Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel for his question. Once again, I congratulate him for how well he has handled this rather complicated file, given the multitude of funds. As I said, he is a tremendous help with his explanations in caucus.
What we are dealing with here is a philosophy shared by the Liberals and the Conservatives, quite simply, a short-term philosophy. As for the Liberals, what did they do? They said they would reduce the deficit in two ways. First, they dumped more financial responsibility on the provinces, while at the same time, cutting transfers to the provinces. The federal government will not get any thanks for doing that under the Liberals. Second, they redirected some of the money from the employment insurance fund. That is basically how the Liberals managed to take care of the deficit. The federal government really did not make any great effort in that regard.
Quebec and the other provinces therefore found themselves struggling with growing financial problems and they, in turn, transferred some responsibilities to the municipalities, without any additional funding. I am sure that my colleague, as a former mayor and former president of the Union des municipalités du Québec, is in a better position than me to recall that there was quite a debate in Quebec, particularly surrounding the Ryan reform. Yet it must be clearly understood that the primary responsibility was that of the federal government.
From the time when, in 1997-98, a surplus began to materialize, one would have expected the federal government to resume its investments. However, we had to wait until 2004 for the government to make a move. From 1994 to 2003, the government invested barely $1.15 billion in Quebec municipal infrastructures, through transfers to Quebec.
It is very clear that the government took its time to act, that problems intensified and costs increased. That is the problem. Often, the regular maintenance of an infrastructure costs much less than having to rebuild it entirely or do major work on it. Now that not only has the deficit been cleared since 1997-98, but the debt is now the lowest of all G-7 countries, there is no reason to make paying off the debt such a priority, as the Conservatives are doing.
It is the same short-term mindset. It seems like a good idea to reduce the debt, and to keep reducing it. But to my knowledge, only very underdeveloped countries are unable to incur public debt. All industrialized countries, all civilized countries are able to maintain a reasonable debt to properly invest in their infrastructure and their public education, health and research networks. In this case, we are mortgaging the future for a purely ideological obsession with reducing the debt. Municipalities and Quebec will pay the price for this philosophy. This is why we asked this week that the expected $11.6 billion surplus for the current fiscal year be invested in various areas, including those affecting municipalities.
In conclusion, I would like to say that for five years, the federal government has used $69 billion of so-called unexpected surplus to pay down the debt. If we had cut the number of workers in the bureaucracy, as the Bloc Québécois has been wanting to do for several years, there would have been a $111 billion surplus. There is more than enough federal money to ensure that Quebec and the municipalities have the money they need to properly maintain and develop their infrastructure. We have these difficulties because the federal government, Liberals and Conservatives alike, is unwilling to do anything. Correcting the fiscal imbalance will give us the necessary financial autonomy to assume our responsibilities in Quebec. Sovereignty would be even better, but that will be for another day.