Yvan Loubier

[Judges Act, June 3rd, 1998]

That is four times the inflation rate.

[Judges Act, June 3rd, 1998]

That it will pocket.

[Maple Syrup Industry, June 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, last February 16, the Minister of Human Resources Development announced the creation of a $40 million fund for special employment measures, in response to the consequences of the ice storm.

At this time, the fund has been exhausted and not all maple syrup producers have received the announced assistance, despite the government's commitments.

When and how does the minister intend to come to the assistance of the 600 maple syrup producers in the Montérégie and central Quebec regions whose trees are endangered by his inaction?

[Employment Insurance, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, those who have borne the brunt of the burden of paying off the deficit of this heartless government are the unemployed, the workers, and the middle class.

Does the minister not feel that, before making any general tax cut that would be of most benefit to the rich, proportionally, he should cut EI premiums and raise benefits to the unemployed, 60% of whom are totally excluded from the program?

[Employment Insurance, June 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the government made a bad choice in deciding to have the unemployed and the workers pay off a large chunk of its budget.

Now that the EI fund is accumulating billions of dollars with indecent speed, the Minister of Finance wants to make use of it to lower taxes.

By giving a general tax cut precedence over raising EI benefits or lowering contributions, is the minister not headed for another bad choice?

[Supply, June 1st, 1998]

Madam Speaker, we simply want justice and fairness. Currently, everyone, without exception, contributes to the employment insurance program. This includes young people, women, older people and middle aged workers. However, access to the program has been significantly reduced over the past 10 years.

Before 1990, over 80% of unemployed workers were eligible for employment insurance. Now, only 42% qualify, and only one in four young people qualife.

The member may claim he was not laughing earlier, but we have witnesses who can confirm that he did not stop laughing while we discuss alarming figures on poverty and unemployment. The Liberals are laughing in our face.

People, particularly the poor and the unemployed, should come here more often and watch from the public gallery. They would see the attitude of the members responsible for the cuts and the human misery. They would see the members responsible for the significantly reduced access to the EI program and for social inequity in Canada. They would see that they are dealing with members who are cynical and sarcastic and who do not care at all about their fate.

[Supply, June 1st, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I cannot help but notice this morning, during the debate on a motion put forward by my colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, that the arrogance and cynicism shown last week by the Minister of Finance and also the Minister of Human Resources Development are contagious.

The hon. member for Malpeque, in Prince Edward Island, and the hon. member for Kenora—Rainy River, in Manitoba, were laughing at us, making disparaging remarks while we were delivering our speeches, while we were talking about the poverty created entirely by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Human Resources Development. Their smiles, their cynicism and their disparaging remarks make them unworthy of speaking on behalf of those they claim to represent.

I was listening earlier to the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst, who defeated Doug Young. During question period and debates concerning employment insurance, Doug Young used to demonstrate the same pompous arrogance and cynicism and make the same disparaging, uncalled for and unparliamentary remarks as these members of parliament. My hon. colleague from Acadie—Bathurst defeated him.

I hope the same thing will happen to the members for Malpeque and Kenora—Rainy River. If their constituents are watching us, I want to tell them “Defeat them in the next election. Go to their riding offices and hold them accountable for their actions. Ask them why they laughed when we were talking about the poor, the unemployed and all the people left out of the employment insurance reforms. Voters from Malpeque and Kenora—Rainy River, go knock on the doors of these pompous members of Parliament who claim that the people in their ridings are quite satisfied with the employment insurance program. Go tell these cynics that it is not true. Go tell these sarcastic members they are not worthy of the seat they are occupying. They are no more worthy than the finance minister”.

His not being here today will not stop me from mentioning that last week he appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance to present his analysis of the supplementary estimates. Do you think that given the excellent job by the member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques we were going to stick to the supplementary estimates?

We talked about employment insurance and while I was presenting all the arguments against the Liberal reform implemented since 1996, the finance minister did exactly the same thing as the members for Malpeque and Kenora—Rainy River. He was laughing at people's misery. He was laughing at the results of his policy. He was proudly boasting about his accomplishments as Minister of Finance.

Any dummy could have done what he did; it is easy to put your financial house in order when you choose two targets: students, who were hit with billions and billions of dollars in cuts to post-secondary education, and the unemployed, who were robbed year after year of $6 billion for a grand total of $19 billion.

I listened to my Liberal colleague for Malpeque, who makes fun of the unemployed and the underprivileged, saying that the EI fund does exist, but it does not really. What the finance minister has been doing for the past four years is basically this: he has been taking employee and employer contributions and putting them into his own pocket.

When the time came to pay his debts to eliminate the deficit, he paid cash. That is why there is no money left in that fund. He stole it. At the end of the current fiscal year, he will have stolen $19 billion. Next year, it will be $25 billion, and that amount will continue to grow year after year.

If the member is too thick-headed to know what is really going on with regard to employment insurance, he should not be here. He has no right to laugh about the terrible things that are happening in Canada, especially concerning the management of the employment insurance fund.

What is going on with regard to employment insurance? What is going on with regard to the job market? It is quite simple. Until the early 1990s, more than 80% of unemployed Canadians, including women and young people, were able to rely on a form of help called unemployment insurance. They could rely on that help for a certain amount of time, enough to relocate and to find another job.

Since 1996, since the reform brought in by the member for Lasalle—Émard and finance minister and by two successive human resources development ministers—the first being the one who was defeated by my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst and the second being the one whom it would be in our interest to defeat in the next election—, the proportion of employment insurance beneficiaries has shrunk almost by half.

Today, only 42% of those who would normally qualify are eligible to receive benefits; less than half of those people, 42%, are now eligible because of the new requirements set by the Minister of Finance, by the Minister of Human Resources Development, in fact, by the Liberals. A lot of people no longer have access to employment insurance because of the reform.

These are general figures. Only 42% of the unemployed qualify, which means the other 58% do not. More than half of those who are affected by the scourge of unemployment no longer qualify for EI benefits because of more stringent conditions and a longer qualifying period. In short, the unemployed have been thrown out on to the streets.

The Liberals are telling us they want to help young people, but 75% of all young workers who are unemployed, people who have graduated and are in their twenties, do not qualify for EI benefits. Some of them are less educated, but others have graduated and are out of work nonetheless. It can happen to anybody.

Last week, the finance minister was quite proud to tell the finance committee that we may have a budget surplus next year, not a EI fund surplus, which we know about. He is making fun of us. He laughs at people right under their noses. He is cynical and sarcastic, as we saw this morning.

In his last budget, he told us there would be no surplus and no deficit for the next three years. He is laughing at us. If nothing changes, the budget surplus will be more than $20 billion three years from now. He is cooking the books.

He was quite proud and he kept laughing when I told him that in 1989, there were 400,000 fewer unemployed and $3 billion more in benefits being paid out. The finance minister was laughing this morning, and his colleagues too. His colleagues from Malpeque and Kenora—Rainy River laugh when we tell them we have 400,000 more unemployed workers today and that they get $3 billion less in benefits. They find this very funny.

Last week, I asked the finance minister a question about this problem. I did not get any answer. I will ask my question again today. Perhaps, we never know, he is listening in a corner of his office, behind closed blinds because he does not want to meet anyone at this point. I have just one question for the finance minister: when he gets up in the morning and looks in the mirror, is he ashamed of himself? It is a real shame to have acted in such a way to put our financial house in order.

There are two major sources: the Canadian social transfer, that is federal transfers to the provinces to fund welfare, post-secondary education and health care, and the employment insurance fund, into which the minister has been dipping, year after year. He puts the money in his pockets and when the time comes to sign a cheque, he uses the money he has taken from workers and employers.

The finance minister did not bother answering me. He did not because I am convinced that he now has doubts. If he does not have any doubts, there is a lack of intelligence somewhere.

But one cannot undertake a reform in this hurtful way and say with one's hand on one's heart: “But what is happening to Canada? Poverty has been on the rise for five years”. I should say so. There are more poor children than before. Why? There is no need to be a rocket scientist to know why. One cannot cut billions of dollars from the employment insurance fund and welfare and then expect to get away with it by saying “What is happening? There are more unemployed people than before”.

These are the people responsible, the ones who are laughing this morning when they are shown the true face of poverty and unemployment. I hope that Quebeckers and Canadians will open their eyes and especially their ears wide. Such cynicism cannot go unchallenged.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1998, May 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, at this conference the then Quebec premier was very reluctant as is the current Quebec premier.

But Mr. Pearson understood. As a result of their discussions, barely two weeks after the end of this important federal provincial conference, Mr. Pearson sent a telegram to Mr. Lesage allowing Quebec to withdraw, with full compensation, from a program in an area under provincial jurisdiction.

We are still hoping that the current Prime Minister will stop being so obtuse, cynical and arrogant and lend a favorable ear to the consensus in Quebec, to allow, as was the case at the Quebec conference when Mr. Pearson and Mr. Lesage—

[Budget Implementation Act, 1998, May 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I was saying that a new chapter has been written in the dark history of the federal system, as illustrated by all the arguments I and every other speaker from Quebec have submitted. They have also unanimously rejected the proposed millennium scholarship fund.

It is not every day that the Premier of Quebec and his education minister lead a delegation to come to meet with the Prime Minister of Canada here, in Ottawa, to see if they could agree on a mutually acceptable position, which would at the same time satisfy the federal government's need for visibility. That is all there is to it: the federal government wants to be visible in what it does for students in the hope of winning them over to the cause of Canadian federalism.

What are they taking students for? Students can see that behind this need for visibility there are measures which have been penalizing them big time for the past four years.

The premier and the minister of education of Quebec came here to meet with the Prime Minister of Canada. They tried to smooth things over and made several concessions. They also put on the table proposals that would respect Quebec's jurisdiction while giving the federal government the visibility it desired. That is all it is after. It does not care about efficiency or helping students. Just the same, a negotiating committee was set up. Week after week, the lead negotiator on this committee did not show any real desire to define a mutually acceptable position.

In the end, little fed up with all the fine talk, and a little fed up that things are not moving ahead, the minister of education has decided that enough is enough, that the federal Liberals do not really want to work out any new arrangements.

As my colleague mentioned just now, the National Assembly even passed a unanimous motion that allowed the federal government its visibility but that also ensured some respect for the Government of Quebec's jurisdiction, ensured that it was Quebec that was responsible for the administration, as well as providing the lists of millennium scholarship fund recipients. We also had a share, based on the demographic figures, of the $2.5 billion that would have gone to Quebec. This was passed unanimously by all parties present in the National Assembly.

Once again, this is an indication of the consensus that was clearly evident during the discussions of the Standing Committee on Finance, when witnesses from Quebec appeared before the committee.

There are even Canadian supporters, as I mentioned earlier. John Trent of the University of Ottawa, for instance, who is a vocal opponent of the sovereignists, who is certainly no friend of the Bloc Quebecois, said, and I quote “The fund will inevitably lead to federal-provincial duplication and overlap with existing programs. It is in direct competition with Quebec's loans and scholarships program, which many consider superior”.

When people like him speak in our favour, speak in favour of Quebec, and add their voices to the consensus in Quebec, that says it all. The government is demonstrating unprecedented arrogance and cynicism.

As my colleague mentioned earlier, there have been several attempts by the federal government in the past to interfere in the field of education, which comes under the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec. Every time, the federal government understood. The federal leaders, who were less arrogant and less cynical than our leaders today, understood in the past that education was sacred to Quebec, that we would not allow the federal government to interfere in this sector.

One of the most important federal conferences in the history of Canadian federalism was held in Quebec City in 1964, on March 31 to be exact.

I remember that it was given front page coverage by the Globe and Mail on that date, because it considered this an historic event on a number of levels, including the fact that it marked the discussion of new arrangements between the federal government and the provinces, Quebec in particular, with respect to taxation, the establishment of a new order if you will, in federal-provincial relations and the respect of jurisdictions such as education.

At that time, Messrs. Pearson and Lesage, two intelligent men who were willing to talk to each other, exchanged views during this federal-provincial conference because, in 1964, the federal government wanted to inaugurate a federal program of student loans and bursaries.

I was surprised to find, in rereading the opening remarks by the Hon. Jean Lesage, the Premier of Quebec at the time, that they could have been made today.

If I may, I will quote a few passages from those opening remarks by Mr. Lesage.

The fact that the federal government offers only student loans, not bursaries and loans as seems to have been the case at one point, may at first appear to be an attempt to avoid the constitutional problem bursaries would have presented. In fact, because supply falls within its jurisdiction, the federal government can give the impression that it is remaining within its jurisdiction by giving loans rather than bursaries.

We do not believe this gets around the constitutional problem. The students themselves have felt this, because they have openly opposed the new federal policy.

The millennium scholarship project has also been opposed recently by students.

I will now continue.

The difficulty arises, not from the fact that there are loans, but that they are interest-free loans for students. These loans will be made by financial institutions—

For these two reasons, the Government of Quebec cannot accept application of the federal program as it is proposed at present.

We have, moreover, already set up a student aid service involving sizeable amounts of bursaries and loans to students every year. We are therefore already making a particularly significant effort in this area, not to mention the huge sums of money we devote to other sectors of education every year.

Under the circumstances, in order to resolve the problem posed by the federal student loan policy, Quebec demands that the Government of Canada hand over to it, in the form of tax equivalencies, those amounts it would have reimbursed in interest payments on loans to Quebec students. We would accept as the basis for determining this equivalent amount the relative proportion of the population of Quebec.

From that conference on, therefore—

[Budget Implementation Act, 1998, May 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, maybe you could ask the members who want to have a meeting to hold it in the lobby. It would be better for everyone.