Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House today to speak on behalf on the citizens of Mégantic-Compton-Stanstead about the budget tabled recently by the Minister of Finance. Let me assure you that my constituents, like Quebecers and Canadians everywhere, have become acquainted with the measures contained in the budget and, like the Official Opposition, are extremely concerned about the budget's implications on their day-to-day lives.
In the past few days, as I was thinking about what I would say on the subject, the front page of the Saturday, March 5 edition of La Tribune caught my attention. In fact, two headlines caught my attention. I would just like to mention that La Tribune is owned by the Power Corporation. It has no ties to the Bloc Quebecois and is in no way sympathetic to the Bloc's position. I would invite my colleagues on both sides of the House to subscribe to this daily which, I might add, focusses on the Eastern Townships. On reading the editorial page, they will see that this newspaper has nothing in common with the usual stands taken by the Bloc Quebecois.
As I said, this daily newspaper is sold in the Eastern Townships and outside this region. So, naturally it also reports on the
goings-on in the riding of Mégantic-Compton-Stanstead which I am honoured to represent in this House.
As I was saying, two headlines in the newspaper caught my attention. The first one, which I would like to show to my colleagues, proclaimed the following: "Record Number of Social Welfare Recipients".
Last January, 21,539 people in my region received unemployment insurance benefits, according to statistics supplied by the Department of Human Resources Development. How in all conscience can we speak of human resources development in the face of such a high level of unemployment? In addition, 17,600 people received social welfare benefits during the same period. These figures do not include dependants of unemployment insurance and welfare recipients. In reality, what all of this means is that 28.6 per cent of the region's labour force is unemployed.
The 1994-95 budget launches an assault on the least fortunate, the very group that the Liberal government and its Minister of Finance profess to staunchly defend.
The second headline in this newspaper was a statement made by the Prime Minister of Canada which earned-the statement that is, not the headline-the applause of 700 people attending a luncheon given by the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce. I assume that very few unemployed people must have attended that luncheon. The Prime Minister is quoted in this article as saying: "Stop complaining. The time has come to stop whining, to forget about the Constitution and think about creating jobs". He goes on to say: "Stop whining-you know what I am talking about-and you will make progress".
The Prime Minister's comments show unacceptable scorn towards the thousands of people who find themselves unemployed, not because of their own iniquity but mostly because of mismanagement by all federal governments of the last 20 years, in particular that of Pierre Elliott Trudeau in which, as Minister of Finance, the current Prime Minister was one of those who started the monstrous deficit spiral that has led to a debt of over $500 billion.
However, we understand why the Prime Minister drew applause from the richest members of our society, since this government has not touched the outrageous family trust system.
I want to point out another perverse effect of this budget on unemployment insurance. I refer to the study done by three economists from Quebec University in Montreal, Pierre Fortin, Pierre-Yves Crémieux and Marc Van Audenrode. What are the conclusions drawn by these economists?
They point out that the new unemployment insurance measures are generally more stringent than the 1990 Tory reform that caused an outcry among members of the current Liberal government then in opposition, and make the unemployed bear the burden of the unemployment insurance reform now under way, which represents 60 per cent of the new budget cuts announced by this government.
According to these three economists from Quebec, the new cuts are in the order of $4.1 billion, $2.4 billion of which comes from savings made possible by the changes to the unemployment insurance program.
In the face of such measures, how can we assume that the government is acting in good faith when it claims it wants to improve income security programs through an extensive reform process and when, even before knowing the first thing about this reform, we already know that this government intends to make cuts of between $5 billion and $6 billion in unemployment insurance and who knows how much in the Canada Assistance Plan? Only yesterday, the Minister of Human Resources Development and the Prime Minister announced outside this House that they would make cuts not only in unemployment insurance and social assistance but also in old age security pensions.
In conclusion, I urge the Minister of Finance to intercede with the Prime Minister to make him show more compassion towards the disadvantaged and more common sense in the administration of federal affairs. If the government really wants to save $280 million at Quebec's expense, it only has to put Quebec in charge of managing job training programs, as all Quebec stakeholders are asking; it will thus save $250 million a year while ensuring that job-seekers receive better services.