Mr. Speaker, the speech from the throne indicates the Liberals have not delivered on one promise they made in the last election campaign so they are making these promises one more time.
The Liberals have talked about creating jobs. Let us go over the list of jobs they have created. Bell Canada made profits of $502 million last year and laid off 3,100 employees. Petro-Canada made a profit of $196 million and laid off 564 employees. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce made over $1 billion in net profits and laid off 1,289 employees. General Motors made a profit of $1.39 billion yet laid off 2,500 employees.
Shell Oil made profits of $523 million, an increase of 63 per cent over last year, and laid off 471 employees. Imperial Oil made $514 million, which was an increase of 43 per cent over the previous year, and laid off 452 employees. The Bank of Montreal made a $986 million profit, an increase of 20 per cent over 1994, yet laid off 1,428 employees. This is the job creation program of the federal government.
We have seen the government in every field give contributions in terms of tax breaks to these corporations which have a corporate responsibility, a community responsibility to use the profits they make to reinvest in Canada either through capital, through job sustenance or through job creation. This has not been done by the corporations because the Liberal government has allowed it to go unattended. As a matter of fact, the government is encouraging it.
How is the government encouraging it? The corporations I have mentioned have made substantial financial contributions to the Liberal Party. They are large political contributors and what do we get in return? We get the Liberal government turning a blind eye to these very policies which are not job creation policies but job elimination policies.
The speech from the throne, which somebody has more appropriately referred to as the speech from the toilet, is exactly that. It does not seem to address the real problems of Canadians.
On Saturday we saw another disaster with respect to this government policy. On Thursday the Prime Minister in the speech from the throne challenged business to create jobs in Canada. He
pleaded by saying to the business community: "I challenge you to create jobs".
On Friday Conrad Black, a multibillionaire in Canada whose company Hollinger Inc. took possession of the Regina Leader-Post , the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and the Yorkton Enterprise in Saskatchewan. The next day 25 per cent of the employees of all three newspapers were laid off. According to Mr. Black as quoted from the newspaper, the reason was: ``These newspapers made a profit but they didn't make enough profit''.
I am challenging the government, I am challenging the Prime Minister today to define for Canadians how much profit is enough before corporations have to stop laying people off when they are making profits.