Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie.
I am extremely pleased to take part in the throne speech debate. I know how much all members want to voice their views on this document, which is short on content. It is probably the longest throne speech on paper since we became elected officials but the shortest on content. Many have commented that it could have been written by the former prime minister and that it probably would not have been much different.
I was particularly struck by one paragraph, on page 5 in English and page 6 in French. In order to understand the true meaning of this sentence, I checked to see if, perhaps, the translation carried a certain nuance. I could hardly believe that this was what the government really meant. It states, and I quote:
Jurisdiction must be respected.
The person who wrote the beginning of this paragraph probably forgot to read the rest of the speech, because this sentence totally contradicts everything else.
If jurisdiction must be respected, then provincial areas of jurisdiction must not be encroached on. However, almost the entire document attests to the fact that the government did just that. Before, there was a formula, the old served with a modern twist; now, it is the new served with an old time twist. That would be a better way to describe this government, which claims to be a new government.
This sentence clearly reflects a thought voiced by the Minister of Social Development and published in Le Devoir on January 21, 2004:
When 81% of Canadians, including Quebeckers, demand that something be done, it is our duty to respond. If one level of government does not want to do it, the other can do it and negotiate.
I have done many things in my life, including negotiate collective agreements. I never signed collective agreements before bargaining. I always bargained before signing. Before collective bargaining, I never publicly announced the details of the UQAR professors' collective agreement. The details are always kept very secret, except to our members, before being made public.
The federal government is in the very bad habit of saying, with its spending power and its usual arrogance, that it will do this or that, it will intervene in parental leave, in compassionate care leave, in health, it will ask the deputy minister to create another new complicated system and then spend money on the structure and officials rather than transfer money to the provinces so that they can provide the best care to our fellow citizens.
Of course, afterwards, there is a qualifier. After clearly stating that “jurisdiction must be respected”, they say:
But Canadians do not go about their daily lives worried about which jurisdiction does this or that.
Of course, if every effort is made to confuse Canadians, they will not be asking who does what. They will take what they can get. A person in need does not look a gift horse in the mouth. You do not bite the hand that feeds you, you take what you get.
They expect, rightly, that their governments will cooperate—
That they will cooperate, not go over people's heads. There absolutely needs to be more cooperation, such as making a simple phone call to the head of the other government requesting a meeting to discuss common interests, not just publicly announcing in the newspapers that the program is in effect and explaining how things are going to work. By then, it is much too late to turn back.
The current government has held three elections and it is getting ready for a fourth. It has held three elections on the backs of workers, each time promising employment insurance reform.
On June 6, 2003, when he was touring Quebec, the Prime Minister met with workers from Charlevoix and promised them that on becoming Prime Minister, he would do something about reforming employment insurance, because, he said, he realized—