Mr. Speaker, I did not mean my rising to cause a mass exodus on the part of the Bloc, but while the member who asked the last question is still in the House I want to begin by saying that it is a profound mistake to caricature this debate as one between separatists and federalists, or between those who somehow support the agenda of the Bloc and those who do not. There is a degree of support within a variety of federalists in the country for the whole notion of a social union.
It would be profoundly cheap in the political sense or intellectually vacant to try to caricature the debate as somehow having to do with who supports the separatists and who does not. There may be a convergence of views among the Reform, the Bloc and others, but I do not think this is the appropriate way to portray the debate on this matter.
We have a convergence of a number of things. We have the convergence of the view of the Reform Party which has always been for a more decentralized Canada, a Canada in which the federal spending power is much more restricted than it has traditionally been, and the view of the Bloc which is a traditional Quebec position whether or not one is a separatist.
The reality is that the Liberal government, far from the provinces being the ones who have destroyed or are destroying the power of the strong central government, has systematically weakened and destroyed the power of the federal government in the federation by acting unilaterally and unfairly, by withdrawing from various programs and by acting in a way to weaken its power.
It does not make any sense to demonize the provinces. It is the federal government that has been destroying its own status and its own power in the country by way of withdrawing from the partnerships it established, particularly with respect to medicare and in a variety of other ways.
We have a convergence of what I would say is the Bloc and Reform views of a more decentralized federation and a weakened federal government, with the reality being that the federal government is systematically weakening itself and converging with the reality that the provinces have to deal with the federal withdrawal from medicare, et cetera.
Provinces are saying they need some other way of dealing with this matter. They cannot continue to imagine that they are in some kind of idealistic partnership when in fact they are in no partnership at all. They are constantly subject to the unilateral actions of a federal government which does not collaborate with them. It does not co-operate with them. It does not endeavour to set up ways of dealing with these problems. They want a less conflictual federation, the kind of conflict we see all the time.
The minister thrives on this kind of conflict. I do not think he is particularly helpful in the way he deals with it. He could have answered the questions asked of him in a much more helpful way than giving us the usual Liberal diatribe.
The social union, as I understand it, comes out of two things. It comes out of the anxiety of the premiers after the referendum of 1995 that there was no federal leadership. They needed to do at least what they could do to provide a context in which Quebecers who want to make the country work could see that others in the country wanted to make the country work.
The anxiety about lack of federal leadership continues to this day.
There is still a paucity of federal leadership when it comes to this file. On top of that is the fact that the federal government in its budget of 1995 virtually withdrew from the partnership it had established over the years with the provinces.
So we have these two factors which I think put the premiers on the road to Saskatoon last August. I think there is great merit in their proposals and great merit in trying to build a less conflictual confederation.
I do not think the federal government has the authority any more to unilaterally set standards in health care if it is not going to pay the tune. If the federal government is only paying 6 cents or 15 cents on the dollar, or whatever it is, depending on whose figures we believe, it just does not have it any more.
I wish the government would put the money back in, speak with authority and go back to the old system. But if the government is not going to put the money back in it cannot do it. It means that it has to sit down with the provinces and work something out instead of belabouring this with all of its tired, old rhetoric.
We have some concerns about the social union and about the motion. We still think the December 31, 1998 deadline is not helpful and not something which the chairman of the premiers supports. But we also have concerns with the Saskatoon agreement itself and I want to put those on the record. They are not insurmountable things. They are things that could disappear in the course of the negotiations between the provinces and the federal government. I hope they would.
Our particular concern is with respect to the language of opting out, with compensation, out of new or modified Canada-wide programs. There is nothing new about new. “New programs” was in Meech. “New programs” was in Charlottetown. But modified Canada-wide programs would open up the door to a situation in which at some point there could be changes to the Canada Health Act or changes to something else with respect to medicare that could allow some provinces to argue that medicare was now a modified program and, therefore, they had the right to opt out of it.
I can say, in spite of our desire to be agreeable and constructive and to see the merits of the social union and the merits of the provincial arguments on this score, that the federal NDP will never agree to a social union which opens the door to opting out of medicare by provinces.
On the other hand, it is important to get the social union so that we do not have a situation in which provinces might decide to opt out anyway. Because at some point, if it is only 6 cents or 15 cents on the dollar, why would some provinces which feel they could afford it not say that they might as well go it alone? Then they would not have to put up with all of the rules from these guys.
This is the danger, this is the precipice that this Liberal government has led us to with respect to medicare and other programs. By so weakening the federal presence in the existing social union we now have these proposals before us which, in many ways, we would not have if we had significant, real and inspired leadership from the federal government on the unity file and in respect of maintaining a decent federal presence in these social programs. But we do not have that and so we have the situation which is before us.
Another concern that we have has to do with the status of aboriginal people in respect of the social union. There is a concern on the part of the aboriginal leadership that the fiduciary responsibility which the federal government has for aboriginal people is not dealt with in any of the social union documents that have come forward so far.
It certainly seems to me that this is something which has to be addressed in some way or another if we are to conclude an agreement at some time. At the moment the provinces and the federal government do not take this into account at all.
I asked the leader of the Reform Party why he wanted an agreement by December 31, 1998 and he said that he wanted a federal response. The motion does not say “Let us have a federal response by December 31, 1998”, it says “conclude an agreement”. That is not just a federal response, it is an agreement between the federal government and the provincial governments. That is why that continues to be such an unrealistic proposal.