Mr. Speaker, before discussing the issue as such and the amendments tabled by some members, I want to reply to the comments made earlier by the hon. member for St. Boniface. The hon. member criticized the Bloc Quebecois on a number of issues and, on several occasions, he made comments which were quite inaccurate. I want to state the facts and also look at the real intentions of the government, in the light of the member's remarks.
He said that the Bloc is inconsistent since it is asking the government to cut spending, while opposing the fact that the UI budget will be reduced by several billion over the next few years. Yet, there is no contradiction there. It is possible to cut expenditures, but the government must certainly not start with cuts which will adversely affect the unemployed. The hon. member is telling us that, as regards spending reduction, the only significant measure in the budget, of which this bill is the result, is major cuts to the unemployment insurance program.
The hon. member said that the opposition lacked vision, adding that the problem was not new. He must know what he is talking about since he sat on this side of the House for a quite a while. I remember that at the time he and several of his colleagues, including the current Deputy Prime Minister, used to vigorously denounce the UI reforms of the Conservatives. It is rather amusing to read the speeches made then by those people. They were talking about inhuman measures and other similar things.
Yet, only four months after they took office, and after claiming in many cases that it was impossible to implement quick reforms because these things require in-depth reviews and a long term approach through committees which have to work for a year or two before changes can be made, the government was more than ready in the case of the UI program. And this only 18 months after the Liberals vehemently opposed the idea of targeting UI to fight the deficit at the expense of the unem-
ployed. Yet, four months after they came to office, the Liberals launched an all-out attack on the jobless.
This is where they will go and get a good chunk of the money they need to reduce the deficit in a very small way, as they said in the last budget.
The hon. member then went on to say that we live in the best country in the world and that our quality of life is second to none. He referred to a UN study, to the umpteenth version of a study that is published every year and whose findings were released during the weekend. According to the study, Canada ranked first for the second time in three years, and he was very proud of all that. Of course, he forgot to mention that the study does not consider debt levels in its ranking.
However, the report did say there was some concern about the future, because considering the debt, many programs may not be possible to maintain, at least not as they are now. There are a number of criteria in this study which are debatable, including the number of tv sets per household, and so forth. This is quality of life evaluated in North American terms. It is no coincidence that a country like Canada comes out well in this study. Criteria and values are ours, and they form the basis for the judgment made by the study.
If the debt were included as a criterion, I think there would be a little less enthusiasm, and I think the hon. member would be the first person to acknowledge this. Fine, we can say our quality of life is very good, but if next month I were to use up all my credit, my credit cards and my bank loans, of course I would have an excellent quality of life during that month. But I could hardly say the same for the months after that. I might have a few problems then, although for a while I would have a very good quality of life. Well, it would be a quality of life on credit.
He also referred to Canada as the most decentralized country in the world. I must admit I found it hard to keep a straight face. The hon. member must know a couple of countries. In any case, I will mention two he should look at a little more closely.
Certainly Belgium, where the federal level is responsible only for foreign affairs, international trade and currency. And even in the case of foreign affairs, two of the three levels have certain powers. I wonder how he drew the conclusion that he did. I suggest he take a course in international politics and take a close look at the Belgian model.
He could also look at Switzerland to see how the system in that country works. He would realize that they are somewhat more decentralized than we are here.
He also talked a long time about the duplication that exists between Quebec and Ottawa. As a member I get terribly frustrated when someone comes to my office and wants to apply for a training program, and they tell him he is not eligible because he is not on unemployment insurance. The program is open only to unemployment insurance recipients. If he is on welfare, he has to apply for a different program, because he is not eligible for this one. And then these people say: "But how come we have these criteria, because after all it is public money, and we want the training". And again they are told this program is not for them and that they have to go to the other level of government, which is responsible in their case.
What we have here is a lack of vision and a lack of consistency. The hon. member for St. Boniface knows this. And what have they done about it since they came to power? Nothing. It is easy to see. He says that we made "no concrete suggestion". We have been telling him for a long time that there were concrete measures to be taken in the area of manpower training. It is a very concrete suggestion and I am convinced that he sees people like that every day or so in his office. I know I do.
Let us talk about what is being proposed now. They are attacking the present unemployment system in many ways. They are changing the number of weeks, the benefit rate and the rules of eligibility. Since they cannot control unemployment itself, they will at least control the number of unemployed people and the way they will receive benefits. They are attacking the unemployed themselves. That is where they put the focus in order to solve the problem, despite the way they talked about employment all through the campaign. They say: "We will decrease unemployment expenditures" but they will not do so by creating jobs; instead, they will modify the plan and make it more stringent by increasing the number of weeks required and decreasing the importance of criteria such as regional unemployment, by increasing the number of weeks of insurable employment from 10 to 12 and decreasing the rate of benefits from 57 per cent to 55 per cent. For some the rate will increase to 60 per cent, but for most it will go from 57 to 55 per cent. They talk very little about that.
Who will be affected most by such a reform in the area of eligibility, expenditures, etc.? We can say that the Atlantic provinces and Quebec will be hard hit. We heard figures like 630 million dollars in the Atlantic region, 735 million in Quebec, 560 million in Ontario and 430 million in the west. You know the Maritimes will be the hardest hit.
Following the comments of my colleague for Saint-Hyacinthe, the subcommittee on finance worked very hard and saw to it that witnesses were heard. It was disrespectful toward several of the groups that came to express their views and their fears, particularly about the UI reform aspect of Bill C-17. This was the case for the Acadian community, whose presentation was cut short and whose members were thrown out. It did not even take the time to listen to them. For a government which stressed the importance of dignity and openness, it showed blatant disrespect. Showing dignity is also listening to people and letting them speak even if their visions or views are different from our own. The committee did not even bother to do
that. This is quite astonishing, considering that that group had for the most part supported the elected party.
In the few minutes I have left, I would like to ponder what will happen now in view of these facts. What will happen if the system is made stricter, or the entitlement period shorter? What if beneficiaries still do not have a job at the end of their entitlement period, since nothing would lead us to believe that they will easily find one. They will simply have to become welfare recipients.
Then, which level of government will take them over? The provincial level. Another level of government will pay the bill. They are not in our records any more and they do not produce any red ink here. They are now in the records of the provinces which may end up with a tab of $100 million.
Researchers from the Université du Québec à Montréal, economist Pierre Fortin and his group, have estimated at almost $600 million the liability thus transferred to the provinces. Therefore, we are passing the buck and telling the provinces: "Make the choices that we refuse to make", notwithstanding the fact that their budgets are much smaller.
Here we have a budget of $160 billion, when in Quebec it is less than $50 billion, that is less than a third. We are telling them: "You have more imagination, do the cuts we refuse to make". This is a terrible thing to do. Who are the losers in all that? They are the individuals under attack and given little hope. They are the consumers who just lost their jobs, that are often in very difficult economic situations, and to whom we say that they cost us too much and that they are responsible for the deficit. We find that unacceptable.
This is why several of my colleagues have proposed interesting amendments aimed at preserving an efficient enough system, given that we are presently studying an in-depth reform of social programs. I believe that what we have in front of us is a major piece of legislation, and I call on my colleagues to support the proposed amendments.