That is right. It is ridiculous. The government is using all of its ammunition, one round at a time. That is what it is doing, and it is not working. The throne speech was supposed to make a lot of noise all across Canada, but that has not been the case at all.
Obviously, the next round will be the budget. There is fear that it will not be well received by the public, which will most certainly be the case. It is very simple, the government has increasingly less money. It can no longer bleed, if I may use that term, the unemployed. It dipped enough into the employment insurance fund that it does not dare do it again. That is why it is getting poorer and poorer.
It must invest in the armed forces because it promised our neighbour, Mr. Bush, that he could count on us. This investment in our armed forces will eat up a good part of the budget.
That is why it made what was supposed to be a revolutionary announcement to municipalities: it announced a GST rebate. They were already entitled to a 57% rebate, and the government is increasing that rebate to 100%, telling them that there will be a new deal with municipalities.
Why not have a deal right now? Why is there not a strategic infrastructure program for all rural and urban equipment? Why is the tax on gas not shared? The answer is simple: it is because there will be no money in the upcoming budget.
Let us stop dreaming. The mayors and city councillors, who are former colleagues of mine, must stop thinking that they will get money from this government. Municipalities have received whatever money they were going to get this year. The rest will have to wait until after the election. In the meantime, the government will make promises. I have heard a lot of promises. I have not been in federal politics for a long time, but I sure heard a lot of promises during the last election campaign.
I heard promises about highway 50, in the Outaouais region, and about Mirabel. Earlier, during oral question period, I had the opportunity to explain what is happening with Mirabel. Air Transat will move its operations from Mirabel to Dorval, which means that 500 jobs will be lost.
Such is the policy of the Liberal government. It is a simple policy that consists in emptying the regions and putting all the political weight in the cities. Such is the reality.
The intent behind the changes made to the new electoral map is simple. The government is transferring the political weight to urban centres. It does not take into account the size of an area, and it does not rely on fairness to ensure the provision of uniform services across Quebec and Canada. Instead, the government takes into account the size of the population. Since there is an increasing number of people living in urban centres, the political weight is being transferred to cities. It is cities, large urban centres, that will control things. Imagine what it will be like if, in addition to its provincial counterparts, the federal government invites to the table the mayors of Canada's large cities. All the political weight will be transferred to the large urban centres, and the rural regions of the country will be left out in the cold.
In Quebec, the notion of development includes the regions. How can we have head offices of multinational corporations that make money with paper mills and mines if we do not have jobs created by these paper mill, forestry and mining operations? This is the reality.
The political weight is being drained away. That is why the Bloc Quebecois is opposed to Bill C-49. We are opposed to the political weight of Quebec's rural regions being transferred to the cities. That is the situation.
Instead of having 75 ridings in Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois has proposed to have 77, so that the rural areas could maintain a reasonable weight in comparison to the urban areas, so that all citizens who pay taxes would be entitled to the same services, no matter where they live. It is that simple. Because we pay taxes whether we live in a village, a town, a small city or a large one, we are entitled to the same services. That is fair. That is why we pay our taxes.
That is not what the government is doing today. The government is trying to ram through a motion to reinstate legislation. Nevertheless, I repeat, it does not include all bills and acts, but only those the government wants to pass for its own electoral purposes, because it is going to call an election as of the first week of April.
Let us not be fooled. I hope that Quebeckers will not be fooled in the next election and will understand that everything the Liberals do, they do for the Liberals and not for the people.