Yvan Loubier

[Monetary Policy, March 24th, 1994]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Given what he just said, I ask the Minister of Finance if he could explain to us how his position is different from that of the Conservatives?

[Monetary Policy, March 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, when the Liberals were in opposition, they strongly denounced the policy of high interest rates pursued by the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, John Crow. Now the excessive increase of the Bank of Canada rate that we saw yesterday is another sign which shows that nothing has changed.

My question for the Minister of Finance is this: Why did the Liberal Party of Canada promise in the election campaign to redefine the monetary policy, when it is acting exactly like the previous government by obsessively fighting inflation, which has been eliminated, instead of fighting unemployment?

[Job Creation, March 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question. It is strange all the same to see the Minister of Finance throw his short-term job creation creed out the window, just days after the G-7 Summit. So, I will ask him again.

Does the minister not agree that, by pursuing this obsessive inflation reduction policy, which his own party fingered as the main cause of the latest recession, he is knowingly stifling any hope of economic recovery and employment development in Quebec as well as in Canada?

[Job Creation, March 23rd, 1994]

I will start over, Mr. Speaker. I thought you were rising to indicate that my preamble was too long. That is why I sat down.

Let me put my question again to the minister. After tabling a Conservative-style budget, does the Minister of Finance not realize that he is reneging on his election commitment by pursuing the same obsessive fight against inflation and refusing to make lowering unemployment the priority of the Bank of Canada?

[Job Creation, March 23rd, 1994]

And it goes on. But the Minister of Finance told us yesterday that he is doing the exact same thing as the Conservatives. He strongly reaffirmed the Bank of Canada's goal to fight inflation. What an about-face in four short months! One can wonder what to expect for the next four years, Mr. Speaker.

My question is for the Minister of Finance-and you will not get off lightly! After-

[Job Creation, March 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, page 16 of the red book reads, and I quote:

The Conservatives' single-minded fight against inflation resulted in a deep recession, three years without growth, declining incomes, skyrocketing unemployment-

[Government's Credit Rating, March 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Dominion Bond Rating Service quotes explicitly the budget as the reason for lowering the credit rating.

Does the Minister of Finance not recognize that failing to take seriously our proposal, the Bloc Quebecois proposal, to review and cut the fat in federal government expenditures was a bad move and that such an irresponsible move could end up costing the people of Quebec and Canada hundreds of thousands of dollars, while at the same time causing job losses and allowing interest rates to skyrocket?

[Government's Credit Rating, March 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, as expected, the Dominion Bond Rating Service of Toronto lowered the federal government's credit rating yesterday, justifying its move by the government's inability to put its fiscal house in order. This lower rating, which will translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to the taxpayers of Quebec and Canada, revives the spectre of major hikes in interest rates, a scenario which occurred before under the Liberals in the early 1980s.

Does the Minister of Finance not agree that this lower rating is tantamount to an unequivocal condemnation of Canada by the financial community, signalling the failure of his budget with regard to public spending control?

[Supply, March 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my Liberal colleague's speech and there are a few comments I would like to make.

First a general comment followed by a case in point. This government does not promote job creation as it said it would during the 45 days of the election campaign, and in its now defunct red book. I think the red book can be thrown out, considering the latest Budget brought down by the Minister of Finance.

Of course, the infrastructure program will create between 45,000 and 60,000 jobs, depending on whom you talk to. However, what are 45,000 jobs, compared with 1.5 million

unemployed Canadians, including 428,000 Quebecers? These 45,000 jobs, the cornerstone of the platform of the Liberal Party of Canada, are peanuts.

Does the hon. member not realize that this measure is totally inadequate and provides no structural improvement of the employment situation? Does she not realize that all the measures taken by her government since the morning of October 26 have clearly compromised job creation and this country's economic recovery?

Mr. Speaker, I will give you a few examples which I have found particularly revealing since we took up our duties on the morning of October 26.

First of all, her government, after spending years criticizing the high-interest policies pursued by our defunct Conservatives, has now opted for the same policy. This means that as soon as there is the slightest increase in inflationary trends, of the kind we saw in the first quarter of 1990, the new Governor of the Bank of Canada will administer exactly the same horse medicine as his predecessor, which was vigorously condemned by the present government. What does this mean? It means that as soon as there is the slightest hint of economic growth, interest rates will rise, and this will undermine job creation.

Second, since this government came to power, it has failed to correct the laissez faire approach taken by the budget in recent years. The latest Budget brought down by the Minister of Finance is a failure as far as control of public spending is concerned. So much so, in fact, that financial circles are starting to express concern about the government's lack of control. This means that we can soon expect an increase in the rates of interest charged on government borrowing, a trend that may continue in the foreseeable future.

I repeat, the government is undermining job creation, although for months, if not years, it has been saying that the Liberal Party of Canada is a party that promotes job creation. It is part of the tenets of the red book as well.

Third, Mr. Speaker, as you know, the present government insists on playing a role in manpower training, although this comes under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the other Canadian provinces. When it goes on about job creation being so terribly important, the fact is that by not withdrawing from this area, the Liberal government is undermining our chances of creating durable jobs and quality employment in the years to come.

How can members on the other side of the House say that the government is doing something about creating jobs, when the infrastructure program is merely a drop in the bucket, considering one and a half million Canadians are unemployed, and when the government takes the kind of measures it does in this Budget?

Another point I would like to raise, if I may, Mr. Speaker, is that on the other side of the House they keep saying they are doing something about unemployment and want to intensify the measures that will create jobs. What we find in the last Budget is more like a planned attack against the unemployed, because in the next three years, the government is going to take a little more than $5.5 billion out of their pockets.

That is how the government wants to create jobs and attack poverty, while refusing to restore the budget for social housing, for instance, as it has been promising for years. If that is the way it wants to improve the well-being of Canadians, as it did by attacking old age security pensions and tax credits for the elderly, well, Mr. Speaker, I am truly astonished that the hon. member is still proud to be part of a government that is as far to the right as its Conservative predecessors if not more so.

[Goods And Services Tax, March 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear it. This is the first time I have received such a clear, direct answer.

The Prime Minister has stated very clearly that the new GST will not apply to health care and medication. Is he also prepared to say that the new GST will not apply to food either, given that his Minister of Finance was rather vague about this last week, as vague as the Prime Minister was yesterday?