Mr. Speaker, no one in the Official Opposition is denying the need to do something to help out those of the less fortunate of our fellow citizens, who are in difficulty.
The current economic and financial situation has driven these people to live in fear and anxiety and, in that sense, I am in full agreement with the minister's diagnosis.
I think that when it comes to being sensitive to the situation of the disadvantaged, the minister has retained his progressive, left-wing tradition. The problem is that the cure is a right-wing one. While the diagnosis is left-wing, the cure is right-wing. I am not saying that the minister's heart is not in the right place, on the contrary. The problem is that his wallet is not in the same place, as a Liberal minister. Now that he has become minister, he finds himself in a peculiar situation, stuck between a Finance Minister and a Prime Minister whose primary objective is to reduce the deficit and the debt on the backs of the disadvantaged.
Take this speech for example. If you take away the rhetoric, finer feelings, hand on the heart, you realize nonetheless that the official objective of the minister, as stated in the first pages of the consultation paper, is to cut social program expenditures, to effect the massive cut all right-wing circles, all employers and all the business community have been wanting to see for a generation. And now this minister with a progressive background has been chosen by the right to do the job.
Here is this minister who just related to us, with sincerity I think, how sad he felt when, one morning, as he was going door to door visiting constituents in his riding, he met this young couple in which the man was out of work and the woman was also at home. The young man told the minister how much he wished in himself that changes could be made to improve his situation, to help him find a job in particular.
But besides sympathizing with this young man's difficulties, should the minister not have told him: "Look, I sympathize but my government is about to cut $15 billion in social expenditures over the next five years"?
If the minister had wanted to be straightforward with this young man, that is what he would have told him. He should have informed him that, in addition to the $7.5 billion in cuts already announced in last year's budget, more cuts are planned, which I will discuss later.
How can one make a progressive-sounding speech, how can one claim to base social program reform on a desire for expansion, after having coldly decided to cut $15 billion over five years in the funds allocated to social programs? I am not making this up; the minister has described very clearly right from the beginning, on page 23 of the discussion paper, the context in which this reform is to take place. He very clearly ties it to a budgetary transaction, a spending-cut exercise.
Let me quote two excerpts from page 23: "Reform of social security cannot be contemplated in isolation from the fiscal realities facing governments in Canada". And a little further: "And existing expenditures must be brought under control and in some instances reduced". There it is in black and white.
We all heard the budget speech, in which this minister's colleague, the Minister of Finance, announced a $2.4 billion reduction in social expenditures, in particular unemployment insurance expenditures. It was also announced in the budget that the upcoming social security reform was going to take place as part of an expenditure reduction plan.
I think it is obvious that this exercise lies within a framework of spending cuts on social programs. In fact, when you read through the document and get to the essential and sectorial aspects of the reform, you note that the underlying motivation throughout is to reduce the level of protection afforded to those in need.
Worse yet, in my opinion, is the philosophy behind the minister's approach. This is evident from, first, his attitude regarding the unemployed. Perhaps not for the minister, who would gladly do the opposite of what he is doing, but for his government at least, this attitude is expressed in the paper before us: the unemployed are guilty. Here we have a government going through a financial crisis, as we know. Everyone agrees that we are facing some kind of public finance mess, a mortgage on our young people's future, a burden already weighing down adults in their daily activities. With the deficit almost out of control as it is, it is obvious that the government is confronted with an enormous problem and that it is aware of it.
So, expenditures have to be reduced. The deficit must be brought under control. How? By looking for someone to blame. Why are we facing a crisis? Why, in a rich and highly industrialized country like Canada, blessed with so many natural resources, a hard-working population and lots of capital, does the federal government find itself in such a position? There has to be a culprit. Maybe it is the government, which spends too much on its operations. No, says the Minister of Finance, it is not the government's operating expenditures. But we know that, in fact, there are billions of dollars to be saved there.
Is the problem this overlapping between the various levels of governments, the duplication of programs and the waste of energy and resources? No, the government is not trying to save one penny in that area either. A tax reform might be in order. Do we have a consistent and rational tax system? Should it not be reviewed, harmonized and drastically changed? For example,
should we not eliminate unfair tax irritants? I know that there is not enough money to be saved there to solve the problem of public finance, but the issue of family trusts is a bad symbol for taxpayers. Tax shelters which continue to benefit rich Canadians do not represent an astronomical amount of money, but they are important symbols in terms of tax fairness, at a time when the government is asking all taxpayers to tighten their belt. Yet, the minister did not see anything wrong there either.
Instead, the minister sees the culprits to be those who will be targeted by his measures, namely the unemployed and the poorest, who are already the most affected by the current crisis. This, in my opinion, is the most unacceptable side of the philosophy underlying the minister's approach.
The other attitude which I find just as despicable is this belief that the unemployed are unemployed by choice. The government seems to think that Quebecers and Canadians who are currently unemployed, who suffer from anxiety because they are without work, who feel they are losing their dignity as citizens, fathers and mothers, and who are losing hope about their future, live this situation by choice. The government seems to think that what these people need is a good scare to force them to find work. This is what is so unpleasant in the minister's attitude. Why is that? It is because no jobs are being created.
There is nothing in this agenda to make us think that the government will implement job creation measures. There is no employment policy. Yet, that word is everywhere in the document. But it is a euphemism used to conceal the reality and the reality is that there are no incentives to promote job creation.
This government has no creative spirit; it has not made any effort and it has not allocated any money to generate some enthusiasm in Canada and in Quebec to put people to work and to create jobs. No. It seems that those without jobs are in that situation by choice, because they are lazy.
The minister thinks that by making their plight even worse and by making these people even more distressed, he will force them to find jobs. But those jobs simply do not exist and that is the fundamental flaw in the minister's reform and philosophy.
On the subject of philosophy, let me quote an unbelievable principle stated on page 26 of the discussion paper. It says: "A social security system that is financially unsustainable is a dead end. Therefore, social security reform must in part entail making difficult choices about the best use of available funds". With that statement, the government is introducing a new concept for social programs designed to help people with special needs: cost effectiveness. From now on, social programs will have to be cost effective.
This is what the discussion paper is all about. The minister is trying to ensure cost effectiveness, not as regards government programs, operating expenditures, taxation or inefficiencies resulting from overlapping, but in social programs. Government management is not cost effective, but the unemployed will have to be, even though they have no jobs.
There is another aspect of this document, and its spirit, which is truly unacceptable. It is the fact that this whole exercise is a sham. The government is not being honest. Let me give you two obvious examples. First, the minister, who was supposed to prepare an action plan, decided, even if it will take longer, perhaps a year, to hold consultations. Consequently, he drafts a so-called discussion paper, which he is careful not to label a policy statement, so as to always be able to argue that nothing has been decided and that this is still the consultation stage.
It contains some unacceptable things that will make people jump. So when questioned in the House or by journalists or in consultation sessions where people get excited and upset and concerned, he is prepared to say, "Do not worry. These are not decisions; this is only a consultation. I will listen to what you have to say and take it into consideration; then a decision will be made." That is how the discussion paper is presented.
In fact, thanks to a leak published in the Toronto Star yesterday, we now know that this minister and his colleague in Finance have already decided, regardless of the outcome of the ``consultation'', that a further $7.5 billion will be cut from social programs within five years.
That is particularly odious for the people, the members of Parliament, the media and everyone who will be involved in this vast phony consultation. Yes, members of Parliament can go for five weeks throughout Canada to hear people's grievances, suggestions and reactions to this document, this "discussion paper"; members of Parliament can go around, political commentators can comment, the poor can always hope, MPs can always talk, but the decision has been made.
Whatever happens, whatever people say about these consultations, a further $7.5 billion will be cut and no one on the government side has denied it. It took a fortunate leak, I would say, from the Toronto Star for us to learn that this cut has been decided. Furthermore, it was also decided to keep it secret. The leaked Cabinet document shows that the two ministers got together secretly, shut the door and swore that this decision would remain secret and that they would hide it, letting people naively believe that this document is only a discussion paper.
I remember a sentence which has been credited to former President Theodore Roosevelt. I think he said it in a speech: "Speak nicely, speak sweetly, but carry a big stick". I think the minister should be associated with the same sentence. Maybe change it a little: "Speak with compassion, but carry a big knife". That is what he is doing in this exercise.
That is the first deceptive thing: the decision has already been made. The kind, intelligent, friendly minister will attend many consultation meetings and listen to people, pretending to take in what they say. He may take notes when people tell him not to cut this or that, but the minister will have to keep himself from laughing when he thinks that the decision has already been made and he is faced with the credulity of people who will fall for the consultation exercise.
The other deceptive thing is the minister's incredible distortion of the words "decentralization" and "centralization". The minister tells us: "This is an exercise in democracy. The federal government is sometimes accused of being distant and remote from the people, preoccupied with overly theoretical matters; the federal government will get closer to the people, it will establish direct contact with them, it will become populist. We will now have a populist federal government, something like what the Reform Party wants. A government that will get closer to the people, issue cheques directly to them, establish bursary programs that will issue cheques directly to them and will dictate standards for welfare, and when it comes to occupational training, will select programs with local groups, municipalities and individuals; a government that will democratize and decentralize." That is how the minister describes what he wants to do.
What is actually going on? In fact, the federal government has decided to do without the provinces. I remind the government, which tends to forget, that this country has a Constitution established by the founders 125 years ago as a framework for how this country should run. The founders of this country and their successors realized that it takes two levels of government, one to look after things that are closer to the people and which it is better placed to do so, namely the provincial governments, and the federal government to look after foreign affairs, defence, the currency and so on. That was the spirit which guided the Constitution that is binding on everyone.
Now the minister wants us to believe that the federal government is in a better position than the provinces to manage social problems, to look after problems in people's daily lives, in education, in health, which will come later, as we shall see, and especially in social welfare.
So as I was saying, the terms are being misused because what the minister is actually trying to do is to centralize. He is trying to reduce the provinces' role to an insignificant contribution to community life. He wants the federal government to run everything, to so dominate that the provinces will be unable to stop it from centralizing.
Behind this plan is the desire to redefine the federal government's role for the future. Finally the masks are falling. Clearly, the federal government intends to take the provinces' place in fields reserved to them by the Constitution, as they were always meant to be.
For example, you can see that this government is trying to sideline the Quebec state which is such a thorn for Ottawa. It is done in an underhanded way which I find very disturbing. We will have to keep this in mind while reviewing this proposal in the House today, tomorrow and in the weeks to come.
Mr. Speaker, if you allow me, I would like to briefly go over three or four particular elements of the reform as they relate to specific target groups. Let us start with unemployment insurance. The minister gives two options, clearly stating where his preference lies. One of the options is totally unacceptable, he tells us, since it would mean cuts everywhere. In other words, what he really means is that there is no choice, we have to choose the second option because the first one is simply too horrible.
He is asking us to choose between pneumonia and tuberculosis. Well then, let us reject tuberculosis, that leaves us with pneumonia. What kind of pneumonia? It is the second option, the one preferred by the minister, that is to say a two-tier system, one for people who are out of work occasionally, not very often, maybe even never, that is to say a regular system and then, there will be another one for people who are often unemployed. For those who are nearly never out of work, the UI program does not change. They may never need UI benefits, but they will still have to pay premiums, probably at a higher level, since there will be a ceiling put on them.
The other tier will deal with people who really need unemployment insurance and for whom it was originally created, namely unemployed workers, the real ones whom the minister so tactfully calls frequent beneficiaries. These people are going to get less. They are going to be forced to work for community action programs. They may even be forced to go back to school.
Benefits are going to be lower, premiums higher. It will not be much fun to be unemployed once the system is revamped by the minister. People will be so unhappy, things will go so badly for them, they will be so worried that, or so the minister thinks, they will go out and get a job, a job that does not exist. The truth is, those who are really in need, those who are most vulnerable are getting squeezed. This is where the minister is going to cut and get the billions of dollars he needs for the finance minister.
Who is going to be hurt? Who is the most often out of work? Young people fresh out of school are having a difficult time finding work. Single mothers, seasonal workers, people over 50, people my age who suddenly find themselves unemployed after 25 years in the same job and who do not know what else to do, these are the people who are going to be hurt by the minister's reform.
Beyond the tactful language of bureaucrats using such incomprehensible terms as adjustment programs and frequent beneficiaries, what we must read is that those who really need unemployment insurance, who depend on it, will from now on be virtually cut off from it; their benefits will be lower and they will get less coverage.
Women are another group which will get hurt. We all know how hard they had to fight and must still do to reach a minimum of financial independence, since you cannot have equal opportunities without financial independence. What do we find in the minister's reform? He will tell us that it is only an idea, a strange idea for sure; as a matter of fact, he wonders why it is even in there. It could not be his doing, it must come from one of his officials.
People will reject it, but we know full well that things have already been decided. If a woman loses her job, her husband's income is taken into account to determine whether or not she qualifies for UI. As we know, men usually earn more than their spouses. Women who lose their jobs are treated as second class citizens, they will be penalized for having a husband who makes money. They will receive either no UI benefits or significantly lower ones.
This is a clear case of discrimination. I believe that if this was to be challenged in the Supreme Court under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it would be ruled unconstitutional. Then there are the students. The minister went after them with a vengeance. He must really hate them to treat them the way he does in his reform. Let us look at Quebec. The situation is even worse in the rest of Canada. They are talking about cuts in federal transfer payments to the provinces for post-secondary education to the tune of $2,600,000,000. Due to a complicated formula, that means that Quebec will get $300 million less; bear in mind that it is a lot worse in other parts of the country.
But for Quebec, $300 million means quite a shortfall for post-secondary education programs. The minister himself admits, with rare candour, that these cuts will probably lead to higher tuition fees. According to some quick forecast, they will probably double. If Quebec gets $300 million less for post-secondary education, the government and universities will have to double, some say even triple, tuition fees. And it will be worse in the rest of the country. If Canadian students think things are tough now, wait until they see what this reform means for them.
The Minister has recognized that it will create somewhat of a problem. That is obvious. For example, tuition fees at Laval University in Quebec city are now $3,000 and will easily rise to $8,000 with this reform and the impact will be disastrous for students. The Minister says they will find a solution, they will lend money and implement a grants and loans program so that we can help students who will have to put up with the increased tuition fees. What does this mean?
It means, for example, that under post-reform conditions, a student going through law school, as I did, will leave the university owing the government approximately $25,000. And that will be one debt among others because the student will have to borrow elsewhere to buy a car or for other reasons. For a Ph.D, the debt load will easily reach $50,000.
It means this reform reopens the whole issue of accessibility to higher education for students who are not wealthy. In Quebec, we have been fighting for equal access for twenty years now. I know it is the same in the rest of Canada. For twenty years, people have been fighting for a system ensuring equal access to higher education. There was a time in Quebec when only the chosen few could attend university or obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree. Only those lucky enough to be born in a rich family had access to that. The others did not study, there were no schools for them. Only wealthy families could send their children to university. Twenty years ago, we changed all that. We fought a social battle and we invested considerable funds. That is one thing we are proud of, it is one of the great achievements of Quebec and the federal reform proposed by the Minister will bring us right back to the starting line. Only rich people, sons and daughters of wealthy families, will have the opportunity to attend university if a program such as this one is implemented.
What is even worse, what adds insult to injury is that Bill C-28 dealing with the Student Loans Program, a bill we fought against vigorously, a bill the Bloc Quebecois denounced, but one that was adopted in spite of everything because we had a majority against us in this House. Bill C-28 extends the implementation of the standards the federal government can impose upon provinces wishing to withdraw from that Student Loans Program. From now on, a province withdrawing from the program must implement a new program in all points similar to the federal program. In other words, because Bill C-28 was adopted, on top of restricting access to higher education, this reform will give the federal government the power to determine who will study and what they will study in each of the provinces, including Quebec. The federal government will be in a position to dictate standards and design curricula by controlling those who want to study.
This is a very real danger from what I have seen by perusing briefly the reform document we received only yesterday. You can say the Minister surely has devised other solutions to give students access to education. Yes he certainly has. He suggests they use their RRSPs to pay for their schooling. He suggests that students pay their tuition fees with their RRSPs. How fantastic! One must be a complete stranger to reality to imagine that RRSPs would be an alternative for students. I know very few students who own a RRSP. For that, you have to be part of a rich family or one who owns a family trust.
You could reply that perhaps the Minister meant the parents, that perhaps he will convince the Minister of Finance, who plans to tax RRSPs, to allow parents to use their own RRSPs for their children's education. I see two main problems there. RRSPs were not designed for such a purpose. They were meant to ensure a certain financial security to families, to middle-class people who work, so that they can have at least a minimum security for the future.
So if, out of their generosity, because parents always want the best for their children, parents are forced to use their RRSPs for their children's education, of course children will get a higher education, but the parents will no longer have a retirement fund. That is the kind of situation the Minister is creating for families.
Furthermore, we must admit that not everybody owns a RRSP. One has to be able to afford it and, again, that applies to a chosen few. So it is absolutely incredible that they would propose the RRSPs as a solution.