Madam Speaker, I will not be taking my 13 minutes. I have been asked to be brief because a number of my colleagues wish to take part in this debate, as we know, and there is not much time left today.
I would just like to sum up what I have said. The government has had an excellent opportunity in the past two years, with the 1996 and the 1997 budgets, to completely rework the Canadian taxation system, to ensure that the rich people in this country pay their taxes, which is not now the case, as well as to reduce the gap that currently exists between the middle class and the rich.
For the past two years, the government has opted not to revise the taxation system, on which the Bloc Quebecois has already done some in-depth research. Instead, it has preferred to dump almost the entire deficit reduction effort on the sick, on welfare recipients and students and on the unemployed, by chopping $4.5 billion from transfer payments to the provinces, much of which goes to welfare,
hospitals and education, and taking $5 billion from the unemployment insurance fund.
The Prime Minister will most certainly be calling an election in the next few days, and will be wooing the votes of all those unemployed people in Canada whose benefits he has just cut drastically and who will find themselves without any benefits this fall after the election is over.
I would just like to close by wishing him good luck. In many parts of Canada and Quebec he is really going to need it.