Madam Speaker, let me say from the outset that the Bloc Quebecois is against Motion M-261, the purpose of which is to develop more national standards and guidelines in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction.
Through this motion, the Reform party calls on the Liberal government to ensure greater government visibility across Canada by developing an integrated program for children under the age of eight, which would involve both hospitals and schools. We need not analyze the motion before us very long to realize what the Reform Party is really trying to do.
By putting Motion M-261 forward in this House, the Reformers are acting as accomplices of a government desperate for visibility and more concerned with promoting Canadian unity that with resolving the problems experienced on a daily basis by Quebeckers and Canadians.
I want to make it clear that the Bloc Quebecois and the Quebec National Assembly are sensitive to the rise in youth crime. All Quebeckers agree that we must deal with the root causes of crime. What institution is in a better position than the family to address the problems experienced by children under the age of eight?
The Quebec government is so keenly aware of the importance of these 1.6 million children and of the key role of families in the future of our children that, in 1997, it tabled a white paper outlining its new family policy.
This policy statement creates links between the Quebec government's economic and social priorities and comes out in favour of our families and our children. The Quebec minister of education and family stated that “In Quebec, as elsewhere around the world, family is at the heart of society. That is where children learn the values that will shape them and help them spread their wings. On the eve of a new millennium, we must preserve the best we have come up with to support children and their parents”.
There are a lot of things, but it is of prime importance for me to highlight the principle underlying this statement of policy: the recognition of parents' primary responsibility for the needs of their children and of the support role of government. This principle finds expression in three objectives: to ensure fairness through universal support for families and additional help to families with low incomes; to facilitate the reconciliation of parental and professional responsibilities; and to promote the development of children and equal opportunity.
These are not just fancy words, this is the way Quebec wants to increase the consistency of its action to promote greater equality in family matters. This is the way Quebec identifies the role of the family in child development.
However, despite the fact that these measures proposed by the National Assembly received broad approval from the people of Quebec, it has become very difficult to implement them, because of the obsessive policies of our federal government.
This government wants to dictate national standards at all cost out of a concern for visibility and in order to justify its presence. This is the third time since the start of the week that I have risen in this House to criticize the devastating effect of the federal government's centralizing policies, and I hope we are being heard.
The centralizing measures of the Liberal government have, since 1993, been devastating for Quebec. Why? Because the Liberal government, with the support of the Reform Party today, is doing its best to prevent the Government of Quebec from developing measures that are so vital for young people in Quebec and for the support of their parents. Why?
The measures limiting Quebeckers' choices are the cuts in transfers to the provinces, the refusal to reimburse Quebec the $2 billion for harmonizing the GST, the Liberal government's refusal to review its tax system and the measures that are impoverishing the less fortunate put in place by the government.
I will take a few minutes here to talk of the harmful effect of one of these measures: the savage cuts by the Liberal government to the employment insurance plan.
The Minister of Human Resources Development is trying to sell us on the idea that this is a generous reform for the workers, but what planet does he come from, this minister of human impoverishment? Giving it the name of employment insurance does not make the reform equitable.
The Liberals need to come down from their ivory towers and go ask the seasonal workers, those who have to live through the “black hole of spring”, or the students who pay into employment insurance but cannot collect it, if they think the reform is a generous one. At the same time, they could ask them if they agree with the Liberal government's using the surplus it has saved in this way to eradicate the deficit and sneak still further into provincial areas of jurisdiction.
This disdain of workers has its limits. If the employment insurance fund records a surplus, let it be given back to the people who have contributed that surplus, by creating jobs, by improving this cobbled-together employment insurance program, by lowering the contributions made by workers and employers.
The Minister of Human Resources Development is viciously attacking the unemployed, while the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is trying to stifle seven million Quebeckers by asking nine judges to put words in our mouths that are not ours. While the Prime Minister is getting ready to trample over provincial jurisdictions as never before, the Minister of Finance is forcing us to take a magnifying glass to a bill which would allow Canada Steamship Lines, which he fully owns, to be completely sheltered from any Revenue Canada attack on its profits from its holdings in tax havens.
When we look at everything the Liberal government is doing to increase poverty, I wonder why the Reform Party is so bent on encouraging it to disregard provincial jurisdiction. How can the Reform Party encourage the Liberal government in new overlapping and interference in exclusively provincial jurisdictions instead of urging it to return, in the form of tax points, the money the Minister of Finance grabbed, with his cuts in provincial transfer payments for hospitals, schools and income security?
The Bloc Quebecois is convinced that the provinces are better placed to implement measures that will effectively address the problems of youth. Despite this attitude, we are in no way imposing our point of view on other provinces. We respect the provinces that prefer to let the federal government call the shots in these areas. Why would we not be entitled to expect the same from the provinces, the Liberal government and the Reform Party?
We oppose this motion because it will give the government the power to interfere in areas of provincial jurisdiction.