Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate, and I hope many Quebecers are listening.
To start I will say this: I am quite sure that if Jean Charest were still leader of the Progressive Conservative Party he would support this motion, he would approve of it. This motion has the support of every opposition party. It came about as a result of an array of pressures, not all political.
I want to mention that some of our Liberal colleagues were probably been invited to meet the Health Action Lobby, or HEAL, which was here this week. These 28 national health and consumer organizations are urging the government to raise the floor for the Canadian transfers to $15 billion. This is what they are asking.
What are their demands based on? Not on what members from the Bloc or other opposition parties have to say. They are based on polls taken across Canada showing that Canadians' trust in the health care system is deteriorating. It dropped from 61% in 1991 to 29% in February 1998. My colleague for Vaudreuil—Soulanges must have seen this excellent information kit.
Also the Bloc wanted to know what people were thinking because here we are surrounded by numbers and we see what is going on, but people do not always get to see the real picture. During the break we visited individuals, groups and business people in our ridings. We met many organizations. Our consultations led us to the conclusion that the absolute top priority for everybody was to give the money back to the provinces.
This week the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which is made up of 91,000 small businesses, appeared before the finance committee. And what did it say?
I would like to quote part of what the Canadian Federation of Independent Business had to say. “Although members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business support more spending control, especially under relatively favourable economic conditions, it is important to mention that entrepreneurs are in favour of higher health and education transfers to the provinces”.
“This could require reallocation of existing funding instead of an increase in total public expenditures”. However, they want to ensure that basic health and education services will be maintained and to “avoid costly new programs being set up, like the pharmacare program the government wants to create despite our members' opposition to it”.
What are the small businesses saying through their representative? The money should be given back to the provinces. The president, Mrs. Swift, even said that the government should stop playing the sort of games it played with the millennium scholarship fund. That is what she said and I could quote the blues.
In my beautiful riding of Mercier that includes the provincial counties of Bourget, Pointe-aux-Trembles and Lafontaine, I also consulted with various groups and businesspeople. Their first priority is also the transfers to the provinces.
These people are concerned about health, but they are also concerned about education, and some of them about welfare. Therefore, the motion we have put forward today is not just a whim. It did not come about just because members of the four opposition parties had lunch together. It came about because were are faced with an intolerable situation in this country.
What is so intolerable? We have a government that brags about its management, accumulates surpluses and refuses to return to the provinces the money it owes them for health care, education and welfare. Moreover, we learned last week that the budget surplus for the first six months of this year was $10.4 billion, and we can make the conservative assumption that it will reach $15 billion for the year.
What is intolerable is that people see a reduction in services. That is what the HEAL survey reveals. What do we see? Our health, education and welfare systems are under extreme pressure. Hospital and local community service centre employees, teachers and public servants are exhausted. People are personally and deeply affected by these drastic cuts.
What is the federal government doing about these pressures? Is it rushing to share part of its surpluses with Quebec and the other provinces? No. It is stubbornly resisting all the pressure to reduce employment insurance premiums, which are nothing but highway robbery. They should be called special contributions to reduce the deficit for those people making $39,000 or less and for businesses that pay EI premiums. It is, quite simply, highway robbery.
What is the government doing? Is it sharing with the provinces part of its surpluses to compensate people for the pain, suffering and hardship imposed upon them? No. It just keeps saying no. It is amazing.
It is true that this government often likes to quote the OECD. Our problem is that the OECD has not done a review of social spending in all countries recently.
The last one I saw—and I like to keep up to date—dates back to 1994. At that time, Canada ranked in the bottom third of countries in terms of social spending. If the numbers were to be reviewed, Canada certainly would not move up to another third, but would no doubt move down in the bottom third.
When social spending is so drastically cut, it means that people suffer. It means that it costs people their health.
The Bloc Quebecois has made one proposal: that the federal government allocate at least $1 billion more for health expenditures. What this motion asks is what is necessary, according to the consensus reached by the premiers in Saskatoon, to achieve at least that billion. It is the absolute minimum. The Latin phrase is minimum minimorum. It is the absolute minimum to give the people a break, a breather.
How can this government seriously talk about federalism, when it made a policy in its own interest, and I would add, its party's interest? This policy has a very serious impact on many governments and especially on the people. I hope we will strongly support this motion, which is a cry from the people, and that some members of the governing party will vote with us.
This is not asking for much. In fact, it is asking for very little, but that would be sufficient to let give the people a break.