Mr. Speaker, today I welcome this opportunity to speak to Bill C-17.
This bill is almost symbolic, because in it the government turns its back systematically on its political commitments, a government that was elected on a promise that it would put Canada back to work and that has now reversed its position. It decided that it is was back to the old routine, that nothing had
changed, although it promised something quite different during the election campaign.
Instead of proposing a strategy to promote employment, it has proposed the very opposite. Let me explain.
First of all, the number of weeks worked to be entitled to unemployment insurance has been increased. Instead of ten weeks of work to be eligible for employment insurance, people now need twelve weeks. In the Magdalen Islands, for instance, 43 per cent of the people who are on unemployment insurance cannot find work for more than 10 weeks. Today, I imagine the voters who elected the Liberal candidate in Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine must feel betrayed, because the 43 per cent who worked only the minimum number of weeks will now have to go on welfare.
There was no consideration for the seasonal aspect of the economy in the Maritimes and especially in the Magdalen Islands. Even worse, the government is doing the exact opposite of what it promised during the election campaign, so it is also a matter of political ethics, and perhaps that is the worst aspect of Bill C-17. The bill could be seen as a symbol of the ineffectiveness of this government and of the way it has started to mislead the people during its first mandate and its first six months in Parliament.
And the same holds true for the reduction in weeks of benefits. Speaking on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois, the hon. member for Mercier explained how this bill would have a negative impact on all parts of the Maritimes, not only on the people affected by unemployment insurance cuts who will now have to go on welfare, but also on the small businesses that depend on the money these people spend.
I find it very hard to understand why members from the Maritimes who were elected by their constituents to provide a different kind of government have chosen to remain silent today and are not rising in the House to call their government to order and to say this does not make sense and it cannot send this kind of message. The unemployed are getting the following signal: the government is first going to make it harder to be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits, and then they will introduce social reform.
This could explain in part the comment by Wood Gundy in an investor's guide which says that in the defence sector the government has finally decided to use restraint, but that the measures announced so far impact only on a small part of the economy. This means that instead of a real employment strategy we are given a series of smaller decisions taken to respond to fiscal pressures, to soothe lenders. The original solutions that voters expected to put Canada and Quebec back to work have not been forthcoming.
Another thing which was clear and simple, and that we proposed in an amendment rejected by the Liberal government, was a lowering of premiums paid by employers. In the fall of 1993, immediately after the election, the government pulled one over on us and increased the premiums to $3.07. Then, for Bill C-17, it made a wonderful announcement. In a press release dated March 16 the minister says: "One of the measures is the lowering of unemployment insurance premiums, which will decrease the cost of job creation".
This lowering to $3 is scheduled for 1995. Tell me, do you know any unemployed who have long term jobs? I would like to know them. We must create jobs now, not just next year. It is not next year, or the year after or just before the next elections. The economy needs to be revived now. Wood Gundy said something I find very apt about the budget: "The government is hoping for a cyclical recovery of the economy to revive job creation". What it means is that the government machine is on automatic. What the government said is: "We do not have the means, we do not have the guts to make fundamental changes, and we do not have any clear idea of what we want in terms of job creation". So we have a piecemeal approach, we have measures that allow us to wait for a recovery. I am sure that every day, every month end, the ministers wonder whether the unemployment rate will finally go down a little, so they can use it as an argument. None of their actions has any impact. The automatic pilot is on, and we are waiting to see if the economy will recover somewhere.
Moreover, they are killing consumer confidence for those who could help the economy recover, namely UI recipients-who are also consumers-and civil servants whose wages are frozen.
Only a few months after being elected, this government told people: "We do not trust you. We will not enter into bargaining with you on behalf of others, since we would not be able to agree, anyway". It said that, just after the elections, to the Public Service Alliance of Canada which had told its members to vote for the Liberal Party in order to bring about changes. This government is devoid of political honesty and sends the message that, once elected, it does not have to honour its commitments. It is pure rubbish, of course. The way the Liberal government betrayed its campaign promises, especially with Bill C-17, will come back to haunt it.
Allow me to give you a little inkling of what this government is really like. During the election campaign, we were told that it would cut waste, tighten up the public purse, and manage everything as best as possible.
And then, it tries to put one over on us with this bill, giving borrowing authority to the CBC, a corporation which, in the past, has not always been the best of managers, and in fact, has often spent money unwisely and is still doing so. As we know, it offered $28 million for the TV rights to the next Olympic Games, whereas TVA had offered $10 million, while claiming that it had made no profit. Can you imagine the taxpayers' money being used to broadcast a world event for three weeks?
People in my riding find it totally unacceptable to spend $28 million that way, when the entire network of CBC regional stations has been closed down, and to see that the Liberal government has never said a word to reverse that decision. This kind of attitude is a slap in the face of people who are entitled to regional services. The government is taking advantage of an omnibus bill to put one over on us quickly as far as borrowing authority is concerned, without requiring the corporation to account in any way for the use of these funds.
Even when I give my children an allowance, I ask them to tell me a little how they plan to use the money. In some cases the government lends money and asks for an accounting, while in this instance, it is giving the corporation a $25 million margin to manoeuvre, without asking it for any king of accounting. This is another example of how this government behaves: as if it had been in power for eight years and was totally incapable of coming up with any fresh ideas or solutions to problems. The fact is that this government is only beginning its mandate. In its first few months in office, it has introduced a bill which systematically reneges on the commitments made during the election campaign.
I want to come back briefly to the issue of employer premiums. On the one hand, the government creates a nice, politically correct program such as the Infrastructure Program which allows it to announce in various locations available seasonal, temporary jobs. On the other hand, it introduces a measure which is not as glamorous as the Infrastructure Program, but which would allow those who create the most jobs, namely small and medium-sized businesses, to be active and give some confidence back to people. So what does the government do? It tells businesses to wait until 1995 for the premium level to be brought back to $3 per $100. In other words, it is sending out a message that job creation is not such a priority after all, that the machinery of government will lumber on, that the unemployment rate will fall one day and that jobs will ultimately be created.
Basically, this is typical of a government that has decided not to honour the promise it has made during the election campaign to give priority to job creation, to put the people of Quebec and Canada back to work, especially young people. Take for example the 4,000 engineers in Quebec who are out of work. Would it not be possible to develop some aggressive job-creation programs to provide work for these people?
I would say that, as far as job creation is concerned, this government does not make the grade. It is a failure. During the summer holiday just a few weeks away, wherever we go, if we visit campgrounds or attend any number of functions, people are going to tell us: "You politicians are all the same. You make election promises you never keep". That about sums up what this government, a government that wanted to give people hope, has accomplished.
I derive great pride from the fact that, for various reasons, the people of Quebec have decided that this government did not have what it took in terms of commitment, I mean the necessary level of credibility to honour its commitments. In that respect, we can be pretty proud of ourselves in Quebec. The people have voted for a party capable of representing them in the opposition, to make itself heard and state clearly what commitments have to be fulfilled in Quebec. There is nothing in Bill C-17 to give people hope.
When you tell people in need of a job: "The first thing we are going to do for you is to require that you work more weeks to qualify", you kill their confidence in the economy and contribute to maintaining the negative dynamics by which fear is fostered.
Bill C-17 was a golden opportunity for the government to put its cards on the table. Such a bill could have been used to address problems like tax havens and family trusts. Where in this bill are there measures affecting well-off people who could make a significant difference in terms of creating jobs? They have not be called on to help create jobs.
In fact, this bill is somewhat reminiscent of the budget as a whole. The Liberal government prepared a budget that was a little lazy. It could have taken advantage of the momentum created by its election to bring together all segments of Canadian society, including employers, unions and social groups, and ask them in December 1993: "What shall we do to stimulate employment?", to clearly show we must join forces on this.
Their budget consultation process was a bit of a sham because they did the opposite of what the people told them to do. They decided to throw out the old files prepared by the bureaucrats and to recycle the Campbell material into the Martin material. They continued to act like before without really stimulating employment.
I think this government relies way too much on the four-year mandate that lies ahead, telling itself: "We will hand out the usual goodies at the end of our mandate to ensure that we get re-elected". But they forget that their mandate is not to win the election but to offer good government, to ensure that Canadians have jobs that they like and that they can do something with it.
I would also like to let you know that some people asked this morning: "How can the people opposite-that is, Bloc members-criticize such a bill when what they want is to break up Canada?"
Instead of scaremongering, I can tell you that in proposing our amendments to Bill C-17, we tried to defend the interests of Quebecers. When we say that increasing the number of weeks of work required to qualify for UI goes against common sense, you
can be sure that in my region, in the Lower St. Lawrence, the Gaspé and the islands, everyone understands what it means.
This bill does not bring into question Canada's structure but rather the efficiency of this government. It offers a number of little recipes, of mini-measures, that did not convey to anybody the message that the first budget of the Liberal government would really emphasize job creation. They decided to give a little to everyone and tried to get by on a traditional economic recovery.
Although these people call themselves experts and say they are concerned about the economy, I think there is a lack of vision. They did not see that North America and the entire Western world are currently undergoing deep structural changes and that such measures will not provide Quebec and Canada with the tools they need to hold their own in the new global economy.
I think that Bill C-17 is unacceptable. I am thinking especially of members who represent ridings in eastern Canada. Personally, if I were a member from the Maritimes and I voted for this bill, I think that I would find the coming summer, fall and winter very long, because after the summer when a few seasonal jobs are available, people will face the fall and winter and, if they did not work the minimum number of weeks, they will end up on welfare. They will have less to spend on consumer goods and this will affect the whole economy of eastern Canada.
If this had been presented by a Conservative government, we would have said that they were keeping their commitments, people elected them for that, we may agree or not, but they would be doing what was expected of them. But this is presented by a government that said it would be different, a different kind of government that would change things and take a different approach to the economy and make job creation a priority. And nowhere do we find any of these things there.
All we find, and I think that I will conclude with this, is a budget whose only purpose is to make some lenders feel secure and it does not even achieve this result.
The people who lend money to Canada now did not applaud this budget; they just said that they thought the real Liberal budget would come next year. There was no Liberal budget, it is the same as the Conservatives'. The message given to the senior federal public service is that things are all right and that we will continue as before; with this government, we will continue to pass on our good figures, our good results, and our vision of development, whereas the people who were elected, especially the 200 or so new members, whatever their party, certainly came here to manage Canada differently from the way it was run in the past and to make Canadians feel that changes were being made.
If they said that they would tackle unemployment head on, it would have had a small effect on inflation, but I think that the people would have been prepared to accept it because they have suffered so much from the negative consequences of unemployment. A whole generation was sacrificed. When you look at the résumé of someone who is 25, 30 or 35 years old, you see that they worked on a project for three months, then were unemployed for six months, worked on another small project for two months and then were jobless for a year. That generation will not have the skills needed to take over when the time comes.
Bill C-17 is important for the government, because it will be judged by it. The people in our communities will not say that Bill C-17 is a bad piece of legislation. Instead, they will say that the Liberal government does not keep its promises or its commitments and that it has absolutely no credibility. The people will easily come to those conclusions, because they can expect nothing concrete to come out of these measures, nothing that would prove that economic recovery is on the way.
We will eventually achieve economic recovery if the government decides to launch initiatives that bring all stakeholders to focus clearly on one priority, job creation. By telling small employers that, in 1994, they will get $3.07 for every $100, the government is sending them the message that they need not put so much emphasis on job creation, because it is not giving them the flexibility they need to create more jobs.
All of the provisions included in Bill C-17, whether it is the increase in the number of insurable weeks to become eligible for UI benefits, the reduction in the weeks of benefit, the salary freeze for civil servants, or the unaccountable borrowing authority given to the CBC, send out a very clear message to Canadians, which is that the current government has decided not to honour its commitments, but instead to watch the economy from the sidelines rather than play an active role in this area.
