Mr. Speaker, it is with some displeasure that I rise in this House today to speak on Bill C-36 to implement certain provisions of the 1998-99 budget.
Indeed, on behalf of the citizens of my riding of Verchères, whom I have the honour of representing in this House, and all Quebeckers, I have the duty and responsibility of conveying our profound disappointment with this misleading and shamefully partisan exercise.
At first glance, this budget may seem extremely positive. After all, is it not the first balanced federal budget in nearly three decades? Does it not contain very good news for the taxpayers? The fact is all this is a smoke and mirrors, a cover up.
All of a sudden, after four years of intense deficit reduction efforts on the backs of the provinces, the unemployed and the most disadvantaged, as soon as a surplus is achieved, the Liberals are starting to spend left and right again. Really, once a Liberal, always a Liberal.
To add insult to injury, the federal government has once again decided to invest the money saved at the expense of others in areas over which it has no jurisdiction.
Imagine this, after accumulating in the employment insurance fund billions of dollars in surpluses at the expense of employers and employees to help wipe out part of its deficit and cut back billions of dollars in transfer payments to the provinces, forcing the provinces, including Quebec, to make difficult decisions, which have been made courageously, in the areas of health and education, the federal government has the nerve to use a substantial portion of the extorted money to encroach yet again on provincial jurisdictions.
By the way, members will note that the provinces got hit with 52% of federal cuts; yet, according to the last budget, they are entitled to only 23% of the new expenditures. However, while federal spending was cut by only 12%, it accounts for 51% of the new expenditures.
What is important to the federal government, when it comes down to it, is the visibility of providing services directly to the public and getting into their hands as many cheques bearing the maple leaf as possible. This is an underhand strategy: Ottawa seeks to make the Quebec government look bad by hampering its progress toward a balanced budget, so that it can look good at Premier Bouchard's expense as the provincial election approaches.
Then the Liberal government wants to rush to the rescue once again with new initiatives in areas of provincial jurisdiction in order to lighten the burden of misery it itself has imposed, and continues to impose, since $30 billion or so in cuts still remain to be made across Canada by the year 2003 in education, health and social assistance. Some would call this absolute bunk, yet the federal government is quite open about it.
As proof of this, the President of Treasury Board is quoted in Le Soleil of March 8, 1996 as saying “When Bouchard has to make cuts, those of us in Ottawa will be able to demonstrate that we have the means to preserve the future of social programs”. Edifying, is it not? Is this the co-operative federalism they delight in referring to on the other side of this House?
When will the Liberals understand that this strategy leads nowhere? When will they understand that Quebec cannot be bought for billions of dollars? They have put this strategy in practice over and over during the past three decades with somewhat disappointing, even catastrophic, results. They have been unable to slow the rapid growth of the sovereignist movement and have plunged Canada into the perilous spiral of debt from which it is hard to extricate ourselves today.
In its prebudget document, the Bloc Quebecois asked that a significant portion of the surpluses for the next two years be given back to the provinces as tax points, to compensate them—at least to some extent—for the drastic cuts made by the Liberal government during its first mandate to transfer payments for health, post-secondary education and social assistance. However, it seems that, as with the surpluses generated in the employment insurance fund, Ottawa has decided to keep control of that money.
The Bloc Quebecois has urged the federal government to make sure the employment insurance fund is used only by those who contribute to it. We continue to condemn the misappropriation of funds by the federal government with the employment insurance surplus. That surplus is constantly increasing, because of the more strict eligibility criteria imposed by the government and maintained against all logic.
But it is in research and development that the duplicity of this government is most obvious. Indeed, while the Liberal government's rhetoric has been impressive, we have seen very few concrete measures. The Bloc Quebecois has asked that, at the very least, funding for granting councils be restored to the 1993 level. However, the Liberals have only pledged to restore that funding to the 1994-95 level, thus making Canada fall even further behind in research and development.
This budget speech, like the one last year, was full of grand phrases regarding the importance attached by this government to research and development, and so on.
I will, if I may, quote a few of the gems in the finance minister's budget speech about research and development. First of all, the minister said, and I quote: “For 200 years in Canada prosperity and knowledge have gone hand in hand.—The creation of jobs in the new millennium will be anchored in two essential components: the infrastructure of innovation, and the infrastructure of skills and knowledge”.
And he went on to say: “There can be few things more critical to determining our economic success in the next century than a vigorous, broad based research and development effort. The fact is the more R and D that is done in Canada, the more jobs that will be created for Canadians”.
How are we to square these fine words with the meagre resources committed and the highly questionable decisions already made by this government with respect to R and D?
On numerous occasions in the House, I have seen government members rise and claim that R and D into sources of renewable energy is one of their greatest priorities.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Two years ago, Ottawa announced that it was terminating its modest annual contribution of $7.2 million to the Tokamak magnetic fusion project in Varennes, now the largest R and D energy project in Quebec. Magnetic, or nuclear, fusion constitutes a very promising form of producing a large volume of energy in a clean, safe, environmentally responsible manner.
Since then, I have been trying to understand the twisted reasoning that led this government to make such a ridiculous decision. On numerous occasions, I have questioned the various stakeholders and have met with inconsistent, incomplete and incomprehensible answers. Not only will the $70 million already invested in the project over the last 20 years be lost forever, but the technological, industrial and economic shortfall for Quebec and for Canada could be colossal.
Many other industrialized countries have realized the importance of nuclear fusion research and some are even spending as much as 10, 20 and even 40 times more than Canada in this very promising area of research.
It is important to point out that Quebec, which is already receiving a lot less than its fair share of federal investments in research and development, is facing an even greater deficit with the end of the federal government's financial participation in the Tokamak project.
Paradoxically, Ottawa is pouring billions of dollars into far less promising areas and paying particular attention to Ontario. I am thinking of the federal government's decision to focus on the development, production, marketing and sales of Candu reactors, whose reliability and environmental safety record continue to be questioned.
What explanation is there for such stubbornness and false economies on the back of a province that is not receiving its fair share of research and development funding, in an area where dividends are potentially so numerous and so high compared to the modest annual investment required? I take this opportunity to again express my indignation and to appeal to this government's common sense in this matter.
I would also like to have talked about the millennium scholarship foundation, but unfortunately, as time is short, I will close by taking the few minutes remaining to remind the hon. members of this House that Quebeckers are not fools. They have had it with fancy speeches aimed at nothing more than raising the profile of the government on the backs of society's disadvantaged.
Far from being a prophet of doom, I would like to repeat to the Minister of Finance what many analysts fear. After creating surpluses, he cannot just rest on his laurels and spend wildly to then fall back into the same bad habits. Instead, he must structure public finances so we will no longer have to face the nightmarish deficits passed on to the people of Canada over 30 years by successive Liberal and Conservative governments.