Mr. Speaker, we absolutely must take advantage of the government's motion to point out how both the parliamentary process and Liberal promises have made a laughingstock of democracy. The official opposition received a 300-page bill, with 24 hours to look at the text and no explanatory notes.
This is hardly a democratic or a parliamentary way of doing things and shows little respect for the role and the duties of the official opposition and the third party. Their role is to ensure that the government discharges its duties in accordance with its program, the commitments it has made and its legal obligations.
We can hardly say that receiving a 300-page bill on which we are expected to make recommendations the next day is conducive to a serious process, a process that will reassure Canadians. That is the real issue. This government behaves as though it were the only party in this country. No wonder it has stopped showing any concern for human rights in its international relations.
I also want to point out, and we cannot help but repeat this now that an election is in the offing, that the Liberal Party was elected last time thanks to at least two false representations: jobs, jobs, jobs, emplois, emplois, emplois, while the results, despite all the Prime Minister's bragging, are nowhere near meeting existing needs and nowhere near the level reached in 1990.
Two thirds of the drop in the unemployment rate, which is still close to 10 per cent, or as the Prime Minister would say, is no longer 12 per cent, is due to the fact that unemployed workers have left the labour market and have given up looking for jobs.
So the unemployment rate has gone down, but the number of unemployed workers has not. It is worse than that. According to a recent Statistics Canada publication, what happened between December 1994 and December 1995, a period the government likes to brag about in terms of its performance? The bulk of the jobs were created by independent workers, in other words, people who had to start their own business, and of course, we do not know how long that will last, and meanwhile, these people are cut off from all social insurance programs.
"Jobs, jobs, jobs" came with a promise by the government to get rid of the unpopular GST. What do we see? Not only does the government not get rid of the GST, but it busts its britches because the Deputy Prime Minister, who agreed to resign, was re-elected, and the government is now absolved. Well, that is far from the case. We remind the government, the Liberal Party, that it was elected on promises it knew it could not keep.
The example came from way back in the history of the Liberal Party. Mr. Speaker, I do not know how old you are, but you must remember that Prime Minister Trudeau, in his time, ridiculed the Conservative government, which, in a period of high inflation, talked of imposing wage and price controls. Poor JoeClark suffered the slings and arrows of the opposition of the day.
What did Prime Minister Trudeau do a few months later? He imposed wage and price controls. There is a lesson there. It should be repeated in the coming months. The Liberal Party gets elected on promises it does not keep and I dare to suggest that it knows it cannot keep them.
A couple of words to say that this promise will cost Canadians and Quebecers dearly, because in order to appear to keep it more or less, the government reached an agreement with the Atlantic provinces to have them integrate the GST, make it disappear, something it has always opposed. But they will receive, in compensation, $961 million coming out of the pockets of the other provinces. Not only were the promises made deceptive, but it is costing a pretty penny to hide the fact that the government is unable to deliver the goods.
I take some solace, however, in the thought that, in the upcoming election campaign, the Liberal government will probably promise to resolve the Canada-Quebec issue. That is what the government will say, but everyone will know that it will, in fact, be paving the road to Quebec sovereignty. It will promise what it cannot deliver and knows it cannot deliver, but will run on that platform anyway.
We, on the other hand, will be able to remind voters of this fact over and over again and to count on the Liberal government helping us win the next referendum. We want to reassure you however that what we want is to negotiate a partnership with Canada. Our offer remains on the table because we count on your co-operation in the next election.
The Liberal Party is giving a really poor example of democracy, a poor example of the parliamentary system at work.
If I have a moment, I would like to add that the measure adopted by this government that has promised to eliminate the GST on books is in fact mere window dressing so the government can say it eliminated the GST. The truth of the matter is that this government is not going as far as Quebec by extending the tax exemption to all books, not only those bought by organizations involved in literacy programs but also those bought by consumers, but it is once again trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.