Mr. Speaker, confronted with a serious global economic crisis, the people are right to be concerned and they have turned to Ottawa, hoping that the federal government would do the responsible thing and help them.
Quebec's government and National Assembly also expected the federal government to help rather than make matters worse. This crisis requires extraordinary government expenditures and could have been an opportunity to build a future with a combined focus on social justice, the environment and the economy. With this Conservative budget, the government has dashed all hopes. It is hostile to Quebec, does not provide people with appropriate and sufficient help and lacks vision for the future. In fact, one need only scratch the surface to catch a potent whiff of the Conservative government's partisanship and ideology in this budget.
I want to tell all members of this House this: a vote for this budget is a vote against Quebec, against social justice, against an economy for the future. There is no way the Bloc Québécois would ever vote for this budget, which goes against everything we believe in.
This budget is totally unacceptable to Quebec and to people who, in times of economic crisis, are entitled to expect appropriate and sufficient help from the federal government. In anticipation of the budget, Quebec made its needs clear, and its National Assembly even unanimously passed a motion. The Bloc Québécois did the responsible thing, putting forward as early as last November a realistic and detailed plan backed up by figures, a plan that reflected the broad consensus in Quebec on a number of issues.
The Prime Minister was aware of all that. This means that he knowingly ignored Quebec's demands. Instead of helping Quebec, the federal government decided to deprive it of significant assistance to weather the crisis. The Conservative leader has chosen only to meet the demands from Ontario in particular. For example, his government is providing more than $4 billion in stimulus that will primarily benefit Ontario. The automotive industry, which is largely concentrated in Ontario, will receive $2.7 billion. Southern Ontario will receive $1 billion. But Quebec's forestry and manufacturing sectors will only get a few million.
The government is offering $350 million to Atomic Energy of Canada, to the nuclear sector, once again Ontario-based. The Prime Minister again comes along with his community adjustment fund, a program strongly criticized in Quebec, which offers more money per capita to Alberta than to Quebec. This plan, based on last year's model, offers far more per job lost in Alberta than in Quebec, even though the manufacturing and forestry crisis has hit hardest in Quebec. While thousands of jobs have been lost in Quebec, a goodly number of the workers will still not have access to the employment insurance program, and older workers are still marginalized.
We would have at least expected the Conservative government to respect its past commitments. But no, it goes even further by depriving Quebec of financial means. Capping equalization will mean a considerable loss to Quebec. We are talking funds for health, education, family policy. This decision will therefore have unfortunate consequences for the entire population of Quebec. Then the Conservative government adds on a gift to Ontario, which will mean an additional $250,000 loss to Quebec as far as equalization is concerned, by conferring special status on Hydro One.
By unilaterally modifying equalization and by increasing the fiscal imbalance, the Conservative government is breaking its past promises, just as it did by reiterating its desire to trample over Quebec's areas of jurisdiction in connection with securities regulation, loans to municipalities and funding to colleges and universities, and other infrastructure expenditures, thereby going over the head of the Government of Quebec.
Then we have the refusal to eliminate cuts to culture, a very important sector of the Quebec economy, and the refusal to eliminate the cuts inflicted on economic development organizations.
This budget runs totally counter to the spirit and the letter of the Kyoto protocol, and thus also to the economic interests of Quebec and of the environment. This budget sounds the death knell as far as the Conservative government's so-called federalism of openness is concerned.
I call upon hon. members in the other opposition parties to think things through well before voting in favour of this budget, or letting it get through one way or another, because letting it get through is tantamount to abandoning Quebec, and there will be a political price to pay for such an attitude. The Bloc Québécois, faithful as it is to the interests of Quebec, will vote against this budget without a moment's hesitation.
This budget again bears the mark of a conservative ideology that is bankrupt everywhere in the world. It is hard to imagine what would have happened with a majority Conservative government in a position to impose untrammelled its last-century ideology.
But we must not be fooled by the gloss on this budget. The tax cuts, which are presented as targeted measures to help the most vulnerable and the middle class, actually have the reverse effect. The most vulnerable people in society do not pay tax. The tax cuts are not targeted. For example, a family with two children and an income of $150,000 will get more than a family earning $40,000. These tax cuts help neither people who lose their jobs nor companies that do not turn a profit. By the Conservatives' own admission, in opting for corporate tax cuts, they chose the measure that would stimulate the economy the least. That is what I call putting ideology before the economy.
The government had the means to help the most vulnerable members of society by funding construction of new social housing. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has an $8 billion surplus. The government should be using that money to help people. Instead, everyone but aboriginal people, seniors and the disabled is being left high and dry.
For seniors who have been unjustly deprived of the guaranteed income supplement, the budget offers no justice and no remedy. Yet if anyone can be considered vulnerable, it is seniors who are living in poverty and are entitled to the guaranteed income supplement. Aside from social housing, there is nothing for these poor people in the budget.
We all know that more than half of women who lose their jobs do not have access to employment insurance, even though they pay into the plan. They will still not have access to employment insurance, and this is a serious injustice.
Meanwhile, the rich and large corporations that shelter their money in tax havens can continue to do so with impunity. The big oil companies that have been hosing us for so long will continue to enjoy generous tax breaks. The Conservative government sweetened the pot by providing hundreds of millions of dollars for carbon capture projects that will benefit no one but the oil companies. The major banks, which have been hugely propped up by the Conservative government, have no real obligations in return. And in return for the billions of dollars they will receive, the big three auto manufacturers do not even have to promise not to outsource to Asia or elsewhere.
The Harper government's budget will therefore create even greater social inequalities.