(Ottawa) The Bloc Québécois demands that the Trudeau government have the “honesty and good faith” to split the omnibus Bill C-31 on dental care and housing assistance in order to be able to vote separately on each of its parts.
Posted at 3:41 p.m.
During a press briefing Thursday in the foyer of the House of Commons, the Bloc leader, Yves-François Blanchet, in turn described the process as “odious”, “cheap”, “mean”, “small” , “repetitive” and “manipulating institutions”.
“The government is putting two unrelated cases into one law,” he said. On the one hand, it puts in the law the housing assistance that we ourselves have requested, so we will vote for, they say to themselves, but they will put in the same law the pseudo dental insurance program or support for dental care, which interferes with Quebec jurisdictions. »
Bill C-31 aims to establish a temporary program that will allow the government to pay up to $650 per child per year to families earning less than $90,000 to help them pay for dental their children under the age of 12. It has a second component that provides $500 to help low-income Canadians pay their rent.
The Bloc Québécois is not keen on the idea of voting in favor of the bill, but does not rule out this possibility either, revealed the leader on Thursday.
“We are not there in the reflection, he said. Are we going to prevent people from receiving money that they themselves have paid? Are we going to prevent Quebecers from recovering the tax they have obviously paid too much if we can do frivolities with it? Probably not. »
The political party nevertheless intends to vote in favor of the principle and try to improve the document in committee, in particular to pay the Quebec government part of the cost of the measure so that it can dispose of it as it sees fit.
The Conservatives have announced that they will vote against the bill. Whatever happens, C-31 will be adopted since the Liberals can count on the support of the New Democratic Party, whose implementation of a dental care program was a key element of their agreement allowing the government to stay power.