Mr. Speaker, we say no to Bill C-17; no to the so-called reform of unemployment insurance; no to this government's budget measures; no to the $735 million grabbed with impunity from Quebec workers; no to the $1.620 billion lost by Canadians; no to misleading and devastating savings; no to reducing the benefit period; no to reducing benefits, sole means of subsistence for many workers;; no to offloading expenditures onto the provinces; no to regional inequities penalizing Quebec and Eastern Canada once again; no to social assistance as the only recourse left after unemployment insurance benefits run out; no to undue delays in reducing unemployment insurance premiums.
We reject any policy conceived and adopted under pressure that penalizes workers and the provinces under the guise of economy. These savings are achieved at the expense of workers who lost their jobs because of the dismal state of the current job market. Moreover, half of these so-called savings, in the order of $635 million in Quebec alone, must be absorbed by the provinces through social assistance payments.
Finally, negative consequences will not be distributed equally among the provinces. When we hear that the benefits paid to Quebec taxpayers will be reduced by $735 million while those paid to Western Canadians will only go down by $430 million, we must reiterate vigorously the disadvantages suffered by Quebec within the Canadian federation.
We say no to the harmful attitude perpetuating the idea that the unemployed do not want to work. It is not the unemployed who lack vision, it is their governments. People cannot be blamed for the lack of jobs, but governments can. We say no to unsound, ineffective and unfair policies; no to government mismanagement; no to the systematic overlooking of the real problems and the real solutions. Young people say no to the alarming unemployment facing them. They say no to the unpalatable placebo called the Youth Service Corps. Young people need jobs, not measures which will penalize them right from the start. We say no to harassing the poor and the unemployed; to conducting underhand attacks against poor working women; to letting civil servants interfere in the private lives of mothers; to tolerating paternalism toward women; to having to prove everything to get some minor benefit; and to creating tensions between spouses regarding who will have custody of the children.
We know, and this has been repeated time and again, that women have precarious jobs, which do not pay well and which are very vulnerable to the swings of the job market. Women need permanent well-paid jobs. They have no need for new constraints in their family and private lives.
We say no to precarious and poorly paid jobs; to the lack of job-creation measures which has the shameful effect of increasing the number of unemployed; to overlappings in training programs and to political decisions which favour the rich at the expense of the poor.
Until this government takes the required objectives measures to ensure that the rich share their wealth with others, we will oppose any legislative policy penalizing young people, low-income workers, women and the unemployed.
We say no to misleading statements to the effect that savings will be reinvested by businesses.
The government's evaluation regarding the reinvestment of such miserly savings is not based on any solid ground. Nothing is provided to promote or control this aspect. Moreover, only large corporations might be able to create a few jobs because of the lowering of contributions. We know that small and medium businesses are the ones which create the most jobs. How can we expect them to pay a full salary with annual savings of $40, for example? Employers need real job creation programs.
We say no to the dead-end in which Quebeckers and Canadians find themselves and we say no to despair.
We would have loved to have the opportunity to support real job creation initiatives, as well as the transfer of training programs to Quebec, the promotion of social justice, the respect of privacy and the implementation of programs which would have generated some hope.
However, in light of these phoney measures, the people of the riding of Quebec say no.
The women of Quebec say a flat "no", not even a "no thank you".