Mr. Speaker, the name of my riding is indeed quite long. It is Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques. It is the name of an area in the lower St. Lawrence region.
I am pleased to speak on Bill C-28. Since it deals with measures announced in last year's budget, we are already in a position to assess how effective this budget has been. In Canada and Quebec today, I think that what matters most to taxpayers in assessing their governments' effectiveness is whether the government measures put in place to fight the pervasive spread of poverty in every province are working.
Because of some kind of arbitrary division, the gap is growing between the higher income earners and the people left on the scrap heap at the bottom of the income ladder, those who are affected by the measures contained in this budget, those who must face the so-called spring gap when EI benefits run out. Having decided that seasonal workers become unemployed by choice, this good government figured that cutting their benefits and benefit periods would automatically make them find work and increase their availability for work.
But that has nothing to do with real life. In Quebec and Canada, there are seasonal industries that will remain seasonal, and workers whose expertise is in these industries are not necessarily prepared to switch overnight.
In our society, if there is a way to fight poverty, it is through employment. To say that this is the key does not mean much. Everyone knows that it is the key. But to make things happen today, in our society where a rather significant number of jobs are created for people with the right education and training, who even take the jobs of their less educated fellow citizens, we must admit that this creates a shortfall of jobs for individuals with much less formal education.
On this point, we can say that clearly the current government and its budgetary measures fail to meet people's needs. We have all seen in our riding offices an increase in the number of people coming to see us who have reached a point of desperation because of the federal government's restraint programs. People are not always aware that cuts to provincial programs are caused by provincial transfer payments. However, we members of Parliament all know that the fight against the deficit took place primarily on the backs of the unemployed, low income earners and people who need the services provided, such as health care.
The member preceding me cited the importance of respecting the five criteria in the Canada Health Act, but there is no need to be hypocritical about it. One cannot ask that certain criteria be respected while systematically cutting the funding available for such things.
The federal government had planned to cut over $48 billion in all forms of transfer payments, from the early 1990s. Last year, they decided to make a big deal of the fact that they would be cutting only $42 billion. However, $42 billion in cuts is $42 billion in cuts. It means that the people who benefit from the various forms of transfer payments will do so no longer. It means that provincial governments are forced to make do with less money and to make financial choices.
In judging the actions of the federal government, therefore, one can say that, yes, the deficit must be attacked. Perhaps it ought to have been done differently. Perhaps there are places cuts could have been made in a far more worthwhile way. Looking at decisions like the one on the helicopters, we how to wonder why, a few years down the road, we have come back to solutions very similar to the ones the Conservatives opted for. The taxpayers of Quebec and of Canada end up footing the bill.
Again, looking at what it cost to buy silence in the Pearson airport affair, we have expenses that could have been avoided if more effective policy decisions had been made. When money is spent like that to buy peace, for compensation, it means that less is available to put into the marketplace, less of the government's wealth is available to share around.
That function of our system is, unfortunately, very complicated. If there is one shortcoming in the Canadian federal system, this is it. Despite what may be said in Canada, the federal government has always been a kind of distributor of wealth. It has, particularly, been the one behind the deal giving Ontario most of the industrial and manufacturing sector, while the Atlantic provinces and Quebec had far more of the transfer payments. A few years ago, this sort of tacit agreement that had been maintained by the federal government for a number of years was no longer able to stand up to financial pressures, and a solution to the problem was found.
Rather than deciding to boost regional economies by means of transfer payments, they opted to simply pull the plug, leaving people in the regions with the most primary industries in a crisis situation.
Today, in the maritimes, people are wondering if they will have enough money to get through the fall. We have had to make representations, to the fisheries committee in particular, to extend the TAGS, because what had been set up by the federal government as a means to diversify the regional economy had become nothing more than a subsistence program. Nobody is saying that people do not need money to survive, but the federal government has not yet looked into the solution of diversifying the economy. The best way of doing so is for it to get out of areas of jurisdiction that do not concern it and allow the governments with responsibility in these sectors to take action.
I have one piece of advice to give the federal government for the next budget, as a result of the prebudget consultation I did in my riding. All told, 500 people responded to the survey I had conducted. A number of community groups representing various sectors came to see us. A spokesperson for the KRTB community development corporation said: “The danger after a period of economic restraint is that the government will start spending again to please the electorate”.
In other words, we do not want the federal government to add new programs to those already in place, merely to raise its profile, to get exposure, or to look good. What we want is the money to be given back through transfer payments, so that the provinces, which have jurisdiction over education and health, can act efficiently.
We also heard the following comment from someone representing the unemployed: “We ask that the EI benefit period and amount no longer depend on the financial needs of the government but rather on those of the workers, who pay for insurance in case they lose their jobs”.
People in our region clearly understood that the employment insurance program has become the federal government's most effective tool to collect money in order to reduce the deficit. This has nothing to do with the program's objective. It is merely a way to collect money through regular source deductions, which are great for raising funds. The government has not yet taken measures to set up a separate account, as asked by the Auditor General of Canada.
People who have to draw on employment insurance, who make contributions to entitle them to do so, are asking that the plan serve as it was intended. In this regard, the Bloc Quebecois made a major contribution in the fall. It was very well received all round and even received the support of the NDP, especially the NDP members from the Atlantic region, where people are affected by this problem.
We hope the Minister of Human Resources Development will consider the six bills we introduced so that the reform may be changed. It may have been appropriate to go from weeks to hours, under the reform, but there are a lot of negative elements to the reform, things that must be changed, including monitoring of the fund in order to ensure that the money is really being used as intended.
We are on the eve of a new budget, which will be presented at the end of February. The message from the people was clear during consultations. I asked my constituents the following question in the survey: What should the federal government do with the expected budget surplus? Here is how they responded: 12% wanted lower employment insurance premiums; 20% wanted improvement to the situation of seasonal workers and those starting to work; 28% wanted funds transferred to Quebec and the other provinces in Canada for health and education and 18% wanted reduced taxes.
My constituents recommend, and I will conclude on this point, that the budget surplus go primarily to those who contributed most to the fight against the deficit for their efforts and that we return as quickly and as best we can to fairness in the way government distributes wealth within Canada.