Mr. Speaker, as I was saying earlier, the residents of Brome-Missisquoi will be glad to know that they can still depend on their hon. member and on the federal government for help if they want to start a small business.
The people in Brome-Missisquoi are known for their entrepreneurship and their capacity to develop new niches and to adapt quickly to new sets of rules on the world market.
I want to get back to spending. Expenditures at National Defence will also be drastically reduced. Business subsidies have been cut by 60 per cent. Because of the deficit and our current financial situation, we can no longer afford to maintain subsidies introduced ten years ago, which are now eroding our capacity to adapt, to diversify and to remain competitive.
We will also transfer certain programs to other levels of government and privatize some of our operations. For example, airports and marinas will be transferred to local authorities and CN will be privatized this year. Moreover, and this is very important, departments will have to prepare three-year business plans, which will be subject to parliamentary and public scrutiny.
The federal government is cleaning up its backyard, but other levels of government must do the same. The provinces will have to review their programs also.
Speaking of cleaning up, I urge the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot to do some cleaning-up in his own mind. During his remarks this morning, I heard him criticize the way some Quebec members have voted. This is the budget of a responsible government that knows exactly where it is going. Does the Bloc know where it is going? They are preparing to hold a referendum so that they do not have to sit here anymore, but at the same time they are trying to ensure that Quebec will have 25 per cent of the seats in the House. This is hypocrisy. Do they want to stay or do they want to leave?
I believe in a flexible federalism, a federalism based on dialogue and consensus, not on hypocrisy. Members of the Bloc know full well that it takes a constitutional amendment to change the rules of the game between the various levels of government, but they are still trying not only to confuse people, but to provoke them. We had an opportunity to see, when the vote on the Bloc's motion was taken, the kind of contempt that members of the Bloc feel toward those who do not share their views. It bodes well for the referendum. The remarks made today by the member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot show once again that, for the Bloc Quebecois and the Parti Quebecois, it is just «believe it or die».
The constitution of our country, Canada, guarantees a minimum of 75 seats for Quebec. I hope that Bloc members, after their defeat in the referendum, will have the decency to separate themselves from this House and go back to Quebec to work real hard at helping Quebec population grow. I might indicate to them that there are many ways to go about it, one of which is certainly not to maintain a political and economic climate contaminated by the Bloc, but rather to foster job creation in a strong economy. Then, Quebec will be strong in the true sense for Canada and within Canada, and we will no longer remember the hypocritical tactics devised by the Bloc members and their cousins in the PQ.
To get back to the budget, there is also the new Canadian social transfer. Globally, the major transfers, including equalization payments-which, for that matter, are not affected by this budget-will be 4.4 per cent lower than what they are now. At the same time, the other spending reductions the federal government is imposing on itself will reach 7.3 per cent, almost twice as much.
To summarize the budget, it proposes to reduce spending by $7 for every $1 increase in revenue. The in-depth reorganization of the machinery of government announced in the budget confirms the faith of the people of Brome-Missisquoi in a flexible federalism evolving in a secure environment for all the classes of citizens, young people, students, families and seniors, and also in a secure environment with regard to our political and trade relationships with all our neighbours, who are well aware of the rules of the game here in Canada.