Mr. Speaker, I will share my time with the hon. member for Drummond, who will speak during the second half of the period. Afterwards, there will be a 5 minute questions and comments period.
It is my turn to have my say on the last federal budget that was brought down on March 6. During the next 10 minutes, I would like to address certain elements of the budget pertaining essentially to the new Canada social transfer.
We knew since last year that the federal government planned to merge its old cash transfers to provinces into a single new program, the Canada social transfer. This program is a combination of established program financing and the Canada assistance program.
What the government has done is reorganize various transfer programs, establishing a single program and reducing the global envelope. The amount of funds that will be devoted to the Canada social transfer will be $11 billion. By creating this new package, the government is trying to delude us into believing that, in the field of transfer payments, it did not make real cuts. And to come to this twisted conclusion, it ads up the tax points which were given in the past, and it ads up the equalization payments if that can be helpful in certain cases. In short, the government is twisting the facts.
Let us simply look at the figures, the real ones. When it came to power, this government devoted $17 billion to the old programs, the cost shared program for post-secondary education, the Canada assistance plan and the cost shared health program. The government provided $17 billion; this year, it will provide only $11 billion. At one point it was even almost $18 billion. So, it reduced that amount by 6 or 7 billion. It is simple: 17 minus 11 gives 6. It cannot have us believe that it is giving us more money than before. No matter what numbers you add, no matter how you present it, reality speaks for itself.
At the same time, the government is maintaining the same standards. A few minutes ago, an hon. member on the other side said: "We guarantee social security because we are still maintain a presence in the health field to ensure a universal system for all Canadians". What the Liberals do not say is that they ask the provinces to find new ways to give the same services with less money but by applying the same standards. The government
announced its cuts one or two years ago but, in practice, the provinces are the ones that have to live with them.
We see Quebec and Ontario trying to cope with those cuts that were imposed on them. In fact, I am not sure that Canadians are convinced that the federal government is there to ensure an absolute social safety net, as the members opposite claim. The federal government wants to take credit for the good things and pass the bad things on to the provinces. Often in politics, someone will reap the benefits from a situation and have others pay for it. That is the strategy behind the Canada social transfer.
I think that we must be honest with the public and say that the $6 billion in cuts made by the federal government in transfers to the provinces is in money that went to social assistance, health care and education. These are three areas from which the federal government has withdrawn, asking the provinces to make the more surgical cuts.
I now want to deal with the area of post-secondary education. In the case of Quebec, there have been cuts totalling nearly $300 million. The federal government is telling students that it is the institutions and the provincial government which are raising tuition fees, that it has nothing to do with it. Of course, what choice do they have when they end up with $250 to $300 million less? They either have to make substantial cuts in the system or increase tuition fees. For the moment, the Government of Quebec has chosen to try to absorb the cuts without raising tuition fees. But other provinces have had to do it, and Quebec will have to consider doing it also, if the federal government continues to follow this path.
Students are told that there are no cuts, but there is a $250 to $300 million shortfall that, sooner or later, will inevitably result in increased tuition fees or reduced services. At the same time, the government proposes a student summer employment program. Many of us know about that kind of program. When we were students, we all have looked for summer jobs to help pay for our education and to try to gain practical experience in a field related to our field of study.
In its first year in office, the government maintained the funds allocated in this area. Last year, it reduced these funds by about 40 per cent. This year, it is practically doubling these funds to make the annual cuts of $300 million in the case of Quebec less difficult to swallow. The government will pour $60 million more into the summer student employment program for one year only, so it can say: "Look what we are doing for you". It is getting as many political points as it can from these $60 million.
We will see what kind of program the federal government will announce to get more visibility, while cuts are being made in a more indirect way so that somebody else has to deal with them and pay the political price for them.
Figure it out yourself. Take $300 million a year and multiply that by five, ten or even fifteen years if you want, and compare that to $60 million for one year. Will there be more? We will see, but I would be surprised. The government has not said that this was a permanent increase in that program's budget.
So this is a way to make students swallow the bitter pill, to avoid creating too much dissatisfaction among a client group which seriously questions the existence of the federal government and which counts a high percentage of sovereignists in Quebec. The government avoids creating discontent as much as possible among students or tries to make sure they will not be able to clearly understand what is really going on.
I have discussed with some representatives and no one is being fooled. Student associations have a clear picture of what is going on. They too have problems understanding how they come out as winners in such a situation. This does not mean that we should make no financial effort in this sector. We still must have the honesty to recognize what is being done. A budget must not be nothing but words that conceal reality.
In the last two or three minutes I have left, I would like to talk about subsidies to dairy producers. The two regional county municipalities located at the southern and northern ends of my riding, Témiscamingue and Abitibi-Ouest, have numerous dairy producers. The last budget announced a phasing out of subsidies to dairy producers.
This will create a new reality: there will either be a rise in the price of milk or a major income crisis for dairy producers. The federal government would like us to believe that it took this decision in consultation with producers. The government refers to industry and says it talked to industrial entrepreneurs but it never says it talked to producers. This is difficult to accept.
What people accept even less is that at the same time, the federal government has long had an agriculture policy that supported in a very substantial way the grain industry in the West. We had the Western Grain Transportation Act and the Crow rate, known by everyone in the agricultural sector. When the federal government decided to abolish that, generous compensation programs were set up.
For them, there was a transition period, but for Quebec producers, there has just been talk of looking into it, discussing it, but nothing has been done, nothing concrete announced, and no major developments are expected.
How can it be that, when abolition of the Western Grain Transportation Act was announced, compensation mechanisms were already in place? How is it that, when Quebec and eastern Canada are involved-for it is not just Quebec but also part of
Ontario-the thing is impossible, while, when the west was involved, it was an absolute priority?
In the federal government's eyes, right from the start, agriculture has essentially equalled western beef and grain. This is hard for taxpayers in Témiscamingue to swallow, when they are dairy producers or the neighbours of these producers.
This last budget contained something unacceptable to the people in the rural areas of Quebec, and Ontario, and the dairy producers of these areas. The industry is, as we well know, mainly concentrated in Quebec.
I could have spoken about unemployment insurance as well, as many of my colleagues have done, about making use of a $5 billion surplus, year after year, instead of making less of a cut to the benefits paid to the unemployed or to the amounts workers and employers have to pay into the fund, thus injecting more money into the economy and trying to make use of it to revive employment,
Employment was a recurring theme during the campaign, but there is no sign of government action on it between campaigns. This creates a problem, and it is something I hear about constantly from the people in my riding. It worries them a great deal to see that employment is being taxed, because the surplus is being tapped year after year. That $5 billion represents a lot of money that could have been put to another use, instead of reducing the deficit with it.
These are the elements in the budget on which I wished to speak, the ones I see as the most negative. There are also a number of measures that are not bad, but I am sure that the hon. members across the way will enjoy listing them, so I decided to concentrate essentially on those three.