Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Joliette.
I am happy this afternoon to rise and speak to this motion denouncing the impoverishment of the middle class and proposing a national anti-poverty strategy. Although the middle class has obviously been slipping into poverty, the Bloc Québécois has problems with a national anti-poverty strategy.
Whether Liberal or Conservative, the federal government has obviously failed in its duty to the most vulnerable people in society. The gap between rich and poor has been constantly widening.
All the while, the Bloc Québécois has been resolutely defending the interests of the unemployed. I myself brought forward a bill to improve the employment insurance system. Other colleagues in the Bloc have introduced a number of bills on employment insurance and an independent employment insurance fund. The Bloc has always tried, therefore, to defend the interests of the unemployed and will continue to do so.
We tried to defend the interests of older workers through programs on mass lay-offs and the interests of older people through the guaranteed income supplement. We defended women, minority groups, and all the Quebeckers whom the government abandoned when it eliminated or cut back the programs to help people on low incomes.
The Bloc Québécois agrees that it is important to have a national anti-poverty strategy, but it is the strategy of the nation of Quebec that it supports. The federal government’s responsibility is to provide adequate support, through financial transfers, to the provinces and Quebec to help them combat poverty.
The Bloc Québécois feels that a Canada-wide strategy adopted by the federal government, as proposed in this motion, would not solve anything and would just duplicate what is already done in Quebec and some provinces.
Quebec already has $7 daycare, benefits for families living on modest incomes, and low tuition costs, and the results have been very good.
For example, our numerous programs to support families resulted in the birthrate actually increasing in 2006. That has not happened for 20 years. When there is proper support for families that want to have children and programs to provide them with a reasonable standard of living, then we see an increase in the birthrate.
The key for us is obviously always respect for particular jurisdictions. We urge the federal government to do a few things that for far too long it has refused to do, in particular, improve the employment insurance system, establish a work program for older workers, use the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation surpluses to build social housing, and implement some of the other programs we have suggested over the years.
In regard to the proposal in this motion for a minimum federal wage, it is important to know that the minimum wage varies now from one place to another. In Quebec, for example, where the government is already very aware of this issue, we have had legislation to fight poverty and social exclusion since December 2002, in addition to the social programs addressing poverty. The minimum wage in Quebec is among the highest in Canada.
If we could get transfer payments that would enable us, among other things, to resolve the fiscal imbalance, we could obviously increase what we give to the most disadvantaged people in our society. Among the most vulnerable people that the federal government has abandoned are thousands of Quebeckers.
There is no doubt that we will remember September 25, 2006 as a dark day, as a result of those cuts. It was the same day on which the government declared an annual surplus of $13 billion. I would remind the House that the Conservatives announced $1 billion in cuts over two years. How were these drastic cuts to be made? They were to be made based on Conservative ideology. The cuts affected education and literacy programs, a number of programs targeted at those most in need, and social housing. For us, this was a dark day, one that we deplore. The anti-poverty strategy will have to be rebuilt from scratch. Certainly, we must compensate all those people who have been left needy and destitute.
I would like to touch on child care services. In our view, as soon as it came into power, the Conservative government reneged on the agreement Quebec had with the previous government, which recognized its competence, after Quebec fought hard for years and years to have it recognized. Since then, the government has created a shortfall of $807 million. It has done the same thing with the agreements it had with the other provinces.
Furthermore, the Conservative government went ahead with a taxable allowance of $1,200 paid to the lower-income person in each couple, not based on household income. In our view, the direct payment to parents constitutes a federal social program, that is, an element of federal policy. This is clearly interference in our jurisdictions, which means another broken promise made by the Prime Minister, who said he would respect Quebec's jurisdictions.
We all know that the need is in Quebec but the money is in Ottawa. We have said so on many occasions. Furthermore, the Conservative government is attempting to meddle in Quebec's jurisdiction by establishing what it calls a pan-Canadian child care system—although no spaces have yet been created—that meets pan-Canadian standards, with conditions that it wants to impose for quality of service, universality, accessibility and child development. We will obviously say no to that.
The Bloc Québécois has reminded the government more than 50 times—that is right, more than 50 times—that it was encroaching on our jurisdiction and we asked it to back down and provide full financial compensation.
This federation already does not work very well. If we have to keep telling the government that it is encroaching on our jurisdiction, we will never get anything done and we will spend our days just defending ourselves and trying to keep what is ours.
With regard to child care, it is important that we recover what belongs to us in order to continue investing in our day care system. It is important to speak of the thorny aspects of federal taxation. Child care expenses are a federal deduction. However, since the child care expense for 200,000 Quebec children is $7 per day, the parents can only deduct the amount they pay. Consequently the federal government has appropriated almost $1.5 billion from parents since 1998. Quebec pays for day care services for these children and Ottawa pockets the money. Year after year, the government appropriates $250 million from Quebec parents, or an average of $1,316 per child, which is much more than the taxable $1,200 allowed by the federal government.
I will stop there, but I will be pleased to answer questions.