Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Québec. I rise to take part in the debate and in the analysis of the budget brought down by the government on March 6. My comments will point to the positive aspects of it, but will also cover its negative side.
We all know that the role of the opposition is not always easy, but it is very effective, because all too often, the government mentions a few positive points, but innocently forgets to mention the negative ones.
I will also speak to the amendment proposed by my colleague, the member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, which summarizes what I have to say very well. It reads as follows:
"the budget statement by the Minister of Finance be rejected by this House because:
it proposes no real job creation initiatives and does not reduce government spending, most notably the approximately $50 million appropriated annually to the Senate;
it uses the Unemployment Insurance Fund surplus to reduce the budget deficit and reduces social transfers to the provinces;
it undermines labour sponsored venture capital funds, such as the FTQ and CSN funds;
it does not propose a transparent process for achieving genuine reform of corporate taxation, or an unequivocal determination to undertake such reform;
it undermines the provinces' fiscal autonomy;
it eliminates subsidies to dairy producers without offering them adequate financial compensation;
it jeopardizes women's financial independence by adopting household income as the basis for determining seniors' benefits".
Whether it is a government, corporate or family budget, a budget acts as a mirror. It helps us evaluate revenues and expenses, identify management strengths and weaknesses and plan for the future. In the present budget, I see no plan for the future. It is the status quo in terms of management and excess in terms of expenditures.
I divide the budget into two parts: short and long term actions. In the short term, there is mention of deficit reduction and the absence of taxes-I consider these positive. The negative aspect is the dumping of federal expenditures onto the provinces through the reduction in transfers to the provinces. It involves the taking over of the unemployment insurance fund. When we need so much money for job creation, when employers and employees alone are paying into the fund, the government simply seizes the fund to pay down its deficit.
Revenues are naturally on the rise because of a certain economic upturn and cuts in the public service.
As far as taxes are concerned, we have been told there will be no increase. Here again, we tend to see this as really positive. However, the down side is that no one is mentioning the cuts in goods and services, which amount to several millions of dollars in revenues. Take, for example, support payments in single parent families, which will bring in between $300 and $400 million.
There is also the reduction from 20 per cent to 15 per cent in the exemption in risk capital investment funds. There are the RRSPs, the seniors' pensions, and we could go on at length naming revenue-providing goods and services that have been cut.
Earlier, the minister spoke of the $60 million allocated to students, but failed to mention the cuts of some $400 million in post-secondary transfers. We can see that it is simply a matter of shifting funds about.
We are told that there are no tax increases. However, a cut here or a reallocation of funds there is often equivalent to much more than a tax increase. Long term measures announced in the budget include the creation of a securities commission, a revenue commission, a health research commission and a SchoolNet program.
All these measures seem very positive at first glance, but they forgot to mention that these are primarily provincial responsibilities and, above all, that they will lead to overlap, waste and absolute spending powers without provincial authorization. What is even more serious is that in 1997-98, the debt will reach $600 billion, $50 billion of which is interest, and the debt is due to this
overlap, this waste and this absolute spending power of the federal government.
Earlier, the member opposite told us that there was no problem, that it is a capital asset, that it is comparable to someone buying a house. I do not see much of a long term capital asset in this overlap and waste.
Imagine, $50 billion. If one could, tomorrow morning, have $50 billion to invest in jobs creation, there would probably be a shortage of workers in Canada. A mere $6 billion was made available for the infrastructure program and several thousand jobs were created. These $6 billion will have to be repaid. The interest on this amount is paid out of revenues, in hard cash. So if every year we had $50 billion to invest in job creation, there would not be enough workers left in Canada.
Unfortunately I believe that the message sent by Quebec the day of the referendum, on October 30, has not been understood by Canada and instead of withdrawing from provincial jurisdictions, instead of decentralizing and stopping wasting money, the government is going in for even more duplication, in particular with such things as the securities commission, the revenue commission, the health research commission and the Internet for every school.
Regarding Internet, the matter was raised in California during the last weekend. Internet will be installed in every school but it will be done by way of general mutual co-operation. Now, I am convinced that here the installation of Internet, which the government wants to have in every school in Canada, will require a huge organization. People will travel from coast to coast to make sure standards are enforced and that the program functions well. We will need more than the $800 million usually spent each year on government travel.
In a nutshell, I see nothing there for employment, debt reduction, taxation or Montreal. Yet, economic raiding has done much harm to Montreal. I could give as examples the construction of the seaway versus the port of Montreal, the Borden commission on the petrochemical industry in eastern Canada, the construction of Mirabel versus the shift in air transportation towards Toronto, and many other examples. In other words, I will conclude by saying that the raison d'être of the Bloc Quebecois, which is the sovereignty of Quebec, makes more and more sense.