Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address today the matter of the social union, which will be increasingly prominent in political affairs for various reasons.
Let us first try to define to some extent what underlies the notion of social union. The premiers of all the provinces, for some time now, have been working to force the federal government to reinvest where it cut money, that is, in social programs including health and education, where it substantially and unilaterally cut its transfers to the provinces.
The provinces began discussions to make sure that this sort of thing did not recur in the future and that their ability to manage social programs would be protected to some extent.
The premiers got an agreement permitting them to manage their programs themselves and allowing them to opt out of federal programs, and I will provide a specific example of this in the last minute allocated to me.
In this agreement as well, the provinces clearly indicated their intention to reinvest the money in the coming years in health care. They also mentioned that they had already begun to do so and that the only government that had not done so was the federal government, for the current fiscal year.
The provinces want more money invested in health. As everyone knows, the health system everywhere in Canada needs reinvestment.
Since they have had to cope with difficulties in recent years, however, they are best placed to know where the money ought to be reinjected, how to make adjustments to situations requiring very precise interventions. In the health field, the administrative infrastructures are a provincial jurisdiction. The provincial governments do not want to see the federal government turning up with all manner of programs just to score political points.
I will give an example, this time in post-secondary education. The federal government reduced its contribution considerably. Then suddenly, feeling in need of a higher profile, the Prime Minister launched the millennium scholarship program. Through it, the federal government will be handing out numerous bursaries in the next decade to numerous students. It will certainly do this itself, through a foundation to which it will be sure to appoint its friends, people who will carry out the wishes of the federal government.
All this is intended to ensure that the students see that the money comes from their good friend, the federal government. We in Quebec already have a financial assistance system in place, with eligibility criteria which take into consideration the student's situation, that of the parents, and so on. Now, the federal government can turn up with other criteria, with another infrastructure, adding excellence to the list.
At the same time, it has made hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to education. Would the priority in education not have been to reinvest so that all students could benefit? At the present time, there is a crying need at the university level. We saw this in the last election campaign. A number of rectors and representatives of the education sector called for money to be invested in the university system, but not necessarily as a priority in the loans and bursaries system. If there were needs to be adjusted, we could have taken part of the $2.5 billion reinjected into the loans and bursaries system, but we could have taken and managed the rest according to our own priorities.
This is a striking example of federal-provincial relations in which each government tries to define its priorities in what should be provincial jurisdictions.
This is a fine example of a situation that will create a dispute between governments, rather than real co-operation, initiated by a federal government in need of visibility. It does not meet the real on-site priorities.
But why reach an agreement before December 31? Because we want to avoid having the same thing happen in the next federal budget. Let the federal government announce now its intention to honour the spirit of the agreement, to comply with it, to reinject funds into health and to respect provincial jurisdictions. The federal government must show its respect for provincial jurisdictions by allowing them to manage their own programs, if it contributes to them, with the right to opt out when the provinces have similar programs or the same objectives.
That seems laudable and very reasonable to me. However, the federal government is not co-operating. We hope it will wake up in time. We support the motion that was put forward today by the Reform Party.
We want the government to move in the coming weeks, and quickly, to improve the situation for everyone. In Quebec, everyone, federalists and sovereignists alike, of whatever political affiliation, agree that we have to move forward based on what appears to be a political consensus of all parties in Quebec to move in this direction, as was seen during the last election campaign.