Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the prebudget consultations. These consultations are an opportunity for the public to provide input to the government as it gets ready to draw up next year's budget.
This year, the country-wide approach to the consultations gave the temporary impression that the government was open and ready to listen to what people had to say. But that was the extent of the surprise. The reality of the matter can be found in the committee report we are discussing today.
The much-heralded exercise was very simple: take the Liberals' red book II, remove the cover page and tack on a new one that reads Report of the Standing Committee on Finance.
That is exactly what it contains: the same reasoning, the same promises, the same spending and the same plans for interfering in provincial areas of jurisdiction. In short, the entire consultation exercise was a sham, because the report is nothing more than a rehash of the Liberals' last election platform
To set the record straight, I would like to remind the government what the people of Quebec and of Canada want to see in the Minister of Finance's next budget. We in the Bloc Quebecois have appended a dissenting report to the finance committee's report. I would like to give an idea of what we are calling for in the next budget.
We want the Minister of Finance to pass seven specific measures. These measures represent the consensus of Quebec's stakeholders during the prebudget consultations.
First, the government must quit interfering in provincial spheres of jurisdiction, such as health, education and social security. It must drop the idea of creating new programs in areas of jurisdiction that would only multiply bureaucratic structures, not to mention driving up costs for taxpayers.
The Minister of Finance must instead use some of the spare funds that he frees up over the coming years to pay back part of what he took from the provinces for postsecondary education, health and social assistance.
Second, the federal government must reform the present employment insurance system to put an end to the injustices created by this program and to provide better protection for the workers of Quebec and Canada, especially seasonal workers.
The Bloc also calls on the Minister of Finance to greatly reduce employment insurance premiums, based on a company's performance in job creation. This reduction in rates could represent 40 cents for every $100 of the total insurable payroll.
The Minister of Finance must also create an employment insurance fund which is separate from the federal government consolidated fund, as proposed by the Auditor General of Canada, so that money from the workers and the employers is not used to artificially reduce the deficit.
Third, the federal government must stimulate job creation and commit to seriously fight against poverty. The Bloc Quebecois, along with many stakeholders in Quebec, is calling for a major reform of personal and corporate income tax through which these objectives could be achieved, while implementing targeted tax reductions for individuals and small and medium size companies.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention now, as I forgot to do so at the beginning of my speech, that I will be sharing my speaking time with the member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques.
Fourth, the federal government must restore indexing in the tax tables. No indexing is essentially a hidden increase in personal income tax.
Fifth, the Minister of Finance must pass a law to prohibit deficits, like the one passed by the Quebec National Assembly.
As far as the GST is concerned, the Minister of Finance must first accept the arbitration proposal made by the Bloc Quebecois to settle this issue, and, depending on the outcome, he must pay to the government of Quebec the $2 billion in compensation being demanded for harmonizing with the GST.
Seventh, the Minister of Finance must re-establish funding for international assistance. Since 1993, that is since the Liberals came to power, funding for international assistance has been drastically reduced, contrary to Canada's humanist tradition.
Recent consultations clearly indicate that there are now more than ever two completely opposite visions on the role that the federal government should play, with Quebec calling for more powers for the provinces and greater autonomy. The nine other Canadian provinces are calling for stronger action in Ottawa in their areas of jurisdiction. This is what we see in health, education and policies to fight poverty. In Quebec, the federal government's intrusion in these jurisdictions belonging to the government of Quebec is strongly condemned.
Yet, these respective areas of jurisdiction are clearly specified in the Constitution. We said it throughout the last Parliament, and we are repeating it again. The government is once again putting its foot in the door to get into other areas of jurisdiction. We are asking the government to comply with the Constitution of 1867.
We are also asking it to repay the money taken by the Minister of Finance in this respect, while the rest of Canada is asking for Canada-wide programs and national standards from coast to coast. These two competing visions are irreconcilable and a sign of future jurisdictional battles and useless and costly frictions between Quebec and the rest of Canada.
As we know, the first ministers are gathering here in Ottawa this week. Let me tell you what Mr. Bouchard said yesterday at a press conference, when he condemned the federal government's activities in areas of provincial jurisdiction. Mr. Bouchard said that “instead of sprinkling money through new programs in areas of provincial jurisdiction, the Chrétien government would be better off reducing personal income taxes and easing off on the cuts it has been making for years in transfers to the provinces. The finance minister's surplus, said to be somewhere between $4 billion and $6 billion for 1998-99, should be used first and foremost to reduce taxes. Quebeckers and Canadians are being taxed to death. Nothing would have a more positive impact on families and on the economy than quick federal tax relief”.
According to him, the Canadian tax burden is a millstone around the neck of Canadian productivity. Seventy-five percent of the surplus should go to reduce taxes by approximately $100 per taxpayer. One-quarter of the remaining surplus should go to social expenditures, as Ottawa wants to do but through transfer payments to the provinces, transferring tax points instead of creating a series of new programs whose common denominator is interference in areas of provincial jurisdiction.
In Ottawa the premiers want to sell the idea of creating a framework for federal spending powers, a mechanism through which new initiatives by Ottawa would have to be approved by a committee of provincial governments.
So they created a transition fund for science and health, a national pharmacare program, millennium scholarships, a Canadian foundation for innovation, sprinkling a little money here and there to create new programs, just after they cut health care and slashed transfers to the provinces.
They wanted to cut up to $48 billion, and now they are handing us back a piddling $6 billion. Instead of transferring that to the taxpayers who need it, they are trying to create new programs. And who do you think will end up holding the bag with these programs a few years down the road? The federal government's tactic is to pull out of these programs and leave it up to the provinces to administer them, although it created both the programs and the needs. Then it withdraws funding. That is unacceptable.
I wish this government would understand common sense and take away this tax burden it is imposing everywhere. What is of the most concern to me, as I tell people regularly, is that the government is not giving us anything. They are just returning our taxes to us. They should stop distributing their goodies to make us close our eyes to reality; they should stop sprinkling crumbs. The people are hungry, the people want to see a lessening of their tax burden.