Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate getting back the time I was deprived of because some members do not respect my right to speak in this House.
We are still debating Bill C-28 and, as I was saying, the Prime Minister gave his caucus an order to silence the opposition, and that order was complied with.
Since February 5, when the Bloc Quebecois showed what is really behind Bill C-28, the opposition has been facing systematic obstruction co-ordinated by the Prime Minister's office. If the Liberal government has nothing to hide, why is it stubbornly refusing to respond to the opposition on this issue?
The ethics counsellor himself said that Bill C-28 had not been drafted according to the rules and that, if they had to do it again, some measures would have to be taken to avoid this conflict of interest situation.
He recognized, as we do, that there were serious problems with the way the finance minister was doing things and that the code of ethics the government had adopted in 1994 was not observed.
On the basis of this statement and in an attempt to get to the bottom of the matter, the four opposition parties took the unprecedented step of joining together both in the House and in a press conference to demand that light be shed on this nebulous matter.
Once again, the Prime Minister did not accede to the opposition's request, thereby confirming what we suspected all along: it is in the interest of some individuals that the truth never be known.
To resolve this impasse caused entirely by the government, the Bloc Quebecois is proposing a sensible alternative, which would be in keeping with expressed wish of the various opposition parties.
The Minister of Finance, who is in an apparent conflict of interest situation, should delete from Bill C-28 clauses 241 and 242, which have led to so many questions that have remained unanswered for more than a month now. The minister could include these two clauses in a different schedule of the bill or in a different bill altogether, as suggested by the Prime Minister's ethics counsellor.
In this respect, my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot proposed an amendment that I fully support, as it responds to the many representations made by the opposition, including a request for a special subcommittee to provide answers to some of the questions the government has refused to answer so far.
The ethics counsellor, who works for the Prime Minister, contends that it is not important to know whether or not CSL, the company owned by the Minister of Finance, would benefit from the provisions contained in Bill C-28. In that case, why did Mr. Wilson contact CSL the very day this matter was brought up to inquire as to whether the company was taking advantage of these provisions or contemplating to do so?
In addition, Mr. Wilson has admitted that he was not an expert in tax planning. However, he seems to accept at face value, without outside opinions, the statement from CSL to the effect that the company had no intention of using the provisions contained in Bill C-28.
For several weeks, the government has been denying that the Minister of Finance is at the very least in an apparent conflict of interest situation, arguing that the minister is not the one who introduced the provisions on shipping. Yet, the ethics counsellor contradicted the government by admitting that the Minister of Finance had sponsored Bill C-28 and that that creates an appearance of conflict of interest.
Mr. Wilson says, in this regard, that procedural problems in the Department of Finance put the Minister of Finance in an awkward situation and that things would have been done differently had he been advised, as he should have, before C-28 was introduced.
Since the ethics counsellor admits that the Minister of Finance is in a position of appearing to be in a conflict of interest, how should the federal government's June 1994 code of ethics apply in this case?
Mr. Wilson also suggests that the Minister of Finance was not aware of the content of Bill C-28 before the Bloc raised these issues in the House a number of weeks ago. Could the minister responsible for the Income Tax Act so easily have shirked his responsibilities in connection with a bill he was sponsoring and how does the public view a Minister of Finance who did not know what was in his own legislation?
Is ministerial accountability not a fundamental principle of our parliamentary system? The least I can say is that the government's stubborn refusal to open up the entire matter does little to lighten the suspicions hanging over the minister, on the contrary.
I would like to turn my attention to another point in Bill C-28, which concerns transfers to the provinces.
What this bill confirms is the unfortunate plan for making cuts, which the Minister of Finance dreamt up to reduce his deficit on the backs of others. What they are saying is that $48 billion in savage cuts to transfers for education, health and social assistance will be reduced to $42 billion. What a relief. This is no increase in transfers to the provinces. It is less of a cut.
In this regard, changing the cash floor for transfer payments to $12.5 billion is nothing more than a vulgar election promise, legitimized by the National Forum on Health, in order to fool the people into thinking they are giving more, when in fact the provinces and Quebec have to work with $42 billion less, while the federal government rubs its hands together at the prospect of encroaching on provincial jurisdictions with the money it saved.
Who is going to pay the social cost of the budget approach of this Liberal government? The sick, the unemployed and the most disadvantaged of our society. They are the real artisans of the first balanced budget. The Liberals have nothing at all to be proud of.
When one sees this Liberal government unable to admit it made a poor choice in its last budget, when one sees the federal Liberals encouraging the government to poke its nose into education, is it any surprise that the Prime Minister is trying to conceal the truth in the case of the Minister of Finance and the apparent conflict of interest?
On the eve of a provincial election, even the Quebec Liberals are asking their federal big brothers to be discreet and to respect the traditional demands of Quebec, but it is a bit too late for the Liberals.
With such eloquent examples as Bill C-28, which once again dumps the deficit onto the provincial governments, while offering the Minister of Finance some attractive tax opportunities, Quebeckers understand better and better whom the federal government is working for.
They understand that government decisions will never bear any resemblance to their wishes until those decisions are all made where their interests are really taken into account: in the Quebec National Assembly.