Madam Speaker, this is part of my speech and it is also part of the budget. I wonder why the new business centre of the Canadian embassy in Mexico will be built by an American company. I think it is important to talk about this because, if we want to create jobs and reduce the deficit, we must help Canadian businesses to grow instead of asking foreign companies to build our embassies and offices abroad. I put this question to the Liberals listening to my speech today, so that they can ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs to look into it and ensure that Canadian businesses will be approached first when we have to build embassies and offices abroad.
Madam Speaker, I do not know who stole the notes I had in front of me but they are gone. Ah, I just found them.
First I must explain what a budget is. When a family decides to draw up a budget, it starts by calculating its income, just like the federal government must determine how much it collects in revenues. We know that our revenues amount to some $125 billion while our expenditures add up to about $160 billion.
We know that $40 billion go to pay interests on the accumulated debt. We know that; this is easy to figure out. What is more important in making a budget is to establish an order of priority for expenditures. How are we going to spend the money so as to improve our well-being. For example, a family may decide to first spend on a car, on rent, on clothes, on trips or on food. What proportion of our revenue are we going to spend in order to improve our lifestyle, respect our priorities and meet our needs?
It is in that sense that a government must look at its expenditures: It must ensure that spending is done in a way that best serves people, and it must ensure that these benefits are maintained. During the election campaign, it seemed to me, based on the red book, that the Liberals' priority was job creation. Even though we did not have the same vision regarding the country, we fully shared the Liberal's view on job creation.
However, we realized, once they took office, that the Liberals had completely changed their vision. For one thing, as several of my colleagues pointed out, they targeted the unemployed and overlooked manpower training. For five years now, Quebec has been saying that it must absolutely have jurisdiction over manpower training. Again, there is a unanimous motion before Quebec's National Assembly-a motion supported by both the Liberal Party of Quebec and the Official Opposition-asking that jurisdiction over manpower training be delegated to the province by the federal government. As you can see, this is an important issue.
When a government establishes its spending priorities, it should first look at manpower training on a budget level, since we are well aware that overlapping in that sector costs some 300 to 350 million dollars each year. Indeed, 300 to 350 million dollars are spent uselessly because of this overlapping in the manpower training sector. But the inefficiency related to this poor management and this overlapping is also very costly. The result is that we have people who get less training and who are less prepared to face the competition.
I also want to reply to the Reform Party member who made a speech this morning and said that Quebec is favoured in the Canadian federation. He said that we were receiving more than we were giving to Ottawa as regards unemployment insurance. I think the hon. member is partly right, but the question is: Do Quebeckers want to receive more money strictly to help those who are in trouble, or do they want to ensure that they are not in such trouble in the future? This is an important distinction, Madam Speaker.
We know very well that if we managed our own affairs in Quebec, we would recover several billion dollars through increased efficiency. This extra $800 million which the federal government suggests it is paying to Quebec does not mean anything, because this is in the context of the current management structure. The day we run our affairs alone, we will be much more efficient and we are convinced that we can reduce our unemployment more and we will not need that extra money because our economy will grow much faster.
Sometimes we in Quebec feel that the federal government wants Quebeckers to stay unemployed so that it can say that it is giving Quebec more money than Quebeckers pay. We almost feel that they are acting deliberately in a way to keep Que-beckers out of work more and more. So that is sort of an answer to the questions from Reform Party members, who are quite far
from Quebec. They do not seem to understand exactly what is going on in Quebec.
I must also say to the people in the Reform Party that maybe they should take a look at Quebec's economic structure.Quebeckers have had some successes these past few years, although they had to fight incoherent policies that hurt Quebec's development. Despite all that, Quebeckers set up some institutions. For example, on the economic level, we have set up mutual insurance companies, something quite extraordinary. We have the Caisse de dépôt, the Desjardins movement and its credit unions, the FTQ fund, the General Investment Corporation of Quebec. We built some amazing financial institutions.
Of course, every time the federal government changes the laws or regulations, it affects Quebeckers. If we Quebeckers were able to set our own budget priorities and make our own laws and regulations, we are sure that we could grow much faster and solve this unemployment problem that we have to live with and, again, be told by the federal government that we get a little more than we give, especially when it comes to unemployment and welfare.
You know that we Quebeckers have a lot more pride than that. We want to have the honour and the privilege of being able to develop and to earn our living honourably. For that, the only way to succeed is to collect all our own taxes and to make our own laws and in that way we can set our own priorities and develop as we should, Madam Speaker, and the way to do that is sovereignty for Quebec.