Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques for his excellent work on the issue of employment insurance for the benefit of the unemployed in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
When a situation as dramatic as this one arises, it takes people like my esteemed colleague to document the issue fully, to ask pertinent questions of the minister responsible, and to demand equally pertinent replies.
Employment insurance is a very serious matter, and one that is well documented. I am sure that, some day, logic will win out and the minister will make decisions accordingly.
As my colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques said, we are starting another black chapter in the history of Canadian federalism.
It is rather surprising, when one thinks of the business of the millennium scholarships, that there is one man, and one man alone, who has been a character in all of these black chapters in the history of federalism: the present Prime Minister of Canada.
He was there for the night of the long knives, he was there when the Constitution was patriated to the detriment of Quebec. He was there, floating about in the back hallways and everywhere else with his cell phone and pager during the debate on Meech Lake, and he had a hand in its failure. The present Prime Minister was a presence throughout.
Today, with a major and fundamental intrusion into an area of jurisdiction that is exclusive to Quebec, once again we find the Prime Minister of Canada, the hon. member for Saint-Maurice, right in the middle of things, as the main booster of the millennium scholarships.
It is most unfortunate that a single man can do so much harm to the people of Quebec and to the history of the long battle by the people of Quebec to make the federal government mind its own business. It is, moreover, virtually unprecedented in the history of Canadian federalism for the very essence of the Constitution, the British North America Act which gave exclusive jurisdiction over education to the provinces, and to Quebec in particular, to be trampled underfoot with such arrogance and cynicism.
We have just finished a three week stint with the Standing Committee on Finance, during which we heard testimony from people speaking on behalf of others. The 14 Quebec witnesses represented no less than 1.2 million people in business and education. In fact they represented everything that moves and has an interest in education.
For three weeks, these 14 organizations and others from across Canada came to say that supporting a scheme such the millennium scholarships was out of the question. These organizations, including some Canadian ones and some illustrious Canadian university professors, came to say that if the millennium scholarships were good for Canada, they were bad for Quebec. Now, this is something.
Even after three weeks of such intense work, the Liberals did not even move one single amendment, even though there is unanimous opposition to this in Quebec. Every single witness told the federal government to mind its own business.
Essentially, the witnesses had four messages. First, the millennium scholarship scheme reveals a deep lack of understanding of Quebec reality. I would like to quote from the FTQ's brief; it said that “as it stands now, Bill C-36 shows a lack of understanding on the part of the Canadian government of Quebec loans and grants system and Quebec's priorities in education”.
This is an understatement. Year in and year out, student loans in Quebec alone amount to approximately $500 million. On top of that, the Quebec government pays out grants to students to the tune of $253 million.
The system has been in place for over 30 years. And now we have a bill that ignores this reality, Quebec expertise and the extraordinary results, which in the opinion of the Canadians testifying before the Standing Committee on Finance, tops those of all the other provinces. The government is dismissing all that.
The second problem is the duplication. Quebec has had an administrative structure for loans and grants for over 30 years. There are educational and administrative experts in a whole network of loans and bursaries, who are among the world's most specialized. Now the system is being top loaded, as we say in good French. The federal government is introducing a new parallel structure, federal this time, to administer a $2.5 billion fund.
Do you know what it will cost to administer this millennium fund? It will amount to 5%. Five per cent of the total budget of the fund will go to administer this new federal program in a sector that is Quebec's exclusive jurisdiction. That figure represents twice the cost of administering the Quebec system of loans and bursaries, and they talk about effective management of federal funds.
Another major problem haunted the deliberations of the finance committee, and it is that the millennium scholarships bear no relation to the needs of students in Quebec and even less to the needs of the education system.
If the Liberals really wanted to help students cope with their debt load and gain easier access to education generally, the intelligent approach would have been to limit cuts.
For the past four years and until 2003, the Minister of Finance, who continues shamelessly to collect a surplus of up to $20 billion in the employment insurance fund, has been and will be stealing money from students and the entire Quebec and Canadian educational system, for by then he will have cut $10 billion from higher education.
The best way to help students and ensure their access to education is for the government to return to the system what it took from the provinces. This would have been an intelligent way to intervene in the sector, while maintaining provincial jurisdiction in the educational sector.
There is another problem with this fund. In recent years, the Minister of Finance has got us used to figure juggling. He has us used to being given figures that have nothing to do with reality or the government's annual financial statements. It is the third time that he cooks up figures in such a shameful way.
Each time, the auditor general gave him a stern warning, but cynicism and arrogance are contagious. Indeed, the cynicism and arrogance displayed by the Prime Minister have now spread to the Minister of Finance and the whole cabinet. The Minister of Finance ignores the criticisms of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and those made by the auditor general on three occasions for basically the same reasons.
The Minister of Finance posted to his 1997-98 budget—which ended on March 31—all the funds, a total of $2.5 billion, earmarked for the millennium scholarships. He led us to believe that they would start spending this money immediately. The fact is that the foundation will only start awarding these scholarships in the year 2000. So, an expenditure that would be made only two and a half years later was charged to the 1997-98 federal budget.
This is not standard procedure. Financial statements no longer mean anything. We can read them, but we cannot really find out about the government's revenues and expenditures, because the minister cooks up the figures. This is the third time.
He did so when the maritime provinces harmonized the GST with their own sales taxes. The minister was to give $800 million to the maritime provinces the following year, because they had agreed to harmonize the GST with their own sales taxes, but he had already charged the whole $800 million to the budget of the previous fiscal year. He did the same thing with the innovation fund.
At some point, he will have to stop cooking the books. The truth will have to come out, because this is complete nonsense. Neither the financial statements nor the estimates make sense any longer. And I am not the only one to think so.
After the Minister of Finance brought down his last budget, all the editors said that it made no sense to forecast, year after year, no surplus in government operations, when we know the surplus will keep increasing, starting this year with a $4 billion surplus in the federal budget. It does not make any sense to put “zero, zero, and zero” in the estimates for the next three years. Will he stop laughing at the taxpayers some day?
He does it again with the millennium scholarships; he cooks the books and hides the real budget surplus and all the drastic cuts to education. He keeps doing it and still maintains that he has to fight the deficit, when in fact, since the last fiscal year, we have a surplus that will increase in the future.
Not every day do we—