Mr. Speaker, I know that I will have only eight minutes for this speech before question period. I would like, therefore, to use this opportunity to begin my criticism of the budget brought down recently by the Minister of Finance.
First, we must condemn the fact that the Minister of Finance said that, for the first time, a Canadian finance minister would meet the critics of the official opposition and the other opposition parties to discuss the budget. I spent more than an hour with the minister explaining our party's priorities for serving the citizens. Now, we have a budget that fails to respond in any way to the priorities expressed to the Minister of Finance. I was extremely frustrated, as were all my colleagues, with this phony consultation by a minister who says he is open to new ideas for serving the community better, but failed to include in this budget any of the priorities that were expressed.
One of my party's priorities took precedence over all the others. This was the fiscal imbalance. I know that the Prime Minister has never acknowledged either the concept or the problem of the fiscal imbalance. He spoke about fiscal pressures. I do not know why this Prime Minister has an aversion to such a fine concept. However, I know very well, as chair of the House's Subcommittee on Fiscal Imbalance and having gone on a tour that took us from Halifax to Victoria by way of Toronto, Quebec City and other stops, and is still continuing, that people everywhere agree on the problem of the fiscal imbalance. People also agree on all its effects on the provincial governments and their responsibilities for health, education and assisting the most disadvantaged families.
There is agreement as well on the fact that Ottawa has too much money in relation to its responsibilities. The provinces, on the other hand, do not have enough to be the direct, front-line responders to the citizens. I thought that we would see a start in this budget on correcting the fiscal imbalance and that it would be recognized. It should be said in passing that this imbalance was mentioned in the Speech from the Throne thanks to the Bloc Québécois and the Conservative Party. We expected, therefore, that there would be an initial response in the budget. However, there was not even a hint of a response to this problem.
The Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance are saying that because of the health agreement and equalization there is no room to manoeuvre for the coming years. That is not true. There is more money than they know what to do with. Even with the commitments made in the September 2004 health agreement, even with the $10 billion in equalization indexed at 3.5% a year, even with the agreement reached with Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador to exclude oil revenues from the equalization calculation, over the next six years there will still be a surplus of some $100 billion in the federal government's coffers. That is a lot of money.
This is not the first time we have been in a situation like this. In 1956, the Tremblay Commission recommended looking at the Constitution, the provincial jurisdictions, and the federal government's jurisdictions and ensuring that the fiscal capacity of both levels of government was consistent with this level of responsibility. It favoured transferring these fiscal responsibilities from one level to the other, in other words, from the federal government to the provinces. The Constitution is in fact very clear on this: education, health, and helping out families in need are not the responsibilities of the federal government, but of Quebec and the provinces.
Since these are basic services we must provide in order to meet the public's demands, is it possible that we are back where we were in 1956, at the time of the Tremblay report, when we needed to look at the balance and review the allocation of taxing power between the two levels of government?
The report of the Tremblay commission led to the initial first ministers' conference in Quebec City. At that time, the first ministers were Mr. Pearson for the federal government and Mr. Lesage for Quebec.
The taxation powers of both levels of government were redefined at that conference. Why? Because, at that time, the federal government wanted to implement a pan-Canadian education system, with a loans and bursaries program, a pension fund, etc. The Quebec government refused to conform and asked for the right to withdraw with full compensation.
In 1964, it became possible to withdraw with full compensation. This compensation was then offered in the form of tax points to all the provinces, but only Quebec accepted. The tax points from 1964 and others from later years, particularly 1977 and 1978, are now worth $18 billion and the revenues go directly to the Quebec government.
Why deny the evidence? Why not admit that the current situation is identical to those in the 1950s and 1960s, and that the balance needs to be restored? There is no hint of a solution, or even any recognition of the fiscal imbalance in the budget, even though it is in the throne speech. There is nothing about it.
Year after year, the provinces record major shortfalls. For just this year in Quebec alone, we are talking about $2.5 billion that should have gone to the Quebec government but which has gone to Ottawa, due to the fiscal imbalance. If Quebec had that $2.5 billion, clearly, the underfunding of education over the past 15 years and the shortfall in the health care system would be history.
But first, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance would have to understand, which apparently is not the case at present. Our first major disappointment with the budget is this whole issue of the fiscal imbalance, which this government continues to deny. Perhaps we need to shove this question down its throat more forcefully in the next election campaign. I will come back to this after oral question period. As the saying goes, “The best is yet to come”.