Mr. Speaker, I could hardly wait to rise in the House on this allotted day to take part in the debate on an issue which is crucial not only in Quebec but especially in Quebec.
Let me read you the motion, because I think it is important to put this debate in its proper perspective, especially since our Liberal colleagues seem to get lost in all kinds of considerations. The motion put forward reads as follows:
That this House denounce the will of the federal government to restrict the provinces to the role of mere consultant by imposing on them new national standards for all social programs through the introduction of the Canada Social Transfer, which will enable the federal government to interfere even more in such areas as health, post-secondary education and social assistance, all of which come under exclusive provincial jurisdiction.
That is under our current Constitution, of course. This is the motion now before the House.
First of all, I would like to say how stunned I was to see that the Minister of Finance was the main spokesperson for the government, the individual chosen by the members of the government to speak on their behalf at the beginning of this debate, even though the motion concerns the Minister of Human Resources Development more directly.
Where is the Minister of Human Resources Development? Why is he not taking part in this crucial debate where we would be very pleased to hear what he has to say about the federal policies and their impact on areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction? In my humble opinion, I think the Minister of Human Resources Development should be called the Minister of Human Resources Discouragement and Impoverishment, because that is exactly what he is.
We are now faced with a government whose main objective is to pick on the destitute. They were elected under false pretences, because during the election campaign, they said they would defend our social programs, the permanence of our social programs and the rights of the poorest members of our society. Right after the election, in his first budget, the Minister of Finance, or rather the minister of provincial impoverishment, made cuts in transfers to the provinces and in unemployment insurance, and as if this was not enough, he struck again in his second budget with even greater force.
Last weekend, I was shocked, as were, I am sure, the majority of Quebecers, to hear the Prime Minister criticize the Quebec P.Q. government and all the sovereignists for focusing the debate on the Constitution instead of tackling the real problems facing all Canadians and particularly Quebecers, problems such as the high levels of unemployment that we are experiencing these days.
I was shocked because the Prime Minister and several of his colleagues are constantly saying in this House and elsewhere that if the Constitution is being discussed in Quebec right now, it is because of the sovereignists. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is sheer hypocrisy. The Liberals who are saying this are nothing but hypocrites. They say things that they know are
not true. They know full well that, over the last thirty years, it is the federalists who have fuelled the constitutional debate.
I will simply cite some figures to demonstrate how much the federalists, and not the sovereignists, have negotiated, gossiped and wasted time over the past few years on the issue of the constitution. Please allow me to cite some very telling figures.
Between 1960 and 1992, they held 56 conferences, sessions and meetings. It was getting so ridiculous that they had to keep presenting them under a different light to try to ensure that the population did not realize what was really going on. And I am only talking about meetings at the political and not the departmental level. I am talking about all of the energy spent by the ministers of the federal government in each of the provinces to prepare for these meetings and to follow up on them.
There have been a total of 19 commissions, committees, working and advisory groups, for example, the Laurendau-Dunton Commission at the end of the 1960s, the Pépin-Robarts Commission in the 1970s, and the plethora of consultation panels leading up to the demise of the Meech Lake Accord and the breakdown of the Charlottetown negotiations. Nineteen commissions since 1965, all of them at the political level.
Now, on to the cases which have come before the Supreme Court of Canada regarding the constitution. A total of 212 cases, notices and rulings by the court affecting the federal government and a provincial government. That is the result of the constitutional debate led by and for federalists. And this leads me to conclude that the federalists, particularly the Liberal Party, of which the Prime Minister has been a member for at least 30 years, and this Liberal government have been and still are responsible for keeping the constitution industry alive and well. They have sunk billions of dollars into it, which has contributed to the enormous debt we now face.
That is our real constitutional problem. We sovereignists do not want to talk about the Canadian Constitution. We are proposing a solution to our current problems. What we want is our own Quebec constitution, which is what we were told in February by 50,000 men and women across Quebec. They came to tell us about the values on which Quebec society should base its constitution.
There is a very broad consensus on the subject among the people of Quebec. We as sovereignists have a way to solve the constitutional problem. We do not want to talk about the Constitution, about constitutional renewal or fence mending. We want to propose a definitive solution.
Mr. Speaker, in concluding I would like to give an example of the impact of the Canada Social Transfer, of what happens when the government interferes in areas under provincial jurisdiction. Consider post-secondary education, an area over which the provinces have sole jurisdiction. According to the federal government's policy, the policy of the Minister of Human Resources Development, transfer payments to the provinces for post-secondary education will be cut while, of course, certain standards will be set, which was unheard of in the past.
This would include reducing the amounts of bursaries, obliging universities to raise their tuition fees and letting students borrow more. It seems to me that what the federal government, after putting us into debt over our ears, to the tune of more than $500 billion, what the Liberals and the Minister of Human Resources depletion are suggesting now is to let students get into debt individually as well.
Now that we are in the hole as a country, they are telling students to do likewise. That is the federal government's policy and that is what this motion wants to condemn today.