Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in the debate on the Reform Party motion, at the end of this opposition day.
I partially agree with the motion, particularly its first part, which provides that this House should condemn the government for failing to identify and address the main concerns and issues of the regions of Canada.
With regard to that first part of the motion, there are many issues, many realities which show that in Canada, since the last two elections, that is since the Liberals took office—and the membership of this parliament is a prime example—regional parties have a strong representation. These are parties that represent Canada's regions, because there is a great deal of frustration among our fellow citizens. Let me give you a few examples to support my point.
First, there is the whole issue of employment insurance. A few years ago, the government decided to completely change the unemployment insurance program and to transform it into what was called the employment insurance program. However, this is much more a program used by the government to fight the deficit, to try to pocket money as quickly as possible, without any regard for the impact on regional development.
In Canada, a kind of social pact had been in place for quite some time, in fact for several decades. There was a major seasonal industry in resource-based regions, such as those living off the agricultural, logging or fishing industry, since there were no permanent jobs in those industries. An EI system was introduced that allowed people to work during periods when there were jobs and to have supplemental income during periods when there were none.
A forestry worker cannot cut down trees year round. It is the same for fishers; there is a period of the year when it is not possible to work. Those who harvest peat, an industry in my region, have the same problem.
The federal government decided to scrap this social pact. It tightened up the EI program to the point where many people have no income at all for five, ten or fifteen weeks every year. Another result is that someone earning minimum wage will receive EI benefits that are actually less than welfare, and thus less than the minimum required to get by.
These are not hypothetical examples. I am talking about folks we see in our ridings. Recently, I met with someone in this very situation, a 51-year-old man who had always had a seasonal job and was therefore being penalized. He was losing 1% of his benefits for 15, 20 or 25 weeks every year. This is completely unacceptable.
For people such as these in our regions, the federal government's behaviour shows that it has no understanding of or sensitivity to regional development needs.
We have other similar examples. If the federal government were concerned about the needs of the regions, it would already have introduced a pro-shipbuilding strategy. It would listen to the suggestions of the member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière and this industrial sector could be revived in the regions where it once throve.
Through its inaction and failure to understand what is needed to put things right, the federal government continues to ignore the needs of the regions, to stand in the way of their full development.
Another example is the millennium scholarships. Some will say that scholarships are far from being regional development. In Canada, however, there are people, federalists, who consider Quebec to be a region of Canada. They tell the Quebec government, which is responsible for education, “Your loan and scholarship program, the best in Canada, will be shunted aside and we will create a plan for merit-based scholarships which will directly finance the university studies of certain students but this will be according to their academic success and not their financial need”. This is in direct contradiction with the basic principles of the Quebec program.
This is one more way for the federal government to show that it has solutions for everything and must, in order to raise its profile, trample on people's needs.
Earlier there was a debate on the CFDCs. No one has said that all federal government ideas are bad ones, but what is certainly bad is to have put in place and perpetuated for decades two regimes for local development, side by side. Even if today there are the Community Futures Development Corporations, with a mandate and a community base, there are also CLDs, local development centres. Why both, when each region could manage very well with just one? Because the federal government insists on being involved in regional development, a sector clearly not its responsibility.
There are many examples of how the federal government violated, if you will, the social pact that united Canadians. We witnessed this with the income sharing program and the changes to equalization rules.
The first part of the Reform Party motion obviously refers to people living in the various regions of Canada. Now, national policies are dictated by bureaucrats. This is not necessarily because elected representatives act in bad faith, but because of the huge bureaucracy that the government has allowed to develop in Ottawa over the past 20 or 25 years. Very quickly, those appointed to cabinet start speaking primarily on behalf of these bureaucrats, instead of representing their voters and the various regions of Canada.
We must root out this evil in Ottawa. In that sense, the Reform Party motion is right on target.
I can understand why the Liberal Party of Canada is desperately trying to establish roots in various parts of the country, because there are some regions where no Liberals have been elected for a long time, which is also a reflection of public discontent.
For example, how could people in Quebec's eastern region elect a Liberal candidate when, in recent years, the Liberal Party has reneged on its principles regarding how the unemployed should be treated, preferring instead to pursue the policies set in place by the Conservatives? People are not stupid. They know what they are doing when they vote. They are sending a message to the government, and the government should listen.
I will conclude by describing what I think would be the way the federal government could show clearly it is listening to the regions. Let us take the very real example of the gas pipeline, whose route, which was decided last year, could have been through eastern Quebec and northern New Brunswick and on to Sable Island. The decision was to let market rules apply.
This is what the Minister of Natural Resources blissfully told me in a letter “We have decided to leave the market rules,—to ensure the natural gas finds its way as quickly as possible to the United States—to let these people have a significant competitive edge”. However, had the entire region between Bernières, the Rivière-du-Loup region and New Brunswick been provided with natural gas, there would have been a significant competitive edge that would have attracted business.
Either market rules prevail, and gas service is provided where business exists, or the government plays the role of financial lever of economic development and gives the regions appropriate tools. This is the sort of action the people in our regions are waiting for because at the moment there is deep dissatisfaction which is expressed in this House by among other things the first part of the Reform Party's motion.
