Mr. Speaker, you may be sure that if the official opposition has decided to dedicate one of its opposition days to research and development, it is because we have very serious reasons for wanting to see corrective action taken. I hope that the Minister of Natural Resources, who we just heard is going to take part in the debate, will understand fully the gravity of the situation.
Before going into detail, I know that my colleague, the member for Verchères, will give a complete picture of the discrimination being suffered by the Canadian Centre for Magnetic Fusion, since, as you know, the government is getting ready to close down unilaterally what is undoubtedly one, if not the, major natural sciences facility in Quebec.
I hope that the minister will take advantage of this debate to honour a commitment she made when she appeared before the natural resources sub-committee, and give a solemn undertaking to find alternative funding, because that is the solution.
We can understand that the government must put its fiscal house in order. But why is it that for decades now-in fact, it started with the creation of the National Research Council of Canada in the 1950s-Quebec has systematically and consistently lost out when it comes to research and development?
So that it is very clear what we are talking about during the debate, I would like to propose that we define research and development as work that is creative in nature and that is carried out in a systematic fashion in order to increase the stock of knowledge or devise new applications for this knowledge.
Why is research and development so important and why have all industrialized countries that have taken charge of their development been concerned with having a rigorous and consistent policy, which incidentally is not the case for Canada, which, as we speak, still has no systematic research and development policy? Unbelievably, its policy is completely ad hoc.
Research and development is important because it adds to knowledge, and it adds to value added, obviously enabling us to establish links with the important export sector.
It is nonetheless very obvious that Canada's research and development performance is very weak, and I am anxious to hear what the Minister of Natural Resources has to say about this, because all industrialized countries do R and D. On average,
industrialized countries devote 2.3 per cent of their GDP to research and development policies or investments.
Imagine, for a few years already, Canada has been stagnating with investments amounting to 1.5 per cent. Simply put, of all industrialized countries, only Italy, Iceland and Ireland show a worse performance than Canada. Sweden, Japan, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and Austria perform better than Canada with regard to R & D.
What is worrisome and should bring Quebec ministers to spring into action is the systemic discrimination against Quebec regarding R & D. Some would say that, looking at the system as a whole, there might be some discrepancies in certain sectors, which is acceptable.
But who in the government, which minister is going to be frank and lucid enough to explain to us how it is that there is a four billion dollar a year difference between investments made by the federal government in a province like Ontario and its investments in Quebec? How can that be explained?
I know that the Minister of Natural Resources will be at a loss to explain this. How can she explain that, year in and year out, there are between 25 and 30 federal research laboratories in Quebec and close to 80 in Ontario? Are there factors we should know about which could explain this state of affairs?
I will give you more precise numbers to show that, if the official opposition has decided to talk about R & D, it is not on a whim, it is not because we think that this is only a bad stretch we have to go through.
The Minister of Natural Resources, who is the most incendiary of all ministers in this government, must be aware of the discrimination Quebec has been the victim of for the last three decades. The government's systematic interventions and policies in this respect started in the 1950s and have been going on now for three, almost four decades.
It found a way to concentrate most of its investments in what the member for Rimouski-Témiscouata rightly called intra muros projects; namely, the federal government spends around seven billion dollars on its R & D policies according to two principles. It does it in its laboratories, the number of which is estimated at about 177.
The natural resources minister will certainly share the indignation I feel when I see that the government did not see fit to establish a regional development policy in the area of research and development. Had it been serious, it would have ensured that Atlantic Canada, western Canada, Ontario and Quebec could benefit equally from investments in R and D.
I understand this is not a mathematical question. But when there is a difference such as the one that exists between Quebec and Ontario, a difference supported by the government, what are we to think? I challenge the minister. When we analysed the merits of the Canadian Centre for Magnetic Fusion project, which involved Hydro-Quebec and the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, what scientist in Quebec would have thought that somebody would be foolhardy enough-and I think irresponsible would be the right word to use here-to cancel such a project?
Everybody agrees that the minister was a brilliant lawyer in the past and I challenge her to rise in this House and name one scientist in Quebec who supports her decision. The fact is that there are two major research and development projects in Quebec: the Canadian Space Agency, whose $300 million budget was reduced to about $200 million, and the Varennes project.
It is quite simple: in the area of research and development, especially natural sciences, whenever we looked for examples of major projects, we had two of them before us: the Canadian Space Agency, which was cut, and the project under the responsibility of the Minister of Natural Resources.
The merits of this project were unanimously recognized, first of all, because $70 million was invested in infrastructure and second, because 100 researchers with Ph. D.'s in engineering, in physics and in other fields that are extremely important to economic development were involved.
Everyone was in favour. The whole scientific community had hopes of a promising future for this project. Then, without warning, the government had the nerve to unilaterally and shamelessly cut one of Quebec's most promising projects. That is what federalism means in the area of research and development: the inability to arbitrate, to strike a balance that could have helped Quebec in the past and that could still help it today.
What corrective measures is the government proposing? In fact, the whole history of research and development since the 1950s is a history of systemic discrimination against Quebec. Let me say, in closing, that only in one program did Quebec play a significant role: the Defence Industry Productivity Program or DIPP, which is understandable since the Canadian aerospace and aircraft manufacturing industries are concentrated in Montreal. Believe it or not, this government has the nerve and the chutzpah to dismantle this program, so that Quebec is now losing out in all areas of research and development.