Mr. Speaker, we ought to have been able to rejoice with a projected budget surplus over the next five years of what, according to the minister's own analyses, will be $95.5 billion. For the first time, we can anticipate, for such a considerable length of time, some amazing surpluses in federal public finances. The last budget by the Minister of Finance is, however, a great disappointment. Why? One has to think about where those $95 billion have come from.
There are three main sources for the Minister of Finance's budget surpluses of the past two years and the next five to come. A surplus of that size is not good news when one learns its sources.
First of all, since 1993, since this Minister of Finance has been in that portfolio, things have been arranged so that the taxpayers of Quebec and of Canada have paid $30 billion more in taxes without the Minister of Finance having to announce any increases. This was done by not indexing the tax tables.
In the last budget, he announced that he was going to start indexing. It will, however, take years and years to correct the tables to reflect inflation, years before the Canadian taxpayers can see any difference in their pockets as far as a tax return is concerned. We are talking $30 billion in additional taxes here.
Another significant source of the Minister of Finance's surplus is the employment insurance fund. Year in and year out for the past four years now, he has been dipping into the employment insurance fund to find surpluses ranging from $6 billion to $7 billion annually. These funds are made up of the contributions of employers and employees to the employment insurance fund, not the federal government's contributions, for it has not put a cent into it since 1992. So one part of the surplus the Minister of Finance is so proud of comes from the surplus in the employment insurance fund.
There is another major source of these surpluses. The Minister of Finance, who is full of compassion for society's disadvantaged and who blithely puts his hand to his heart as he thinks of Canada's poor children, is the same Minister of Finance who, in 1994, put a budget mechanism in place that year after year ensures systematic cuts are made to the Canada social transfer, without any announcement of them. This transfer enables the provinces to fund social assistance, income security, post-secondary education and health.
Even with the minor adjustments he made in his latest budget, the 2000 budget, by 2003, the Minister of Finance will have withdrawn no less than $32 billion from these transfers to the provinces.
When we take a look at the Minister of Finance's evaluation of the surpluses over the coming years and the evaluation of what he has systematically stolen from these three budget items, we cannot miss the striking similarity of the figures. He will take the $90 billion from taxpayers as disguised tax increases and from the Canada social transfer by cutting it on the backs of the provinces. He will take it as well from the surplus in the employment insurance fund.
We should be pleased with what he calls good management of public finances and what we call robbery of taxpayers, the most disadvantaged in society and the unemployed.
We must not forget that the surplus in the employment insurance fund is not just an over-contribution by employers and employees. It is also the product of a tightening of the criteria under which unemployed workers may benefit from this plan.
Are members aware that only 42% of those unemployed can benefit from the employment insurance plan? It no longer covers the majority of the clientele it serves. This has got to change.
With surpluses coming out his ears, the Minister of Finance should be thinking about showing real compassion, instead of deliberately waiting until an election campaign is in full swing before announcing any sort of relief.
Since the government knows perfectly well that it will have a $95 billion surplus over the next five years, according to the minister's estimates, and over $140 billion according to ours, it is unconscionable to wait, while the problems of poverty and the problems in the health care system throughout Canada and not just in Quebec grow worse.
There has been an anti-Quebec campaign since we came here. We are more aware of it in the Bloc Quebecois, since we are the only ones defending the interests of Quebecers in this House. We are very aware of the systematic attacks and anti-Quebec propaganda around here.
With respect to poverty, when we see the latest figures provided by such bodies as the National Council of Welfare, it is outrageous, scandalous and unacceptable that a Minister of Finance, who will have surpluses coming out his ears over the next few years, does not introduce drastic measures to do something about this poverty, does not restore the Canada social transfer, and does not make the EI system more flexible in order to benefit unemployed workers.
When we look at the issue of poverty since the Liberal government has been in power, the government led by the little guy from Shawinigan, it has increased for all categories of the population. Let us look at the case of children alone.
In 1993, during the election campaign, the Liberal Party of Canada was critical of the Progressive Conservatives because, at the time, there were one million poor children in Canada. The latest statistics indicate that there are 1.5 million poor children in Canada, an increase of 50%.
If there are poor children, this is because there are poor parents, and if there are poor parents, this is because the Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister and this Liberal government have blithely slashed the Canada social transfer, and have accumulated a stupendous surplus, with plans to accumulate still more in coming years, on the backs of the poor.
When we look at the incidence of poverty among female seniors, it comes close to 50%. What is this government doing to remedy poverty in this group, in Quebec and in Canada? Nothing. It is swimming in surplus funds and is proud of it, but is doing nothing to remedy the situation.
As far as seniors are concerned, according to the Canadian Council on Social Development, we are seeing the reversal of a trend that has been in place for the past 30 years, which was to ensure that seniors had a decent income. Now we are in the process of quietly impoverishing certain sub-categories of seniors, while we ought to be continuing along the path of ensuring them a stable and fair income in a society that claims to be full of compassion and justice.
When we look at the new forms of poverty this government has created, we see that even now there is a new phenomenon which is impoverishing the employed. Now we have the working poor, a phenomenon we had not seen for several decades. People work, but because of a variety of factors, including government inertia when it comes to correcting injustices, such as in federal taxation, they are becoming poorer.
I will give an example. A couple with one child and a single income starts paying federal income tax once their income reaches $13,700, whereas in Quebec, this family would pay income tax only once their income reached $30,000.
Is it reasonable, when they have surpluses coming out of their ears, for the government to start taxing poor families with a dependent child at $13,700? In Quebec, the situation has long been rectified, and income tax is not applied until the income threshold of $30,000 is reached.
Is it reasonable for this man, who is boasting about having surpluses—and the money is here, not in the provinces—to continue to brag about these surpluses, with his Prime Minister bragging about the Canadian model around the world, while no thought whatsoever is given to reforming taxation for Canada's poorest families as the Bloc Quebecois has been requesting since 1993? It is deplorable.
Federal taxation is now contributing to the impoverishment of society, and that is serious. When the Minister of Finance sits on his behind doing sweet nothing and ignoring our requests, despite all these surpluses in his budget 2000 forecasts, that is completely unacceptable.
Not to mention, and I will conclude with this, that the money we give this government, the $32 billion Quebec taxpayers hand over every year to this government, is being used to pay off their buddies in the HRDC scandal, in the form of grants to friends of the Liberal Party for the ministerial tour around Quebec to spread anti-PQ propaganda.
Their buddies are getting money. But it is money from our pockets—$32 billion from Quebecers—that is paying for this anti-Quebec propaganda, for ministers to parade around singing the praises of federalism and squandering our tax dollars.
We are going to vote against this bill at report stage now before us. The Bloc Quebecois is here to defend the interests of Quebec and of Quebecers, because they are very ill served by this government.