Yvan Loubier

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques for his excellent work on the issue of employment insurance for the benefit of the unemployed in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.

When a situation as dramatic as this one arises, it takes people like my esteemed colleague to document the issue fully, to ask pertinent questions of the minister responsible, and to demand equally pertinent replies.

Employment insurance is a very serious matter, and one that is well documented. I am sure that, some day, logic will win out and the minister will make decisions accordingly.

As my colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques said, we are starting another black chapter in the history of Canadian federalism.

It is rather surprising, when one thinks of the business of the millennium scholarships, that there is one man, and one man alone, who has been a character in all of these black chapters in the history of federalism: the present Prime Minister of Canada.

He was there for the night of the long knives, he was there when the Constitution was patriated to the detriment of Quebec. He was there, floating about in the back hallways and everywhere else with his cell phone and pager during the debate on Meech Lake, and he had a hand in its failure. The present Prime Minister was a presence throughout.

Today, with a major and fundamental intrusion into an area of jurisdiction that is exclusive to Quebec, once again we find the Prime Minister of Canada, the hon. member for Saint-Maurice, right in the middle of things, as the main booster of the millennium scholarships.

It is most unfortunate that a single man can do so much harm to the people of Quebec and to the history of the long battle by the people of Quebec to make the federal government mind its own business. It is, moreover, virtually unprecedented in the history of Canadian federalism for the very essence of the Constitution, the British North America Act which gave exclusive jurisdiction over education to the provinces, and to Quebec in particular, to be trampled underfoot with such arrogance and cynicism.

We have just finished a three week stint with the Standing Committee on Finance, during which we heard testimony from people speaking on behalf of others. The 14 Quebec witnesses represented no less than 1.2 million people in business and education. In fact they represented everything that moves and has an interest in education.

For three weeks, these 14 organizations and others from across Canada came to say that supporting a scheme such the millennium scholarships was out of the question. These organizations, including some Canadian ones and some illustrious Canadian university professors, came to say that if the millennium scholarships were good for Canada, they were bad for Quebec. Now, this is something.

Even after three weeks of such intense work, the Liberals did not even move one single amendment, even though there is unanimous opposition to this in Quebec. Every single witness told the federal government to mind its own business.

Essentially, the witnesses had four messages. First, the millennium scholarship scheme reveals a deep lack of understanding of Quebec reality. I would like to quote from the FTQ's brief; it said that “as it stands now, Bill C-36 shows a lack of understanding on the part of the Canadian government of Quebec loans and grants system and Quebec's priorities in education”.

This is an understatement. Year in and year out, student loans in Quebec alone amount to approximately $500 million. On top of that, the Quebec government pays out grants to students to the tune of $253 million.

The system has been in place for over 30 years. And now we have a bill that ignores this reality, Quebec expertise and the extraordinary results, which in the opinion of the Canadians testifying before the Standing Committee on Finance, tops those of all the other provinces. The government is dismissing all that.

The second problem is the duplication. Quebec has had an administrative structure for loans and grants for over 30 years. There are educational and administrative experts in a whole network of loans and bursaries, who are among the world's most specialized. Now the system is being top loaded, as we say in good French. The federal government is introducing a new parallel structure, federal this time, to administer a $2.5 billion fund.

Do you know what it will cost to administer this millennium fund? It will amount to 5%. Five per cent of the total budget of the fund will go to administer this new federal program in a sector that is Quebec's exclusive jurisdiction. That figure represents twice the cost of administering the Quebec system of loans and bursaries, and they talk about effective management of federal funds.

Another major problem haunted the deliberations of the finance committee, and it is that the millennium scholarships bear no relation to the needs of students in Quebec and even less to the needs of the education system.

If the Liberals really wanted to help students cope with their debt load and gain easier access to education generally, the intelligent approach would have been to limit cuts.

For the past four years and until 2003, the Minister of Finance, who continues shamelessly to collect a surplus of up to $20 billion in the employment insurance fund, has been and will be stealing money from students and the entire Quebec and Canadian educational system, for by then he will have cut $10 billion from higher education.

The best way to help students and ensure their access to education is for the government to return to the system what it took from the provinces. This would have been an intelligent way to intervene in the sector, while maintaining provincial jurisdiction in the educational sector.

There is another problem with this fund. In recent years, the Minister of Finance has got us used to figure juggling. He has us used to being given figures that have nothing to do with reality or the government's annual financial statements. It is the third time that he cooks up figures in such a shameful way.

Each time, the auditor general gave him a stern warning, but cynicism and arrogance are contagious. Indeed, the cynicism and arrogance displayed by the Prime Minister have now spread to the Minister of Finance and the whole cabinet. The Minister of Finance ignores the criticisms of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and those made by the auditor general on three occasions for basically the same reasons.

The Minister of Finance posted to his 1997-98 budget—which ended on March 31—all the funds, a total of $2.5 billion, earmarked for the millennium scholarships. He led us to believe that they would start spending this money immediately. The fact is that the foundation will only start awarding these scholarships in the year 2000. So, an expenditure that would be made only two and a half years later was charged to the 1997-98 federal budget.

This is not standard procedure. Financial statements no longer mean anything. We can read them, but we cannot really find out about the government's revenues and expenditures, because the minister cooks up the figures. This is the third time.

He did so when the maritime provinces harmonized the GST with their own sales taxes. The minister was to give $800 million to the maritime provinces the following year, because they had agreed to harmonize the GST with their own sales taxes, but he had already charged the whole $800 million to the budget of the previous fiscal year. He did the same thing with the innovation fund.

At some point, he will have to stop cooking the books. The truth will have to come out, because this is complete nonsense. Neither the financial statements nor the estimates make sense any longer. And I am not the only one to think so.

After the Minister of Finance brought down his last budget, all the editors said that it made no sense to forecast, year after year, no surplus in government operations, when we know the surplus will keep increasing, starting this year with a $4 billion surplus in the federal budget. It does not make any sense to put “zero, zero, and zero” in the estimates for the next three years. Will he stop laughing at the taxpayers some day?

He does it again with the millennium scholarships; he cooks the books and hides the real budget surplus and all the drastic cuts to education. He keeps doing it and still maintains that he has to fight the deficit, when in fact, since the last fiscal year, we have a surplus that will increase in the future.

Not every day do we—

[Employment Insurance, May 27th, 1998]

You look out for your boats, but not for the unemployed.

[Employment Insurance, May 27th, 1998]

When will the minister stop siphoning off money from the unemployed?

[Employment Insurance, May 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in the minute it took for the Minister of Finance to reply to my question, the employment insurance surplus increased by $12,000?

During oral question period, it will have increased by $700,000. By the end of this month, the amount stolen from the unemployed will total $85 million.

[Employment Insurance, May 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is immoral to continue to give such answers when there are thousands of unemployed people in distress.

And while he was answering my question—

[Employment Insurance, May 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this morning, the Minister of Finance announced that he had some decisions to make concerning the indecent surplus in the employment insurance fund.

It was high time he woke up, for the surplus was beginning to exceed the levels allowable by law.

May we know more about these famous decisions the minister intends to make about his surplus, a surplus that has always been immoral and is now becoming increasingly illegal?

[Points Of Order, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I do not recall having used the word. But if I did so inadvertently, I am prepared to withdraw it. In order to satisfy my colleague, I will not make a fuss over the matter.

[Points Of Order, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for you and your office.

I do not recall having used those words yesterday. Many words are uttered in the House of Commons in any given day. I am also looking at Hansard and I am not identified as being—

[National Head Start Program, May 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion by the Reform Party member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

To begin with, although we support the motion in principle and the underlying reasoning concerning youth crime, we cannot support it for the following reasons.

First, family policy is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, and this has always been the case. Second, as far as Quebec is concerned, it has well established policies in place to reduce juvenile delinquency, to help young people reintegrate society and to divert them from a life of crime. One thing the Reform Party member should understand is that youth crime will decrease when other Canadian provinces do as Ontario has done and follow Quebec's example with respect to youth protection, creating youth centres to help young people and tracking those at risk throughout their formative years.

I would like to provide some very important, and very revealing, statistics, which were brought to light by my colleague, the member for Berthier—Montcalm, a little while ago.

The figures on juvenile delinquency recidivism rates are eloquent and speak for themselves. Quebec has been active in this area for 30 years, through its youth centres and through its youth protection legislation. The result is that it has the lowest rate of recidivism in Canada. It has the lowest rate of recidivism for youth crime anywhere in North America. The number is 195 per 100,000 in Quebec while, for a province such as Saskatchewan, where the accent has been much more on punitive measures than on reintegration into society, the number is 800 per 10,000. That is high.

Four or five years ago, Ontario decided to follow Quebec's example and model part of its youth protection program on what is being done in Quebec. The results are very impressive. For the past five years, the rate of juvenile delinquency in Ontario has steadily decreased. Right now, it is around 400 or 500 per 10,000, as opposed to 800 per 10,000 for provinces such as Saskatchewan. These are the two points I wish to make regarding the motion per se.

As for the fact that this motion is being introduced by the Reform Party, that I find somewhat confusing, because we no longer know where Reformers are coming from.

Do they have a common party policy regarding youth protection and the Criminal Code in general? We have heard all sorts of things in the past five years. We even heard of a delegation of Reform members planning to visit a country, whose name I forget, to look into the benefits of flogging criminals.

Private members' bills were tabled and remarks were made by members of the Reform Party, which were extremely harsh and made no mention of reintegration or social rehabilitation, only of punishment per se.

Now, there is this Reform bill, which is kind of mild compared to the ones tabled previously. This is somewhat confusing. What do members of the Reform Party think? Are they in favour of reintegration?

Recently, Reformers criticized the Minister of Justice for lowering the age at which children may be tried in adult court for a serious crime. They argued that lowering the age was not enough. They wanted provisions included in the legislation whereby children under the age of 10 who are charged with a serious crime may be tried in adult court.

During this debate, when the Minister of Justice lowered the age for transferring young offenders charged with serious crimes, not once did a Reformer raise the importance of reintegration and the need to help young offenders re-enter society for its greater benefit. This is a bit confusing.

Another concern we have is with the fact that, in their remarks on this motion, Reformers failed to mention that there is a major reason why youth crime is on the rise, as crime in general may be, and that is the social and economic conditions people live in.

Over the last four or five years, the Liberal government has imposed drastic cuts to social transfers for welfare, health and provincial funding for higher education.

Such cuts, which total billions of dollars and which will continue to be made until the year 2003, have an obvious impact on the economic situation of households, particularly those with children. Social problems surface whenever the economic well-being and development opportunities of families are targeted.

A child whose basic needs are not met because of financial problems experienced by the parents, or because of psychological distress also related to reduced federal transfers is more likely to become a juvenile delinquent.

Let us look at what this government has done regarding employment insurance since January 1996. The changes it made had a significant impact on the economic conditions of Canadian families, thus creating a tendency among children to become juvenile delinquents.

The statistics on employment insurance are shocking and revolting. They amount to political and administrative barbarism. This government has made so many cuts and has tightened the eligibility criteria for employment insurance so much that, for the fiscal year 1997-98, only 42% of the unemployed are eligible for EI benefits, compared to 83% just nine years ago. In 1989, 83% of the unemployed were entitled to benefits, compared to only 42% today.

When you tighten eligibility criteria to that extent and when you triple the number of hours that must be worked, you create conditions that are conducive to a rise in juvenile delinquency. You also create conditions which, in the families that suffer psychological shock and stress as a result of these cuts, promote delinquency.

In 1989, there were a million unemployed. Now, there are 1.4 million unemployed, but we are paying out $3 billion less in employment insurance than in 1989. So, there are 400,000 more unemployed and $3 billion less. This can only cause increased distress and lead to juvenile delinquency.

For instance, eligibility requirements for parental leave, leave that is often necessary, have doubled. It now takes 700 hours, or 20 weeks of 35 hours each. This is one of the major areas that was tightened up, along with the way seasonal workers and those on the labour market for the first time are treated when they are hit by unemployment. The requirement now to receive employment insurance benefits is 910 hours, whereas before it took 20 weeks at 15 hours per week.

Clearly these cuts, which are pushing families toward welfare, are increasing the distress of these families and the likelihood of the children of these families turning to delinquency.

Had the Reform Party taken a coherent and intelligent approach, it would have supported the Bloc Quebecois in the matter of provincial transfers for welfare, post-secondary education and health and it would have supported the Bloc's demands for reform of employment insurance, which is needed immediately to avoid psychological and economic distress to the people of Quebec and Canada.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1998, May 13th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to this important bill and to the group of motions we have presented, whose aim essentially is to eliminate everything to do with the millennium scholarships.

Why are we presenting this group of motions? For one good reason: with the millennium scholarships the government is not minding its own business. In the course of three weeks of hearings before the Standing Committee on Finance, 14 organizations from Quebec all said the same thing, which was that the federal government has no business meddling in an area of exclusive jurisdiction. According to the Constitution these people claim to be defending, the federal government cannot interfere, and the organizations are calling for the right to withdraw with full compensation for Quebec.

Witnesses appeared on behalf of such important organizations as the FTQ, the CSN and university and college student associations. An association of former student movement leaders, who oversaw the changes in the education sector in the past 11 years, had seven messages for the committee, and especially the federal government. The first was that, with these scholarships, the federal government is showing its ignorance of the situation in Quebec.

Allow me to quote from the brief of the FTQ, which said, about the proposal as it was formulated in Bill C-36, that “this proposal illustrates the Canadian government's lack of knowledge about Quebec's system of loans and grants and its priorities in education”. The president of the Fédération des cégeps said essentially the same thing.

The association of former student leaders of Quebec said “With its millennium scholarships, the federal government is showing its ignorance and its incompetence in the field of education”.

I do not think they were paying much attention on the other side of the House because, despite three intensive weeks and the unanimity of the witnesses from Quebec, the members of the Liberal majority on the finance committee did not move a single amendment.

They have the nerve to claim to be in touch with people's needs, when 14 organizations representing at least 1.2 million adult Quebeckers with some degree of connection to education or business have told them to mind their own business. But they did not get it. They are thumbing their noses at people and at the democratic system.

Normally, if people had been listened to properly, and if the business of holding public hearings in the committees had had any value in the eyes of the parliamentarians, who claim they are democratic right down to the roots of their hair, they would have backed off after hearing the representations from Quebec. I fault the chair of the finance committee for not allowing any mention of Quebec's unanimous opposition to the millennium scholarships in the report he tabled last Friday.

The second criticism voiced by all stakeholders is that the federal government came up with this project solely to gain some more visibility. Minister of Human Resources Development made no bones about this either. With his usual candour, he indicated that this indeed was the reason. The Prime Minister went still further, as has been his wont since the start of his career in politics.

This project creates duplication and doubles costs for all taxpayers. At the present time, the loans and bursaries system that Quebec has developed since the Ministry of Education was created in 1964 is without equal, and works impeccably well. We are not the only ones to say so. It is cited as an example across Canada. We have all of the structures, all of the staff, and all of the expertise accorded to us by the Constitution, the British North America Act.

Adding on a foundation to administer scholarships just creates duplication and greatly increases costs. The administrative costs of the millennium fund are double what we have in Quebec.

On the average, Quebec's administration of bursaries and loans takes about 2.5% of the amounts involved, while the figure for the millennium scholarships will be twice that, at 5%. Yet they talk of efficiency. Efficiency, my foot!

The third criticism from Quebec stakeholders at our hearings was that, far from reducing inequalities, the millennium scholarships run the risk of increasing inequalities in the field of education.

The fourth criticism is that the millennium scholarships are not a solution to student indebtedness. Ever since 1995, since the Minister of Finance started slashing federal transfers for higher education, we have been saying that the answer to the student loans problem is for the government to stop slashing and start giving back what it has taken from the pockets of the provinces and was actually used before to finance the education programs. That would be a positive measure to reduce student loans.

The fifth criticism put forward by people from Quebec is there is no need for this in Quebec. That does not mean that we do not need money, but we do not need a wall to wall policy. That could work outside Quebec. Some Canadian stakeholders stated that they were interested in the millennium scholarships, because they are not organized as Quebec has been since 1964, when it set up its student loans and grants program. However, the proposed scholarship fund does not meet the needs of Quebec.

What Quebec needs right now is for the Minister of Finance to stop playing petty politics with the surplus he hides year after year, by juggling the figures, and to start giving back what he has grabbed from Quebec. We would then be in a position to help students out.

The sixth criticism is a major one. We have grown accustomed, ever since his appointment, to seeing the Minister of Finance juggling the figures. He literally juggles all the figures he brings forward. It has come to a point where we no longer believe the government's financial statements or the estimates the minister tables.

With the millennium scholarship program, he has been criticized three times by the auditor general, who is the watchdog of public finances and is accountable to Parliament. The auditor general is impartial; he is accountable to Parliament.

What did the auditor general have to say? He said that, by charging to the 1997-98 budget these $2.5 billion that he plans to start spending only in the year 2000, the finance minister is fixing the books. They no longer mean anything. Amounts that have yet to be spent cannot be included in the financial statements. Where will that kind of government accounting lead us?

A few moments ago, I heard the secretary of state say that people appreciate this new accounting method whereby all commitments are included in the books as soon as they are made, even though the money will be spent only three years later, because it makes people aware of planned spending. This is not true. It is absolutely false. People want to know what the real figures are. They want to know where they are going. They want to know that the money they are paying in taxes will be spent in the current fiscal year. They do not want to know that expenditures that will be made only in the year 2000 were charged in full to last year's budget.

These $2.5 billion should not have been included in the books for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1998. The auditor general and chartered accountants are almost unanimous on this issue, except for those hired by the government, of course, who may be suspected of being less impartial.

It is not the first time the finance minister pulls such a stunt. It is the third time. He did it when he concluded a deal with three maritime provinces to harmonize the GST with their provincial sales tax. A compensation package totalling about $1 billion—which is still being criticized because it means the government bought those three maritime provinces to get what it wanted—was included in the books before the agreement between these provinces and the federal government was even signed.

The second time was when the innovation fund was created. Again, the minister charged the full amount to the current year's budget even though he started spending the money only one year and a half later. Therefore, like all the stakeholders in Quebec, we condemn this practice.

During this debate, we will have the opportunity to address other aspects of the millennium scholarship fund that are very important to Quebeckers. I will talk about an important federal-provincial conference that took place on March 31, 1964, in Quebec City. It was a turning point in the debate on education between the federal government and the Quebec government.