Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to this important bill and to the group of motions we have presented, whose aim essentially is to eliminate everything to do with the millennium scholarships.
Why are we presenting this group of motions? For one good reason: with the millennium scholarships the government is not minding its own business. In the course of three weeks of hearings before the Standing Committee on Finance, 14 organizations from Quebec all said the same thing, which was that the federal government has no business meddling in an area of exclusive jurisdiction. According to the Constitution these people claim to be defending, the federal government cannot interfere, and the organizations are calling for the right to withdraw with full compensation for Quebec.
Witnesses appeared on behalf of such important organizations as the FTQ, the CSN and university and college student associations. An association of former student movement leaders, who oversaw the changes in the education sector in the past 11 years, had seven messages for the committee, and especially the federal government. The first was that, with these scholarships, the federal government is showing its ignorance of the situation in Quebec.
Allow me to quote from the brief of the FTQ, which said, about the proposal as it was formulated in Bill C-36, that “this proposal illustrates the Canadian government's lack of knowledge about Quebec's system of loans and grants and its priorities in education”. The president of the Fédération des cégeps said essentially the same thing.
The association of former student leaders of Quebec said “With its millennium scholarships, the federal government is showing its ignorance and its incompetence in the field of education”.
I do not think they were paying much attention on the other side of the House because, despite three intensive weeks and the unanimity of the witnesses from Quebec, the members of the Liberal majority on the finance committee did not move a single amendment.
They have the nerve to claim to be in touch with people's needs, when 14 organizations representing at least 1.2 million adult Quebeckers with some degree of connection to education or business have told them to mind their own business. But they did not get it. They are thumbing their noses at people and at the democratic system.
Normally, if people had been listened to properly, and if the business of holding public hearings in the committees had had any value in the eyes of the parliamentarians, who claim they are democratic right down to the roots of their hair, they would have backed off after hearing the representations from Quebec. I fault the chair of the finance committee for not allowing any mention of Quebec's unanimous opposition to the millennium scholarships in the report he tabled last Friday.
The second criticism voiced by all stakeholders is that the federal government came up with this project solely to gain some more visibility. Minister of Human Resources Development made no bones about this either. With his usual candour, he indicated that this indeed was the reason. The Prime Minister went still further, as has been his wont since the start of his career in politics.
This project creates duplication and doubles costs for all taxpayers. At the present time, the loans and bursaries system that Quebec has developed since the Ministry of Education was created in 1964 is without equal, and works impeccably well. We are not the only ones to say so. It is cited as an example across Canada. We have all of the structures, all of the staff, and all of the expertise accorded to us by the Constitution, the British North America Act.
Adding on a foundation to administer scholarships just creates duplication and greatly increases costs. The administrative costs of the millennium fund are double what we have in Quebec.
On the average, Quebec's administration of bursaries and loans takes about 2.5% of the amounts involved, while the figure for the millennium scholarships will be twice that, at 5%. Yet they talk of efficiency. Efficiency, my foot!
The third criticism from Quebec stakeholders at our hearings was that, far from reducing inequalities, the millennium scholarships run the risk of increasing inequalities in the field of education.
The fourth criticism is that the millennium scholarships are not a solution to student indebtedness. Ever since 1995, since the Minister of Finance started slashing federal transfers for higher education, we have been saying that the answer to the student loans problem is for the government to stop slashing and start giving back what it has taken from the pockets of the provinces and was actually used before to finance the education programs. That would be a positive measure to reduce student loans.
The fifth criticism put forward by people from Quebec is there is no need for this in Quebec. That does not mean that we do not need money, but we do not need a wall to wall policy. That could work outside Quebec. Some Canadian stakeholders stated that they were interested in the millennium scholarships, because they are not organized as Quebec has been since 1964, when it set up its student loans and grants program. However, the proposed scholarship fund does not meet the needs of Quebec.
What Quebec needs right now is for the Minister of Finance to stop playing petty politics with the surplus he hides year after year, by juggling the figures, and to start giving back what he has grabbed from Quebec. We would then be in a position to help students out.
The sixth criticism is a major one. We have grown accustomed, ever since his appointment, to seeing the Minister of Finance juggling the figures. He literally juggles all the figures he brings forward. It has come to a point where we no longer believe the government's financial statements or the estimates the minister tables.
With the millennium scholarship program, he has been criticized three times by the auditor general, who is the watchdog of public finances and is accountable to Parliament. The auditor general is impartial; he is accountable to Parliament.
What did the auditor general have to say? He said that, by charging to the 1997-98 budget these $2.5 billion that he plans to start spending only in the year 2000, the finance minister is fixing the books. They no longer mean anything. Amounts that have yet to be spent cannot be included in the financial statements. Where will that kind of government accounting lead us?
A few moments ago, I heard the secretary of state say that people appreciate this new accounting method whereby all commitments are included in the books as soon as they are made, even though the money will be spent only three years later, because it makes people aware of planned spending. This is not true. It is absolutely false. People want to know what the real figures are. They want to know where they are going. They want to know that the money they are paying in taxes will be spent in the current fiscal year. They do not want to know that expenditures that will be made only in the year 2000 were charged in full to last year's budget.
These $2.5 billion should not have been included in the books for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1998. The auditor general and chartered accountants are almost unanimous on this issue, except for those hired by the government, of course, who may be suspected of being less impartial.
It is not the first time the finance minister pulls such a stunt. It is the third time. He did it when he concluded a deal with three maritime provinces to harmonize the GST with their provincial sales tax. A compensation package totalling about $1 billion—which is still being criticized because it means the government bought those three maritime provinces to get what it wanted—was included in the books before the agreement between these provinces and the federal government was even signed.
The second time was when the innovation fund was created. Again, the minister charged the full amount to the current year's budget even though he started spending the money only one year and a half later. Therefore, like all the stakeholders in Quebec, we condemn this practice.
During this debate, we will have the opportunity to address other aspects of the millennium scholarship fund that are very important to Quebeckers. I will talk about an important federal-provincial conference that took place on March 31, 1964, in Quebec City. It was a turning point in the debate on education between the federal government and the Quebec government.