Sylvie Bérubé

[Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, February 14th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, it is accessible in Quebec. It is affordable. It is flexible. It is inclusive, too. Children get help. Families also have help for children with different ranges of abilities. I think Quebec really is a model that other provinces could learn from. The government should do the same with Bill C‑35.

[Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, February 14th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, our model is the best one. In fact, the member is proof positive that it is, since Bill C‑35 calls for another model.

As for the Conservatives, I have no idea how they will vote because they are impulsive. Unfortunately, I cannot say more than that.

[Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, February 14th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, the federal government must not interfere in provincial jurisdictions, especially when it comes to Quebec. Second, I think our child care policy is a model worth following. As for the amendment, of course we must also help francophones outside Quebec gain access to day care services.

[Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, February 14th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville.

I am pleased to rise again to speak to Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day, especially my spouse, Marc, despite the distance separating us.

This bill has come back to the House with an amendment adopted by the Senate. In December, the Senate adopted an amendment to maintain long-term funding for child care services for official language minority communities, as well as child care services for indigenous peoples.

The amendment reads as follows:

That Bill C‑35...be amended in clause 8, on page 6, by replacing lines 13 to 20 with the following:

“8 (1) The Government of Canada commits to maintaining long-term funding for early learning and child care programs and services, including early learning and child care programs and services for Indigenous peoples and for official language minority communities.

(2) The funding must be provided primarily through agreements with the provincial governments and Indigenous governing bodies and other Indigenous entities that represent the interests of an Indigenous group and its members.”.

On reading this amendment, it is clear that its purpose is to add the words “official language minority communities” to the bill. This amendment addresses the calls from the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada and the Commission nationale des parents francophones, who wanted to see long-term funding commitments, especially for francophones outside Quebec. Since Quebec already has its own agreement with Ottawa, this amendment should not apply to Quebec.

In its current form, Bill C‑35 is not perfect from Quebec's perspective. I tried to improve it in committee, but all the amendments I proposed during the clause-by-clause study were rejected. In short, the demands of the Bloc Québécois and Quebec have not been heard or respected.

I want to provide a little background. Throughout the committee's study of the bill, we heard witnesses talk about how important affordable, quality child care is for early childhood development, for better work-school-life balance, for the emancipation of women and for return on investment in the economy. Throughout this study, Quebec was lauded as a model. On numerous occasions, the Quebec model was mentioned as one to draw inspiration from.

When it came time to include Quebec's expertise in the bill, however, I saw the other three parties dismiss that reality out of hand. The same thing happened with our amendments to include wording allowing Quebec to completely opt out of the federal program with full financial compensation. The only sign of any degree of openness was when a reference to Quebec's expertise was included in the preamble, the only place where these words ultimately have no real impact on the law.

Thus, Quebec does not have the option of completely withdrawing from this program with full compensation. The agreement concluded with the Quebec government spans a period of five years. Enshrining Quebec's full right to opt out of this program would help avoid another dispute between Quebec and Ottawa in case the federal government ever tries to interfere in Quebec's jurisdictions, as it does so well. Senior officials who worked on the bill also repeatedly stated, when questioned on the subject, that while nothing would prevent the federal government from imposing conditions as part of a future agreement, the bill had always been designed with the asymmetry of Quebec's reality compared to Canada's provinces in mind.

The various members of the Liberal government who spoke on the bill also repeatedly said that the Liberals intended to continue working with Quebec on this issue. The current agreement also appealed to Quebec because it did not interfere in any area of jurisdiction and left the Quebec government free to spend the money wherever it wanted.

Given the current agreement between Ottawa and Quebec and the federal government's express desire to continue working in this direction, Canada does not seem to have any intention of lecturing Quebec when it comes to child care.

We therefore believe that another bilateral agreement would be possible, probable and necessary, since Quebec is the inspiration for the Canadian government.

Then, at report stage in the House, nothing substantive was added to the debate. The Conservatives continued to argue that this bill has major flaws, particularly regarding accessibility, since private child care is not covered by the subsidies provided for under this bill. Meanwhile, the NDP continued to ask the government to interfere even more in jurisdictions belonging to Quebec and the provinces.

It is also important to remember that for many years now, many Canadian families have been envious of Quebec's child care system, because child care often eats up a large portion of their household income. These families have long dreamed of having access to the same service that families in Quebec have been receiving for a very long time. It is high time that all Canadian families were able to access child care without breaking the bank.

For a number of years now, Quebec's child care policy has enabled Quebeckers to benefit from a better work-life or school-life balance and more generous maternity and parental leave. It also extended family assistance programs to self-employed workers and workers with atypical work schedules. This model is a valuable program that the entire Quebec nation is proud of. Considering the popular support they enjoy, the child care centres rank among one of the greatest successes of the new social economy, being democratically managed using an approach that involves both parents and educators.

It is also important to remember that the mission of Quebec's early childhood education services is threefold: one, to ensure the well-being, health and safety of the children receiving care; two, to provide an environment that stimulates their development in every way, from birth to school age; and three, to prevent learning, behavioural and social integration problems from appearing later on.

In my opinion, a real family policy like the one in Quebec, which includes components such as family leave, income support and an accessible child care network, must be integrated into a coherent whole in order to be effective, so it should be overseen by just one level of government.

Despite the many the flaws and imperfections of Bill C‑35's current wording, the Bloc Québécois will support the bill. It is high time that families outside Quebec also got to reap the benefits of an early learning and child care program. With prices rising across the board, Bill C‑35's passage will certainly bring many families some welcome financial relief. Not only will it give Canadian families some financial breathing room, we know it will also allow more mothers to enter the job market.

Bill C‑35 will strengthen the vitality of the French language outside Quebec and prevent assimilation into English. As Jean-Luc Racine of the Commission nationale des parents francophones said, his organization's “experience in the field clearly shows that as soon as [francophone] children enter an English school, it's all over, even in immersion....As soon as people switch to the English-speaking side, within a few years, they forget French.” These are some of the major reasons I have decided to support Bill C‑35.

[Government Business No. 34—Proceedings on Bill C-62, February 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, medical assistance in dying and mental health are obviously not simple issues. What is surprising, however, is that some people experience intolerable suffering. An expert report found that these people are not eligible. For example, people who are suicidal are not eligible if they are newly diagnosed and being monitored but refuse treatment and their requests are based on systemic vulnerabilities. Help and support are available to these people. Just because someone requests medical assistance in dying does not mean that they will receive it.

The Conservatives' conception of medical assistance in dying is flawed. There are people suffering right now who need their support.

[National Strategy on Flood and Drought Forecasting Act, February 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today to speak in this session of Parliament. I want to begin by saying hello to the people of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou and to my team, Line, Mélanie, Marie‑Josée, Jenny, Lamine, Eric and Loukas, who are holding down the fort in my riding.

Let us now talk about Bill C-317, an act to establish a national strategy respecting flood and drought forecasting, which seeks to provide key stakeholders with the information they need to forecast floods and droughts. This bill affects me directly, since much of my riding had to deal with forest fires in 2023.

Year after year, more and more regions of Quebec and Canada are facing flooding and forest-fire-causing droughts because of climate change. Climate change is escalating around the world and causing climate events that are increasingly frequent, more intense and more variable in nature.

Quebec has experienced a lot of flooding in recent decades. The socio-economic costs associated with those floods have only continued to grow. The same is true of forest fires.

The Société de protection des forêts contre le feu describes the 2023 wildfires as the most devastating ever. The drought in May 2023 was the spark that ignited it all. Some 4.5 million hectares of forest burned in Quebec, including 1.1 million hectares in populated areas.

In summer 2023, there were 30 times more wildfires than the annual average, including 48 that burned more than 1,000 hectares, or 30 times more than the annual average in Quebec, which is 1.6 fires per season. Some 2,360 forest firefighters from the rest of Canada and around the world came to help their colleagues in Quebec.

The community of Lebel-sur-Quévillon, in Abitibi-James Bay-Nunavik-Eeyou, was the hardest hit by the wildfires in summer 2023. It had the biggest fire, made up of 19 fires that converged and burned 480,000 hectares of forest. Five years of forest harvests went up in smoke. I was there on the first day of the forest fires in Chapais and when Lebel-sur-Quévillon was evacuated, to announce the evacuation.

For those who do not believe that these fires are a result of climate change, I can enlighten them. I can tell them about the damage they caused in my riding in terms of the economic and social losses, of our people's insecurity and their fear of losing their homes and personal property, of their fear of going through more fires, of the lack of compensation to the cities and towns that were devastated. People are still stressed, and they are still awaiting financial assistance.

I worked with the mayors to help meet the complex needs of cities and towns in this difficult situation. I reported on the situation every day between May and August of last year.

Floods and droughts are natural phenomena that are amplified by climate change. Adjusting to the impacts of climate change means that public authorities need to rely on science to guide government decision-making. This means making relevant information about meteorological events, including droughts and floods, available to the public and all responders.

The Bloc Québécois agrees with the principle of Bill C-317, but someone will have to show how a bill seeking to create a national strategy to prevent floods and droughts will improve current public action, since public authorities are already doing much of the work.

In fact, we would like to take this opportunity to remind our colleagues that Canada is not a national state made up of a single people. There is no one single Canadian nation. Canada is a multinational society, which includes the Canadian majority, the Quebec nation and indigenous nations. The use of terms such as “national policy” or “national strategy” is therefore a bit misleading.

Everyone knows that a country can hold up diversity as a cardinal value while showing very little consideration for the diversity of nations that make up its population. That being said, our main concern about Bill C-317 is its relevance. We are not certain whether the bill’s provisions will have a beneficial effect on public action and, especially, on the ability of public authorities to plan and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The preamble of Bill C-317 explains that the reason for this new legislation is the fact that “current flood and drought forecasting in Canada is conducted by the provinces without coordination between them and with limited federal technical support”.

It is therefore important to consider public actions already taken by the provinces in order to forecast and prevent floods and droughts and to evaluate to what degree federal support is or is not needed.

Quebec’s plan to protect its territory from floods contains sustainable solutions to protect our living environments. As we can see on the government of Quebec’s website, the plan is based on four areas for action.

Given the seriousness of the situation, the Quebec government has taken action. The ministerial action group on flood-related land-use planning was given a mandate to develop a land-use government plan to ensure the safety of the public and the protection of property in flood zones in Quebec. The action group collaborated with municipalities and the scientific community to find sustainable and creative solutions for protecting our living environments from flooding. Two advisory committees were also set up; one was composed of representatives from the municipalities and associations involved and the other was made up of experts from the various fields associated with land use and flood zone management. After several months of research and consultation, both committees tabled their report. The numerous recommendations they made were taken into consideration by the ministerial action group.

As my colleague mentioned earlier, Quebeckers can also use the Vigilance app to better prepare for flooding by keeping up-to-date on rising water levels in Quebec. Government and municipal stakeholders can also use it to alert and mobilize responders in the event of an emergency.

Generally speaking, we can reasonably say that the Quebec government has the expertise needed to protect the land and the people against flooding. In addition, Quebec put a great deal of thought into the Quebec water strategy, which takes into account all past experience. Quebec's strategy works quite well without intervention by the federal government, whose involvement is not needed to protect the environment and manage natural resources.

So it must be made clear that Quebec already has comprehensive flood prevention and water strategies, and that the strategies do not require federal government intervention. Therefore, in subclause 3(3), which defines the content of the future federal strategy, paragraph (d) will have to be amended to remove an unnecessary reference to a Canadian water agency. The very existence of this agency is just as unnecessary as the reference to it in the bill. It is not needed because of the division of powers provided for in the Constitution of Canada.

In closing, the last thing I want is to relive what happened with the 2023 forest fires in Abitibi—Baie‑James—Nunavik—Eeyou.

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my colleague that Quebec experienced a phenomenal 46% increase in non-permanent residents this year. Furthermore, the federal government has allocated only $100 million of the $470 million requested by the Government of Quebec, despite this government's many calls.

What is the government actually doing to prevent Quebec's economic and social collapse? What is it doing to ensure that our plea to improve our immigrants' living conditions is heard?

[Business of Supply, February 6th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, yes, thefts did increase in 2023. However, contrary to what the Conservatives may say, Bill C‑5 did not abolish minimum sentences for car theft; not at all. The Conservatives can claim all they want that it is not enough, but there is a major problem with their statement. It was the Conservatives who added section 333.1 with Bill S‑9 in 2010. The accusations and attacks need to stop. We need to act quickly.

What does my colleague think? We have to deal with this car theft situation. Sooner or later, it could be mine or his that gets stolen. We need to act quickly.

[First Nations Clean Water Act, February 5th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. Bill C‑61 is important. The Kitcisakik reserve, which is in my riding, does not even have clean drinking water. I recently visited Kuujjuaq. It has no water that is safe to drink. The reservoir is very old, even in Nunavik. The government therefore needs to take action on principle, considering that there is a lot of water, but no adequate infrastructure.

What does the government claim to be doing, and what does my colleague think about it?

[Business of Supply, February 1st, 2024]

Madam Speaker, we know full well that the Liberal government and the Conservatives get along just fine when it comes to doling out billions of dollars and tax breaks to Canadian oil companies. We know that the Minister of the Environment said that this government had abolished subsidies when in fact they never were abolished. The government nationalized the Trans Mountain pipeline, which has cost $30.9 billion to expand. Most of that cost will be passed on to taxpayers.

I would like the member to explain to me what the government is going to do to improve the environment and the cost of living.