Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on the motion put forward by the hon. member for Shefford, which reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take steps to alleviate the burden of poverty in Canada by encouraging self-sufficiency and self-reliance and, to that end, should increase the basic income tax credit to $10,000, index the tax brackets and index the child tax benefit.
It is a pleasure because, today, we will have an opportunity to debate the issue of poverty in Canada and in every province. I can see that, on the government side, members are very compassionate. They seem to be familiar with the issue and its adverse effects and to know what constituencies are affected by poverty.
My colleague from Mississauga South not only has the gift of the gab, he also has a great deal of compassion, as I heard. Too bad he is not the Prime Minister of Canada. I think he might just implement some of the suggestions made in this motion.
It seems to me that he contradicted something he said earlier. I see him every day applauding the Minister of Human Resources Development and his EI reform. We are aware of the fact that this is a social policy that has taken a serious toll on the public. It has made poverty grow worse day by day.
Compassion is one thing, but action is what is needed. What good is it to recognize and lament the fact that some people cannot afford basic necessities like food and housing, if nothing is done about it. The Liberal government could take a variety of measures to remedy the problem, but it is not taking action. Everyone knows that poverty is growing. There are many more children living in poverty today than there were ten years ago.
The Bloc Quebecois has been actively involved in fighting poverty. I mentioned earlier the employment insurance issue, which is a major social policy. Several of my colleagues have worked on private member's bills that they have introduced in this House. Time and time again, they have suggested various approaches to the government, which brushed all of them off, without any consideration for the effort that had gone into developing these proposals.
Unlike the hon. member for Mississauga South, I congratulate the hon. member for Shefford for bringing this motion to the House today. It allows us to focus on poverty.
It is a motion that is praiseworthy in itself, but we are not in agreement with its wording. We find the motion financially irresponsible. It is all very well to bring in solutions, but they must also be affordable. The main weapons against poverty are not contained in the motion of the hon. member for Shefford.
This morning, the political parties admit that poverty is a real shame. It is time to act, and the Liberal policies in this area have been a total failure. The only ones who can do anything are the Liberals. However, we do not see even a hint of willingness to do something to change the situation.
Yet in 1989, the House unanimously passed the following resolution:
This House express its concern for the more than one million Canadian children currently living in poverty and seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000.
We are well aware that the Liberals had a great deal to say on this when in the opposition. They criticized the Progressive Conservative government. Now the shoe is on the other foot and the Progressive Conservatives are criticizing the Liberal government for not attacking poverty.
Ten years later, we have a 60% increase in the number of poor children, to a record high of 1.5 million poor children in Canada.
Each successive government has passed the buck on to the next. I think it was under the Progressive Conservatives that social transfers to the provinces were first reduced and UI eligibility requirements tightened.
These are two enormously important social measures that have a major impact on people, and that play a key role in contributing to poverty if corrective action is not taken.
The Bloc Quebecois is not pulling figures out of a hat and it is not alone in condemning the situation. There are a number of bodies that advise the government and that examine the problem of growing poverty in Canada. The National Council of Welfare, the Canadian Council on Social Development, the UN and Campaign 2000 have criticized the government on several counts and asked it to take action where it could.
The National Council of Welfare is not just any old council. It is a body that advises the federal government on poverty. In a report entitled “Poverty Profile 1996”, it was already identifying poverty as an issue:
Our child poverty is at its highest level in 17 years.
With 20.6%, or 1,481,000, of Canada's children living in poverty, the Liberals are the clear winners when it comes to driving people into poverty. The poverty rate for all categories of families is 14.8%. The rate for single mothers under 65 years of age with children under 18 is 61.4%.
The policies set up by the Liberal government are nothing to brag about. If we look at the figures, the result is rather disastrous.
According to the National Council of Welfare, the decline in government income support programs, particularly social assistance and employment insurance, is the primary cause of poverty. The federal government hurt people in two ways, by reducing transfers to the provinces for social assistance and by making it harder to qualify for employment insurance.
The cuts affecting transfers to the provinces total $42 billion, or $6 billion per year. The National Council of Welfare says that, since the deficit has now been eliminated, the government is in a position to change its approach and to fulfil the commitment it has often made regarding children and their families. This means restoring transfers to the provinces and improving the employment insurance program.
The Canadian Council on Social Development also released a report on progress achieved by Canadian children in 1998. That report is even more scathing. It says that improvements in the lives of Canadian children and young people were offset by negative social and economic patterns. The council blames the bad coverage provided to the unemployed.
So, the Bloc Quebecois is not the only one to condemn the government's attitude regarding transfers to the provinces and employment insurance, with all the restrictions that it has imposed.
The United Nations is also a very important body. It released a report, on December 4, in which it strongly condemned Canada for the rapid deterioration of the living conditions of Canadians. Under the UN's human development index, Canada does not take first place, but only tenth place.
As we all know, Canada prides itself in being the best country in the world, but with figures such as those there is nothing to brag about.
Campaign 2000 is another organization dedicated to fighting poverty in Canada. Its report published in 1998 provides very disturbing figures.
The number of children living in families with incomes under $20,000 has increased by 65%. The number of children living in families experiencing chronic unemployment has increased by 33%. The number of children living in families on social assistance has increased by 51%. The number of children living in low cost but unaffordable housing has increased by 91%.
The government can tell us all it wants about how it is trying to combat child poverty, that it has made it a priority and that its programs take the needs of children and their families into account, but its attitude to the problems of EI and the Canada social transfer put it at the bottom of the class in social policy.
We would like to come back to the member for Shefford's motion and make a few suggestions, because we in the Bloc Quebecois think that she did not go far enough and that her figures are unrealistic. We feel that her motion is financially irresponsible and that the measures proposed do not go far enough.
The motion is financially irresponsible and merely repeats some of the dissenting views of this party with respect to the December report of the Standing Committee on Finance. The Progressive Conservative Party is making suggestions which individually have some merit but collectively would clearly push the Liberal government back into a deficit situation.
I would like to outline the costs associated with this motion of the Progressive Conservative Party. The motion would lower EI premiums by $6 billion without making any improvement to the program. We in the Bloc Quebecois have asked repeatedly that the government improve the system, so that more people can qualify, but this concern is not reflected in the motion put forward by the hon. member for Shefford. At present, 60% of the unemployed are excluded from the EI program. This means that many do not qualify, which contributes to the growth in poverty.
The second suggestion in the hon. member's motion is about fully indexing tax brackets, at a cost of $2 billion. This is in addition to the $6 billion for EI premiums.
She is also asking that the basic income tax credit be increased to $10,000. We know that this would cost $9 billion and that the cost to the public purse per $100 increase—
