Yes, it is a shame, because they tell us we must tighten our belts, while cutting $560 million in Western Canada but compensating by injecting $3 billion in that region. This does not make any sense.
We are also opposed to the proposed measures related to international aid. They are cutting the international aid budget by $532 million, thus placing Canada, which already ranked pretty low in terms of the assistance provided to the millions of children who starve to death every year, at the bottom of the list of donor countries. When I see that, despite Canada's tradition of compassion, the federal government is maintaining until 1997 the $1.5 billion in direct subsidies to business while
cutting by $532 million the budget to help reduce child mortality around the world, I find this simply revolting.
We oppose Bill C-73 resulting from the last budget because this budget forgets a fundamental consideration: the federal government's chronic debt problem.
With the national debt currently standing at $548 billion, the federal government is responsible for over 70 per cent of the public debt burden in Canada. In terms of the size of the overall public debt, the debt of all levels of government put together, Canada ranks first among G-7 countries. Not a very enviable position.
Just at the federal level, the debt is so huge that debt charges alone presently account for more than one third of the taxes paid by Quebecers and Canadians. In the case of Quebec, for example, this means that of the total amount paid by the people of Quebec in taxes of all sort, which is about $30 billion, $10 billion goes to pay debt charges, that is to say the interest on this huge debt.
The last budget does not provide any relief, none at all. To the point that, next year, the portion of the taxes paid by all the taxpayers in Quebec and Canada that will be required to service the debt, just to pay the interests on the federal debt, will be more than 37 per cent, or a 4 per cent increase in just one year. Before you know it, in four or five years, nearly half of the taxes paid by the taxpayers in Quebec and Canada will go to servicing the debt. If you extrapolate these figures, five or six years from now, the federal debt, which will have increased steadily since the Minister of Finance tabled this budget, will be between $750 and $800 billion.
If the federal debt is already a huge problem at $548 billion, you can imagine what a problem it will be at $800 billion. It will be a nightmare in terms of public financial management. It will be such a nightmare that the Minister of Finance tried-we can talk about the response of the financial markets-to do some window-dressing. He does not talk about the debt any more. He does not talk about it. But based on the assumptions and growth rates contained in his budget, you get this $800 billion figure. This is not a figment of our imagination: it is reality.
Similarly, using the Minister of Finance's own calculations and the same growth rates, we arrived at the following conclusion: in five years, the percentage will be 50 per cent. In other words, the proportion of tax revenues allocated to federal programs, including transfers to provinces and individuals, and the proportion used to pay the interest on the debt will be the same. One year later, the tax revenues used to pay the interest on the debt will be greater than those allocated to federal transfers to provinces and individuals.
In the private sector, if we had a product to sell and if interest costs related to that product were greater than its value, we would have declared bankruptcy a long time ago, we would have gone belly up as they say. That will happen in five or six years, and this is what the Minister of Finance tried to hide from Canadians and Quebecers.
There are two major reasons for this enormous, chronic and inescapable federal debt. First, the federal system is obsolete. It can no longer meet the challenges of the nineties and of the year 2000; it does nothing to help the country adjust to the new international economy by being productive and competitive, by having the best possible products and skilled workers, and by striving to provide humane conditions in this new competitive environment. Such support is greatly lacking in Canada right now, but we hope to find in Quebec.
The second main reason why we have such an enormous debt is what is called the structural deficit. We are not making that up: it is mentioned in the Minister of Finance's documents and it has been for about seven years in the documents released by his department. What do these documents say?
The Canadian economy does not generate enough jobs. Since the unemployment level for the next three years is expected to reach 9.5 per cent in Canada and about 12 per cent in Quebec, it is obvious that we have a problem here. The annual deficit and the debt increase are caused by the fact that the people who do not work do not pay taxes, which means a loss in tax revenues. This loss of revenues is reflected in the deficit and then in the debt. This is the structural component of our deficit and our debt.
What does it do? It creates a spiral: we have foregone tax revenues, a higher deficit, a steadily increasing debt, higher interest rates following incursion into the capital markets and foreign borrowing, investors demanding incentives because our debt in not under control, which means we pay more interest and our debt service costs are on the rise.
Our debt service costs are rising, which entails another increase in interest rates, the expected investments are not forthcoming and all the jobs that we were promised and that we need-we are 800,000 jobs short-will not be created. This is the structural component of our deficit and our debt, and it never changes.
Why? Because there is no major change to this structural component in what was tabled by the finance minister. It remains with all the duplications, overlapping, federal interference and, now that the federal government can no longer live beyond its means, it is reducing its vision to its means. It goes after the provinces, imposing national standards and pretending
to have the right to do so for ever and ever. That is what flexible federalism is all about.
For all these reasons, the official opposition will reject Bill C-73 at third reading. This bill to provide borrowing authority stems directly from the budget. We, and Quebecers with us, have enough reasons to reject this bill. I remind you that 58 per cent of Quebecers are against this budget. They are convinced that it undermines job creation and economic recovery and that it does nothing to solve the basic debt problem, as I just explained. Therefore, we will reject it.
I would like to send a message to my fellow Quebecers. I would like to ask them what they want for the years to come. Do they want to continue to live in a system which will at best make decisions they will not necessarily agree with, because the Bloc represents only 25 per cent of the votes in this Parliament? Twenty-five per cent of a board of trustees, that is not much.
Do they want to go on within a system which has nothing to do any more with the image we have of a government of the 90s and beyond, with how we have been been percieving our society for the last 30 years? An image that we have tried to fashion through various constitutional conferences, through various negotiations, through various submissions in the history of Quebec?
Quebecers have been very patient. One could hardly be more patient than we have been over the past 30 years, trying to change the system a little so as to better reflect a reality that we have wanted to see reflected since 1867, that is the reality of two founding nations with some kind of recognition of Quebecers' legitimate aspirations.
Finally, we have two choices. We can stay in a system that is sinking-a big boat that is taking in water on all sides-a system that neither the federal government nor English Canada want to reform. This system may be satisfactory for English Canada, but it cannot be satisfactory for Quebecers with their particular aspirations.
Do we want to stay in this system or seize the opportunity that is offered to us this year to leave it voluntarily, maintaining the peace of mind that has motivated us over the last seven years since the failure of the Meech Lake Accord?
Would it not be preferable to get out of this system in a democratic way and to envision a less morose future than what we have had for several years with a system that is continually slowing down and that is becoming a burden, a ball and chain for Quebec and Canada's economic advancement?
I would say that if my fellow citizens get out of this system, they must do so by ignoring the fear-mongering campaigns and also ignoring the distorted analyses based on dubious methodologies and often containing a web of untruth.
Last week-end, I had the opportunity to take a look at one of these truncated analyses, one that distorts reality. I am talking here about the analysis made by Mr. Marcel Côté, from SECOR, and contained in a book entitled Le rêve de la Terre promise ou le coût de l'indépendance . That gives me an opportunity to digress somewhat, using the distorted elements of this analysis. Mr. Côté presents 15 questions on sovereignty.