moved:
That this House condemn the federal government which, because of its policies, is in large measure responsible for increasing poverty in the regions of Quebec, especially the loss of 10,000 jobs at Canada Post; the offloading of regional airports and ports without adequate financial compensation; the tightening of employment insurance eligibility criteria that has adversely affected seasonal workers, among others; the setting of fees for coast guard services; the significant reductions in fishing quotas in Quebec; the refusal to extend the framework agreement on regional economic development with the Quebec government; and, finally, increasing unilateral intervention in regional development matters without consideration of Quebec's areas of jurisdiction.
Mr. Speaker, first I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Laurentides, who is the seconder of the motion.
With your permission, I will also read this opposition motion, for which we deserve to be congratulated. It is time that we, on this side of the House, take stock and condemn the government which is blissfully moving toward an election, as if things were going well, when in fact Quebec and Canada are in a deep slump.
The motion reads as follows:
That this House condemn the federal government which, because of its policies, is in large measure responsible for increasing poverty in the regions of Quebec, especially the loss of 10,000 jobs at Canada Post; the offloading of regional airports and ports without adequate financial compensation; the tightening of employment insurance eligibility criteria that has adversely affected seasonal workers, among others; the setting of fees for coast guard services; the significant reductions in fishing quotas in Quebec; the refusal to extend the framework agreement on regional economic development with the Quebec government; and, finally, increasing unilateral intervention in regional development matters without consideration of Quebec's areas of jurisdiction.
I will deal with certain issues mentioned in the motion, and leave it to my colleagues to discuss other ones. I should point out from the outset that, as regards regional development, a frame of reference called the Economic and Regional Development Agreement, the ERDA, has been in place since 1974, between the Quebec and federal governments, as the secretary of state probably knows.
The Liberal government opposite is increasingly circumventing this agreement, which has been in existence for over 20 years and which led to the harmonization of relations between the two levels of government with respect to regional development, which is recognized as a primarily provincial, Quebec in this case, area of jurisdiction.
One needs to know that, in 1993, when the members across the way came to power, 62 per cent of funding for regional development came by way of the ERDA, while today, in 1996, we are receiving only 33 per cent in this manner. In other words, two thirds of these public funds are being used as the federal government sees fit, sometimes arbitrarily, supposedly in an attempt to promote regional development.
Why? So that the federal government can be more visible, score political points. So that the Secretary of State for the Federal Office of Regional Development for Quebec can visit the 53 CFDCs and score political points on behalf of his government, cut ribbons, smile nicely, hold press conferences and pretend that there is harmony between the Government of Quebec and the federal government and that there is a genuine intervention and consensus strategy, when in fact there is not.
What there really is, in the case of CFDCs, is competition with regional economic development corporations, which have been there for a long time and which were created by the Government of Quebec and come under its jurisdiction, coming under the department of industry and commerce for example.
In addition to this hit and miss approach, there is also the fact that it is being done through the federal office of regional development. They do this by circumventing and duplicating what is being done or what was already being done in Quebec. Recently they changed the mandate of FORD-Q. It was supposed to analyze submissions from small businesses seeking grants, and evaluate their projects. Funding was cut, so the mandate was changed. Instead of getting rid of this agency, they changed its mandate and turned its employees into advisers to small business, a role that was already being played by the Department of Industry and Trade.
They set up the Idée-PME program which is directly targeted to small businesses in Quebec and is in a way competing, at taxpayers' expense, with other public sector resources for small businesses, which tends to make the whole process of seeking financial assistance from the government unnecessarily complex.
Things are also changing at the Federal Business Development Bank. The name has been changed. It is now called, rather pretentiously, in my opinion, the Business Development Bank of Canada. The legislation authorizes the federal government to approach local and regional stakeholders under the jurisdiction of the Government of Quebec. Arbitrarily, without prior consultation, the government decides to intervene in a jurisdiction that belongs to the Government of Quebec.
We can hardly call this co-operation. We can hardly call this strategy. Certainly not when we are talking about the so-called
co-operation between the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada, with taxpayers' money, not hand-outs as the Secretary of State for Regional Development sometimes seems to imply, as though it was federal money, not money paid by Quebecers through their taxes. We should not forget this.
On a macro-economic level, I think we should compare FORD-Q with its Canadian equivalents. There are two. In Eastern Canada we have ACOA, for the development of the maritime provinces and in Western Canada, the Western Economic Diversification Agency.
Suppose we stick to ACOA. Compared with what Quebec receives through FORD-Q, if we consider the number of unemployed workers concerned in Quebec and compare this with the number of unemployed workers in the maritimes, the latter receive four times as much for an equivalent number of unemployed, if we look at it on that basis. If we look at it on a per capita basis, it is five times as much. So this is the profitable federalism the secretary of state was talking about last week when I asked him a question about regional development.
Remember also that not only do the maritimes receive far more proportionally, but altogether, in terms of regional development, the maritimes receive five times as much money from Ottawa as Quebec does.
Furthermore, we have this very controversial decision, and Quebecers are becoming increasingly upset about this, the decision by the Government of Canada to give the maritimes $1 billion in compensation for harmonizing the GST. Of this $1 billion, part of which goes to New Brunswick, $250 million comes from Quebec, and part of that will go to New Brunswick. Thanks to this money, the engaging Premier of New Brunswick will be able to use Quebec's tax money to recruit Quebec industrialists and bring them to New Brunswick, thus competing with the Government of Quebec and the Quebec economy. This is appalling. In fact, there is evidence that this was going on during the recent trip to China by Team Canada.
It also needs to be known that, where the GST is concerned, not only did the maritimes get $1 billion but, as was pointed out during question period, using a cooked-up formula the Minister of Finance finds ever so pleasing, the Government of Canada is refusing to provide Quebec with the same amount, proportionally, which would be in the order of $2 billion, compared to their $1 billion. This offers a clear illustration of the cost-effective federalism the Secretary of State referred to last week.
Where a number of activities are concerned, the concept of regional development can be broad and vague on occasion. One of those activities is the coast guard, which was also referred to in the motion. The coast guard was inherited by Fisheries and Oceans from Transport Canada, with a mandate to manage the ports of Canada, including those along the St. Lawrence, and it was decided to charge users of the St. Lawrence.
This three-tier fee system involves charges for navigational aids, that is buoys, lighthouses and so forth, as well as charges for dredging the river and the waterways leading to the St. Lawrence ports and for icebreaking. The latter is the most significant, and would be the most painful, if ever the federal government sticks with its decision to set fees which would net the federal government $160 million over the next three years leading up to the year 2000. All of this totally ignores any possible impact studies available. The actions taken in this area were the product of an amateurish approach by those concerned only about the costs of the coast guard, apparently without any concern for the major negative impacts that might result if this new fee scale is implemented as the government plans.
Seventy-five per cent of the witnesses, who knew what they were talking about, who knew how to do a case-by-case impact study, begged the federal government to reconsider, because of the threat this represented to the competitiveness of the St. Lawrence ports compared to their competitors on the U.S. east coast, the Canadian east coast, and even the Mississippi.
Since you are indicating to me that my time is up, I will conclude by saying that the way the federal government is going about this illustrates the ever more pressing necessity for Quebec to attain sovereignty so it can finally be in charge, and for the federal government to stop being involved, not in regional development, but in regional anti-development.