Mr. Speaker, when it brought down its budget last February, the government once again demonstrated its lack of respect for the institutions and mechanisms developed by the people of Quebec during the quiet revolution.
By creating millennium scholarships, the Liberal government is once again poking its nose into a jurisdiction that belongs exclusively to Quebec, in this case education.
It is rather ironic to see the Prime Minister of Canada trying to sell the Canadian Constitution to Quebeckers and to Canadians, when his own government is not even able to respect it. Section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867, recognizes Quebec's exclusive jurisdiction over education, and the millennium fund is an unprecedented intrusion into this area of provincial jurisdiction.
In 1964, the government of Lester B. Pearson suggested making interest-free loans available to Canadian students. When this federal education subsidy was opposed by Jean Lesage, a Liberal, the Pearson government then wisely declared that, if a province preferred to stick with its own loans program, it would be entitled to equivalent compensation. So said a Liberal. The government of the day had tried unsuccessfully to interfere in the area of education. The right to opt out of student financial assistance programs with compensation has existed since 1964.
Will the Liberal government be as fair a player in 1998? Knowing that paragraphs 29(1) and 25(2) of Bill C-36 are designed to block the transfer to the Government of Quebec of its fair share for opting out of the millennium fund, one could have one's doubts. In order to have access to the program, Quebec will have to embark on a series of long and pointless negotiations in a field where it has already proven itself.
Worse yet, in order to deny Quebec its right to opt out with compensation, the federal government has decided to create a foundation outside regular federal programs. The federal government's imperialist attitude is beyond all understanding.
Why interfere in Quebec's loans and bursaries program when it is the most advanced in Canada? Quebec has built up an effective and vigorous loans and bursaries program that is the envy of students in other provinces.
Why, just when the federal government has reduced its deficit to zero, is the Minister of Finance rushing to create additional federal-provincial duplication and again wasting taxpayers' money? Now that it again has money to spend, the federal government is spending it in provincial jurisdictions.