Mr. Speaker, I think the parliamentary secretary did not listen to everything because he would have understood that what is scandalous and a joke is not having a contingency reserve, it is making people believe that the surplus is only equivalent to this contingency fund.
For example, it is true, as I said, that the Canadian economy took some very hard blows this year. We can imagine how big the surplus would have been without the mad cow crisis, the blackout in Ontario and SARS.
Despite these events, the surplus is three times higher than forecast. Even just a few weeks ago, the Minister of Finance forecast $2.3 billion. It is at least $5.4 billion, and will probably be about $7 billion.
The joke is trying to get us to believe that the federal government is having financial difficulties, that it is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
We must not forget that, over the past five years, bureaucratic expenditures, the federal government's operating expenses, have increased 40%, a more than 8% annual increase. That money too should have gone to health and education, instead of creating an even heavier federal bureaucracy, particularly in Ottawa.
Next year, the surplus will not be $4 billion. Everyone is well aware that the economic situation will be better than last year. In fact, last year, despite the fact that there were a certain number of problems, the surplus was three times higher than forecast. Without those problems, the surplus would probably have been $10 billion or $12 billion. What is scandalous is hiding the true figures from Canadians in order to avoid a very important public debate.
It is also scandalous—I did not have the time to say this in my speech—is having used $45 billion from the employment insurance fund at the expense of workers, by taking contributions from workers and employers to pay down the debt. That is not the purpose of the employment insurance fund. This fund must be used to provide financial security to workers who temporarily lose their job.
We must not forget that, to a great extent, the federal surpluses over the past seven years have come from the employment insurance fund. If the federal government, under the current Prime Minister and former finance minister, had not raided this fund, these surpluses would have been much higher.
I will close with a few figures. If the Liberal government only occasionally went wrong in its estimates, people could say, “Yes but there may have been a particular economic situation that year that caused the miscalculation”, but it is a regular occurrence. It goes on year after year.
Take 2000-01. The estimate by the finance minister of the day was $4 billion; the reality was $18.1 billion. That is what the surplus was. It went to the debt, yet the money came from the employment insurance fund.
In 2001-02, the estimate by the finance minister of the day was $1.5 billion; the reality was $8.9 billion. That too went to the debt, and again in large part came from the employment insurance fund.
In 2002-03—with a new finance minister—there was an estimate of $3 billion; the surplus was $7 billion. This year, the prediction was $2.3 billion, and we are already at $5.4 billion. So it goes on and on. The truth about the federal government's handling of public funds is being concealed. This is scandalous. The figures are farcical.
I realize, however, that there is a political will behind this, a plan to construct a unitary state focussed on Ottawa, to give this central government the means to strangle the provinces and impose its vision of how Canada needs to be developed and built. This is done particularly at the expense of the building of the Quebec nation and this is why Quebec sovereignty is so urgent.