Madam Speaker, I will share my time with the member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord. We have about 15 minutes left before question period starts. I hope it will not be too heated in the House and that everyone will remain calm.
Today, we are debating a Liberal motion that asks whether we still have confidence in the Conservative government, the government in power. Before I answer that question, I must say that the Bloc Québécois has analyzed all of the Conservatives' actions and decisions since their election. We concluded that the Bloc Québécois no longer has confidence in the government and that it will support the Liberals' motion for a number of reasons.
We asked ourselves two questions: do we have confidence in how the government deals with Quebec and the needs of Quebec? For example, what actions has the government taken to support the manufacturing and forestry industries? We know that since 2005 these sectors have been pressuring the government for assistance. The forestry and manufacturing industries were sacrificed during the economic crisis, but since 2005, these industries have been losing ground even more quickly, and we should have helped them through the crisis. In Quebec, plants have been closed and people have been laid off. Some people have been temporarily laid off and some are permanently unemployed. We need only think of AbitibiBowater in Portneuf, and in Beaupré, where this week, 400 workers were temporarily put out of work, knowing that perhaps this company would not be saved in time for them to return. Some workers will be sacrificed.
Another question we asked ourselves had to do with employment insurance. For years, the Bloc has been calling for a real reform of the employment insurance program. We have witnessed the pillaging of the EI fund. The Bloc Québécois condemned the Liberals for taking money from the EI fund, putting it in the consolidated revenue fund and using it to pay government expenses. The workers and employers who paid into the fund should have had a say in how the money in that fund was distributed.
One might have thought the Conservative government would have appreciated the urgent need for action to help certain workers make it through the crisis. Moreover, the OECD made two requests, one of which was to not let workers down. A good way to not let workers down when jobs are being lost or people are being laid off temporarily is to make sure that they receive employment insurance so that they can get through the crisis. We also learned that unemployment in Canada would reach 10%. That, too, should have sounded the alarm for the Conservative Party.
But the Conservative Party has never believed in the economic crisis. I remember the debates we had in the Quebec City area during the election campaign. The Conservative Party said that there was no economic crisis and that everything was rosy. It wanted people to believe that that was self-evident. Meanwhile, the United States was entering an economic slowdown. When 85% of our exports go to the United States, we should be worried about whether American consumers will consume as much and buy Canadian products. It did not take a master's degree in economics to see that there would be an economic slowdown in Canada. Yet the Conservatives kept mum and remained passive about the economic crisis.
How can we believe that they are taking the economic crisis in Canada and in Quebec seriously, or that they will help the aerospace sector and the manufacturing industries that are also suffering from the crisis?
The Conservatives were elected, but since voters did not quite believe them, they only gave them a minority government. The Conservatives then came up with a budget in 2009. Everyone was worried and we expected them to shake things up and to show that they were taking the situation seriously. What they did instead was to introduce an ideological plan. They forgot all about a plan to recover from the economic crisis.
Instead, the Conservatives proposed an ideological type of plan, because they wanted to first target political financing, but not for just any party. Indeed, under that plan the Bloc Québécois would no longer be eligible for political funding. This shows how the Conservatives engaged in petty politics, this at a time when the public was expecting the government to deal with the economic crisis.
The Conservatives forgot about the crisis and engaged further in petty politics by eliminating the court challenges program. As members know, francophones outside Quebec would often rely on that program to be represented before the courts, when they were overlooked regarding certain requests, or when they were being ostracized. Women also used that program for the same reasons.
Why did the Conservatives make that decision? Because the program bothered them and they did not want to pay for people who were challenging them. That is some kid of openness on the part of a government and a political party that are supposed to make sound use of the power delegated to them by voters through a democratic process.
I believe the Bloc Québécois is an opposition party that is well represented here, because, over the years, Quebeckers have consistently elected a majority of Bloc members. Members opposite should ask themselves why Bloc Québécois members get elected, despite what the minister from the Quebec City region said this morning, namely that the Bloc's presence here is a paradox. I told her that the real paradox is that she is a minister.
So, our study provided us with a number of examples which showed the direction taken by the government in various areas, whether social, such as employment insurance, cultural or economic, and which also showed that this government has not met Quebec's needs.
Why was $10 billion injected so quickly into Ontario's auto industry? We are told that this saved hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of jobs. However, jobs have also been lost in the forestry industry and manufacturing industry in Quebec. Yet Quebec was given only $70 million. One can understand why Quebeckers feel abandoned by the Conservative government. That is just one example among many. I could give other examples besides employment insurance.
To prevent more jobs from being lost, instead of introducing Bill C-50, which excludes workers laid off temporarily because they file too many claims for employment insurance, what was really needed was a complete overhaul of the system, taking into account those who are excluded from employment insurance.
The Conservative government says it is acknowledging long-tenured workers. That is great. I have nothing against that. However, they have forgotten seasonal workers, for example, who are having difficulty getting their jobs back, because their industries are working at a much slower pace. They have also forgotten people who work in the tourism, construction and manufacturing sectors, just to name a few.
We would have liked to see the employment insurance system completely overhauled and to have it looked at very seriously. But the opposite is happening. We are facing exactly the opposite situation. It should therefore come as no surprise that the Bloc Québécois will be voting with the Liberal Party, because the Conservatives have not fulfilled their duty to Quebec.