Mr. Speaker, I have fully complied with the rules. Perhaps the hon. member should clean his ears, because I did not mention anyone when I talked about hypocrisy. I referred to a budget that is hypocritical. Perhaps the member feels that a budget is a person. There seems to be a problem of understanding, perhaps a problem of conceptual learning. I have never made a personal attack.
So, I was saying that this was the most hypocritical budget, because, in one fell swoop, the government decided to impose cuts that will exceed $40 billion by the year 2003, money that is largely used by the provinces to finance health services.
Since it is the national health care system, which is administered by the provinces, that was the victim of the government's attempt to put its fiscal house in order, one would have expected the government to use part of that money according to the previous provisions. In other words, the federal government should have given that money back to the provinces, without making a big show of it to promote its visibility. It should have given part, not all of what was asked based on the Saskatoon agreement, that is the agreement reached by the premiers.
I find it totally unacceptable to be at this point, where the government has huge surpluses that help promote the personality of the year, namely the Minister of Finance and future leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, at the expense of ordinary Canadians. The government is even resorting to despicable methods—as we saw with the employment insurance program—to deprive the unemployed of hundreds of millions of dollars. They create a surplus in the employment insurance fund of $6 billion annually, a real public vendetta. That is where we are.
The federal government is setting itself up as the great saviour of the health care system when in fact it is responsible for entire mess we have been in since 1995. Then there are the unemployed, who continue to pay and will do so forever, if we are to believe the offhand and arrogant remarks of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Human Resources Development, at the rate of $6 billion annually.
They keep pressuring them so they can draw off every cent that will enable the federal government to increase its surplus and fund initiatives such as the millennium scholarship fund that move the Prime Minister's face, the federal government and the Canadian flag into the foreground. They are threatening the unemployed who are considering appealing a decision that is totally unacceptable and unjustified. They are even threatening the officials carrying out this vendetta with the loss of their jobs should they not meet the objectives.
There is not much difference between that and the mafia. There is not much difference between that and an organized vendetta. It is as if the idea in the little brain of the Minister of Finance is to have the biggest surplus possible in order to impress as many as possible so he appears to be the best manager in the world and swell his popularity in the near future at the head of the Liberal Party of Canada.
But is he creating social problems in his efforts to score political points? Is he dragging down the health care sector? Is he creating hardship for families in Quebec and in Canada, so that he can look good and keep Bay Street happy?
The humanity has all but gone out of the system when visibility is more important than people's health, when misinformation is more important than hard facts, the truth and democracy, and when vendettas are more important than unemployed workers in need of assistance. This is a terrible way to treat people.
I hope that one day the government will come to its senses. We should not have to get down on our knees for what is rightly ours. Quebeckers pay $30 billion in taxes annually. It is only right that part of this money, a good part of it, should come back to us without our having to negotiate a deal that would guarantee visibility for a power-hungry Prime Minister.