Mr. Speaker, I would first like to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Rosemont.
The motion by the Bloc member reads as follows:
That this House censure any action by the federal government in the area of education, such as the introduction of the Millennium Scholarships program or national testing.
In moving this motion today, Bloc Quebecois members want to find out whether the federal government still views education as an exclusively provincial jurisdiction. If it opposes the motion, the government will once again show its true colours, providing proof positive that, in creating the millennium scholarship fund, it is interfering in provincial jurisdictions.
The federal government is using the fund as an excuse to barge into education, an exclusively provincial jurisdiction, uninvited.
The government is obviously not helping Quebec reduce student indebtedness or fund universities and post-secondary educational institutions. It is just after additional visibility. It is obvious to everyone that this program runs directly counter to Quebec's.
We already know that the fund was dreamt up by the Prime Minister and that even his most influential ministers could not persuade him to change his mind. I think that the term ego trip says it all.
One has to wonder whether the Prime Minister is prepared to put everything on the line just so he will have a place in Canadian history books. I can tell the House that his latest whim will be written up something like this:
Shawinigan, 1934; destroyer of Canadian unity, henchman to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and king of federalist propaganda. His last act as Prime Minister of Canada was to create the millennium fund, a huge blunder.
Enough pleasantries. I must now set the record straight, for the year 2000 is right around the corner.
I would like the Prime Minister and his government to understand the reality of today's young people. Not all that long ago, I was a student myself. Thanks to the Quebec government's system of loans and bursaries, I was able to get my degree and thus improve my chances of a job.
Needless to say, I still have debts, but I am nonetheless far better off than many others, because I am working. My purpose in saying all this is to point out that debt is the main concern of students.
So when the government refers to scholarships based on some criterion of excellence, it is obvious that it is way out in left field. But that is excusable, because it has not been tuned in to the reality of the people of Quebec for a long time—if ever it was, that is.
All the Prime Minister's predecessors agreed that education ought to be administered by the provinces. Even Pierre Elliott Trudeau, not a sovereignist, or at least never an avowed one so far, said the following back in 1957, in connection with government intrusion into education: “We are entitled to suspect the federal gifts of being in bad faith—which is insulting for the provinces—and contrary to the principles of representative democracy”.
If the federal government really wants to help young people, and in particular to ensure them of a future, thus reducing their debt load, why does it not try to create jobs for young people? One more promise we will never see kept. My generation has had its fill of empty promises.
Young people are not fools. They do not want to turn down generosity, no matter where it comes from. But as the president of the Fédération des étudiants universitaires du Québec so aptly put it, “The greatest possible number of students must be reached, and the system best placed to meet that objective is the Quebec student aid system”.
I will repeat his words more slowly, so that the Prime Minister and his colleagues can grasp them fully: “The greatest possible number of students must be reached, and the system best placed to meet that objective is the Quebec student aid system”.
In a federation, whether it qualifies itself as renewed federalism or not, where education is an exclusively provincial jurisdiction, the situation becomes complicated. This time, the big bad separatists cannot be blamed because even the other provinces do not agree with the eligibility criteria. The government might be well advised to listen. Worse yet, to be sure Quebec would not withdraw from the millennium scholarship program, the federal government went as far as creating an independent foundation. It smacks of bad faith and is oddly similar to Option Canada. I wonder if students will receive their check even before they apply for it. As far as I am concerned—and there are many others like me—this is clearly another federal propaganda trick played on the back of students.
Would it not have been preferable to help institutions or simply transfer the money to the provinces? Oh, no. What the federal government wants is uniformity from coast to coast, wrapped in the Canadian flag.
For my part, I see it as provocation. The Quebec people is getting used to provocative manoeuvres on the part of the federal government, but enough is enough. This operation seduction does not take into account the root cause of the problem, namely the massive cuts in transfer payments.
The government claims it had to make choices according to priorities. Its own priorities. Does its millennium scholarships fund mean that encroachment in a field of provincial jurisdiction is one of its priorities? What happened to its commitment to create jobs and fight against poverty?
If the budget reflects the government's priorities, does it mean that women are not a priority? I must remind the government that women were unanimous in asking for an increase in the Women's Program budget. But I forgot, this government's priorities are areas of provincial jurisdiction, however the Women's Program is a federal program. What a pity!
I would like to add that students did not ask for such a program. What they demanded was for transfer payments to the provinces to be restored at the level they were before the finance minister hacked them out.
Why not listen to people's demands instead of catering to the Prime Minister's whim? I can hardly wait for the day.
