Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to the Bloc Québécois motion put forward by the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain. I will take the time to read the motion again:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should immediately renounce two measures contained in the recent budget:
(a) establishing a national securities commission, because establishing such a commission would constitute an intolerable intrusion into Quebec’s jurisdiction, and the current passport system functions very well; and
(b) unilaterally amending the equalization formula, since the Prime Minister, in a letter to the Premier of Quebec dated March 19, 2007, promised that transfers to the provinces would be predictable and long term, and should also comply with the government of Quebec’s request to give the revenues generated by Hydro-Québec’s transmission and distribution activities the same treatment, regardless of the equalization calculation, as that given Hydro One’s revenues.
I wanted to reread the motion to underscore these two aspects, which are fairly disparate, but which share a common element—they show us once again the limits of federalism. They show that Quebeckers, even though they all agree, even though the 125 members of their National Assembly voted unanimously on a matter, cannot go forward and cannot build the nation or country they would like because they are restricted by a federal framework in which they are a minority.
As a Bloc MP, I will obviously continue to convince my fellow citizens that the best way to get out of that is to become a sovereign country, to become a nation like Canada. It is a big and beautiful country. It is simply not Quebeckers' country and not the country where they can realize their full potential.
Since we must, let us have a closer look at the two parts of this motion and see what it means for Quebec. I will begin with the second part, the one involving the equalization formula. When we meet our electors and talk to them about our work in Ottawa, equalization is rarely the topic they find most exciting or appreciate most. To be honest, it involves a lot of figures and theory. Still, it is vitally important. In theory, this formula should allow each province to provide equivalent services and to set equivalent rates of taxation. In theory, the formula should be based on a number of principles, with the primary one providing that the provinces' fiscal capacity—their ability to tax and gather revenue—be evaluated. Those provinces whose fiscal capacity is less than the average will receive the amount of equalization that brings them up to the average.
That is the theory. The problem is that, for years, there have always been one-time agreements that stray from this principle. These agreements, surprise surprise, always penalize Quebec, no matter how you look at it. By way of example, I offer the decision to exclude a portion of non-renewable natural resources from the calculation of equalization. Once again, it may seem quite technical, but it means in simple terms that the provinces producing oil or other non-renewable resources appear poorer for the purposes of equalization calculations. And so they are entitled to more money. Conversely, provinces like Quebec, which relies primarily on renewable resources, appear richer than they are in fact. In the end, they get penalized.
This is what we explain at the end of the motion. We refer to the federal government's latest brainwave, which is to treat the revenues of Ontario's Hydro One and Quebec's Hydro-Québec differently. Oddly enough, once again, Quebec loses out in equalization payments by $250 million.
And what does it mean for Quebeckers?
First of all, it means that we have a system that does not take our reality into account, and second, it means that our government is unable to predict the revenues it will be receiving from the federal government. Incidentally, those revenues come from the income taxes paid by all Canadians, Quebeckers included. Equalization is not a gift, but a mechanism for redistributing the wealth drawn from our very taxes. So we find ourselves in a situation where, according to Ottawa’s mood, these transfers to Quebec are going to change.
At the beginning of the previous mandate, when the Conservative government announced in this House that it had resolved the fiscal imbalance, the Bloc Québécois immediately said that it had not. First, the size of the amounts involved was insufficient, but basically, there were no tax transfers. When the people on the Séguin Commission convened in Quebec and introduced this concept of the fiscal imbalance into the public arena, they were not drawing two words at random from a hat. They called it a fiscal imbalance because it was an imbalance of a fiscal nature. The solution inevitably was to restore the balance with a fiscal solution.
In Quebec, there was therefore a unanimous demand that revenues be transferred to the Government of Quebec. They could have transferred tax points, or a field of taxation like the GST. This was not done. They transferred a sum of money and confined themselves to that. Today, with a stroke of the pen, the federal government can say that this year it is dropping transfers $991 million below what Quebec had expected, that the Government of Quebec will have to make do with that. We saw this in 1995. The Liberal finance minister of the time slashed transfers of all kinds to the provinces. So we have always had to live with this sort of problem.
Obviously, within the current federal framework, the Bloc Québécois will continue to defend the interests of Quebeckers. In the long term, the only way to fully control our financial resources is to become a sovereign country, like Canada. We must become a country that is able to participate in the world community in order to decide where our revenues will be allocated each year and to carry out long-term planning.
The second part of the motion concerned the securities issue. Once again, there is a consensus in Quebec, that is, total unanimity, from the unions to management, on the left and on the right. Imagine what you will, because everyone says and maintains that the securities commission must remain an exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec. And yet a Canadian securities commission is to be imposed on us.
No one in Quebec is fooled by the government’s trick of saying that this will be optional. The choice will be clear for a foreign company coming to set up operations in Quebec, for example, a company that will have the choice between the national securities commission and the Quebec commission using passport systems. Quite possibly the other commissions will eventually wither and die. The choice will be obvious. If two regulatory bodies are in competition, the one that imposes the fewest restrictions on companies will attract the most companies. This makes no sense. This trick of saying it is optional is window dressing. The reality is that they want to make the Commission des valeurs mobilières du Québec disappear and centralize everything in Ontario, principally Toronto.
For Quebec, it means losing powers and leverage when it comes to influencing economic decisions that are important to us. In the current Canadian framework, we are nowhere near open federalism or any attempt to seek additional powers; we keep going backwards. My guess is that, sadly, this motion will not be passed, because the two main federalist parties will not support it. This motion reminds us, however, that the only choice for Quebec is to become a sovereign nation, a great country like Canada. Then, our countries will be able to work together on new bases.