Madam Speaker, I was saying that a new chapter has been written in the dark history of the federal system, as illustrated by all the arguments I and every other speaker from Quebec have submitted. They have also unanimously rejected the proposed millennium scholarship fund.
It is not every day that the Premier of Quebec and his education minister lead a delegation to come to meet with the Prime Minister of Canada here, in Ottawa, to see if they could agree on a mutually acceptable position, which would at the same time satisfy the federal government's need for visibility. That is all there is to it: the federal government wants to be visible in what it does for students in the hope of winning them over to the cause of Canadian federalism.
What are they taking students for? Students can see that behind this need for visibility there are measures which have been penalizing them big time for the past four years.
The premier and the minister of education of Quebec came here to meet with the Prime Minister of Canada. They tried to smooth things over and made several concessions. They also put on the table proposals that would respect Quebec's jurisdiction while giving the federal government the visibility it desired. That is all it is after. It does not care about efficiency or helping students. Just the same, a negotiating committee was set up. Week after week, the lead negotiator on this committee did not show any real desire to define a mutually acceptable position.
In the end, little fed up with all the fine talk, and a little fed up that things are not moving ahead, the minister of education has decided that enough is enough, that the federal Liberals do not really want to work out any new arrangements.
As my colleague mentioned just now, the National Assembly even passed a unanimous motion that allowed the federal government its visibility but that also ensured some respect for the Government of Quebec's jurisdiction, ensured that it was Quebec that was responsible for the administration, as well as providing the lists of millennium scholarship fund recipients. We also had a share, based on the demographic figures, of the $2.5 billion that would have gone to Quebec. This was passed unanimously by all parties present in the National Assembly.
Once again, this is an indication of the consensus that was clearly evident during the discussions of the Standing Committee on Finance, when witnesses from Quebec appeared before the committee.
There are even Canadian supporters, as I mentioned earlier. John Trent of the University of Ottawa, for instance, who is a vocal opponent of the sovereignists, who is certainly no friend of the Bloc Quebecois, said, and I quote “The fund will inevitably lead to federal-provincial duplication and overlap with existing programs. It is in direct competition with Quebec's loans and scholarships program, which many consider superior”.
When people like him speak in our favour, speak in favour of Quebec, and add their voices to the consensus in Quebec, that says it all. The government is demonstrating unprecedented arrogance and cynicism.
As my colleague mentioned earlier, there have been several attempts by the federal government in the past to interfere in the field of education, which comes under the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec. Every time, the federal government understood. The federal leaders, who were less arrogant and less cynical than our leaders today, understood in the past that education was sacred to Quebec, that we would not allow the federal government to interfere in this sector.
One of the most important federal conferences in the history of Canadian federalism was held in Quebec City in 1964, on March 31 to be exact.
I remember that it was given front page coverage by the Globe and Mail on that date, because it considered this an historic event on a number of levels, including the fact that it marked the discussion of new arrangements between the federal government and the provinces, Quebec in particular, with respect to taxation, the establishment of a new order if you will, in federal-provincial relations and the respect of jurisdictions such as education.
At that time, Messrs. Pearson and Lesage, two intelligent men who were willing to talk to each other, exchanged views during this federal-provincial conference because, in 1964, the federal government wanted to inaugurate a federal program of student loans and bursaries.
I was surprised to find, in rereading the opening remarks by the Hon. Jean Lesage, the Premier of Quebec at the time, that they could have been made today.
If I may, I will quote a few passages from those opening remarks by Mr. Lesage.
The fact that the federal government offers only student loans, not bursaries and loans as seems to have been the case at one point, may at first appear to be an attempt to avoid the constitutional problem bursaries would have presented. In fact, because supply falls within its jurisdiction, the federal government can give the impression that it is remaining within its jurisdiction by giving loans rather than bursaries.
We do not believe this gets around the constitutional problem. The students themselves have felt this, because they have openly opposed the new federal policy.
The millennium scholarship project has also been opposed recently by students.
I will now continue.
The difficulty arises, not from the fact that there are loans, but that they are interest-free loans for students. These loans will be made by financial institutions—
For these two reasons, the Government of Quebec cannot accept application of the federal program as it is proposed at present.
We have, moreover, already set up a student aid service involving sizeable amounts of bursaries and loans to students every year. We are therefore already making a particularly significant effort in this area, not to mention the huge sums of money we devote to other sectors of education every year.
Under the circumstances, in order to resolve the problem posed by the federal student loan policy, Quebec demands that the Government of Canada hand over to it, in the form of tax equivalencies, those amounts it would have reimbursed in interest payments on loans to Quebec students. We would accept as the basis for determining this equivalent amount the relative proportion of the population of Quebec.
From that conference on, therefore—