Mr. Speaker, during the election campaign, the Bloc Quebecois proposed a specific plan for reducing government spending and attacking the deficit.
One of these measures was an infrastructure program, something much bigger that what the Liberal Party offered us. Let me point out here, and perhaps other members will want to react to this, that the federal government is advancing $2 billion for the infrastructure program, but the federal government is now spending $20 billion on unemployment insurance.
Look at the dichotomy. On the one hand, we have $2 billion to put people to work and, on the other, we have $20 billion for them not to work. I would have expected a much more solid proposal from the Liberal government for redirecting unemployment insurance funds to more productive things that are more promising for the future of all these unemployed people.
At the present time, unfortunately, unemployment insurance is a way to help people survive until welfare becomes their only option. Unfortunately, there is no work once these weeks of unemployment insurance inexorably run out.
The Bloc Quebecois's program also sought to redirect a greater share of federal spending to Quebec. You should realize that Quebec pays a total of $28 billion, more or less, in tax every year and receives the same amount of $28 billion from the federal government. The problem is that a large part of this $28 billion is unemployment insurance and what is called welfare. If this money were spent on job creation, and what I am saying applies not only to Quebec but to all of Canada, people who work would pay taxes.
An interesting statistic to which few people refer is the $120 billion paid by people who work and consume. In Canada, about one in four employable persons does not work, which means that if they could work, they would pay $40 billion more in taxes and that is exactly what we need to wipe out the deficit.
Mr. Speaker, what are we waiting for to act?