Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I extend my regards to all of my colleagues. Before I begin, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Jonquière—Hébertville—Pays-des-Bleuets, a riding with a very lovely name, by the way. We are very pleased with it. The name-change process took some time, but the effort was well worth it. I would like to take a moment to say that a provincial election was held in Quebec yesterday. Quebeckers elected a new government, a Parti Québécois government. I wanted to use my time in the House to congratulate Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, his team, and the Parti Québécois, and to tell them that we are proud of them. I would especially like to congratulate my colleagues from the Laurentians, colleagues from my riding: Geneviève, from Mirabel; Dieudonné, from Les Plaines; Pierre Nantel, from Argenteuil; and Audrey Bujold, a mother of four, from Bellefeuille. I want to offer them my congratulations. It will be a real pleasure to work with them. In an election like this, many people lose and leave their seats. On election nights, we see a lot of the candidates and MNAs. I just want to take a minute to recognize not only all of the candidates and all of the members who are leaving the Quebec National Assembly, but also their teams, the people who work with them but whom we did not see last night. Regardless of party affiliation, these people, like the ones in my own riding, help constituents with issues related to health care, day care and school. They serve the public. Today, they are facing a major personal transition. I want to recognize the commitment of all those who work in an elected official’s office. Everyone here has a team. Even if those people were not in front of the cameras yesterday, I want to tell them that, everything else aside, we are thinking of them. Our teams are important and deserve our recognition. I also wanted to say that people in the Laurentians are making it clear how they feel about about Alto high-speed train. More than 60% of voters in Mirabel voted against the high-speed train. If you look at the map along the route, with the exception of two places where there are stations, the vote is clear. It is clear in Papineau. It is clear in Argenteuil. It is clear throughout the Laurentians. It is clear in Lanaudière. It is clear in Mauricie. It is even clear in Trois-Rivières. It is clear in the Quebec City region. This project is a mistake. Quebeckers made that clear yesterday. The government needs to reconsider this project, particularly given that Alto’s methods, business practices, lack of transparency and the way it pays out bonuses are contrary to all our democratic ideals and to all the ideals we hold about good business practice for a project like this. The fact that the people at Alto are being driven by Bill C-15, a law that also contradicts our democratic ideals and violates people’s rights, should also give us pause. We know that expropriations are on the horizon. We know that Alto is already laying the groundwork. We know that Alto’s relationship with the truth is murky, to put it very politely. It is clear that today, the government must acknowledge that Quebeckers said no to this project last night. Now, let us get back to the Conservative motion. I thank my colleagues for proposing it. It should come as no surprise. The Conservatives are in favour of removing all taxes, although which ones depend on the day and the subject. Today, we are talking about diesel. This motion is full of shortcuts and statements that are not backed up by facts. However, there is a reality behind it. Diesel is a key input in the transportation of goods. It is a key input for the cost of the food we eat, for taxi drivers and for people in construction. It is a key input whose price has increased considerably. I would simply like to remind the House that the Bloc Québécois has repeatedly asked, during a crisis, for special relief measures to be offered to businesses and individuals who use diesel as an input. We are talking about targeted measures, and that is exactly what we are discussing today: We have to acknowledge that the increased cost of diesel is significantly affecting supply chains, yet at the same time, we need to be fiscally responsible. We cannot vote every tax like this into oblivion every time a problem crops up, without conducting any studies, without any facts and without first doing our job. I think the Conservatives should follow our example and adopt the Bloc Québécois’s approach. I think there is a way to target measures more effectively and be fiscally responsible while still reducing supply chain costs. That is the challenge I am putting to the Conservatives today. Clearly, the Bloc Québécois would have a hard time supporting this motion as it stands. Once again, I am calling for facts and studies, for details about the impact of these taxes and the effect on government revenues of measures like this motion by the Conservatives, or the excise tax suspension introduced by the government. We are members of the opposition. Our job is to legislate, to look at motions and bills and ask ourselves the following questions. Is the money being redistributed to the right people? Is it making life more affordable for the right people? How is it affecting taxpayers? Is it a gift to the oil companies? Often, the answer is yes, or unknown, because the Minister of Financeis not giving us information. Yesterday, there was a committee meeting on the excise tax. I asked the Minister of Finance a factual question, and his answer shows that we are not off to a good start. I asked the minister whether the department had conducted any studies on the excise tax rebate of 10¢ on gas and four cents on diesel, for example, to see what proportion is actually going into taxpayers’ or consumers’ pockets and assess whether this measure is actually working. Are we talking about 90%, 85% or 75%? Did the department do its job? The minister told me that 100% of the excise tax rebate is going into people’s pockets, that there is no need to conduct studies, that this is an easy calculation and that the answer is obvious. People at home can figure it out on a napkin. That is basically what the minister told me. The member for Québec Centre is right in front of me. He taught the impact of taxation at the university level. He understands the importance of doing the math. That does not necessarily mean we are against it. It means we are being asked to vote for bills without knowing the impact they will have. Is the money being redistributed to the right people? Is it regressive? The minister showed up at the committee meeting with an infographic, with cartoon-style speech bubbles, and told us he had an infographic. He is the Minister of Finance and likes to remind everyone that he is in the G7. The finance minister of a G7 country shows up in committee with an infographic, without any studies. The excise tax has been suspended in Australia. Researchers at the University of Melbourne concluded that due to a lack of competition, among other factors, it has effectively become an oil subsidy, that a significant portion of the tax was stuck in the distribution network and that the money was not all ending up in people’s pockets. Some might say that Australia is so far away. In the U.S., it has been suspended in several states. As it turns out, nearly a quarter of the tax cut ended up in the pockets of oil companies. During the Senate Committee of the Whole, Senator Gignac put the question to the minister, but the minister refused to answer. The same thing is happening in the debate on today’s motion. The Conservatives wants to suspend all taxes, claiming that it will help Canadians, but without considering competition issues or the fact that oil companies are going to fill their own pockets. If they want to subsidize oil companies, they should say so, they should tell us that that is part of it. As a member of Parliament, my job is to think about the 20% or 25% of people earning the lowest incomes, people who have seen no increase in their real purchasing power for years, whose wages are lagging behind, who have to use their vehicles to get to work or engage in construction or agricultural activities. My job is to ask myself whether these are the people who will benefit directly from the measures proposed today. We are talking about permanent measures. The minister told us yesterday that his excise tax measure is targeted, but that it affects everyone. We therefore had to ask whether it was targeted or whether it affected everyone, and if he had any definitions in that regard. There were no definitions. The minister says that this is temporary, yet there is nothing more permanent than a temporary tax cut. History has taught us that. These tax cuts become permanent. Yes, I quoted Milton Friedman. Imagine that. One witness told us that the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz will continue to affect the supply chain long after the crisis ends. We cannot keep cutting taxes without knowing what impact it will have, especially since, and I will say this again to the Conservatives, the federal government’s budget situation is troubling. There is no plan to balance the budget. Several fiscal anchors have been abandoned. The government is not being rigorous. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that the definitions for what constitutes capital investment are inconsistent. Yesterday, the minister could not even tell me whether an excise tax cut is a capital investment. When the Conservatives move a motion like the one before us today, I want to know how it will affect the public purse. We cannot keep cutting taxes left and right and then expect the budget to balance itself. It is not like an apple that falls from the tree. Gravity will not simply take care of that. I urge the Conservatives to be more thorough and to give us the facts. I also want to let the government know that it has to give us the tools we need to do our parliamentary work.
