Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on the motions in Group No. 6. I believe they were moved by the Reform Party, the Liberal Party, the Bloc and the NDP.
The Bloc motions seek to delete many clauses of the bill, namely clauses 12, 14, 25 and 27 to 61, which would make the bill inoperative as far as those clauses are concerned. As my colleague from Mercier said on several occasions, members will recall that this strategy was used ad nauseam by the current Minister of Human Resources Development when the Conservatives introduced the controversial GST legislation in this House. Members will also recall that the minister himself presented more than 60 amendments to neutralize one by one all the clauses of the bill on the GST.
Following that, the Liberal government promised to "scrap"-of course, I am quoting here-the GST, and this promise resulted in the resignation of a member, a minister and, to some extent, in a loss of confidence of Canadians in this government.
Along with the attempt to delete some clauses, other amendments were also moved. All that allowed us to point out and prove to the population that our fundamental option on this issue is a perfect match for what ought to be the population's best interests. Our main option is to have the bill withdrawn and to start all over from scratch.
Why? Because this bill is utterly unfair. It will result in claimants receiving fewer benefits for shorter periods of time and therefore being forced to go on welfare much sooner.
My colleague for Lévis earlier quoted new statistics from Scotia Bank indicating clearly that the unemployment rate quoted, the one given in the statistics, is not the real rate, because more and more people are not appearing in the statistics on unemployment or elsewhere. They have simply stopped receiving benefits and are not yet getting welfare, although they are headed in that direction.
The bill is also unfair because it will be increasingly difficult to obtain unemployment insurance and because the bill creates two categories of unemployed: the ordinary unemployed and the frequently unemployed, that is, seasonal workers who will not have quite the same rights.
The bill is also somewhat regressive. There has been a lot of talk about the decrease in the maximum insurable earnings from $42,380 to $39,000. What does this mean in reality? It means that people earning over $39,000 will stop contributing. That is, people who earn over $39,000, before, it was $42,000, will contribute less, and the big companies employing them will also pay less. The difference in the amounts is estimated at $1 billion right now. This reduction in contributions will, to be compensated, be transferred to the base of the pyramid, to the lowliest folks, those hardest up and those who work very infrequently. They will be taxed. Their contributions will have to be paid the first hour they work.
So $1 billion from the upper class and the most profitable companies will be transferred to the class of people earning the least and to small and medium size businesses, which are the only ones that create jobs. Therefore, this bill is anti-employment, because employers who have workers earning more than $39,000 and who need people to work 10 per cent overtime will, instead of hiring people who will pay premiums as soon as they start working, prefer to ask those already employed to work overtime. This means there will be no incentive to share work.
From a fiscal or bookkeeping point of view, the surplus of $5 billion will, as we have so often said, show up on the books as government assets when, in actual fact, it is as though the government were garnisheeing wages to artificially reduce its deficit.
Each and every time they address the bill before us, the government has been trying to find a scapegoat.
We all remember what the Prime Minister himself said at least twice in the House. It was two years ago, I think. When asked why public finances were in such a mess, he answered it was the beer-guzzling couch potatoes that were to blame. This made the headlines for a while, but he had just singled out those in the system who were to be targeted by the cuts and let on that they should been ashamed.
Furthermore, my Liberal colleague for Malpeque said this morning, among other things, since he spoke several times, that it would be like encouraging some people to burn down their own houses, to torch the system. But we all know that those who are torching the system are not those at the bottom of the social scale.
They are not on UI benefits. The auditor general has just identified them.
I will just take a few minutes to read an article on what was just found by the auditor general. It made the news for only one day, but I hope there will be more reports on this topic, because it is the tip of a gigantic iceberg. The auditor tells us: "We have examined two advance rulings concerning transfers to the United States of assets worth at least $2 billion held by family trusts in Canada. In our opinion, the transactions these decisions were about"- listen to what the auditor has to say, he is the epitome of diplomac -"have thwarted the legislator's intent"-this means that the law was not abided by, but it is put in very kinds terms-"with regard to taxing capital gains".
This means that $2 billion were transferred from a Canadian family trust to the United States. This case was under review. By making this decision, the government created a precedent, and now, if the decision is not rescinded, everybody will take advantage of it.
Today we put a question to the minister on this very issue. I will repeat the question: The minister has the authority to rescind decisions by Revenue Canada and collect hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in taxes owed to the federal government. Is she going to take action? Her answer was that she had taken action. She was reviewing the case.
In the meantime, billions of dollars are going south and the unemployed, who have hardly any means of support, are being pointed out as parasites. I think it is a case of mistaking identity: the ones who are torching the system are not the ones we think. As a matter of fact, the auditor is not the only one to raise this issue. I will remind the House that he is not a member of the Bloc Quebecois nor the Parti Quebecois, of course.
Yesterday, the Financial Post came out with some astonishing news based on material it obtained, apparently, from Revenue Canada, and I quote:
A federal government report points to news of offshore tax havens by Canadian corporations and says up to 20 per cent of international transactions that should be reported are hidden from Revenue Canada. Who is the problem in this country?
We should not be singling out the unemployed. We should start by collecting the taxes that companies do not pay. I continue.
The study suggests as much as $60 billion-
We hear figures of $500 million, $200 million. We are singling out the unemployed as one of the biggest problems in Canada. We spend a whole week talking about that and, meanwhile, $60 billion have left the country. We have set precedents which will allow this practice to continue. We put questions to the minister and she tells us that she is studying the matter.
People whose unemployment insurance will be cut-and it will come pretty fast-should remember that if they are targeted for cuts, if the government is appropriating the surplus of the unemployment insurance fund to reduce the deficit, it is because billions are leaving the country without any taxes being paid and nothing is being done to prevent it.
I will just read a little bit more:
Total international transactions by banks and trust companies soared to $84 billion in 1991 from $52 billion in the previous year.
Thus there is a constant upward trend. Since coming to the House, from the very first weeks in fact, the Bloc Quebecois has been asking for an exhaustive study of the Canadian taxation system, family trusts and tax havens. What did we get? We have absolutely no idea how many family trusts there are. We have no idea how much money there is in those trusts. However, we know that billions of dollars leave Canada while the unemployed are being used as scapegoats.
As far as tax havens are concerned, we are told the issue will be examined in a few months by people who are the chief users of such tax havens. You can easily understand that we are not enthused about supporting an unemployment insurance reform in such circumstances.