Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today in my capacity as the Bloc Quebecois critic for regional development on Motion M-224, presented by my colleague on the industry committee, the hon. member for Kelowna. I can attest to how hard he works on that committee, and he often asks pertinent questions. entirely
I believe it would be useful to reread his motion:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should dissolve the regional development agencies, including ACOA, Ford-Q, WED, and FedNor, and redirect funds targeted for the agencies toward tax relief, debt retirement, and the reduction of the size of the federal government.
All of the components of this motion make sense, but there is a problem, I believe, when they are put together. Then some clarification becomes necessary.
The Bloc Quebecois would be in favour of dissolution of the regional development agencies, but is not opposed to investment in regional development. Our Reform colleague is suggesting less intervention in the economy. On this point, my thoughts are along the same lines as the Liberal minister who has just spoken. It is certain that the rural and isolated areas need help. They must be given special assistance or they and their local businesses will not have an equal opportunity for development.
In our opinion, however, the federal government is not the one best placed to develop the regions. The government in Ottawa creates agencies right and left, but there are services in place at the provincial government level for this. Such is the case in Quebec, with its regionalized structure made up of 16 regional development councils. There are local development councils, one in each of the MRCs, and these structures are characterized by representativity. The public can run for membership on the board of these bodies.
The minister may well say “Oh yes, we do the same, we have CFDCs in our region”. But this duplication of energies and of staff constitutes a problem. I am speaking for Quebec, because it is what I know best. In our opinion, the federal government is not the one in the best position to look after this matter.
The federal government will be present because of its need of visibility. Whether the government is Liberal or Conservative, it has to have its visibility. It must at all cost show it is doing something even if regional development services exist in the provinces.
According to the logic of our statement, money for regional development should go to the provinces, which are in a better position, in our opinion, to look after such matters, or federal-provincial agreements should be established.
That was long the case. It could have been the case, for example, in the infrastructures program in which municipal, provincial and federal governments acted on a one time basis. Such agreements are possible, therefore.
One such one was renewed in the east. Since 1994, with the Liberals in government, renewal of the regional development agreement with Quebec has been impossible. There has been no agreement since 1994, and on top of that, the federal government continues to spend money on regional development without a thought to regional development council strategies or to the priorities and approaches of local development councils. It is therefore acting unilaterally, driven by its concern for visibility.
This is so much so that they changed names. They are no longer calling it the federal office for regional development—Quebec. Since early March, it has been called the Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions Agency. They have to show their maple leaf. This is for visibility. When ministers cannot make announcements, they send government members to do it, to cut ribbons, so as to always ensure the visibility of our good federal government, and particularly that of the Liberal government. Money is spent. But we need to allocate that money to development initiatives that reflect the priorities.
An example of duplication is the $33 million spent in Quebec for administration purposes. There are 264 federal public servants who duplicate the work of provincial public servants, or of development officers paid by municipalities, regions or communities. And they seldom sit down to put their heads together. We must put an end to this situation.
However, I will admit one thing. We must recognize the work of the CFDC's in Quebec that are funded by the federal government. Over time, they developed an expertise in regional development. In recent days, I talked to Quebec government people involved in regional development, and they were saying that their government is willing to recognize the expertise of the CFDC people who have been involved, and that it would be pleased to continue to work with them. These people include permanent employees, but also many volunteers who became involved over the years.
In conclusion, the federal government's participation in Quebec's regional development activities has considerably evolved toward unilateralism. Indeed, while the federal government used to provide financial support to activities determined by the Quebec government, it is now implementing its own programs and activities, and it funds them in a unilateral fashion.
What is more, no reference is made to either strategic planning or framework agreements between the Quebec government and the regions for the choice of priorities, but rather to the study results on which the former federal office of regional development based its own view of the regions of Quebec. This situation does not augur well in any way, because in future the two governments will be taking action on parallel paths in regional development, so there will be still more duplication and overlap, thus creating an atmosphere of confusion for the clientele in the regions.
If, with the abolition of these agencies, the federal government were to convert the amounts it was already spending into transfer payments to the provinces, we would be in favour.
Quebec does not get its fair share in regional development funding. Looking at the per capita amounts, and comparing with the Atlantic provinces for instance, I would like my colleague from the Atlantic region to know that there is a five-to-one ratio, with his region getting five times as much.
Comparing the number of unemployed, the ratio is four-to-one. I have not done an analysis for other regions, but I believe that if the government wants to continue paying out money and if it were to accept a federal-provincial agreement for doing so, it should at least respect the principle of fairness. There is already the principle of equalization, which applies to transfers to the provinces. The Minister of Finance has jurisdiction over this, according to certain calculation formulas too complicated to go into here. This is a system already in place.
When it comes to regional development, where the focus should be on giving isolated regions of a province, or sub-regions, the same opportunities as the rest of that province, it should be up to the province to decide on priorities and on the mechanisms to be used.
Conditional on such a balance, there should be transfers to the provinces for regional development, because we feel that the provinces are best placed to be responsible for this.