Mr. Speaker, before I get to the main issue, I would like to take a few moments to speak about the form of the political exercise in which we are engaged today.
As recently as last weekend, in my riding of Charlesbourg—Jacques-Cartier, people were asking me to explain what a throne speech was. I said that someone who had not been elected to office, someone who had been chosen and appointed by the Prime Minister, would be reading the government's policies out to a chamber full of other unelected and unrepresentative people. When I mentioned that MPs, the people's representatives, those who had been elected, did not have access to this chamber, people were surprised, to say the least.
They had some idea of what it meant. However, when one stops to think about it for a few minutes—and that is all the time I would spend—the absurdity of these colonial trappings hits home, and one might wonder how this exercise is representative of societies, such as those of Canada and of Quebec, which are themselves hardly monarchist and very egalitarian. All in all, one might have some questions about the form itself of the exercise, which, of course, is not as important as its substance.
What we saw in the Speech from the Throne is a reflection of Canadian dynamics. We have a country that has been built at quite a pace since 1995. This pace gathered steam in 1995, following the defeat of the yes side in the referendum, but it began back in 1982. I am referring to the building of a strong central Canada with equal provinces, a nation from coast to coast. When conflict arises between the Canadian way and the Quebec way of doing things, it will always be the Canadian way that will come out on top.
About this nation building, the Speech from the Throne is a good illustration of the fact that there is no status quo. Those who believe that some constitutional, administrative, or even political status quo exists are totally wrong. There is no status quo. Since 1982, Canada has rebuilt itself, and the process has gathered speed since 1995. This process is clearly illustrated by three specific examples.
The first example is that of centralization, a power grab by the central government in areas of responsibility that do not come under its jurisdiction. This is not simply about labelling powers. In very specific areas, this centralization has meant that Quebec cannot implement programs that it wants.
Just this week, the Speech from the Throne mentioned that the federal government would provide access to quality day care. Yet everyone knows that Quebec already has a $5 a day day care program that is very popular, in fact the only problem with it is that it is too popular. The federal government has once again announced its intention to interfere in research, in literacy and education, when we know very well that this is a provincial jurisdiction. The same can be said for health, education, university research, public transit. There are numerous examples.
So, the first example of this nation building is a complete disregard for jurisdiction by Ottawa, as it decides to act in areas where it does not belong.
The second example, which follows on the first one, shows that fiscal imbalance allows Ottawa to impinge upon areas which do not come under federal jurisdiction. I would remind the House that because of this fiscal imbalance, which is recognized by everyone in Canada—except the government—by the three political parties in the National Assembly and by all of the provinces, Ottawa can now afford, through its spending power, to get interfere in provincial areas of jurisdiction.
Ottawa can tell the provinces “You are hungry, you are thirsty, you cannot afford to carry out your responsibilities in your own jurisdictions, but it does not matter. We, in Ottawa, can give you the money you need; you will be able to do your work, but under our conditions and according to our standards”.
On one hand, we have Ottawa's stated intention to centralize, illustrated by the three examples from the throne speech that I have given. Also linked to that is the issue of fiscal imbalance, where Quebec loses $50 million, that is $2 billion a year. Ottawa has the means and the desire to impose its standardizing and centralizing vision for Canada.
The third example of this centralizing web is the fact that the federal government does not care about consensus in Quebec in the least. For example, I was very disappointed not to see anything about young offenders in the Speech from the Throne.
Judges, defence counsel, crown attorneys, social workers, police officers and the three political parties represented in the National Assembly all say that Quebec's approach to young offenders had produced the best results in terms of youth crime in North America.
With its bill, which has now been passed and which, by the way, that will be challenged before the appeal court at the end of November, the federal government has axed that approach. While it would have been so easy to allow Quebec to continue with its approach, since it was producing good results, the government said that, no matter, it would ignore the Quebec consensus, because it had a Canadian vision and, when there is a conflict between the Canadian vision and the Quebec vision, the former must prevail.
Here is another example: parental leave. Quebec is willing to give its young families the most generous parental leave program in Canada. What has Ottawa done? It refuses to transfer the money to Quebec so that it can impose its own parental leave program, which is not as good nor as generous as Quebec's program and to which six out of ten people would not have access.
I have used various elements of the Speech from the Throne to show how Ottawa is building a Canada where it wants to interfere in areas that are not under its jurisdiction, which it has the means to do because of the fiscal imbalance, where it can impose its Canadian vision, where it shows nothing but contempt for any consensus that may exist in Quebec and for Quebec's way of doing things. I think that all that is leading Quebeckers to realize more and more that there is no status quo, which brings us back to my introduction.
There is no status quo, and the choice that Quebeckers are facing is this: they can either build their own country or accept to be a province like the others, accept to live in a system that is increasingly centralized and standardized.
When the alternatives are clear, I am sure that the latter option, this centralized Canada, will be rejected by the vast majority of Quebeckers.