Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-32, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget.
Having closely examined each component of the latest budget by the Minister of Finance, we reached exactly the same conclusions as we did on February 28 when it was brought down. We have much criticism to level at it.
I would like to make one aside about the size and importance of the surplus to come. The people listening to us need to understand that when we refer to the surplus we mean the overpayments the taxpayers of Quebec and of Canada have made to the Minister of Finance. This has merely gone to swell the annual surpluses that are largely used for government propaganda. This money is also used to grease the palms of friends of the party, also known as looking out for one's buddies. The government has no control over at least part of this money.
The surpluses the Minister of Finance is projecting for the next five years are in the order of $90 billion or $95 billion. Knowing the Minister of Finance and how he loves to fiddle with the figures, and knowing how in the past he has deliberately hidden the true situation of public finances, the validity of his estimates are suspect.
It would be more accurate to speak of a cumulative surplus, over the next five years, of more than $140 billion. For the employment insurance fund alone, despite the decrease in contributions in the last budget and the one before it, there will still be a surplus of more than $6 billion. Employers and employees are, therefore, paying too much in the way of contributions.
Worse still, the majority of workers who pay into the fund while employed are excluded from benefits. Only 42% of the jobless can benefit, although 100% of them contributed while employed. This is a disgrace. This is why there are stupendous surpluses every year in the fund, like the average of $6 billion annually over the past three years.
We were expecting a thorough reform of employment insurance. My colleague, the member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, introduced a general proposal to reform the employment insurance plan. Under this proposal, all the bias in the plan, all the harmful aspects of the plan that the Bloc Quebecois has criticized so often, all the elements preventing the people who should benefit from the employment insurance plan from doing so could be totally and readily corrected.
It would even be possible to set aside a bit of a surplus annually to ensure there would be something of a cushion in the event the economy slows down. The cushion in the employment insurance fund for the past four years has been over $26 billion. That is a lot. This is robbery, because the federal government does not put a cent into it anymore. The employers and the employees pay.
Worse yet, those who contribute the most, in these two categories of taxpayers, are the small and medium businesses and the middle income workers, because of the ceiling on contributions.
Not only are the SMBs penalized by the federal tax system, especially compared to big business, not only are middle income workers penalized by the tax system and the various programs they cannot access, but they are obliged to pay more than their share of contributions to employment insurance.
While the Minister of Finance has surpluses coming out his ears and polishes his image as the possible next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, it is appalling that this man is responsible for really botching a policy that had in the past made Canada an example in the area of social programs.
This man, with his ambitions for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, has ruined the work of a number of important politicians before him. He has wrecked the employment insurance plan. He stayed firmly seated on his fanny when he was asked to reform the tax system to make it a little fairer. He did not do anything for the poor. He let the ship drift. Let us not forget that he is a shipowner first and foremost, before being a Minister of Finance.
This man's ambition is to become the leader of a country. Imagine the catastrophe that could result if he were at the helm. People often forget that he is the one responsible for the increase in poverty since 1993, because of all the cuts he made to employment insurance and social programs.
Considering the surpluses that are coming out of his ears, we expected the Minister of Finance to fully restore transfers to the provinces for social assistance, higher education and health. But no. The minister earmarked only $2.5 billion, over the next three years, while everyone was asking him to allocate $3.7 billion immediately and to continue to do so every year.
This is far from restoring federal transfers to fund health, higher education and social assistance to the levels they were at before the man responsible for this chainsaw massacre came into the picture.
For social housing, $54 million has been earmarked. The minister was boasting, saying “I care about the poor”. It is hypocritical to present things like that. The minister gave $54 million when he knew full well—because of the representations that had been made to him, by FRAPRU, among others—that a minimum of $1.7 billion this year was required for a minimum number of social housing units.
Let us not forget that even if money has been put into social housing since 1993, it is not for new units. It is not to meet the needs of thousands of Quebecers and Canadians who are getting poorer because of the Minister of Finance. It is to maintain housing that has already been built. That is the difference. There is also quite a difference between $1.7 billion and $54 million.
I have a few words of congratulation for the Minister of Finance with respect to the indexing of the income tax tables. Since 1993, the Bloc Quebecois has been calling for the income tax tables to be fully indexed. Why? Because taxpayers are being robbed. Although the Minister of Finance does not rise in his place, when bringing down the budget, and announce that he is raising taxes, the government's coffers kept filling up at an incredible rate because, since 1994, he has ignored our requests to index the income tax tables.
And what has been the result? Since 1994, the Minister of Finance, who has visions of leading the nation, has taken in $17 billion of taxpayers' money—taken in and stolen, it boils down to the same thing—because there is no indexation. He might deserve some praise for what he has done in this year's budget, but it took seven years and $17 billion stolen from taxpayers before this Minister of Finance decided to act. This is unacceptable.
Those who are worst off and those in the middle income category will have to wait longer for tax breaks. With Canada's social policies scrapped, the worst off will benefit later from this huge sacrifice. The middle income earners, who have had billions squeezed out of them to eliminate the deficit and build up the surplus, will have to hold their breath too.
Do people realize what the real tax reduction will be this year and next for a couple with one child earning $20,000? The tax savings for this couple will be $106 this year and $269 the next—not even a dollar a day. The tax savings for a couple with two children with a family income of $35,000 will be $115 this year and $195 the next. If this is not thumbing their nose at people, what is it?
A couple with two children and an income of $65,000 saves $485 in taxes this year, and $500 in 2001, which works out to about $1.25 a day. This is really laughable. However, the buddies of the ship-owning Minister of Finance, with their annual incomes of $250,000 or more, will benefit this year from a tax savings of $4,785. Next year, another $3,500 will have to be added to that figure, because the 3% surtax is going to be gradually eliminated.
We look at this on top of the enormous scandals at HRDC—the $3 billion hole, and that is just the amount we know about—the Placeteco affair and the creation over the years of no fewer than 80 government bodies which have no obligation to report to parliament in any way and which have a budget allocation of more than $10 billion, over which we have no control. We look at this mismanagement, this misuse of funds that could have gone to the disadvantaged and the middle-income earners. We look at the Minister of Finance greasing the palms of his little buddies, and we cannot do otherwise than to regret this latest budget and all this pretence at lowering taxes.
In light of the analysis I have just presented, it can be seen that, yes, there were tax reductions, but for the millionaires, the peers and buddies of the Minister of Finance. It is possible that these shipowners do pay taxes elsewhere, but not in Canada.