Madam Speaker, after this short royal intermission, I am pleased to speak on the prebudget consultations.
Previously at this time of year we were consulting the public on the directions we wanted the government to take with regard to its budget decisions and, for a number of years already, the use of the imposing budget surpluses it had accumulated.
Strangely enough, this year the prebudget consultation process will result in a rushed budget, or at least an early budget in view of the recent events. I will come back to this in a moment.
Traditionally these past years the government would table its budget in February. Through the years we have noticed that the government would occasionally accept some of the suggestions made by the Bloc Quebecois as a result of our own consultations in our respective ridings.
The government has not very often given credit to the Bloc Quebecois and our finance critic, the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, for our contribution to the establishment or development of its budget policies. It is a pity.
I would say that the government's decision to table a budget this fall stems also from a recommendation my colleague for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot had been pushing for a few weeks, in fact since the tragic events of September 11.
Finally, it is high time the government follows up on the suggestion from my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot since the main economic indicators have been pointing to an economic slowdown even before September 11, as a matter of fact for a few months now. In the wake of the tragic events of September 11, this downturn has turned into a free fall.
When we look at the main economic indicators, be they simply the gross domestic product, final domestic demand, public expenditures, goods and services, fixed assets, consumer spending, exports, imports, labour market, unemployment rates, inflation or financial markets, they all point to a slowdown in the economy.
Because of the events of September 11 every financial institution has had to review its forecasts for economic growth.
The average real growth of the GDP which had been estimated with the help of the forecasts of various financial institutions was expected to be 3.4% in 2001.
After the events of September 11, financial institutions have reduced considerably their economic growth forecasts. We are now talking about an average growth of 1.5% both in 2001 and 2002.
Clearly, it was imperative that the government table an economic statement or even a full budget to take into account this new dramatic context affecting directly the jobs of many Canadians.
For a time, the finance minister dodged the issue and rejected the Bloc's recommendation to bring in a fall budget, arguing that the measures in the last budget were quite adequate to help the Canadian economy weather the storm.
First of all, as mentioned earlier, that is not what the indicators were showing.
Secondly, the Minister of Finance was a bit naive when he suggested that a budget that was prepared when there was no indication that a momentous event like the September 11 attack would take place could have any impact whatsoever after it took place.
At last, the government acted on our recommendation. We will have a budget by December. I dare hope the government will consider the many recommendations that are being made here, and those that have already been made and will be made in the coming days, especially by the Standing Committee on Finance, which is having consultations on the December budget.
Hopefully we can expect the government to make its own contribution to an economic recovery plan. One may wonder if the decision to table a budget in December was not motivated by the Quebec government's decision to table its own budget this fall. Besides, as we speak, the minister of finance of Quebec, Mrs. Marois, is tabling an ambitious and very interesting budget, which does put forward an economic recovery plan. Naturally this budget is proportionate to the means of the government of Quebec, those means available to the government in Quebec. Quebec is still only a province and it consequently has the means of a province.
Even with its relatively modest resources, the government of Quebec makes a contribution and does everything it can to ensure that, despite the dramatic circumstances we know, Quebecers maintain a standard of living that meets their expectations.
As for the Government of Canada, it has huge sums of money at its disposal. Since 1996 it has accumulated a surplus in excess of $30 billion. My colleague from Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup-Témiscouata--Les Basques referred to that earlier. Despite the tough times we are going through, the federal government will nevertheless manage to accumulate a surplus of some $12 billion by the end of this fiscal year. This means it has sufficient flexibility.
I will come back in a moment to the stabilization plan proposed by the Bloc Quebecois. Who knows, perhaps the government will once again borrow from it to ensure the well-being of Canadians.
That being said, when you look at predictions—I referred earlier to a total surplus of $30 billion since 1996—I think that before addressing the stabilization plan I should point out that in our opinion the government, and especially the finance minister, knowingly underestimated the surpluses to avoid discussing or publicly debating how these surpluses should be used. Under the existing provisions these may systematically be applied to repaying the debt.
I come now to the economic stabilization plan proposed by the Bloc Quebecois and which, I hope, will inspire the government, even though it would obviously not want to give us credit for it.
If we took a very conservative approach and forecast a negative growth rate of 2%, the government would accumulate a surplus in the order of $13.6 billion. We could allocate this surplus without causing a deficit. This disclaims the Minister of Finance's argument that the Bloc Quebecois wants to plunge Canada back into deficit. We would use these surplus funds while avoiding a deficit. This stabilization plan would inject significant sums of money into support measures for small business, employment insurance, obviously, and also into sectoral assistance for different areas of the economy that have been hit particularly hard by the events of September 11, including tourism, the airline industry, biotechnology, shipping, security, defence, and a reserve for a contingency fund and any fiscal imbalance.
I hope the government will present an adequate plan to stimulate the economy.