pettiness and all of the things we cannot do to focus on the things we can and should do. They expect us to show up with solutions. All of us who have kids know that when we have difficult conversations with them, a temper tantrum is not the way to a solution. Resolution comes through doing things together and showing by example. The Conservatives would have us believe that by ripping up the paper, tossing our toys and walking away, we are somehow going to build a stronger economy. That is not how economies are built. They are built by people who are prepared to invest in this country, which we are seeing now in record numbers. We are seeing that through workers who are prepared to be retrained today for the jobs of the future. That is what we are seeing. It comes with governments that are prepared to match the ambition Canadians have with what they need, which are the resources and the support to be able to get to those places. Danielle Smith talked about how working with this Prime Minister is a joy. David Eby talked about how working with this government is a joy. I am really curious to know how provincial governments, from Wab Kinew's and David Eby's to Doug Ford's and Danielle Smith's, look at this government and say this is a government they can work with, yet the Conservatives sit there and wonder why their poll numbers keep going down and Canadians refuse to return them to office. It is because premiers of all parties have recognized that this is a government that is prepared to work hard for Canadians, build things for Canadians and invest in the type of economy that Canadians want to see built in this country for a future their kids can look at and be proud of. Yes, we all know that times are tough. When times are tough, we work together. We are providing solutions to people to give them the supports they need to get through this period. We are showing them a path to a brighter future with the dollars, supports, commitments and, most importantly, the compassion and hope to be able to deliver on big things. We are doing that. We are backing it up by having the provinces and the private sector working with us. I encourage the Conservatives to stop the slogans and get to work for Canadians with us.

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Jeremy Patzer

Conservative 12:25 p.m.

“The Liberals are out of ideas. The Liberals said Bill C-5 would get things built. We passed it. But no projects got approved. Now the Liberals want a 'sovereign wealth fund.' But it's not a real fund. It has no money. The Liberals will borrow money and call it a 'fund.' It's a debt fund. It will cost $750 million a year just on interest. Now the Liberals want more consultations to 'speed things up.' They're clueless. Why won't they pass our sovereignty act? That would actually get projects built.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, this is coming from a Liberal government that is completely out of ideas. Here is why. We let the Liberals have Bill C‑5 because they said it was the thing they needed to get business investment and get things built at speeds we have never seen before in this country. We worked with them to pass it because we agree that Canada needs to get building and start getting things done, yet not a single project from the Major Projects Office has been approved and advanced to any next stage. The Liberals then turned around and said that is not working. What else can they try? They decided to try a sovereign wealth fund, but they do not have any money to put into it, so they are going to borrow against it. They are going to use debt to finance it. It is going to cost Canadians $750 million a year just in debt service charges for their so-called sovereign wealth fund. It is going to be a debt fund. On top of that, they figured out that that is not going to work either, so now they are going to have consultations to figure out how to speed things up. The government is clueless. It has no idea. Why does it not pass the sovereignty act that the Conservatives proposed to get projects built?

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Taleeb Noormohamed

Liberal 12:25 p.m.

“I have nothing new to say. You're impatient. Don't expect instant results. Building things takes time. I'll just attack you instead.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure exactly what the question was. It sounded yet again like a litany of complaints and no new ideas, which is exactly what the opposition is devoid of. Perhaps I could tell them something they might be hopeful about. In my province of British Columbia, there are now four projects at the Major Projects Office. I understand that the Government of Alberta is looking forward to putting forward a proposition to be able to get energy resources to tidewater. It seems that the provinces, the country and the private sector are working together to ensure that we are building things. I understand the impatience on the other side. After all, the bill was passed less than a year ago. However, they somehow expect mines to spring out of the ground, mills to be built overnight and pipelines to randomly show up. People who have actually built things know that is not how things get done in this country, and it is not how we build real, resilient infrastructure.

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Serge Cormier

Liberal 12:30 p.m.

“The Conservatives talk about diversifying markets but didn't do enough. The Prime Minister got new investments that help my riding!”

Taleeb Noormohamed

Liberal 12:30 p.m.

“Countries trust Canada because our government is reliable. Our workers are the best. Our researchers have good ideas. We're a safe bet for investment.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, if we look at the number of trade agreements we now have with countries around the world, we can see that countries are seeking to invest in Canada. Whether they are countries in the Middle East or Europe, or our partners in the EU, more and more countries are looking at Canada with confidence as the place to invest. Why? It is because there is a government they can trust and rely on. There are Canadian workers who have talent and are the best in the world. We have research and researchers in this country coming up with the ideas of the future today. They see the convergence of those three things as a recipe for success and a place where they can place a bet, and they know our word means something.

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Xavier Barsalou-Duval

Bloc Québécois 12:30 p.m.

“I don't agree with everything in the Conservative motion. But they raise a fair question. The government hasn't given a good answer. The Prime Minister said he would fix the tariff crisis, but nothing has changed in a year. The government is only arguing about trade with other countries instead of fixing things with our most important neighbor. The government should negotiate with the US.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his speech. While we do not necessarily agree with everything in the Conservative motion before us today, we do believe it raises an interesting and relevant question to which I do not feel the government has provided an answer. Essentially, what the Conservatives are saying is that Canada is in a technical recession, that things are going badly and that the Liberals are to blame. The fact is I cannot say that they are not at least partly to blame. They are the ones in charge, after all. The Prime Minister, who was elected nearly a year ago, promised us he would resolve the tariff crisis with a wave of a magic wand. Here we are a year later, and nothing has changed. Now, today, the government is engaging in rhetoric by trying to contrast having agreements with our southern neighbour with having agreements with other countries around the world. Given the difficult situation, might it not be time for the government to sit down at the negotiating table with our southern neighbour? It might be time for the government to realize that we cannot really get by without doing business with them either.

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Taleeb Noormohamed

Liberal 12:30 p.m.

“We can do two things at once. We are working to fix US tariffs. But we also want trade with other countries. More trade is good. We signed trade agreements to help Canada sell products to other countries.”

Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault

Liberal 12:30 p.m.

“The motion is bad. I don't like it. It's not serious. Look at our serious plan instead! We signed trade deals. We sent money to my riding. We made a space bill. Space is good for the economy! We gave wage subsidies to some businesses. We made a summer jobs program. We gave money to some people. The other side is bad. We are good. I am focused and serious!”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, today's motion is on a serious topic. However, it is written in a very unserious way. As we know, the United States has fundamentally changed its approach to trade with countries around the world, not just with Canada. However, given our geographic proximity to the United States and given the fact that it is our main trading partner, this tariff dispute, which we did not initiate, is having specific repercussions on the Canadian economy, our workers and our businesses. At the same time, conflicts around the world, particularly in the Middle East and Europe, are having significant impacts on supply chains, which in turn affect the global economy. In light of today's challenges, Canadians do not need political theatrics. They need a serious plan to strengthen our economy and make it more resilient. In last year's general election, Canadians had a choice between a team offering empty slogans and divisive politics, and a team with a plan to strengthen our economy. That is exactly what they chose. Since our election, we have been working to diversify the Canadian economy, facilitate the implementation of major projects of national interest, strengthen domestic demand, and support our workers and businesses. When we look at the motion tabled today, it is clear that the official opposition is not taking the current challenges seriously enough. Once again, it is presenting us with a motion that seems designed more to fuel social media content and generate sound bites than to propose concrete solutions and work with us for the benefit of the Canadian public. I can list a few examples to illustrate our work and the results we are achieving. When it comes to economic diversification, we have been working for over a year to strengthen our trade partnerships around the world. This enables our businesses to access new markets and, at the same time, attract foreign investment to Canada. In fact, over the last 12 months, we have made significant progress in this regard. We have signed more than 20 new economic and defence partnerships and secured nearly $97 billion in foreign investment commitment. These are concrete results. They have an impact on the Canadian economy as well as on the ground, in our ridings. For example, agriculture is an important sector of the economy in Madawaska—Restigouche, where many farmers grow potatoes. The new agreement with Mexico will give Canadian potato farmers access to a market of over 130 million consumers. I have talked to business owners in my riding about this, and they are very excited about the benefits of this new agreement. That is how we build a strong economy: by providing new markets and new opportunities for Canadian businesses. I also want to mention that, in our work to strengthen the Canadian economy, we are also looking to develop new sectors and build capacity in areas where we may be less competitive right now. I will use the commercial space industry as an example. Right now, Canada is the only G7 country without sovereign space launch capabilities. That means that our country, our businesses and our institutions have to rely on foreign countries, particularly the United States, to launch their satellites into orbit. This reliance has real-world consequences. It is diverting investment to other countries. Naturally, since we lack sovereign space launch capabilities, investors turn to other countries. This leads to costly delays for our companies, since they need to launch their satellites through other countries. In addition, our critical infrastructure is at the mercy of decisions that are beyond our control. In an increasingly uncertain and competitive world, Canada can no longer rely on others to guarantee its access to space. That is why we introduced a bill on Canadian space launches. This legislation will be a real game-changer by establishing the framework needed to build Canada's own space launch capabilities. The idea is to boost Canada's commercial space launch industry. These changes will have real benefits for the Canadian economy. They will help develop a new commercial space industry in Canada and create numerous opportunities, particularly in the telecommunications sector. This is a particularly promising area. We often hear about connectivity problems in rural areas. Certain emerging technologies like low-earth orbit satellites show a lot of potential for improving connectivity in regions that are currently underserved by cellular networks. However, if we want a seat at the table, we need to have the capacity to develop these technologies in Canada and then be able to launch our own satellites. This also opens up all sorts of interesting opportunities in navigation and natural resource development in remote regions, as well as in the defence sector. This will also help reduce costly delays for Canadian businesses. We also expect it to attract billions of dollars in investment to Canada. In fact, since the announcement of this bill, several Canadian and foreign space launch companies, as well as foreign governments, have approached our government to signal interest in doing business in Canada for satellite launches. This is creating new partnership opportunities with our NATO allies and strengthening Canadian sovereignty. It is a concrete example of how our plan to strengthen the economy also helps strengthen our defence capabilities and our sovereignty. Moreover, as a member from an Atlantic riding, I am pleased to note that this potential is particularly significant in the Atlantic provinces, where several spaceports are under development, including the Maritime Launch Services spaceport in Nova Scotia and NordSpace's Atlantic Spaceport Complex in Newfoundland and Labrador. When we talk about investments that will strengthen the domestic market, when we talk about investing in infrastructure, building housing and delivering major projects of national interest, we have to start by investing in our workforce and our workers. In last month's economic update, we announced a plan to increase the number of workers in the country's Red Seal trades. For starters, apprentices attending technical training can get up to $400 in financial support per week—$16,000 per year—plus a $5,000 bonus when they obtain their certification. We want to give them a financial incentive to help them complete their training from A to Z. We will also provide financial support to small and medium-sized businesses that offer on-the-job training because apprentices have to accumulate a certain number of hours to get certified. Specifically, we will provide up to $10,000 in wage subsidies to small and medium-sized businesses that take on apprentices. This is an effective way to increase the number of welders, electricians, plumbers and carpenters, to name just a few. These workers are essential to achieving our ambitious goal to build more in Canada. When we talk about providing employment opportunities, we also need to talk about youth. In budget 2025, we announced increased funding for the Canada summer jobs program. In my riding, it amounts to an investment of over $1.5 million this summer to support more than 400 jobs. These jobs provide practical work experience for young people in Madawaska—Restigouche. They will have an opportunity to work for community organizations, municipalities, day camps, the construction sector or SMEs. This wide range of employment opportunities might not have been available without this funding. For employers, SMEs, community organizations and municipalities, this is a game-changer. Over the past few weeks, I have called over 200 different employers in my riding to let them know the good news that they are going to receive funding this summer through this program. Based on the feedback I received, the program is making a real difference to them. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the young people in my region who get jobs through the Canada summer jobs program a terrific summer. When we talk about building a stronger Canadian economy, we must also ensure that we build a fair and equitable system and that we are there for those who need it most. That is why all our efforts to strengthen the Canadian economy are accompanied by a social safety net. I am thinking of all the programs we have put in place over the years, including the Canada child benefit, the Canada disability benefit, the Canadian dental care plan, the affordable child care programs and the Canada groceries and essentials benefit. These programs make a huge difference to those who need them most. Unfortunately, when the official opposition is presented with measures that genuinely help people, their instinct is usually to oppose them. In closing, I think that we can see a contrast between this side of the House and the other side. The motion that is before us today is a joke. It was written in such a way that it cannot be supported. It seems to have been designed to generate sound bites for social media. It proposes very little in the way of concrete measures. On our side of the House, we do not let ourselves get distracted by this sort of grandstanding. From day one, we have remained focused on our work. Canadians gave us a clear mandate: to strengthen the Canadian economy and make it more resilient. That is what we are doing to deliver the results the public expects.

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Pierre Paul-Hus

Conservative 12:40 p.m.

“You say we just want sound bites. But I have facts. 113,400 jobs lost. People can't put food on the table. Two negative quarters means recession. Statistics Canada said it, not me. Stop attacking us and explain your thinking.”

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