Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to the budget that was brought down Monday by the Minister of Finance.
Not that I am particularly pleased with the provisions it contains, far from it. Nevertheless, I feel it is my duty as a parliamentarian to engage in a critical analysis of the budgetary measures proposed by the government and to report on my conclusions in this House. I admit it was not very difficult to be critical of a budget I would qualify as insidious and inequitable.
This budget is disappointing in several respects, and perhaps I may elaborate.
I think that first of all, it can be said that the budget contains no specific measures for economic recovery and job creation, which is unusual, to say the least, considering the government's emphasis on these issues. Need I recall that during the election campaign in 1993, the Liberal Party promised it would champion job creation and fight unemployment?
My constituents, Quebecers and Canadians are still waiting for this vigorous recovery and the jobs promised in the Liberal Party's red book, which the Prime Minister brandished repeatedly as a sure fire recipe for prosperity. There is nothing new in this budget to create jobs and worse, the Liberal government has, without any compunction, made cuts in the only sizeable job creation program it managed to come up with so far, and I am referring to the infrastructure program.
This program was supposed to create nearly 45,000 jobs-temporary jobs-over a period of three years. The budget intends to cut about $200 million from this program over the next three years, which will inevitably result in the withdrawal of equivalent amounts by participating provinces and municipalities. So altogether, $600 million less will be spent on job creation over the next three years.
What is more, the government is virtually cancelling out the expected effects of the infrastructure program by laying off some 45,000 public servants over the next three years. This is exactly the number of temporary jobs that this program was to create, before it was announced that the program would be spread over five years.
Clearly this budget is continuing the practice instituted by the previous government of going after the unemployed instead of tackling unemployment itself. For instance, despite a significant surplus in the unemployment insurance fund, the government is announcing cuts of 10 per cent in the unemployment insurance budget. Needless to say the federal government is on the wrong track if it thinks that this sort of measure will help find work for the some 800,000 people who are unemployed and looking for work in Quebec.
While the fight against the deficit is being waged on the backs of the unemployed and public servants in the government's budget, and I will definitely come back to this point later on, we must also recognize that it is being waged at a cost to the provinces.
With its brief passages in French alluding clearly to the referendum, the Minister of Finance's speech spoke of the dynamic and changing nature of Canadian federalism based on the pseudo decentralization project, which is nothing more than a hollow promise and a huge operation to dump the federal deficit into the laps of the provinces. They will have no choice but to cut public services and increase income or other taxes or pass the cost on to the municipalities.
Not wanting to spoil its chances in the upcoming referendum, the federal government is taking great care to put off its sinister plan to make massive cuts in transfers to the provinces until next year, that is, until after the referendum. It will be cutting $2.5 billion in 1996-97 and $4.5 billion in 1997-98. And the $7 billion cuts announced in the 1995 budget will be in addition to the $48 billion cuts in transfers to the provinces since 1982 and the $2 billion cuts in the 1994-95 budget.
The worst part of it all is that the provinces will have to continue to meet the standards defined by Ottawa. Those that fail to do so will be immediately deprived of what remains of federal funding, that is an increasingly paltry amount.
Furthermore, this so-called decentralization program will certainly not eliminate duplication, there will always be two ministers of health, two ministers of natural resources, of the environment, of revenue, etc. The alleged project to give more power to the provinces is hollow, because the federal government is not withdrawing from areas that come under provincial jurisdiction in exchange for a share of the taxes we pay to Ottawa. Is federalism cost effective?
For Quebec in 1996-97, these forecasts represent a reduction of almost $700 million or 27.1 per cent of the cuts made to all the provinces. The federal government's way of proceeding in this regard will obviously have a definite impact on public finances in Quebec. Deprived of part of its revenues, which I might add were earmarked for welfare, health and post-secondary education, the Quebec government will be left no alternative other than to make drastic cuts in its own spending, not to reduce its own deficit, but simply to make up for the shortfall due to the drop in federal transfers. Quebec will obviously not be spared in the round of cuts planned for 1997-98. In looking at the Martin budget, the more one reads the more one realizes that it is more of a curse than a blessing to the people of Quebec.
The same can be said for the federal public service and more specifically for the Outaouais which feels it has been given an especially rough ride by the federal budget. The government has shown itself to be extremely insensitive in announcing the elimination of 45,000 jobs in the Canadian public service over three years. Of these 45,000 jobs to be cut during the next three years, some 14,000 will be in the Hull-Ottawa area, nearly one third of jobs cut in the whole country. It is easy to see that this decision would have a direct and very negative impact on the economy and social life in the area.
Of the cutbacks expected to total $29 billion over the next three years, the federal government intends to cut nearly $16.9 billion from the management and operations of its programs. So the federal deficit will to a large extent be reduced on the backs of federal public servants, especially those in the Outaouais region.
Even more unacceptable is the fact that the federal government knowingly made the Outaouais region economically dependent on it. Seeking to generate in Quebec and especially in the Outaouais a sense of belonging to Canada, the federal government began by creating the National Capital Commission in 1958. Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government, eager to give concrete proof of French Power as a means of hampering the sovereignist movement in Quebec, proceeded to implant a large number of federal government buildings on the Quebec shore of the Ottawa River in the 1970s. Probably taking the region for granted, the federal government seems to have no qualms about leaving the region to fend for itself in the wake of the disastrous cuts it announced. To repeat the jest made by the Quebec finance minister, which I feel hit the mark, the federal government is acting like a guy who gets a girl pregnant and then takes off.
I agree with the Coalition des associations économiques de l'Outaouais, which is of the opinion that the federal government must assume responsibility for the region. It must help to absorb the shock of budgetary decisions on the Outaouais region, just like it does when there is a shortage of fish in the Atlantic or a drought in the Western prairies, by giving the region a one-time payment to be put in a fund for diversifying the region's economy. Unless I am mistaken, the budget makes no mention of such a compensation which, by rights, should be paid to the region. Does the government intend-and I see that the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, who is responsible for looking after the region, is sneaking out-does the government intend to give-