Mr. Speaker, Bill C-254 deals with children's rights. I am glad to participate in this debate as the official opposition's critic for training and young people's issues to support the good intentions the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing expressed regarding children's rights in his private member's bill. I find it a little sad that there will only be a debate, and no vote, on his bill.
With issues such as sexual exploitation, child labour, health and education, social assistance, special care for handicapped children and especially when we consider that the bill is based on a convention signed by Canada and on a declaration of rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, it is a little surprising to see that the Liberal government, represented by its parliamentary secretary, has reservations about a bill of this kind. After all, it deals with rights which are, all told, quite basic.
The official opposition does have reservations, however, about certain rights falling under provincial jurisdiction. Take education and health, for example, over which the provinces have exclusive power, as you know. This does not stop us, of course, from agreeing in principle with the provisions of the bill, since the Bloc Quebecois is clearly very much in favour of giving children the best education and health care possible.
It is all well and good to wish to implement the principles of a bill based on a declaration of rights passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 20, 1959, as I said earlier. All well and good, but how does one go about really implementing such a measure?
I will now quote what the current Minister of Human Resources Development said on November 24, 1989, when he was an opposition member, regarding a private member's bill which also dealt with children's rights.
The Minister of Human Resources Development, the hon. member for Winnipeg, said the following: "I ask members to shed the speeches prepared by their departments. Open your eyes and your hearts a little, start looking at the reality of what is going on, and begin to talk about what is the real vocabulary in this country. A day does not go by in this House of Commons that we do not hear ministers or members of the Conservative regime talk about the deficit. That has become the icon of our times: the deficit. I never hear the Minister of Finance talk about the real deficit in this country-" and at the time, he said the real deficit was "-those one million kids in poverty". He went on to say: "That is where we should invest. That is where the real tragedy lies. Ten years from now, these children should be our teachers, business people, politicians and journalists. They will never get there because they will never be able to get started. When one million children live in poverty, that is a considerable loss. That is the big deficit we have to deal with. But nothing is being done to solve this serious problem". This was in 1989.
But what about children today, in 1995? How are they doing? I would like to quote the figures in the latest report from the National Council of Welfare for 1993, in Canada. What does it say? It says that in Canada 1,415,000 children live in poverty, which means that 20.8 per cent of Canadian children are living below the poverty line. There were one million in 1989, and now there are 1,415,000.
In Quebec, 348,000 children live below the poverty line, which means 20.9 per cent or slightly more than the national average. So the situation is getting worse instead of better. If we take the figures for 1981, we see that, since that time, the number of poor children has doubled. In 1981, Statistics Canada set this number at 700,000. This is incredible!
So if we have poor children in this country, it is because their parents are poor. There are no poor children without poor parents. So what has the Minister of Human Resources Development done since he was appointed a year and a half ago to remedy the situation, the same man who, in a speech in November 1989, condemned the Conservative government's failure to act in this respect? He said we should drop all our prepared speeches and start speaking from the heart and do something about the problem.
We saw the minister make cuts in unemployment insurance totalling $2.5 billion, so that the Minister of Finance could balance his latest budget, meaning that the budget would come in right on target. This was done by cutting unemployment insurance. Mr. Speaker, do you really think that by cutting unemployment insurance, by hitting the families of the unemployed, we have helped to reduce child poverty in Canada? Everyone knows the answer to that.
Was that the end of it? It was not just $2.5 billion. He also announced it would be $2.5 billion annually, in other words $7.5 billion over three years. That was just the first year. So what does the Minister of Finance have in store for this year?
Additional cuts which may get worse, starting with next year's budget. So we may be talking about a cut in social programs totalling $15 billion since the Liberal government came to power, in other words, the $7.5 billion that have already been announced and another $7.5 billion in the future.
Social programs include more than just unemployment insurance. There is also, of course, the federal contribution to welfare which may be as much as 50 per cent. Will cutting and freezing transfer payments to the provinces for social welfare financing help reduce child poverty in Canada?
I think the answer is obviously no. There are other serious situations. In the end, however, many children are poor because of the increasing number of single parent families here. In Canada, 453,000 children live below the poverty line because their mother is the head of a single parent household. Ninety per cent of children living with single mothers are living below the poverty line.
Worse yet, increasing numbers of couples with children are finding themselves living off only one salary. For those earning only minimum wage, the breadwinner would have to work 73 hours a week just to stay above the poverty line. Does this situation indicate an improvement in the child poverty situation? No, Mr. Speaker.
Unfortunately, beyond the speeches and beyond the principles and good intentions of the hon. member presenting this motion, there is the matter of applicability and implementation and, in the end, of the government's political will to really work to reduce child poverty.
I would like to talk to you about a situation in Quebec. Particular efforts have been made in Quebec to protect young people. There are rehabilitation services. When I was a member of the committee on human resources development, I noted that, in many provinces, people asked us about services available in Quebec, which seemed to spark some jealousy in certain provinces. In a way, I say so much the better. True, Quebecers are very proud of their social programs in general.
Many people talk about the rights of children. Of course, I agree with them but I think that we should start right here in Canada and in our democratic societies to teach our children about their responsibilities with regard to the rights of others, particularly the people in their families, their communities and their schools, and their responsibilities to themselves. We should make every effort to ensure that our children can improve their knowledge while learning how to exercise their right to criticize, even at a young age, public policies in Canada and everywhere else.