Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to speak on the budget tabled by the current Minister of Finance in February.
I will tell everyone listening why the members of the Bloc Quebecois, including myself, will not support this budget.
We will oppose the budget because it does not meet the real concerns and expectations of Quebeckers. What did Quebeckers ask the new Minister of Finance for, which should have been included in his budget? First, they asked that the fiscal imbalance which has been condemned be corrected.
There is and has been much talk about this. In Quebec, we have had the Séguin commission, which has tabled its report. This study concluded that there is a fiscal imbalance and it has been endorsed by the premiers of all the other provinces, who agreed that such an imbalance exists, that the federal government is collecting too much in taxes and raking in huge surpluses. Second, these huge surpluses escape scrutiny by parliamentarians. As a result, nothing is being done to correct the imbalance.
Also, there is nothing in this budget about establishing an independent employment insurance fund. For years, the Bloc Quebecois has been asking that the government establish, in conjunction with all the central labour bodies and workers in Quebec, a genuine independent EI fund administered jointly by workers and employers.
It is unacceptable that the surplus in the EI fund today, in 2003, is $44 billion. What is the government doing with that money? The Secretary of State responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec referred to a virtual amount. This is a serious matter. We are talking about money that belongs to workers and employers. I call it an employment tax. This means that the government collected far more money than it had to and hid it God knows where. It means that now working Canadians and Quebeckers are being required to pay premiums higher than necessary to meet the needs of the fund. There is nothing about that in this budget.
Second, there is nothing for the wind power industry. We know that with the Kyoto protocol comes the need to favour renewable energies. Changes will be required in our management in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Quebec saw fit to invest heavily in this new energy. I think it is important that we do, but there is nothing about that in the budget.
Furthermore, in this budget there is no mention of abolishing the special tax of 1.5¢ per litre of gas that was introduced by the former Minister of Finance. This tax was meant to pay down the debt and eliminate the deficit. There has not been a deficit since 1995, and there is no indication that the tax will be abolished. What are they doing with this money? We do not know. It is another hidden tax.
We are also told that the airport security tax will be abolished. This is a tax was introduced by the former Minister of Finance for security in airports. The current Minister of Finance asked two independent firms to conduct studies to determine the income generated by this tax compared to the expenses incurred by tightening security in the airports. Based on the findings, there was a $43 million surplus.
What did this do? This tax increased the price of airline tickets, which penalizes the regions, once again. Money is taken from the regions and invested in large cities.
A return ticket from Bagotville to Ottawa costs me $900 to $1,000, and I buy one once a week. This is unacceptable. How can we expect people in the regions to use this mode of transportation? It is an essential mode of transportation for people who have no other way to get to meetings and to work, like me. I have to go to work. The general public cannot afford to pay such a price for an airline ticket.
This tax increased the price of airline tickets. We said there was no need for this and that the money should have come from the budget. Nonetheless, the tax was introduced in order to take in even more money.
Also, there is nothing in the budget to abolish useless programs and thereby decrease spending by several billions of dollars. We know that the government is very good at encroaching on provincial jurisdictions.
Yesterday evening, when I came out of the debate on mad cow disease, I met some ordinary people who told me they are always the ones who have to pay, always the same taxpayers. There are school taxes, provincial taxes, municipal taxes, federal taxes, but the taxpayers are always the same. If they knew their tax money was going to the right things, they would have no objections to paying.
But we know that the federal government of today is always trying to encroach into areas where it has no business being. The Constitution says it is not their area of jurisdiction, so why does it insist? For visibility. Its obsession with visibility drives it to use funds that could be used elsewhere. On what? In essential areas, which this budget could have included. They could have been used to help the real people who have been shunted aside in this budget. They could have been used for the needs of women, aboriginal people, the elderly, self-employed workers. As well, they should also have been used for the softwood lumber crisis.
When the Minister for International Trade gets up to speak, he always says everything is great, everything is just wonderful in connection with softwood lumber, and we are going to win. We are going to win, but there will not be many people around to celebrate when we do. In my region, the one most affected by the softwood lumber crisis, there will be no workers left. The sawmills will have closed and our communities will have been decimated.
In my region, there are some small communities that owe their existence to the work provided by the sawmills. Today, however, they are waiting impatiently. They have reached the stage of no longer believing this government will respond to their needs and keep its commitment to move on to phase two of its softwood lumber assistance plan. How else could they feel? There is no mention of it in the budget, no mention of phase two, and that is where action must be taken.
And what is being done for women? I find this unacceptable. This government is doing nothing. Quebec would like to create its own parental insurance program. When will this government start negotiating with the Government of Quebec in order to reach an agreement that will allow the creation of this Quebec parental insurance fund?
This fund would help women. It would provide insurance for self-employed women and those with seasonal employment. At present, things are no so good for women who work and want to have children. They say to themselves, “I am going to have a child”. These days, both the man and the woman in a couple work; this is no longer a luxury. This is how they manage to stick to a budget and provide for their family's welfare.
So, this fund would be a good thing. The women of Quebec called for it, and the former Government of Quebec agreed to it. It wanted to do it. Quebec asked the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Human Resources Development to take the money from the employment insurance fund, to take the premiums that went toward EI, and transfer this money to the provinces. This would provide for a fund that would allow women to receive 75% of their salary when they take parental leave.
The Minister of Finance made no mention of it in his budget. It would allow women to have children under much better and easier conditions. The budget contains no such measures.
There are no tax measures for seniors, whether for pensions or old age pensions. This, despite the fact that we know that incomes for this segment of the population are declining steadily, and since women make up more than half of this population, they are the ones who suffer.
Of course, there is the guaranteed income supplement that my colleague, the member for Champlain, criticized, and which was updated. Hundreds of women and seniors—again, most of whom are women—were deprived of the guaranteed income supplement for years—