Mr. Speaker, when one has a little parliamentary experience and hears a minister make, in reply to the budget speech or as a follow-up to the budget speech, the kind of partisan remarks the Minister for Human Resources Development just made, you can be sure that he is hiding something.
He spent half of his speech blaming the opposition. Yet, he is the one who ran an entire election campaign on job creation. The truth is plain and simple and, if it was easy to speak the truth, then the minister could speak it calmly. Canadians would understand.
Why does the minister have to make such a fuss, raise his voice and make accusations? The reason is simple. I cannot say that he is lying, of course, but I can say that he is not telling the whole truth. The truth of the matter is quite simple. They are making $5.5 billion worth of cuts on the backs of the unemployed, cutting $2.5 billion in social assistance and there is no telling what is going to happen two years from now to post-secondary education, I mean federal transfer payments to the provinces in that area, but one thing is sure, we can expect cuts. We do not have the individual amounts for social assistance and post-secondary education, but the combined amount is in the budget.
The minister talks about job creation. He did so during the entire campaign. Yet, in January, the government decided to collect an extra $800 million in UI premiums. And now, it is telling us that in 1995 it is going to reduce the premium rate and roll it back to its previous level. That will happen next year.
The loss of 40,000 jobs has just been announced, and we will have more jobs in 1995. Of course, this is making the unemployment situation worse, so benefits have to be cut. Everyone can see that you are cutting benefits. Everyone can see that you are getting ready to cut social assistance. That is clear from your budget.
It apparently contains measures for businesses. As we said before, Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General of Canada clearly demonstrated that Canadian corporations were hiding millions of dollars in international tax havens. Yet, there is only one tiny little measure with regard to banks and insurance companies in this budget, and it will not be implemented before November 1995.
In the Globe and Mail this morning banks were reported as saying: ``We did not get an answer yet. We are waiting. It is only for 1995, anyway''. Basically, what they mean is that things can change between now and then. Cuts on the other hand take effect immediately.
I would ask the minister to calmly tell us the truth on this. He does not need to shout if he wants to get his message across to the Canadian people. Neither does he need to accuse the opposition. If he has positive steps to introduce, we are prepared to listen.