Mr. Speaker, a few days ago I had the privilege to ask this House to accept an amendment to Bill C-17. My hon. colleagues decided otherwise and, as any good democrat, I accept their decision. That does not mean that I agree with this bill, and for the second time, I will try to explain my reservations to this House.
Some of the wording of this bill leads me to believe that it would be premature to pass it. Let us take, for example, the wage freeze. I already said yes to the freeze for certain categories of public servants such as federally-appointed judges, parliamentary agents, the Governor General, lieutenant governors, Parliamentarians, and certain members of the Canadian Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But I believe that it is very dangerous to remove any incentive for public servants and to prevent them from climbing the wage ladder.
This bill also caps payments to provinces under the Canada Assistance Plan after the 1994-95 fiscal year. The Canada Assistance Plan cannot be modified without a national consultation and, for this reason, I found it premature, at this point, to cap payments for 1995-96.
I do not agree either with authorizing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to borrow money. The CBC is a public corporation and as such should be funded by government grants and advertising revenues. With a deficit of more than $500 billion, this government does not need to authorize public corporations such as the CBC to borrow money, thus adding to the Canadian deficit. Anyhow, if the CBC chalks up a deficit, Canadians will end up paying anyway. So, let the Canadian government give the corporation the necessary budget to promote Canadian culture and inform Canadians but we must not authorize it to borrow money.
Although this bill contains many questionable and premature items, the most questionable of all is the reform of unemployment insurance. The changes proposed in Bill C-17 are unfair and will harm Canadians, especially in Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
The government proudly proclaims that the proposed changes will bring about savings in UI expenditures of $725 million in 1994-95, and of $2.4 billion in 1995-96 and 1996-97. Does the federal government think it is doing Canadians a favour with such a measure? Does it really believe that it will create more jobs by lowering the premium? No, I do not think it will and I am convinced that this government does not think so either. It is just passing its financial problems on to the provinces, as it has been doing for some time. What will Canadians and Quebeckers who will no longer be entitled to unemployment insurance live on? On welfare, which is of provincial jurisdiction.
The results of this decision are twofold. First, the human person, and I often talk about the human person when I address this House, will lose dignity, because in addition to being out of work, they will no longer have the income to which they contributed with their premiums. They will face the problems of welfare recipients, despite the efforts of our provincial governments to make welfare less painful. Mr. Speaker, human dignity means being gainfully employed. As Félix Leclerc, who is from Saint-Pierre on Île d'Orléans in my riding, said, the best way to kill a man is to pay him to do nothing. With this bill, the government is not creating jobs, it is shortening the unemployment insurance benefit periods and forcing people to depend on the state for subsistence.
Secondly, the changes to unemployment insurance will force the provincial governments to increase their welfare budgets and thus increase their deficits. That is what these premature changes will do.
The people of Beauport-Montmorency-Orléans, whom I have the honour to represent in this House, want to have something fine, true and real to hang on to so that they can forget the recession we are going through and the financial difficulties they have had to put up with for several years. The people of Beauport-Montmorency-Orléans are entitled to work so that they can consider themselves full citizens. They are entitled to
believe in their elected representatives. They are entitled to hope that their representatives will find solutions for the current problems and prepare better days for the years to come.
This House where the people of Canada are represented does not have the right for partisan reasons to pass legislation that is premature and unfair to the people of the Atlantic provinces and Quebec.
I therefore ask this House to reject Bill C-17 on second reading and thus permit the House to go more thoroughly into the proposals which were made to us prematurely in this bill.