Mr. Speaker, I would like to briefly congratulate the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot for raising such an interesting and important topic.
The future—we are talking mainly about the present—of this federation, which the members opposite think handles finances so well, is shaky. The money collected by the federal government must be redistributed to the provinces, which are responsible for health, education and municipalities. These are responsibilities of the provinces and of Quebec.
But the federal government keeps on building up its surplus and distributing the money to the rich rather than giving it back to the provinces. I say that it is distributing it to the rich because, when it uses the surplus to pay down the debt too quickly, this is not money that goes to the poor, but money that goes to the rich. When the surplus is used to lower taxes, as was done last fall, this is money that has been taken away from the least well off, taxpayers, and redistributed to the richest members of society.
Last year, following the mini budget, which became the main budget, I had my accountant do two calculations for me. I wanted to know what two 35 year old men, one earning $33,000 a year and one earning $100,000 a year, would save in taxes as a result of the new budget. The man earning $33,000 a year saved approximately $300 annually in taxes. The one earning $100,000 a year, or three times more, saved seven times more in taxes, around $2,000.
If that is a fair distribution of money in a society that claims to look out for the poor, that says it wants to help low wage earners, some questions are in order. When members opposite say that they are right to take pride in how they are running this country, I have my concerns.
When the federal government takes $36 billion out of the EI fund and gives people to understand that the money belongs to it, we should be worried.
The employment insurance fund is paid into by workers, and also in part by employers. I have been an employer. What do employers do when setting salaries, when looking at the payroll a company can pay out? They take salaries plus benefits, plus the employer's portion of payments.
In the long run, employment insurance is entirely paid by the workers, because if there were no employment insurance, they would be paid a little more.
When I hear justifications like the one provided earlier in response to the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, whereby talking about grab in reference to the employment insurance fund is misleading the public, I disagree. In my opinion, that is a precise and accurate description of what the government has done.
The money paid into it by the low wage earners has been used to build up a surplus. Year after year, this continues to be done, at the rate of some $6 billion yearly.
A worker who has trouble making ends meet sees part of his pay taken regularly to be added to the federal government's surplus and distributed later to those least in need of it.
The motion being discussed today is one that relates to respect and honesty. As long as Quebec is part of this system, it is normal for part of the taxes we pay to the federal government to come back to us to help us—Quebec and the other provinces too, it is true—to deliver the services provided by the government of Quebec and the governments of the other provinces.
Education is a provincial area of jurisdiction. Health is a provincial area of jurisdiction. The municipalities are a provincial jurisdiction. So now we see the federal government giving some money back. They are congratulating themselves because, within a few days of the last election, an agreement was reached in the health field.
But what was the cost of this negotiation? How much did it cost in terms of time and energy? What progress has been made?
Did we get what the federal government was supposed to be giving us in the area of health care? No. We have figures that show that the federal government is now paying about 14 cents for each dollar spent in the health care area.
As far as I am concerned, this is a debate that should not even be taking place. People say that the federation is working properly. The member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot has just said that, in the beginning, in the federal system, the tax points belonged to the provinces. If we have made our contribution to the war effort, and if all the provinces have done so, the tax points should be given back.
This has not been done so that, every year, regularly, people would have to come here to get what is owed to them, and to get it the way the federal government agrees to give it to them.
I will give an example. In the area of education, the government decided to set up the millennium scholarship fund. This is unbelievable. Roughly $2 billion has been put into this fund, in an area that is not under federal jurisdiction but rather under provincial jurisdiction. Moreover, the government has asked unelected people to manage the fund and it found a way, ignoring provincial responsibilities, to give out scholarships, when we had very good scholarship programs in Quebec. It could simply have given the money to the Quebec government, which is responsible for education.
But no, it found a way to ignore provincial responsibilities. It found a way to play petty politics. It found a way to interfere in areas under provincial jurisdiction, to play petty politics with money that belongs to the provinces. It is even going one step further in Quebec, right now.
It has money to give out, but only in exchange for flags. Our money must be used to promote Canada. This is an absurd situation, and it is the same everywhere.
We recently had a debate on the subject. We saw that getting money from the federal government is tied to distributing flags. Personally—