Mr. Speaker, after this interruption that was quite beyond the House's control, I remind members that we are looking at Bill C-93 concerning certain measures in the budget.
Before the interruption, I was saying that this budget did not contain any real measures to combat unemployment, the major problem in Quebec and in Canada. I proposed several specific
solutions to turn the tide and promote employment in our various ridings.
The first was a plan to use the surplus in the UI fund not just to lower the deficit but to really create jobs, particularly in regions with a lot of seasonal employment. This would make it possible to diversify our regional economies.
For example, the number of weeks of work could be increased for forestry workers, as is done in our region, by processing forest products, in order to increase the number of full time jobs in the forestry industry in the future.
I also spoke about changing government policy on procurement, which has been sadly lacking in Quebec, among other places, in recent years. In 1994, Quebecers were short $1.3 billion compared to what they should have received, given their percentage of the population. That is 22,000 jobs for Quebec, or almost 300 jobs per riding. This would make all the difference between towns having trouble surmounting these difficulties and towns with an SMB that could win federal government contracts. This is a concrete way to do something about employment.
The other way to do something is to loosen the federal government's grip on transfer payments, to ensure the return of the $750 million in health cuts over two years in Quebec alone because of lost transfer payments. If it had really decided to make cuts in departmental operating budgets, this kind of cut could have been avoided and the money would be there for jobs. The provinces would not be stuck with the problems they are now facing.
There are also active measures under the infrastructures program. The federal government announced that it was divesting itself of ports and other infrastructures, that it was turning them over to the public, to interested groups. But when it does this, these facilities must be in an acceptable condition. Action must be taken rapidly. Market conditions are changing. Our economic stakeholders must, therefore, be able to take advantage of the best transportation infrastructures possible.
Shipping as well as road, rail and air transportation are all sectors in which prompt action must be taken. However, where ports are concerned, the federal government has already announced its intention of unloading them. Let it hand the money over to the communities concerned, so that they may take things over, as soon as possible, in order to breathe new life into these really important elements for job creation.
After Quebec became aware that it absolutely must assume responsibility for manpower, after 32 years of repeated demands-particularly in the past three years as the Bloc kept asking questions in the House in order to ensure that the money available for manpower was given to Quebec, which already had responsibility for education, which already possessed all of the tools necessary, and which was lacking only the necessary funds for these programs to be effective-it finally came to pass. In future, we will have to obtain the same type of responsibility for transportation.
We became aware in the past that, because the federal government was responsible for rail, air and maritime transportation, while the provinces were responsible for highways, there had never been any true connection between the governments in order to ensure effective intermodal transportation.
We have reached the point now where all means of transportation, and all infrastructures, must be brought in line with one another, so as to properly meet the new challenges of the North American markets created by the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States, Mexico and South America. This, then, is another step that must be taken.
Under the current system, it is certain that we will never obtain real jurisdiction, because the federal government has a sort of natural inclination to prevent such transfers. But at the very least we would need to obtain the same as for manpower, during the next mandate, so as to be able to act on the economic markets and to ensure that the economic strategy is consistent with a transportation strategy which takes all means of transportation into consideration.
I will give an example of this. A few years ago, the rail line linking Rivière-du-Loup with Edmundston was dismantled, with federal government authorization. Since that time, the highway system has been jammed with truck traffic. There is also increased economic activity between the maritimes and Quebec. Had there been only one government intervening in the two sectors, we would have realized that the solution lay not in making miserly savings by dismantling the railway system. What we needed was a more integrated approach which would have made it possible to put trailers on trains and move them by truck at the end of the line. There would have been economic choices, but they were not made.
Today we face a new reality. The federal government is responsible for this highway. It is part of the Trans-Canada highway. We proposed with the Liberal members a public-private partnership project, which would mean the early completion of repair work.
I think the federal government would do well in the next election to endorse public-private partnership projects and, as the Liberal and Bloc members of the Standing Committee on Transport recommended, pilot projects, with Highway 185 being an interesting example.
In short, the budget we got in 1997 was along the same lines as those of previous years. The Minister of Finance tried to fight the deficit. He had some success, but the number one problem governments are facing today is not the fight against the deficit anymore, but unemployment and how to help people in the regions.
If we want results, we cannot wait another year. Canadians will have to react quickly and tell the government, during the election campaign, that they want corrections to be made, that they want a budget to implement such corrections as soon as Parliament returns after the election, so that, in one, two or three years, we will see
results because something will have been about unemployment and about using the potential of all Canadians.
I am thinking in particular of those who have no specialized training. We must make sure these workers have jobs. When I am told there are no jobs available and when I am asked what to do about it, I say that we must make money available, we must make the employment insurance surplus fund available to allow these workers to gain more experience and to accumulate more weeks of employment. For example, why not use the employment insurance fund to promote secondary or tertiary processing of forestry products?
As you know, our softwood lumber exports to the United States are subject to a quota. However, when that wood is processed and given added value, it is no longer subject to that quota. This means that more wood can then be exported to the United States. We could use the surplus in the employment insurance fund to implement concrete projects and hire people who do not necessarily have specialized training, but who have practical experience in the forestry industry.
In conclusion, the government will have to go back to the drawing board very quickly in order to deal with the number one problem: unemployment. Given its performance regarding the deficit, the government has no reason to brag. Canadians want action now.