Did the poor people find a cause for hope? No! But no expense was too great for the others-caviar, wine, champagne; one hundred dollars per person maybe, approximately $100,000 for a party for 900, at a time when people are starving. That is what you did yesterday. What surprised me most of all was to see the Reform Party members join in. You said when you arrived here that you would cut everywhere. You told the shoeshiner, who barely earns $20,000 a year: "That's too much! We are sending you back on the dole". But you had no problem with last night's party. They want to cut the shoeshiner. They want to eliminate his job. They were even ready to discuss the price of a club sandwich in Parliament. Yet, they were all dancing about at the Governor's party. Members of the Bloc, however, kept their word and refused to be part of those unacceptable expenditures.
Our party has made the economic recovery one of its priorities. The Speech from the Throne does little to give back hope to the unemployed in my riding and to all those young people who want to work. The infrastructure program announced by the Liberals will bring no solution to structural unemployment. It will not allow workers to acquire the new qualifications they need to get tomorrow's jobs. Quite the contrary! It is to be expected that as soon as the work is finished, the workers will once more be unemployed.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, our party wants to do its part to eliminate the Canadian debt. The Liberal government systematically refuses to go to the roots of the public finance problem and submit to a rigorous review each and every federal department and organization, in order to cut the fat, as my leader said earlier. And we all know that there is still a lot of fat to cut. I mentioned the Governor General's ball earlier. Again this week, we saw how millions of dollars were spent by several federal departments to produce videos depicting the life of officers of the Canadian forces and on windsurfing safely. These are real examples of wasting of public funds and members of this House, including those who put on their patent leather shoes to go dancing at the Governor General's ball last evening, will have to work hard to eliminate such waste.
It should be noted that the Liberal government has in no way committed itself to reform the tax system in an equitable way and to challenge tax shelters such as family trusts. It is unacceptable that wealthy families be allowed to hide their fortune from the tax man while the burden of the middle class is constantly increasing. The Bloc Quebecois will fight in this place in order that any reform of taxation and social programs, in particular those for the poorest in our society, is done according to the principles of equity.
I must say that I am also extremely concerned by the desire of the Liberal government to update, as it says, and to restructure social programs. After posturing as the defenders of social programs during the last electoral campaign, now the Liberals are threatening to do an about face and to slash the social safety net protecting Quebecers and Canadians.
The Bloc Quebecois will not allow such a reform to be carried out at the expense of the most vulnerable members of our society, the very same who are the first ones to be affected by the present economic situation.
Finally, the Speech from the Throne ignored altogether the Liberal promise not to cut transfer payments to the provinces. The Liberal government will have to deal with a block of members committed to preventing it from carrying out its fiscal reform on the back of the provinces, which have been doing more than their share for a number of years.
On the strength of the mandate given to us by Quebec voters, we are determined to talk in this House about real people and their problems. During the coming months, my colleagues and I will show the many failures of the Canadian federal system. We will do so at every opportunity.
We will talk about the slow death of Quebec regions, the victims of Ottawa's paralysing centralism keeping people in the regions in a state of dependency.
We will be talking about economic recovery and industrial development policies that cannot get off the ground and are ineffective because they have fallen victim to all of the illogical government programs. We will be talking about the millions of dollars wasted left and right without any apparent logic and especially without any input from the people directly involved.
We will be talking about this country that is buckling under the weight of the debt load and that is incapable of achieving the necessary consensus to see things through. We will show that the sorry state of Canada's public finances is attributable not only to the actions of governments, but first and foremost, to a federal system which can only result in a stalemate.
We will be talking about this country struggling with the inconsistency and confusion of overlapping programs. In fact, there are more than 50 job training programs and sub-programs, not to mention matching programs set up by the provinces, particularly in Quebec.
We will expose this system which unfairly allocates job creation funds and fails to give Quebec its rightful share.
The Bloc Quebecois will speak at great length in the days and weeks to come about the real problems. For the first and undoubtedly, I hope, the last time in the history of Canada, a political party that embodies hope for true change for Quebecers will be present in this House.
Setting aside arbitrariness and partisanship, the Bloc Québécois is here to say what the old federal parties have always prevented Quebec from saying.
Try as they may to escape reality, the Prime Minister and his colleagues will have 54 members of the Bloc Quebecois sitting across the floor who, as they were mandated by their voters in Quebec, will raise the real issues, flush out the real causes and put forward real solutions.
Firmly, but also respectfully, honestly and with no hard feelings whatsoever, we will explain to our colleagues from the rest of Canada what our vision for the future of Quebec is, a vision of a sovereign Quebec fully equipped with the tools essential to its development.
Contrary to what the Liberal government seems to think, for us, to talk about the Constitution has little to do with philosophy. It deals with concrete things like eliminating costly overlaps and waste. We, in the Bloc Quebecois, insist that decisions be made by the people who will suffer the consequences. And that is exactly what we will do, in accordance with the mandate received from our voters, in the riding of Richelieu and throughout Quebec, to defend the interests of the people of Quebec.
I wish to thank once again the people of my riding for their show of confidence and I want them to know how proud I am to serve them here, in Ottawa.