Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking today on the budget, if my Liberal colleagues will give me the chance. There is a place where people may discuss respectfully.
Therefore, with the opportunity afforded me, I would like to show that the 1996 budget does not represent, as they like to say, any additional savings, that it really does not add anything new and that it represents the end of the plan to put the country's finances in order. In this budget, the minister is not cutting expenditures and this year's deficit at all. On the contrary, there is in fact an increase in expenditures of $104 million.
The Minister of Finance is demonstrating the government's indifference. It is as if there was no waste, no duplication and no tax inequity. It is all forgotten; out of sight out of mind.
The government is dumping $7 billion of its 1996-97 and 1997-98 deficit on the provinces. Furthermore, it artificially reduced the deficit by taking the $5 billion surplus from the unemployment insurance account, which is funded entirely by contributions from companies and individuals. It is unacceptable to see the burden of the social programs left to the provinces and to those who forced to depend on them. In matters of employment, the government is deceiving the people, and particularly young people. It claims to be creating jobs and improving the economy, but clearly its measures are either inadequate or totally ineffective.
The Minister of Finance cut funding to student job programs by $26 million over the past two years. And then, all of a sudden, perhaps because of an election year or an election on the horizon, he changes direction. He doubles to $120 million the amount of aid to student programs-an increase of $60 million. Nevertheless, the government is hitting young people by cutting funding to post-secondary education.
The government will reduce funding by $150 million in 1996-97 and by between $400 million and $500 million in 1997-98. This will inevitably lead to an increase in education costs, hence the demonstrations by young people and university students in recent months and years against these draconian cuts. In the end, the students will be the ones paying.
For more than two years now, the Bloc has been calling for an investment fund to promote defence conversion. The Liberals promised $200 million per year over five years starting with 1994, for a total of $1 billion. They made this commitment in the red book and during the election campaign. As is too often the case, this promise was then forgotten. The Minister of Finance is proposing $150 million in 1996-97 and maybe $200 million in 1997-98. We would not be surprised if the $200 million figure was revised downward, as is too often the case.
Furthermore, for two years, the Bloc Quebecois has been calling for a major reform of the business tax system. The government has come forward with the proposal to set up a committee made of tax experts, several of whom would come from businesses already benefiting from tax shelters. We, in the Bloc Quebecois, joked that this was like choosing members of the Hell's Angels because they know how organized crime operates.
It seems obvious that the only purpose of such a committee is to ward off criticism and to pretend to examine the issue. We can already anticipate the conclusions of this committee. They will not contribute anything new. In any case, the members of this inner circle are both judges and judged. We, in the Bloc Quebecois, want fair and equitable reform. To this end, we have been asking since we came to Ottawa for a parliamentary committee to analyze federal policies concerning business taxation.
Regarding these same subsidies to businesses, last year the government substantially reduced assistance to the dairy industry, which is mainly concentrated in Quebec. This year, it is simply abolishing it altogether.
Is the Minister of Finance really aware of the negative impact this measure would have on Quebec agricultural and dairy producers? We already know the answer is no. Does he know that these cuts are excessively dangerous, that Quebec is still the federal government's poor relation? Recently, civil servants who had nothing better to do got this great idea, they would go after raw milk cheese. They had a brainstorm over the Easter break. It would give them something to do. They said to themselves: Let us throw another monkey wrench in there. More often than not, the agricultural sector is the one that has to pay.
The Bloc Quebecois demands that the government get its fiscal house in order by seing to it that those who do not pay their fair share do so.
Mr. Speaker, I must ask you if this is a questions and comments period. If not, I would ask my colleague to please be patient a few minutes before making his clever comments.
When will the government act in a real fair and responsible manner? We have now been waiting for two and a half years.
Last year, unpaid taxes amounted to $6 billion and the government was not even able to do better than the year before. There are lots of funds that the government could recover. But because of its ineptitude, its incompetence, the government too often does nothing at all.
The last estimate of the finance department shows that, as far as business taxes are concerned, the government forgoes nearly $10 billion. When will members of Parliament undertake a thorough review of business taxation? Before anything else, the government must put an end to that type of evasion, that tax dodging.
Part of the deficit reduction is due to the country's economic situation, which is relatively good, not because of the Liberals, but because all G-7 countries are currently enjoying a good situation.
Undeniably, the government is making political hay with this. It is true that exportations are high, interest rates are low and unemployment insurance premiums are higher than payments. However, if the economic context was to change, either because of higher interest rates or a stronger pressure on the unemployment insurance system, the impact would be immediate and catastrophic for public finances. I am convinced we would then see a major change in the Liberal government's attitude.
I am a member of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. As such, I would like to stress that we will have to examine what seems to be the main problem of new exporters, that is financing, whether it is easy to obtain financing. Above all, we will have to establish parameters in order to facilitate access to foreign markets for small and medium size businesses.
According to what he said on page 78 of his Budget Plan, the finance minister seems to be aware of that problem. I would like to know how much of the $50 million injected into the Business Development Bank and the $50 million added to the working capital of the EDC, will go directly and through concrete measures to small and medium size enterprises trying to export?
Government must recognize that Canada is made up of regional markets: atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, the prairies and British Columbia, which are separately integrated into larger trade and economic continental entities. For British Columbia, the northwest United States and the Asia-Pacific area are natural markets.
For Quebec it is another matter altogether. Its favoured markets are North America, 80 per cent of its exports, and Europe, 12 per cent. We should note that for Quebec European markets are three times as important as Asian markets. It is up to individual companies, and not the federal government, to determine, on the basis of their strengths and the nature of their productions, what their export targets should be.
The federal government should limit itself to providing support. Again the priority in the area of assistance to exporting companies should be a better access to financing.
I would like to stress that we believe Quebec and Canada have lost something when they renegotiated the agreement on lumber with the United States. The fact that we agreed to reopen an agreement already in force will probably serve as a precedent for the United States, which will demand the same in other disputes with Canada.
To conclude, I would like to quote an article by Jean-Robert Sansfaçon, published in Le Devoir on Thursday, March 7: ``While Ottawa continues to pretend that it reduced the deficit by cutting expenditures from $120 billion in 1993-94 to $106 billion in 1997-98, a more thorough analysis shows that at least 5 of these $14 billion come from a normal reduction in the number of unemployment recipients due to economic growth, and another $6 billion come from cuts in transfers to the provinces for health, social assistance and post-secondary education. We know that a new recession would make the unemployment insurance fund surplus melt like new snow and, therefore, increase the budget deficit of the government. Like last year, the victims of this budget are the provinces, especially provinces like Quebec''.
This is the reality: The federal government is not assuming its responsibilities, it is transferring to the provinces the burden of making most of the cuts called for in this budget.