My hon. colleague here may be saying, “bravo”, but the purpose is not first and foremost to contribute to Canada's success; it is to ensure that there are programs in place so that the people for whom they were designed can benefit from them.
The chair of the Subcommitteeon Children and Youth at Risk in Canada, the hon. member for Don Valley West, said:
The objective of the Department of Social Development now is to have the public and history remember the Liberal government.
I do not hear my colleague shouting bravo this time. He is a little embarrassed. It is embarrassing too. I can understand him. I too would be embarrassed in his place.
These programs are created to try to relieve hardship. That is why we call it social development. In the provinces, it is the department of social affairs or health and social services to cover all this. It is clear from the name what is involved.
The stated purposes of these two departments are worrying. One purpose is to consolidate the public's vision of Canada and the other is to ensure that the Liberal government is remembered in a positive light. How nice.
I will now move on to the agreement on early childhood development. The government has announced a program that will be similar to and even modelled after the program in Quebec. In setting up a structure that will duplicate and complicate access to these services, the money the government is announcing for the child care program it plans to set up is clearly inadequate for meeting the needs of all the provinces. It is talking about $1.3 billion, but in our experience in Quebec it costs much more than that.
The government is announcing that it will set up child care in the other provinces—something we agree with—and although we are happy for them, it must also announce how it plans to right the wrong that stems from the fact that Quebec already has a $5 or $7 a day child care system in place. In fact, parents who were entitled to receive a tax credit did not receive it.
While they say that is a separate issue, it does have an impact on people's incomes. They have paid taxes and if we had an equitable system with the other provinces these parents would receive a tax credit. At least the $230 million the federal government saves every year should be returned to Quebec. In turn, Quebec could reinject the money into measures to help parents, such as parental programs.
Over the past few years, the government has saved several billion dollars because the provinces have managed to develop their own social programs despite the tight budgets imposed on them by the federal government . The hon. member would not be heckling like that unless he had forgotten that his own party, along with all the parliamentarians here, had to acknowledge the fiscal imbalance—which they have another name for—as a fact. A fact is a fact.
One of the facts that will not go away is the fact that the government deprived the provinces of money to which they were entitled. This means that the provinces, including Quebec, have had to make considerable efforts to be able to provide adequate social programs.
Incidentally, from 1998 to this day, the federal government has recovered $1 billion, thanks to Quebec's child care system. This is a significant amount.
I will conclude very quickly by saying that the money invested by the federal government in provincial jurisdictions has increased more rapidly than the money invested in the programs that come under its own jurisdiction. Based on the growth rate that we have observed, since 1997-98, non intrusive spending has increased by 1.9%, while intrusive spending has increased by 5.2%.
I will stop here, but I hope to have the opportunity to complete my presentation during questions and comments.