Mr. Speaker, about 10 days ago, the Quebec National Assembly unanimously passed a resolution asking the federal government to amend its bill on the millennium scholarship fund, so as to respect Quebec's unique student loans and grants program.
Over the next few minutes, I will explain why the representatives of the people of Quebec asked Ottawa to unconditionally withdraw from this area and to provide full financial compensation to the Quebec government.
Let me first discuss the federal government's unconditional withdrawal from education. Many reasons justify such a measure, but it is always worth repeating them.
First, under the Constitution, education is an exclusive provincial jurisdiction. We can never say it too often. The federal government argued that its initiative is not related to education, but to the funding of education. Yet, it is clear that the federal program interferes in the education sector by evaluating scholarship recipients and asking them for an activity report.
Second, the issue is even more sensitive in the case of Quebec which, as you know, is not a province like the others, even though some refuse to recognize that fact. Again, anything relating to language, culture and education is vital to Quebec's national identity.
Finally, the federal government's project is a waste of time, money and resources. Indeed, the Quebec government has been administering its own loans and scholarships program for 34 years. It has the expertise and the necessary infrastructures to ensure the smooth operation of a new scholarships program. Why create a new structure, the millennium scholarship foundation, and provide it with the required staff and mechanisms, when everything is already in place in Quebec?
Such shameful duplication is condemned so strongly that a consensus quickly developed in Quebec to have all student scholarships administered by the Quebec government.
This leads me to discuss the second Quebec claim, that is the transfer to the Quebec government of the financial resources reserved for Quebec, so that it can implement an additional scholarship program if needed.
The main reason for this is the current imbalance between the federal government's financial resources and those of the provinces.
In February 1957, ten years before he became Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau wrote the following: “The total wealth at the disposal of the Canadian tax system needs to be divided between the federal government and the provincial governments so that each may do as it sees fit with its share”.
In other words, each level of government must have its share of taxes so that it may meet its constitutional responsibilities. The present Prime Minister would do well to read what his mentor had to say on this.
The federal government does, however, have greater powers of taxation than the provinces. This problem dates back to the beginnings of Confederation, worsening as the provinces began to develop programs to meet the growing needs of their populations in the areas of health, education and welfare. Instead of splitting tax resources differently with the provinces, however, the government of Canada offered to co-finance programs under certain conditions.
Worse yet, the federal government did not settle for controlling the provinces' exercise of power. Often, solely in order to raise its profile, it wants to be the one to control a program in an area of provincial jurisdiction. As we know, very often it does this by taking advantage of its spending power.
What is the millennium scholarship foundation but just one more abuse of the federal spending power, despite this government's promise to limit spending in the aftermath of the 1995 referendum?
The present Prime Minister of Canada is launching unprecedented assaults on the provinces. Even Pierre Elliott Trudeau supported the Quebec premier in his opposition to the federal grants to universities in the 1950s. On this he wrote the following: “If a government has such a superabundance of revenue that it undertakes to provide part of the common wealth which does not fall under its jurisdiction—that government is conspicuously guilty of going against the principle of proportional taxation”.
Judging by these words from a Quebecker who cannot be labelled a separatist, the Government of Canada collects too much taxes compared to the provincial governments. This is no doubt the reason the Minister of Finance is trying to camouflage his budget surplus. Every year he has underevaluated his taxation revenues, overestimated his reserve for contingencies, and as a result exaggerated the size of the federal deficit. Today, he is trying to include in the 1998-99 budget expenditures that would be made over a period of ten years. What will he invent tomorrow to interfere, once again, in areas under provincial jurisdiction?
The federal government now has more money than it needs to fulfil its responsibilities. That money is not the federal government's money. First of all, it is the money the provinces should have received through transfers, which were cut by several billion dollars. It is also the money of the workers, whose EI contributions were diverted. Finally, it is the money of taxpayers from Quebec, Alberta, New Brunswick and all the other Canadian provinces where the federal government collects taxes.
If there is a need for scholarships, the provinces must meet that need themselves. The federal government just has to give them part of the fiscal base so they can collect the necessary taxes directly or, as a former premier of Quebec used to say, “to give them back their loot”. But, as we can see, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
In other words, the federal government should withdraw from the area of scholarships with full compensation to the provinces, as demanded unanimously by the members of the National Assembly of Quebec. As a matter of fact, that is the intent of the amendments to the bill that were brought forward by my colleague, the member for Quebec. It is so convenient to attack the separatists when things are not going well in the Canadian system.
But if there is a sovereignist movement in Quebec, is it not primarily because the Canadian federation is not working? If it is not working, is it not mainly because the federal government is infringing upon provincial areas of jurisdiction, which is leading to costly overlap?
To answer these questions, let me remind the House of what the late political analyst Léon Dion wrote in 1980: “The political stability of our country relies on Quebec being granted control over all linguistic and cultural matters as well as the financial means to develop and implement the programs it would see fit to promote in these areas as suitable for its own people.”
Canada is a dysfunctional entity. For the last 50 years, Canadian federalism has moved away from the model developed by its founders, since respect for the autonomy of the provinces is at the heart of the 1867 pact.
The Millennium Scholarship Foundation is but another example of this distorted federalism. Since negotiations are underway to allow the Government of Quebec to regain exclusive control over scholarships, it would be appropriate to suspend the implementation of the millennium scholarship program.
However, the federal government seems to be too concerned about its political visibility and not enough about the welfare of the students to support the amendments put forward by the Bloc Quebecois.