Yes, Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Anjou-Rivière-des-Prairies.
First of all, I would like to say that I was not thrilled with the finance minister's February budget. Why? Because the budget tabled by the Liberal government is what I would call a lazy budget. Let me explain. It is clear from the figures that the Minister of Finance has much more breathing room than he lets on in his budget.
No one can argue with wanting to balance the budget. I believe, however, that there is a way to go about it and, when targets are met ahead of schedule, one would expect that those who helped create this breathing room for the Minister of Finance would recover part of the costs, get back some of the money they have given the minister. The finance minister should have returned the favour.
The theme of this year's budget was: while balancing the books, we will combat child poverty. This was the theme. But how does this translate into reality? There are a few subsidies, measures that
are supposed to eliminate child poverty. But what does this mean in reality?
Practical measures for implementation this year-because children are hungry this year, right now-amount to approximately $70 million. But-and the Minister of Finance did not talk about it this year-he took close to $4.5 billion from the social transfer payments to the provinces. What is the impact of that? It means that the provinces are also forced to make cuts.
The provinces are forced to cut in the health sector, because there is a shortfall of $4.5 billion. They also have to cut social assistance. All these measures adversely impact on daily necessities, on post-secondary education. It comes as no surprise that things are not going well in the provinces, that provincial governments are forced to cut their payrolls, and that they have to consider increasing tuition fees in the universities-even though they managed to avoid having to do it this year. The fact is that when the federal government makes cuts, someone, somewhere, is adversely affected.
Again, the recurring theme, which may well be an election theme for the Liberals, is that something must be done about child poverty. The Liberal government is trying to show that it is reducing its deficit but, as I said, barely $70 million will be allocated this year, compared to the $4.5 billion cuts to transfers to the provinces. I want to say something about the largest cut ever made. What makes things even worse, and the Liberals should be ashamed of themselves, is that they target the poor in our society, namely the victims of this lack of jobs and those who rely on employment insurance benefits.
Everyone on the Hill and in this House knows that before 1993, the cumulative deficit in the unemployment insurance fund was as high as $5 or $6 billion. I realize something had to be done.
However, today, and the President of the Treasury Board has made no secret of it, in fact he even bragged that there was a surplus, today in 1997-this is March 1997-there is a surplus of $12.3 billion in the unemployment insurance fund.
When the Minister of Finance says proudly that he balanced his budget, he got the money somewhere. He took it out of the pockets of the provinces and of those who were hit by the lack of jobs.
What could he have done? I will try to give government members, the Liberals opposite, a few clues. They will not be able to say I do nothing but criticize. Today, I would like to do some constructive criticism. There are people on the Liberal benches who come from rural areas, who at one time were farmers and whose parents were farmers.
Here are some rules every good farmer knows: If you have a good harvest, you put 50 per cent of the year's profits in the bank,
and you reinvest the remaining 50 per cent in the land that helped you make those profits. You seed for the next harvest, to make sure the next harvest will be just as good.
Now the government has just taken $12.3 billion out of the unemployment insurance fund, I would have expected the government to introduce job creation measures for the people who need them. Of course two weeks ago, the Minister of Human Resources Development hastily tried to deal with one of the sticking points of the employment insurance reform by allowing hours to be accumulated for the purpose of calculating benefits.
This measure will cost scarcely $245 million and will expire in the fall of 1998, after the election. Then we will have to start all over again. This is just peanuts, these handouts for people who have been hit by employment insurance.
What does the budget contain regarding job creation? I would remind the House that the Liberals opposite were not elected to cut unemployment insurance. They did not have a slogan saying: If you elect us, we will cut unemployment insurance. They did not. Was they did say was this: "We are going to create jobs, jobs, jobs". That was the slogan they shouted as they waved the red book.
What is the government's record on job creation? The only real jobs that were created under this government were short term jobs, as part of the infrastructure program. There was some highway construction and other construction, but the jobs created were only temporary jobs in 1994. We are in 1997 now. The effects of this job creation program are long gone.
So where are the job creation projects and the famous jobs, jobs, jobs? If only the government would act as a catalyst for job creation. How? I will give them a few more leads.
During the referendum campaign, we, in Quebec, were asking for decentralization. We wanted to see powers transferred back to us. The Prime Minister took us at our word and said: "We are going to decentralize powers, in the area of manpower training in particular, and transfer these powers back to the provinces". The referendum was held in the fall of 1995. We are now in the spring of 1997, on the eve of another election campaign, and nothing has been done.