Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in this House to this budget.
My colleague from Châteauguay—Saint-Constant explained the reality of this budget quite well. This is a step toward correcting the fiscal imbalance, but things are not really resolved. We are still at the mercy of the federal government's goodwill. All we need is an election, another budget or another government and all this can change.
In fact, the first thing this government did when it came into power was tear up the agreement on child care reached with Quebec. It could very well do the same in a few months or another government could do so in a few years. Such is the cost of dependency: being at the mercy of another government for making our strategic choices in Quebec. The only solution to this is independence.
The hon. member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant pointed out that the government needed to have the fiscal imbalance explained to it. It was the Bloc Québécois that proposed this debate in the House. Even though some progress has been made, the Conservatives still do not understand what the fiscal imbalance is. The minister claims that it has been resolved, that it is over and that nothing more will be said about it. To resolve it, he would have had to offer a real and complete solution to the fiscal imbalance, but he does not understand what that means.
The concept of the imbalance was first introduced by the Séguin commission in Quebec. It received a broad consensus, regardless of political stripes and allegiances to national unity.
When the term “fiscal imbalance” was adopted, people at the Séguin commission did not just randomly pick two words out of the dictionary. They did not draw them out of a hat. These words did not come out of nowhere. These people came up with the term “fiscal imbalance” because it was an imbalance and because it was fiscal. This seems logical enough to me.
The imbalance means that the central, federal government collects more taxes than it needs to discharge its constitutionally-assigned responsibilities, while the governments of Quebec and the provinces do not have sufficient tax revenues to provide all the services designated or required by the Constitution and the related fields of jurisdiction shared by the provincial governments.
This situation will only get worse, because expenditures related to federal jurisdictions tend to increase relatively moderately, while expenditures related to provincial jurisdictions, especially health and education, for instance, increase quite quickly.
That is the imbalance aspect and there is also the fiscal aspect. It is a taxation issue, a question of predictable, own-source revenues the provinces can collect in order to provide their citizens with the appropriate services.
One cannot consider the fiscal imbalance resolved as long as there are no fiscal solutions. It is not called the budget imbalance, the financial imbalance or the monetary imbalance. It is called the fiscal imbalance. I repeat this, because we have been repeating this for four years and, as of just last week, the government still did not understand what it was.
Thus, the government has taken a first step. It has decided to transfer more money to Quebec and the provinces. That is a step forward. However, it is not enough. This can only be a short-term solution. What Quebeckers want—and all party leaders in Quebec have said so, partisan politics aside—is to take this even further. Independent transfers are needed. The GST, for instance, must be handed over to the Quebec government to collect directly, increasing the Quebec sales tax by six points, for example and, in exchange, the federal government would agree to stop collecting that tax in Quebec.
That was the Séguin commission's preferred solution. It would be the simplest solution to implement and would give the Government of Quebec its own revenues that would grow at the same pace as its economy and would be controlled by Quebec voters when they choose their government. That is what we want. We do not want to have to start everything over in a few months, which is what happened in the past. This could be a solution to the problem.
We could also solve the problem through tax transfers, which has been done in the past. We could increase the federal income tax allowance for Quebeckers. The Government of Quebec could then increase its income tax rates by an equivalent amount. This would be completely transparent for taxpayers. This would make a difference for citizens and the government because Quebec could take advantage of its own revenues. That is what should have been done.
With respect to the budget, there is still a lot to do. In terms of equalization, the point is to ensure fiscal fairness—as I said, this is about taxation—which means that all of the provinces would have similar fiscal capacities. This regime is for provinces that fall below the Canadian average for fiscal capacity. The money they receive will enable them to offer services similar to those offered in other provinces based on the Canadian norm without having to raise their own taxes unreasonably. How is the tax base calculated? In any reasonable federation anywhere in the world, people would say that it is not complicated, that the tax base is simply all of the revenue sources available to governments.
In Canada, the government has decided to exclude, on a totally arbitrary basis, a source of revenue equivalent to half the country's non-renewable natural resources. That is completely arbitrary. It just so happens that the province that will suffer the most because of this exclusion is Quebec. In the current budget, there are two levels of inclusion that can be used to calculate equalization: 0% and 50%. Why is there no 100% level, which would benefit Quebec? The Conservative members from Quebec have failed to ensure that Quebec's voice is being heard.
I would like to address my colleagues from the rest of Canada who might say that we are complaining for nothing. How would they have reacted if the government had decided to exclude aerospace from the equalization formula. Why not? Would the Bloc support that? That would be good. It would mean additional revenues for Quebec. The aerospace industry is concentrated in Quebec and is part of our fiscal capacity. So it would be to our advantage to remove it from the calculation. But that would not make sense. Everyone would say, “why aerospace?” Why would we not exclude hydroelectricity? Why not? Non-renewable resources are excluded, so why not renewable ones?
What I am trying to show is that this measure is completely arbitrary and that it goes against the very spirit of the Canadian federation. The amount Quebec receives might of course seem large. We heard some of our colleagues speak about this. Of all the provinces that receive equalization payments, Quebec receives the least per capita. Quebec obviously receives more in equalization than Prince Edward Island. It is not just about volume, number of residents and the principle of fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity is calculated per capita. Is each province able to offer similar services to every resident?
In conclusion, the government has taken a step forward. It is a start. The government could have done better by eliminating the arbitrary nature of equalization.
It could also have done better by offering a tax transfer.