Madam Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise at this stage in the debate, especially after a speech by the Reform Party on a very important motion tabled by the Bloc Quebecois.
I think that we should put the cards on the table and look at what is really happening. The motion is very clear. It is aimed at denouncing the federal government's delay in paying the money it owes Quebec. This government owes Quebec $79 million as a result of the Oka crisis, $135 million under the 1991-92 stabilization program, and $119 million for problems related to
the education of young aboriginal people in northern Quebec. The Minister of Indian Affairs and the federal government know that these amounts are owed, but they are not doing anything about it.
It is normal for the Bloc Quebecois, for Quebec MPs elected by Quebecers to defend Quebec's interests in Ottawa, to table such a motion on an opposition day, because it is in the news. This week, a Quebec official met with her federal counterpart to claim the tidy sum of $333 million. You expect us to remain silent while this is going on? No way. We have been sent here with a clear mandate, which we intend to fulfil, and we will fight for this money because it is owed to Quebec. We will work to get it.
Again, this issue gives us the opportunity to show clearly that Quebecers made a very definite choice in the last federal election because, as you know, Madam Speaker, this issue has been dragging on for years. Let me take a minute to give you some background information. We did not make anything up. The Bloc Quebecois and the big bad separatists in Quebec had nothing to do with this. Once upon a time, there was a federalist government called the Bourassa government in Quebec; it was a Liberal government. In the last Liberal budget tabled in the Province of Quebec, the Bourassa government indicated that the federal government owed $300 million to Quebec.
Is this something that big bad separatists made up? No, Madam Speaker. If the allies of our friends opposite, those who will share their platform in the Quebec referendum scheduled for this year, if the Liberals mentioned this $300 million in their budget-and we know that they are pals with our friends opposite-it is because this amount is really owed. It remains to be paid.
I had a prepared speech but I think that I will set it aside and speak from the heart instead, because this is much too important an issue. I think you can push, but only so far. Our motion refers to three demands of the highest importance. Let us look at them one at a time.
First, there is the Oka crisis. What was this crisis? Well, Oka is in Quebec. Certain Indians claimed a strip of land in that area in the 1990s, and the Quebec provincial police, as well as the Canadian Armed Forces, had to be called in. The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs said so himself. He reported having spent $122 million on these measures. And we are supposed to believe that these were not emergency measures related to a disaster, that, to use his own words, public order and public good are slightly different?
If it were strictly a matter of public good, what was the army doing there? Why did the government spend $122 million? Can you tell me, Madam Speaker? Because there was an element of public order involved, which is directly covered by federal-provincial agreement in the definition of disaster. This may sound like a strange term, disaster, but that is what the agreement says, and letters were even exchanged by the two levels of government, in which the federal government recognized the events in Oka were a disaster under the terms of the agreement.
Correspondence exchanged between the provincial Liberal government and the federal Conservative government at the time provides that the Oka crisis is covered by that agreement. An amount of $139 million was spent on that in Quebec. How did the federal government pay its debt? It gave $5.3 million. Then, it said: "The federal government is acting in good faith. It would pay the total bill, but the issue relates to public good, not public order". Such an interpretation can only be made in bad faith. When $122 million was spent because of the existence of a threat to the public, either the federal government pays the full amount or, if it does not want to respect its own agreements or thinks that it will not be able to fulfil its commitment, it should not sign such agreements with the provinces. This is what is deplorable.
Governments, whether they are Conservative or Liberal, are all the same. In fact, whether we are talking about the Conservatives, the Liberals or the Reform Party, it is all the same when it comes to looking after Quebec's interests. They are all opposed to these interests. This is the case and we have a very good example of that here, where Reform, Liberal, and Conservative members are working hand in hand. They belong to different parties, but they all react in the same manner regarding this issue. They are all opposed to Quebec's interests.
They put Quebec in its place. That is what federalists want to do, put Quebec in its place, and that is what they have been doing for 30 years. And then, they wonder why there is a sovereignist movement in Quebec.
There is a very precise order to the events in the Oka crisis. All the ministers who dealt with that issue have that correspondence. They know that the $139.7 million Quebec spent on that issue was not money spent for a futile purpose; it was spent to maintain public order. There was a major crisis going on. Those events involved the death of one person, and there was the need to intervene. That is why that money was spent, through the Quebec provincial police force.
It must be remembered that there is a provincial police force in Quebec. The province provides its own police services. What would have happened, say, if such a crisis had taken place in Manitoba, a province without a provincial police force? The events would have been monitored by the RCMP. Who would have paid? The federal government. Would the federal government have passed the $139.7 million bill on to the province of Manitoba? I doubt it.
Let us look at what is going on now with federal-provincial agreements on law enforcement services between that province and the federal government. The federal government provides police officers, and pays them, but it cannot even pass on the bill to get full payment for the services it provides to that province. Some might think that the member for Berthier-Montcalm is putting forward figures without knowing what he is talking about, but those are not my figures. The Solicitor General of Canada is the one who pointed them out. The solicitor general has been saying year in and year out: "You cannot even recover all the costs of the RCMP services you are providing, and you should".
And then, we are told that in a case like the Oka crisis that could have happened anywhere in Canada, the whole bill should be passed on to the province. Madam Speaker, this could only happen here. It could only happen in Quebec. It is the only province that has to argue to have the federal government pay its bills. We should not forget the Charlottetown referendum. How many times did we have to raise the issue in this House in order to get the federal government to pay the $35 million it owed? Quebec paid twice for that referendum that was forced upon it. The federal government imposed that referendum, and we had to pay for it twice.
It is only when the government opposite examined the issue, set aside its political interests and partisan considerations that it handed a $35 million cheque to Quebec, because that claim was indeed justified.
The situation is exactly the same with the Oka crisis. Quebec is owed $79 million. Now, who is going to pay?
I would now like to say a few words about the second claim concerning the education of young aboriginals. I am particularly pleased to do so when the minister is here. He will certainly confirm what I have to say.
Is it not strange that, here again, we had agreements between both levels of government on the education of aboriginals? One point should be clear. Aboriginal affairs are a federal jurisdiction. When the federal government steps outside its jurisdiction, we take it to task. What we have here is exclusively under federal jurisdiction. Let the government abide by that nice Canadian constitution it so eagerly defends in the House. Let it honour its signature. Here again, we have a federal-provincial agreement under which the federal government is supposed to pay 75 per cent of costs and Quebec 25 per cent. The minister gave an excellent explanation earlier. A few young whites live on the reserve, and their education is a provincial jurisdiction. Therefore, Quebec should pay for their education.
The federal government should also pay for the natives living on that reserve and on all the reserves in northern Quebec. Following the James Bay agreement, both levels of government reached an excellent agreement under which the federal government and the province of Quebec split some of the costs.
Between 1978 and 1987, this approach worked very well. The federal always paid as soon as it received the bill sent by the Quebec government. In 1987, the federal government stopped paying. Why? Because it argued that the bill was too high and that the expenses had increased too much. Why had these expenses increased? Simply because the birth rate has increased on the reserve as well as the number of young natives, and more natives had gone back to school. The Quebec government was providing more education services and more classes to the natives. So, the federal government said: "Oh no, the expenses have gotten out of hand; we will no longer pay".
Today, the minister had the nerve to say: "Look, we are acting in good faith. We paid $450 million". Yes, but they stopped paying in 1987. Is that what he calls acting in good faith? Is that what flexible federalism is all about? Is this the kind of federalism in front of which we should grovel like the members opposite? Without Canadian federalism, there is no salvation? I do not think so.
In cases like this one, we will still be blamed for defending Quebec's interests, even if the federal government obviously owes us some money. And we are not talking about petty cash here, but rather $119 million. We should give up $119 million without saying anything. This is horrible. It is unacceptable.
What is even more unacceptable is for some members representing Quebec ridings to rise and to criticize us because we are defending Quebec's interests and asking for the money owed to us. We want what is ours. This money is owed to us.
These Quebec members will still rise to try to sweeten things up, to hide the truth and to tell us why they do not have to pay. However, all the documentation we have clearly shows that some agreements were reached and some promises were made by the various levels of government concerned.
This only goes to prove that the system in which we live is awful and cannot work. There are two nations in this country; there are two countries in this country. We are totally unalike. How do you think we can agree when they cannot even respect contracts which they signed? Moreover, they invite us to settle our disagreements in court. "We do not agree, so let us go to court".
We can do that with the United States. A great Canadian like the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs can say to his neighbours who do business with Canada: "Listen, if we cannot reach an agreement, you can always go to court; that is what courts are
for". But, to my knowledge, as long as Quebec does not say yes to sovereignty, as long as Quebec is not a separate country, we are still part of the system.
This is what the so-called flexible federalism is. Is this what the blind advocate of flexible federalism is going to offer us? It is scandalous. I think there is no better way to describe it than to say it is scandalous.
The third claim, and not the least, is an amount of $135 million for the 1991-92 stabilization program. If my memory does not fail me, it was not the big bad separatists who were in power then, it was the Liberals.
Indeed, the Premier of Quebec was the ineffable Robert Bourassa, a federalist well known by our friends opposite, and this man claimed $135 million. That tells you something. If a man like Mr. Bourassa put down in his books that the federal government owed Quebec the sum of $135 million, you need not look any further, it is a minimum. No matter how you calculate it, he was so afraid of displeasing his great federal friends, he so often groveled before the federal government, that if he submitted a claim for $135 million, you can be sure the federal government owed this money to Quebec. There is no need to look any further. We can make all kinds of complicated computations, we can make a balance sheet say what we want, I think everybody here agrees with that.
The fact remains that, if federalists like Robert Bourassa and his cabinet, of which the present Minister of Labour was a member, claimed such an amount, then that was probably the amount due. I would like to hear from the Minister of Labour, who was elected to protect Quebec's interests, since she is very familiar with all the details of the claim. I would like to know what she says to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Does she say that that is the correct amount as she used to claim when she was a member of the Bourassa government? Does she say that Quebec's claims like the one for the Oka crisis, which she certainly knew all about as a member of the Bourassa cabinet, are well founded? Does she say to the intergovernmental affairs minister that the money owed for northern Quebec natives' education should be paid? She was once the Quebec Minister of Education. Does she say it should be paid? Will she rise in the House? I am anxious to see how she will vote tonight on the motion and to see if she defends Quebec's interests as we do because it was for that reason that we were elected. I am anxious to see her on her feet.
The federal government made written and oral commitments to Quebec. It is accountable to the people of Quebec. Moreover, it is the source of some of the problems we are faced with today. The federal government should pay right away what it owes Quebecers. Do the honourable thing and pay what you owe.