Mr. Speaker, I listened with considerable interest to the member who has just spoken. It is a good thing that he only had ten minutes, because, had we let him go on, we would have ended up with a shortage of unemployed people in Canada.
It would perhaps be a good idea to look closely at the NDP member's proposal and read the motion. It provides:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take into account regional unemployment rates when establishing or expanding government offices and agencies so that regions with high rates of unemployment are considered for any new job creation.
I do not know if the member is aware of the scope of his motion. I was involved in the 1993 and 1997 election campaigns and I saw the Liberals opposite waving about the famous red book, which, the second time round, had rather a warmed over look about it. However, the government did not object.
The government is being asked today to honour its promises and do what it has always promised in the regions. The member who spoke before me gets around this when he says that unemployment dropped by 40%. This is why I was saying we will end up with a shortage of unemployed people. The member should have said that 40% of the 12% it had been, and it is still high, unfortunately.
Some 20 RCMP investigations are under way in management at Human Resources Development Canada. I did not invent that figure. It was in the papers again this morning: all sorts of misappropriation.
The minister explained her terrible boondoggles by saying that there were pockets of unemployment in the regions and that the department was acting based on these pockets. I wonder which pockets.
In any case, in response to a simple application for a name change, HRDC gave $720,000 to a company that had 118 employees and transferred them three or five doors down the street. Meanwhile, in my riding of Chambly, which is neither poor nor rich, just average like most constituencies represented by my colleagues, we feel that we are not getting our fair share, as the hon. member from the NDP pointed out.
When a party like the one in office has 98 of its 155 members coming from Ontario, it knows which side its bread is buttered on.
This is a recurring story itself, with the result that, since Confederation, the regions have been ignored, except during election campaigns, when politicians come and promise the world to everyone. But once they are elected, they make cuts affecting the regions and they centralize everything around the national capital, Ottawa, instead of trying to give the regions a fair share of the economic spinoffs resulting from government activity.
There are, of course, some exceptions. Unfortunately, these exceptions are all found in the 20 investigations currently being conducted by the RCMP on all kinds of misappropriation.
Is the hon. member of the NDP aware that Atomic Energy of Canada is preparing to outsource the building of its Candu reactors to someplace in Asia, Vietnam or a neighbouring country? I learned this last week when doing research on various government agencies, at which time I discovered that it has been five years since Atomic Energy Canada submitted its five year plan to parliament for approval, as it supposed to.
This has been going on for five years, under the supposed pretext that there is restructuring going on. As well, there are preparations under way for signing agreements with Vietnam and Cambodia, I believe, for production of Candu reactors over there. This is totally against the very principle of the motion by the hon. member from Nova Scotia and the totally gratuitous statements made by the Ontario member who spoke before me.
A total of $12 billion of Canadians' hard-earned dollars has been invested in Atomic Energy Canada at a time when there was no hope of any clear benefit from the production of Candu reactors. Time has passed and the interest has built up. If Atomic Energy of Canada were to pay back capital and interest to the Government of Canada, the total would be impressive, so much so that the figures might seem unrealistic. The interest that would normally have been paid back to the government was therefore written off.
This is a little like the government telling Canada Post “I transferred assets to you when I created Canada Post, so now I am entitled to dividends. I want to be reimbursed”. This is why André Ouellet, the President of Canada Post, pays the government dividends every year. Last year, he handed over $200 million in dividends to the government and he will likely hand over the same amount, maybe a bit more, this year, because Canada Post Corporation is doing quite well.
Why does the government require Canada Post Corporation to hand over dividends, but not Atomic Energy of Canada? For the simple reason that taxpayers are the ones who are going to be paying dividends to the federal government through Canada Post Corporation. They are easy to overtax and shove around because they do not answer back or, if they do, it is just part of the general background buzz, and no one pays any real attention.
But when Atomic Energy of Canada gets ready to contract out the building of its Candu reactors, there might be a slight possibility of some small benefits, rather than the already considerable capital losses and interest loads associated with this kind of project. But no, the government is going to contract this out to another country.
That is how this government treats Canadians who, election after election, want to see the government's actions produce some economic benefit. Generally, the parties that take office hold out the promise of tremendous post-election economic growth in the form of job creation.
In my riding, for instance, Marieville is located in one zone, because Canada has been carved up into zones for the purposes of the transitional jobs fund.
If you have less than 12% unemployment, no business in your riding or your region is eligible for the transitional jobs fund. Marieville, a pretty town in my riding, is a major centre. The region is almost 100% agricultural. The people not working in the farming community come into the major centre. The town of Marieville itself has perhaps 22% or 24% unemployment. However, neighbouring villages have almost full employment. There are family farms and small family businesses linked to the field of agriculture.
Marieville is being penalized, because it is in an area with less than 12% unemployment. If we isolated Marieville, it would be a pocket of unemployment in the opinion of the Minister of Human Resources Development and the Prime Minister. He considers these pockets when they are in his bailiwick, which is Saint-Maurice. He considers them such all the more since the RCMP is considering them as well, because it went rooting around there.
Why do these famous pockets not count elsewhere? Perhaps because the elsewhere did not elect someone in the party in power. What bothers me and what the member for Nova Scotia is right in saying is that this business is unfair.
Apart from those around Ottawa, in Ottawa itself, or in Ontario in the case of many, Canadians do not feel they are getting fair benefit from the government's economic activities. The government generates activity, for example for document printing or for jobs for public officials.
Although not necessarily for the same reasons as the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Quebecois, for its own reasons and after considering all that I have said, feels it has to make the government see things as they are. It has to say to the government “You do not do what you should be doing unless you get a push from behind”. It takes motions such as the one by the member for Sydney—Victoria to say to the government “If you are unfair, rotten to the core, do not give people that impression. Try to at least appear to be fair”. That is what we want.