Mr. Speaker, I must say that I was really disappointed with the Bloc's presentation. Perhaps nothing more should be expected from someone speaking on behalf of a party which has already made fundamental choices for ideological reasons and is therefore impervious to the truth.
The truth is that, last year, 433,000 new jobs were created in Canada. This is actual job creation, not just idle talk. In Quebec, 116,000 jobs. In the National Capital Region, a net total of 16,600 new full time jobs were created in 1994. These are the facts, not a bunch of unsubstantiated claims like those made by the previous speaker.
Yesterday, when the hon. member for Verchères said 14,000 public service jobs would be lost in the Outaouais region, he showed his profound lack of understanding of the region. The truth is that the total job loss resulting from the budget over a three year period will be approximately 3,000, not 14,000.
In all of Canada, 45,000 jobs will be cut but this does not mean people actually losing their jobs because in many cases these jobs will be filled by other employees reassigned as a result of the attrition process. I cannot expect the hon. member opposite to have deep knowledge of government, but I would ask him to at least stick to the facts and analysis. The truth about the budget tabled this week is that it is the only way to promote job creation in the long term.
When the hon. member says that this budget will result in the loss of a few thousand jobs throughout the National Capital Region, he makes it sound like job creation would necessarily ensue if the deficit in the federal budget were allowed to continue to build up. If that were true, Canada would have achieved full employment a long time ago, given its accumulated deficits.
The truth is that this is the only way to avoid hitting the wall like New Zealand did. In just a few months, New Zealand had to cut its public service by two thirds, not a mere 14 per cent like us. Our public service will continue to operate with 86 per cent of its employees in three years. Because New Zealand acted along the lines of what the hon. member opposite recommends, it had to cut its public service by two thirds. These are historical facts, not empty words like those spoken by the hon. member.
By shrinking the size of the federal government, which was long overdue, by forcing ourselves to streamline and downsize government, we are ensuring that the 1994 job creation effort can continue.
If we had carried on with the deficit that we had, the rise in interest rates would very quickly have prevented investments in the private sector, thereby also preventing the creation of jobs. What we did was to foster the economic climate which will promote investments and new jobs in the private sector.
The member opposite has no idea of what is going on in the Outaouais, which is my region, when he says that the federal government is keeping it in a state of dependency. If you look at the 1971 census figures, you will see that, back then, one third of all the jobs for our region were in the public service. By comparison, last year only one fifth of the jobs in the Outaouais were in the public service.
In other words, 80 per cent of the jobs in our region are not in the public service. In the national capital region, there are more jobs in the service sector than in the federal government. It is based on that necessary economic diversification that our government developed a plan for the region which will allow the private sector to create jobs that are needed and that will reduce the excessive burden on taxpayers, since the federal public service had become too big.
I have a question for the member opposite regarding dairy producers. Quebec provides 48 per cent of the milk production in Canada and it exports that production elsewhere in the country. Should the province separate, where would it sell its milk, which costs two to three times more than the milk which we could get from the United States? It goes without saying that the rest of Canada would buy its milk at a cheaper price. Quebec's separation would totally destroy its dairy industry. While the federal government adjusts prices at the national level over a certain period of time, the member opposite wants to destroy the dairy industry in Quebec.
As regards public servants, the actual number is 3,000 for the Outaouais, taking into account the five provincial and three federal ridings. We are told that Quebec would absorb the federal public servants, there are 50,000 of them, plus the other 50,000 public servants they already have. They put the 3,000 public servants from the Outaouais and the 100,000 for all of Quebec in the same boat. These people would want us to believe that they will absorb all these public servants, a measure which would cost them $4.4 billion.
Given the analysis made by the hon. member, my question is this: Does he know Quebec sufficiently well to hope to create a better future than the one that we, federalists, have found to be adequate for over 125 years?