Mr. Speaker, today we are debating Bill C-50, the budget implementation act. Naturally, the Bloc Québécois will vote against this bill because it voted against the budget. Since then, the government has given us no reason to believe that it is even aware of the significant economic downturn or that it should be using the tools that would enable our economy to cope with these new realities.
Last fall, the Bloc Québécois held consultations throughout Quebec. A number of important facts emerged, and at the time, we told the Conservative government that it should change its stance on economic intervention. The Conservative government makes its decisions based on the premise that the market will sort everything out and decide how things should work. If plants close and economic disaster hits communities, the communities and the companies will just have to cope and regroup. According to that philosophy, we, the state, do not have a role to play.
This approach was inherited from the American right, which has been trying to impose its point of view for the past 25, 30 or 40 years. The American right has been pretty successful in the United States, and is trying to achieve success in Canada through a minority government, but Quebeckers and Canadians will not fall for it. Right now, if there is one thing they do not want, it is a majority Conservative government, because we have seen just what it can do as a minority government. Imagine what it might do if it had a majority. That much is clear.
The analogy I used earlier with respect to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance is apt. The Conservative government is behaving just like the captain of the Titanic. Worse yet, the Minister of Finance wants to go sailing in waters where he was not elected. Let me go back to the Titanic analogy. The Titanic was supposed to be an extraordinary ship, just like Canada's economy. It was supposed to be able to sail through any storm. Unfortunately, its builders were a bit too arrogant, a bit too proud, and we know what happens to people like that.
I am afraid that if the Government of Canada does not make some adjustments, Canada will suffer the same fate as the Titanic. This morning, the U.S. federal reserve confirmed that the United States is in a recession. The International Monetary Fund has forecast growth of approximately 0.5% in the United States over the next three years. This is very bad news for the Canadian economy and especially for the economies of Quebec and Ontario. When the Americans have less purchasing power, as they do currently, consumer spending goes down. Companies in my riding are having difficulty selling their products in the United States, and this is true throughout Quebec and across Canada.
The Conservative government has taken the stand that it cannot intervene. That is the rule of market forces, which is a little like the divine rule. But we know that there have been other serious economic crises in the past. We know—and people are starting to say—that during the great depression in the 1930s, when the Republicans in the U.S. were saying that the government should not intervene, it took the Democrats under Mr. Roosevelt to do something and make a difference.
What we are saying is that when the economy slows down, the government must invest to boost the economy. The Conservative government does not want to take that route. It is stubbornly insisting on keeping its rose-coloured glasses on, even though since last fall, and even since last year, there have been very clear signs—such as the increase in the value of the dollar and the bank paper crisis in the United States and its impact on consumers—that the government needs to be much more aggressive.
Here is the worst example of the Conservatives' inaction: they used the $10 billion surplus as of March 31 to pay down the debt, even though Canada has the best debt to GDP ratio. Canada is already in good shape on this front. The government did not use this money to help the manufacturing, forestry and tourism industries acquire the tools they need to offer competitive products.
I am not talking about subsidies. Businesspeople in my riding are in serious trouble, but they are not asking for subsidies. Workers are not asking for subsidies for the companies where they work. They are asking the government to put in place a fiscal framework so that these companies can be productive and competitive.
For example, let us talk about the money from the latest cut to the GST. Instead of lowering the tax, the government could have kept that margin to award refundable tax credits to businesses that are not generating much profit, as is unfortunately the case for businesses in the manufacturing and forestry industries in various regions throughout Quebec. The same thing is going on in Ontario and the rest of Canada.
The government should have implemented a suitable support and assistance program for businesses. It should have reinvested in the Technology Partnerships Canada program, which made it possible to develop new products with the help of new technologies. This is the type of attitude the government needed to move forward. But we have not seen it in the budget or in this bill. The government still seems to be headed in the same direction.
The government thinks it is improving the overall economy by systematically cutting taxes for large corporations, which means that oil companies pay lower taxes. But now there is a domino effect: the bank credit crisis has spilled over into the consumer sector, and the last sector affected will be natural resources.
The parts of Canada that think they are immune to this slowdown are mistaken, because American consumption will decrease in all sectors, and there will be consequences. This is not a preordained situation where we cannot do anything. The government can get involved, but it is not. That is why we would have expected the government to take constructive measures and implement an action plan for our communities, for our citizens and for the workers in our regions.
But the opposite is happening. For example, in terms of regional development, this bill would decrease the budget of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec—talk about unbelievable—by $107 million for the current fiscal year, a year when we will more likely need even more money to help businesses.
The minister now feels obliged to justify his actions. He says the government no longer really has the means to fund businesses that were receiving financial support to back the overall economy of a region and that their funding should be withdrawn in order to be able to allocate enough assistance to businesses. What we needed, however, was both. We have the means to help businesses and to develop new products. Any business that has the tools to do research and development will use that to create new products, thereby becoming more competitive and selling products elsewhere. It is not about accepting subsidies to offset lost productivity. It is about ensuring the competitiveness of those businesses.
Furthermore, we would have expected this government to eagerly seize such an opportunity for sustainable development. In the current economic climate, the most important tool would be to make the most of the opportunities provided by the creation of new products for sustainable development.
Consider the carbon exchange, for example. In my riding, a company had developed a product and was waiting for the carbon exchange to be implemented, since revenues from the sale of credits on the carbon exchange would have been assured its profitability. However, because of the government's delay and its decision to not establish absolute targets, the carbon exchange is not yet up and running and this is delaying the development of these products, which would be beneficial not only for the environment, but also for economic development, new product development and, therefore, sustainable development.
One could say that the government has neglected its responsibility to create prosperity, as though creating prosperity were the responsibility of the private sector alone. Its method for distributing prosperity is even borrowed from that of the private sector. Indeed, they are trying their best to avoid distributing wealth. Thus, the government is still following the American right-wing model. A perfect example of this is the creation of an employment insurance board.
The Bloc Québécois and I, as the human resources critic, have been waging a battle over this issue for several years. I have seen the contribution made by seasonal workers go towards deficit reduction without them ever obtaining a return on their investment.
This year, the Conservatives decided to follow through on the idea of establishing an independent employment insurance board and that is a good thing. However, it is unacceptable that, having paid $54 billion towards the deficit, the workers and employers will not get any return on their investment.
The screws have been tightened. Workers need more hours of employment to qualify for employment insurance and, in the end, they receive fewer weeks of benefits. This system was place for 10 years. Once the government's economic and financial situation stabilized, all the efforts made were forgotten. It was as though it had never existed.
However, major corporations have had their taxes cut. That is also the case for the middle class, but it is fair that there should be a return on investment on that side.
What is unfair is that those who pay into the employment insurance program and need this program do not have access to it. In our regions, not all workers have employment year round; some are seasonal workers.
Over the years, a special system has been set up for seasonal workers through pilot projects, but without amending the legislation. There has been some improvement. We would have liked the government to show some common sense and give this new independent fund a portion of the surplus it used to finance the deficit reduction and current government operations. However, that is not the case.
With regard to the manufacturing and forestry sectors, the message was sent to the House this week. A motion by a Bloc member, the whip, in fact, was adopted by this House. According to this motion, the government should have a forestry strategy. It does not have one and the consequences have been devastating.
In my riding, there are some companies that are very solid financially and very solid insofar as the quality of their forestry management is concerned. Nowadays, though, the heads of these companies are coming to see us and saying that they have reached the end of their rope and will have to shut down for three months. In one of the companies, an approach has been developed for which employees should be congratulated: wages are tied to the price of wood. This helps save jobs. Employees have been paid less for a while, but they hope to weather the crisis in fairly good shape.
These employees and employers would have liked to see a program to help older workers. When someone has put everything he has into finding a job or loses his job in a sawmill at 56 years of age, he cannot become a computer technician overnight, even though he has been one of the best at grading lumber for 30 years.
We try to find him another job, but it is not easy. From the standpoint of employers, hiring an older worker means that their health benefit and occupational safety costs might increase. In their eyes, an older worker is riskier and they are reluctant to hire him. So when the older worker’s employment insurance runs out, he is left with nothing. He worked full time for a company for 25 or 30 years and never drew employment insurance, but once his 45 weeks are up, the next stop is social assistance.
This is a social measure but it could also be seen as an economic plan in connection with a very necessary industrial strategy. It is always good to have a program that gives people some income support until they qualify for their old age pensions. At the same time, this plan would make it possible to keep younger workers in the forestry sector. Forestry will not be in decline for the rest of time. There will be an economic recovery and an upswing in construction. We are going to need workers, but the youngest will have been lost because they are most affected by layoffs. They will find work elsewhere, and when the recovery comes, they will no longer be available.
We would have expected the government to drop the kind of approach it took in the budget and adjust instead to what people were telling it. It is the first time in my 15 years as a member that I have seen such a thing. During the week following the tabling of the budget, the Standing Committee on Finance agreed, with the support of some Conservative members, to reconsider the entire section on manufacturing and forestry. It adopted a motion telling the Minister of Finance to get back to work because the government had not done enough for this sector. But the government is still refusing to bend.
The Minister of Finance is hiding behind general tax reductions for the people who make lots of money; but he has used just one part of the strategy that is available to him. It is as though he had a pair of crutches and only used one. He had the means to implement a much broader initiative. It is good to reduce taxes by a few points, but we must also have targeted approaches to support research and development, to provide assistance through tax credits that lead to the development of new products, and to provide help to older workers. There is none of that in this budget and there is nothing in the program now before us. It is no longer a matter of productivity, but a matter of fairness.
In Quebec and in Canada, for about 15 years, the guaranteed income supplement has been paid to a few of the older people who were entitled to receive it. A person had to apply in order to receive it. There was no automatic enrolment, and each year it was necessary to apply again. This scandal came to light about seven or eight years ago. At the time, a Bloc member, Marcel Gagnon, worked very hard to find those people, to enable them to apply for the guaranteed income supplement. We found thousands of them. We also recognized that there was a terrible unfairness in the law.
Let us look at the example of a 78-year-old woman whose husband has died. Her children review her financial situation with her. They suddenly realize that she has not been receiving the guaranteed income supplement. They submit an application and learn that she can only claim up to 11 months in arrears. Even though this woman was entitled to receive it from the age of 65, she cannot claim any more than 11 months.
Compare that with the behaviour of the government when someone owes income tax. In that case, it can go back as far as it wants. It can claim as many years as it wants. However, the older person cannot claim more than 11 months in arrears. No member in this House can contradict that. Older people have been entitled to amounts going back two, three, five or seven years, and the government had the means of paying such claims with no difficulty. In any case, about 95% of that money is quickly returned to the economy. People do not get rich on old age security or the guaranteed income supplement. They only provide a minimum to make ends meet every month.
I am particularly sensitive to this because in my region, in eastern Quebec, 52% of seniors living in the regional county municipality with the highest income are receiving the guaranteed income supplement. That means that for every two seniors you meet, at least one of them is receiving the supplement. In the poorest regional county municipality, we are talking about 79%, three people out of four, and in many of the villages the rate is 100%, four people out of four. For a long time, our seniors worked for employers that did not provide pension plans. Today, in a society that calls itself one of the richest in the world, we are unable to provide these people with a minimum income that would let them live out their days with dignity.
This is blatantly unfair. When we measure the effectiveness of a society like ours, we have to take these things into account. Creating wealth is all very well, but we have to see how we are creating it and how we are distributing it. These two main points are how a government can be measured when it comes to finances.
In the present situation, our government is withdrawing from the entire field of economic development, and saying that the private sector should look after that; it will not create the conditions that must be present in order to continue developing products; it will eliminate programs like Technology Partnerships Canada because there may have been a few excesses when it came to a few companies, minimal as that was; the regions are now going to have to fend for themselves. And for next year, it will be eliminating $107 million in investments in Quebec. This is the kind of thing the Conservatives are doing when it comes to creating wealth in Canada; they have decided they are not responsible for it anymore.
And then, when it comes to distributing the wealth, they always give as little as possible, and they do not recognize the contribution that people make to our society.
There is one thing in the budget that I consider to be terrible. That is the provision for a senior to be able to receive $3,500 in non-taxable income. Do you know what that means? It means we are encouraging people who are 68 or 70 or 72 years old to go knock on the door at Dunkin' Donuts or Wal-Mart or some other employer, to earn a few pennies. Do you not think that our seniors deserve a better fate than that, and that in our society we might have the resources to provide them with what they deserve?
It has been calculated that we would need to add about $100 a month to the guaranteed income supplement to give people an income that comes up to the minimum threshold for them to be able to get along, to meet their basic needs. They could have addressed part of that out of last year’s budget surplus, and included it in the budget for this year. It could have been done. They did not do it.
So we can see that there are many reasons to vote against this budget and the budget implementation bill. The Conservative budget is fundamentally at odds with the needs expressed by Quebeckers during prebudget consultations. We submitted these needs to the minister, and we are waiting for his cooperation.
If there had not been problems with the official opposition, we would be in an election now and the Conservative government would be severely judged for the choices it has made. I hope that the result could be more in line with what citizens want, especially those in Quebec. This government gives the impression that it is open to the province; but in practice, when it comes time to take concrete action, it pulls back and does nothing. We saw it again yesterday with the Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec.
I hope that the government is taking note of this message, because if there is no change within a few months in terms of economic policy, the public will pass an even more severe judgment about the fiscal issue.