Mr. Speaker, let me tell you that I am shaken and even bewildered by this Liberal document on social programs.
There is nothing in that green book save proposals to reform our system on the backs of the poor. That, in my opinion, is a step backwards. Where are the commitments made by the Liberal government in its red book?
When will the government stop treating people in Canada, in Quebec, and other provinces like gullible fools? The government is hiding behind vague consultations that will drag on for months. Countless organizations will express their disappointment to the committee. They will be listened to politely when in fact the dice are loaded and decisions have already been made. The minister will cut $15 billion in social spending. Those who will be affected are middle and lower class families.
The reform proposal is a shameful attempt to reduce the deficit and the debt on the backs of those people. The Liberal government has a smile on its face while it attacks the poor, not poverty.
Above all, the government is not acting as a good government should. A good government should be more concerned with today's realities, that is excessive government spending for day to day operations and wasteful spending due to the refusal to abolish overlap between different government levels.
The reform has a very negative impact on those citizens who want to work and cannot find jobs and for whom there are no jobs. The government is creating second class unemployment for workers in uncertain jobs. These workers represent 40 per cent of the workforce. Among those uncertain jobs, many are cyclical and seasonal. Ask a lumberman to work when all the felling is done. Ask a construction worker to build when the work site is closed. Ask an independent worker to provide himself with contracts. It is ridiculous.
These people will have to find jobs that do not exist just to show their good will to the Liberal government. It is totally ridiculous and even worse because the government won the election with a platform based on three words: jobs, jobs, jobs. Was that just wishful thinking? There are still no results. The Liberal government has not yet understood that people in precarious jobs are already subject to economic instability. They want to add to their stress, to their feeling of helplessness and to their despair.
Another option is the social label. With this reform, the minister will impose mandatory employability measures, training programs and community work on the unemployed. What a mess! Hon. members opposite do not realize that to deal with structural unemployment, we have to change the structure of employment. The federal government should let the Government of Quebec set up its own manpower training system, and it will save money in the process by reducing duplication in this area.
Let the provinces be responsible for manpower training. Social security reform puts groups that have already been severely hit on the firing line. Young people, single mothers, seasonal workers, workers who are fifty and over, and the middle-class will be hit harder than anyone else. On top of that, they will pay higher premiums and receive lower benefits.
Women will be the first in line. The minister is undermining their financial independence, which they fought for bit by bit, for so many years. And it gets even worse. Is this the Liberal government's vision of the future? When the spouse's income becomes a factor that determines eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits? Does this mean women have the right to work but are not entitled to unemployment insurance if they lose their jobs?
The federal government is not focusing on the real problems. It sharpens the differences between classes in society. The gap between the rich and people on middle- and low-incomes will get wider. Society is becoming polarized. Furthermore, the government is introducing cuts in transfers to the provinces for post-secondary education, cuts totalling several billion dollars, which represents about $300 million for Quebec.
With cuts like these in post-secondary education programs, CEGEPs and universities will have to raise and even double their tuition fees. It is clear that education will become an impossible dream for students of modest means.
Students from socially disadvantaged families will have a clear choice: either they go deep into debt or they can forget about higher education. Yes, the choice is clear. Only one class in society will be able to afford higher education: students from rich and wealthy families.
To this, the Bloc Quebecois says no. We refuse to set the clock back twenty years. Access to higher education is everyone's right, a the right that students alone should be able to exercise on the basis of personal choice, and not on the basis of whether they can afford it. Students cannot afford to go into debt to get an education, and the minister's answer to that is unrealistic. He talks about using RRSPs. How can a student use an RRSP he does not have? The minister of course, will say he is referring to the parents RRSPs. Yes, but the truth is that middle-class parents need their RRSPs to live on during their retirement. If they were able to contribute to an RRSP, it was because they made certain sacrifices.
The Bloc Quebecois is convinced the social security reform proposals presented by the Liberal government are merely a tool to strengthen Ottawa's centralist tendencies. The federal government is using every means at its disposal to appropriate the jurisdictions of the provinces and has no desire to cut wasteful spending and duplication.
The Chrétien government is cutting social programs instead of providing for consistent and comprehensive job-centred policies. It wants to reform the unemployed instead of dealing with unemployment. It is using this reform to become more and more involved in areas over which the provinces have exclusive jurisdiction.
Has the minister not considered some legitimate budget cuts? It would make more sense to work on recovery of bad debts totalling around $6 billion. Withdrawing from areas of provincial jurisdiction would save another $3 billion. Tax reform would provide an opportunity to measure and control the deficit. Hundreds of millions could be recovered in the process. Consider family trusts. I am sure that with the approach it has selected to reduce the deficit and reduce the debt and foreign interest payments, the government is on the wrong track.
What we need is genuine reform, genuine tax reform that will give us the resources we need to put the country's finances back on track.