Mr. Speaker, with Bill C-17, the government is asking us to amend 11 different laws to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 22, 1994. However, this budget, as could be expected and as was denounced in this House, is making waves in the financial community of this country because it fails to meet either the expectations of the financial community or those of Quebeckers and Canadians.
This government had the opportunity to take some measures to put public finances in order, to put an end to wasting money and to eliminate duplication and unproductive expenditures in programs under both federal and provincial jurisdictions, but it did nothing. This government had the opportunity, as it has promised during the election campaign, to restore some hope among Quebeckers and Canadians, but it did nothing.
Rather, the Chrétien government brought about a budget which deeply affects our economy-and, God knows, it did not need it-and thus deprives us of our hope for economic growth and job creation. Those past two weeks, we have witnessed in the financial community some reactions which clearly reflect the low level of confidence they have in the direction that the government wanted to follow in this budget.
This government did not go in the right direction: the budgeted deficit has never been so high, reaching $40 billion and when they propose to cut back on expenses, they bluntly attack the most disadvantaged, the victims of a recession they are fueling rather than fighting, they go after unemployed men and women.
In the same budget exercise, the Liberal government is asking us to spend every day some $110 million more than the revenues it receives while the unemployed have to bear the largest part-almost 60 per cent-of the new budgetary cuts announced in the Liberal budget. In this regard, this budget is particularly unequitable and unfair, and when the government is asking us, through this omnibus bill, to implement measures so devastating to the unemployed, we must object to it.
The government has announced a comprehensive review of social security, including unemployment insurance, and hopes to present a reform plan to this House next September. It is therefore unacceptable for the government to proceed with such important cuts and such drastic changes in the unemployment insurance program before the necessary consultations have been held and before this whole matter has been thought through.
Whether it be the increase of the premium rate for 1994, the reduction in the length of the benefit period, the longer qualifying period, the two-tier benefit system which will affect 85 per cent of claimants, or the lesser importance attached to regional unemployment levels, these measures have, in our opinion, been taken on the spur of the moment and have only one purpose, to reduce the budget deficit on the backs of the unemployed, in an economy where there are not enough jobs for everyone. Instead of helping to reduce unemployment, these measures only weaken the social safety net. By impoverishing the unemployed, the government promotes the degradation of the entire social environment in Quebec and in Canada and thereby activates all sorts of ripple effects on such things as welfare and health systems.
If the government thought that the social environment in this country was bad enough to require social program reform, why does it further aggravate the situation by improvising such harsh measures for the unemployed? There were many areas where there is fat to be cut, but the victims of the recession have none. The Bloc Quebecois spared neither its suggestions nor its offers of services to identify areas where major savings could be made, and this, through a committee of this House looking at budget spending as a whole.
But no, this government would rather pursue policies it once condemned. I quote: "Conservative fiscal and monetary policies, as we have seen over the past few days, are having disastrous effects on the economy and always ask more of the poorest".
We must not fail to mention one of the adverse effects of the bill: the shifting of a portion of the deficit burden onto Quebec and the provinces. By shortening benefit periods, the federal government will more rapidly divert a greater number of unemployed people towards provincial social security programs. According to three members of the Department of Economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal this new shift from unemployment insurance to the welfare system will cost Quebec an additional $280 million. The provinces as a whole will have to pay an additional $1 billion, approximately.
Considering the government's promise whereby any social program reform affecting provincial finances would take place after due consultation, in order to get their prior approval, here is a good example of a broken promise. First the cuts, and then, the negotiations: what a nice way to instill a climate of confidence in future public debate and negotiations with the provinces!
We must reject Bill C-17 out of hand because it is a rag-bag containing radical amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act. Those amendments should have been dealt with in a separate piece of legislation in the first place and, most important, they should have been preceded by extensive consultations.
In the present context, the unemployed in Quebec and Canada have enough incentive to find work and they do want to work. They plead for jobs in our ridings every day. Fraud, which we must continue to try to eliminate, accounts for only a very small percentage of costs. The basic problem is that there are not enough jobs for everyone as things now stand, and reducing the amount of benefits and the benefit period will not put more people back to work.
The government has estimated that every one-cent reduction in contributions leads to about 1,300 new jobs. At the same time it maintains an increase of 7 cents in contributions, which rise from $3 to $3.07. In doing so, the government deliberately prevents 9,000 people from going back to work, regaining their dignity and taking part in the economic recovery. Mr. Speaker, I like to use numbers on a smaller scale, those of a riding for instance, since I represent people from a riding in the House of Commons. Therefore, if you reallocate equitably on an individual riding basis the number of jobs lost because of the stubbornness of the government which maintains the contributions at $3.07, 32 people are deprived of a job in every riding.
You might say it is one case among many others. Maybe, but it was not so when we were elected or when our government colleagues got elected by promising jobs, jobs and jobs. Before we vote on Bill C-17, I invite my colleagues to think of those 32 people and of all those who regularly come to our riding offices to tell us about their hardships and their dismay because of the employment situation.