Debates of Dec. 2nd, 1998

Employment Insurance

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, my instructions to the Minister of Finance were to be a good, responsible Minister of Finance. I am very happy with his delivery.

[Deborah Grey, Reform, Edmonton North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the chief actuary for employment insurance says that the EI rate should be as low as $1.90 per $100 on Canadians' paycheques. That is $1.90, not $2.55. That difference amounts to hundreds of dollars a year for workers and small business in this country, yet the finance minister insists on keeping it at $2.55.

Why is the minister being so stubborn? Why will he not lower it more?

[Paul Martin, Liberal, Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member owes it to her party to at least cite the actuary correctly. The actuary quoted a range and the other side of the range was $2.50.

The Prime Minister has just said that the actuary makes a recommendation to the commission. The commission has representatives from the employer side and the employee side. That commission made a recommendation to the government which the government has accepted.

[Deborah Grey, Reform, Edmonton North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in fact the government owes it, and it owes workers hundreds of dollars.

The finance minister once said that payroll taxes like EI are a cancer on Canadian jobs.

The chief actuary, whose judgment is not tainted by politics, still says that EI premiums are way too high. Each business is paying hundreds of dollars more than it should per worker.

Again I would like to ask the minister, how can he justify jingling that money out of every Canadian worker's pocket?

[Paul Martin, Liberal, Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I think we should be very clear. This is not about EI premiums, nor in fact is it about income taxes. It is about the Reform Party's agenda to gut the health care system, to cut the transfers to the provinces, to make sure that aboriginal Canadians do not have decent health care and do not have decent education. The Reform Party talks about the working poor. When we brought in the child tax benefit to help the working poor, the Reform Party opposed it with its narrow fiscal agenda.

Social Union

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, according to an article in this morning's National Post , senior federal officials have prepared a social union proposal, and an announcement is expected shortly.

Is the Prime Minister going to pull his usual stunt and release the proposal after the recess so as not to have to answer questions in the House about his proposal to the provinces?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, the answer is no.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I understand correctly, the proposal will be announced before the House adjourns. Yesterday, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs told us that we might see it before February, but the Liberals refused to amend yesterday's motion. This is double talk.

If the Prime Minister seriously wants to be consistent and show that he is interested in social union with all the provinces, should he not agree to leave any new program that interferes in provincial jurisdiction out of the next budget?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, I ask the hon. member to be patient. He will have his answer when we bring down the budget in February.

[Pierre Brien, Bloc, Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, a day does not go by that the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health do not repeat that the federal government intends to put money back into health care. However, they are very careful not to say how much or how they plan to go about it.

Is the Prime Minister prepared to reinvest the money he says he wants to put back into health care through transfer payments, as he ought, as long as there is no agreement on social union?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, the member will have his answer when the budget is brought down in February.

[Pierre Brien, Bloc, Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we heard the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs saying that the federal government wanted to retain its spending power in provincial jurisdictions.

What message is the minister, who says he is acting in good faith, sending to the provinces, when he says he is ready to negotiate in good faith and then repeats that he will do what he wants because, whatever the case, the federal government is right?

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, in all federations around the world, the distribution of powers applies to the power to legislate, but the federal government can spend wherever it considers it in the national interest to do so.

The provincial governments want us to use this federal spending power in a way that does not upset their priorities. We are very open to discussions with them, because we know that we will end up with the best policies by working together for all Canadians.

Social Programs

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister stunned Canadians yesterday when he said that he does not see the link between the social union and the federal budget. Canadians do see the link. It is more children living in poverty, fewer unemployed receiving benefits, every single Canadian harmed by health cuts. Why is the Prime Minister the only Canadian who cannot see that his unilateral budget cuts are tearing apart our social union?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, I point out to the member that we have introduced a national child tax benefit of $1.7 billion. Since we have been in government we have increased the amount of the child care deduction. We have provided a family income supplement for roughly 350,000 low income parents on EI. We have enhanced the community action program and the Canada prenatal nutrition program for children at risk. I could carry on but I do not have the time.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister boasts about balancing the federation but his cuts have created a Canada that is dangerously out of balance. There are 800,000 unemployed living without benefits. This year alone 37,000 more people have been forced to use food banks. There are 1.5 million children and their families living in poverty.

Is this the Prime Minister's idea of balance? What kind of balance lets our children go hungry?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, because we are very concerned, I will carry on reading the list.

We have introduced tax relief for low and middle income Canadians, taking 400,000 low income Canadians off the tax rolls completely. We have transferred $25.9 billion to the provinces through the Canada health and social transfer in 1998-99. We have introduced a millennium scholarship program to permit people with low incomes to attend university. Above all, we have established—

[The Speaker]

The hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester.

Highways

[Bill Casey, Progressive Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister's former Minister of Transport, Doug Young, signed an agreement to fund 100% of the cost of a highway in New Brunswick. The auditor general revealed yesterday that the same Doug Young has secretly altered the terms of the deal to allow a private company to charge tolls on that same highway. Doug Young is the president of the same company that is going to charge the tolls.

It does not take an ethics commissioner to know this is a crooked deal. Will the Prime Minister use the tools described by the auditor general to stop this outrageous rotten deal?

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member takes great licence with the auditor general's report because he has come to conclusions that the auditor general did not come to.

The auditor general came to some conclusions. Quite frankly, Transport Canada disagrees with most of them and we told the auditor general and his staff that we disagree with them.

We disagree that the federal government failed to control highway funding. We disagree that Transport Canada failed to provide accurate information. We get our information from the provinces. We work with the provinces. We do not parallel the provinces.

If the auditor general has a problem, he should talk to the provinces about the information they provide us with.

[Bill Casey, Progressive Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, what the auditor general said exactly was that Transport Canada failed to exercise the controls entrenched in the agreement to ensure that federal positions are honoured. It is the same thing we have been talking about for months and months.

I ask the hon. minister if he will take action, stop boondoggling, stop the delays, stop stonewalling, use the tools as described by the auditor general, take action and stop this deal.

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, the auditor general confuses minimum acceptable national standards for the national highway system with normal evaluations.

We have engineers and experts of the provinces—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[The Speaker]

The hon. Minister of Transport.

[David Collenette, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, the auditor general appears to confuse minimum acceptable standards and design standards. Those standards are developed in concert with the provinces which have the engineers and the experts.

What the auditor general seems to imply is that the federal government should set up a parallel department to mirror all of the work the provinces do. We do not do that. His analysis is predicated on faulty assumptions.