Yvan Loubier

[Supply, February 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, such statements denote a lack of judgment, because of course the provinces have fewer means, after they have been pushed to the wall, after funds have been taken from them. All the surplus the government has accumulated has had two sources, the provinces and the unemployed.

Since the provinces have their backs to the wall because of the federal government's actions, the hon. member ought to look in his own back yard and look at what the government has done and, as a responsible MP, get his Minister of Finance to change his attitude. The minister is more concerned with his success in connection with the record surpluses than with the plight of Canada's poor.

[Supply, February 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, as I was saying earlier, I have a lot of respect for the hon. member and her work. My initial remarks, good ones, carried through to the end. I did not betray my thought, even though I took a shot at her party and past actions.

That said, there are a number of ways to reduce poverty. We chose three targets, because the government has acted and can act rapidly on these three, which are the primary source of increased poverty over the past five years.

I do not deny that a review of the child tax benefit could help children but, if we analyze the situation, we can see that the government exacerbated the situation in three ways.

First there was a tax increase for middle income families. Many of them were pushed into the low income bracket because of government taxes.

Second, accessibility to employment insurance has dropped to 36%. It seems to me that the effects on poverty of working to raise this 36% average back up to the 80% of a few years ago would be direct, effective and unbiased.

Third, we cannot cut $40 billion by the year 2003 from transfer payments to the provinces for social programs without that having an impact on poverty.

We have taken this approach because we know that the federal government can address these three parameters starting with its next budget. I do not, however, deny the UN recommendation, and once again I say to my colleague that she is doing a good job, and I hope she will keep at it.

[Supply, February 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, to conclude, while I salute the work done by my colleague from Shefford, my uneasiness comes from the fact that the measures that plunged the people of Canada and Quebec into poverty in the first place were Conservative measures. I would simply ask her to take note of this fact and perhaps accept on behalf of her party the blame for its past actions.

[Supply, February 11th, 1999]

Could I have the unanimous consent of the House to finish my sentence?

[Supply, February 11th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I wish to thank the hon. member for Shefford for this opportunity to debate an issue as important as poverty, and children living in poverty in particular.

I must congratulate the hon. member for Shefford, who has done a wonderful job on this issue. Ever since she was elected to this place, she has had a thought-provoking input. To her credit, she also made representations at various levels to denounce the alarming growth in poverty, especially among children.

Like the hon. member for Shefford, we have noticed that the poverty situation is critical. There are at least 5 million Quebeckers and Canadians living in poverty today. Since 1989, poverty has grown by approximately 45% in Canada. That represents a substantial deterioration of the situation.

You will recall that 1989 is the year when Canada signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since 1989, not only have we not managed to reduce child poverty in this country, but the number of poor children has actually increased by 500,000. In 1989, we had 1 million children living in poverty, with parents who were themselves living in poverty; today their number has grown to 1.5 million.

The situation has worsened particularly since 1993, when this government took office. There are three reasons for the spiralling poverty of parents and children in Quebec and in Canada, all of them attributable to the policies of the Liberal Party and of the Minister of Finance, who loves to tell us about his record surpluses. What he fails to mention is that his pockets are full because those of the public, particularly the poor, are emptier.

Since it first came to power in 1993, this government has deliberately set out on three courses of poverty creation. First, it has increased taxes. Since the Minister of Finance, the member for LaSalle—Émard, brought down the first Liberal budget in 1994, individual and corporate taxes have gone up by $34 billion.

Of this $34 billion, over $20 billion comes out of the pockets of individual taxpayers. People pay $20 billion more in taxes today than they did before the Liberal Minister of Finance brought down his first budget.

Corporate taxes have increased by over $14 billion since 1994 and this has led to pockets of poverty. When corporations are overtaxed—as they are by the Minister of Finance—they do not create enough jobs, nor do they make the contribution to the community's prosperity that they should. This is the first problem created by this government that has led to an increase in poverty.

The second is the cuts in social transfers to the provinces, particular those for social assistance, post-secondary education and health.

With his 1995 budget, the Minister of Finance inaugurated a regulatory mechanism for his various transfers to the provinces for social programs.

Every year, the provinces have $6 billion taken from them, to finance social assistance in particular. Social assistance is an anti-poverty program which helps those in greatest need. Since 1995, this government has set in motion a totally hypocritical policy which means that, year after year, without any need for the Minister of Finance to make any announcement, $6 billion is taken away from the provinces, in part to finance social assistance, all the anti-poverty programs, and health.

By the year 2003, some $40 billion will have been drained off by this government to finance social programs. After all that we have the Minister of Finance standing up, hand over heart, to talk about poor children. This is shameful. This is hypocrisy, pure and simple. This Minister of Finance ought to be ashamed. He would like to bask in praise for his success in improving public finances, but this success has been achieved at the expense of the most disadvantaged, at the expense of middle- and low-income taxpayers. He deserves no congratulations. He ought to be ashamed of his part in destroying the legacy of his father, a man who was a great builder of social programs in his day.

The third deliberate action by this government that has had an effect on poverty is the creation of an employment insurance plan that is so Manichaean and so removed from its initial objectives as to have only 36% of the unemployed in 1999 benefit from it. That is a shame. And if it does not amount to throwing families and children deliberately into poverty, what does it do.

At the moment, only 36% of the unemployed receive employment insurance. That means that 64% of the unemployed, who should receive benefits, are marginalized on the labour market, forced to take welfare and impoverished by this government.

Therefore, we have three primary sources of poverty arising from a term and a half of Liberals in office and an unscrupulous Minister of Finance cutting wildly everywhere it hurt the most, that is, in the pockets of the public already hit by poverty and struggling with every month end. Then they come bleating about poverty and talking about returning the money the provinces had cut. Are they hypocrites or what? They are the ones who cut the funds to the provincial governments to pay for health care, social welfare and antipoverty programs and now they come crying over the fate of the poor.

The Minister of Human Resources Development even wrote a book during his term of office. I have criticized that enough, it would be overdoing it if I did it again today. He was going on in his book about the most disadvantaged when he was the artisan of the marginalization of whole families. Thousands of children are living in poverty because of him. He bleats on in his book, when he should sit down in his office and redo the entire employment insurance program. He should propose something reasonable, which does not exclude the unemployed from a plan intended to help them.

On the subject of these three sources of poverty, we in the Bloc Quebecois have presented our proposals on several occasions since September, following our prebudget tour of Quebec. The first time was before the Standing Committee on Finance. The second was when we tabled a minority report in the context of the prebudget activities of the Standing Committee on Finance. And finally, the third time was when we held a press conference in December to identify our budget expectations.

Given these three deliberate measures that have pushed people toward poverty, the motion should have asked the government—and I say this with all due respect to my colleague—to, first of all, improve access to employment insurance, because that program no longer makes any sense. The EI program systematically puts families on the street and increases poverty.

Second, the motion should have asked for an increase in transfers to the provinces. Not one quarter or one half of what should be given, but the whole amount taken from the provinces year after year, that is $6 billion annually until the year 2003.

Third, we agree with the Conservative Party that tax tables should be indexed. Clearly, these tables should be indexed.

Our three suggestions are within the budget limits that a responsible federal government must set for itself. If we look at the anticipated surpluses for this year and next year, our three proposals are fully within the limits of the federal government's financial authority.

We are asking the government to improve access to employment insurance by providing up to $6 billion. We are also asking it to set aside another $6 billion for transfers to the provinces. This makes a total of $12 billion, to which we must add $2 billion to index the tax brackets. We arrive at a grand total of $14 billion, while this year's surplus is expected to be around $15 billion.

By contrast, the Progressive Conservative Party's proposals, including those made in its minority report, in December, largely exceeds this anticipated surplus. I wish to point that out to the hon. member for Shefford. When one makes proposals, one must evaluate them thoroughly and, based on an initial assessment, it would cost $21 billion to implement the proposals made by the Conservatives. This would largely exceed the moneys available for this year and next year.

I also want to say something else. With all due respect to my colleague from Shefford—as I said earlier, this does not apply to her as she has been doing a wonderful job of fighting child poverty—I cannot help but feel a little uneasy with a motion like this one coming from the Conservative Party, especially since it was a Conservative government that de-indexed the tax tables in 1986 and redefined the statistics on child poverty so that, on paper at least, it would appear that things were looking up, while in fact they were not.

I am also a little—

[Taxation, February 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, instead of lowering the taxes of the rich with the surplus in the employment insurance fund, and with recovery targets set three times higher than the actual amount of fraud, would it not be fairer and more humane for the Minister of Finance to improve the present employment insurance plan, which barely covers two out of five unemployed workers?

[Taxation, February 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the leaks cleverly orchestrated by the Minister of Finance, we now know that the next budget will include tax decreases for the well-off.

Is the Minister of Finance not a bit uncomfortable about preparing to lower taxes for the richest people by using the money that has been collected at the expense of the unemployed, thanks to quotas, harassment and performance bonuses for those administering the unemployment offices?

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, February 8th, 1999]

The members opposite are laughable. But I am not going to take the bait because it is not worth it on these small points.

The overall picture has to be presented. Yes, it is true that Quebec receives more social band-aids, because its levels of poverty and unemployment are perhaps worse than they would have been if the federal government had treated Quebec fairly for the last 105 years.

As I said earlier, we are mentioning this not to complain but to set the record straight and to put the debate in proper perspective. Furthermore, the Leader of the Official Opposition just made a thinly veiled suggestion that this is one national standard Quebec finds to its liking.

I did not want to get into the federalist argument that, as the spoiled child of the Canadian federation, Quebec receives more than its share of equalization payments. Given what we have been hearing for weeks from the other side, and what I heard just minutes ago from the leader of the opposition, I have no choice but to direct my presentation on Bill C-65 to that aspect of the matter.

Getting back to the bill, in the days to come we intend to go into further detail on certain aspects of the review of the equalization payment system, on certain parameters such as the demands brought to the table over the past 10 years, not just by Quebec but by a number of provinces, particularly those relating to the way property tax is handled. We are going to address these further in committee.

We already have a meeting scheduled this week with people from Finance, in order to go still further into the technical aspects that are different. There are, for instance, differences from the formula used in the past five years. We are going to continue our efforts and will be making recommendations to our party based on the final outcome of this.

In the meantime, I would ask my Liberal and Reform colleagues to take a look at equalization payments. It is not all that complicated, a matter of taking an hour or two to read some very well prepared documents. Some are summaries, while others are a bit more complex. One can have a good grasp of the principles of equalization payments even without the latter, however.

There is nothing magical about equalization payments, nothing arbitrarily determined. The process is one of negotiation, based on parameters that are highly technical but can be verified in all the provinces of Canada. It is being rather lazy intellectually to say “The system must be torn up, got rid of, dumped. We must start all over again, reform the whole business”.

In my view, the federal taxation system is not all bad. It contains some things that are understandable, and the equalization payment system may be one of them.

I thank my hon. colleagues for their attention.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, February 8th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, through you, I ask the member for Beauce not to call me a liar, as he did in stating that the figures I gave were not the right ones. Let him check, let him do his job. The Liberals from Quebec should do their job and take it a little more seriously. They will see that the figures I gave were the real ones, the right ones. These figures came from their own colleague, the Minister of Finance and member for LaSalle—Émard.

As I was saying, we must be very careful with figures. We must review the principles behind equalization. Since equalization payments are calculated on a per capita basis, any comparison should also be made on a per capita basis. On that basis, Quebec does not benefit from equalization payments any more than the other provinces do.

If one insists on making statements such as the ones we heard from the other side, to the effect that Quebec is spoiled when it comes to federal transfers, then one should provide the whole picture. If one claims that Quebec receives more in equalization and social transfers payments than the other provinces, one should also say something about federal investments in Quebec over the past 30 years and about the procurement of goods and services in Quebec. If those Liberal members did their homework, they would defend Quebec rather than begin by saying we are whiners. One has only to look at the data—and the data come from Statistics Canada, the Department of Finance, and the Department of Public Works and Government Services—to see that, since 1961, Quebec has never had its fair share.

For example, in terms of federal fixed capital investments, in the past 30 years, only 18% of total federal investments were made in Quebec. Yet, Quebeckers still account for one quarter of the Canadian population. Given our demographic weight and our contribution to the federal government's revenues, we should be entitled to at least 25%.

The figures on the procurement of goods and services are not jokes of false data. They can be checked. In fact, all the figures that I am presenting can be checked. It is simply a matter of not being so lazy and really going to check them. In terms of the procurement of goods and services, we have had only 18% since 1961, more than 35 years ago, while Quebec accounted for more than one quarter of the population then and accounts for one quarter of it now.

If we look at the whole investment picture and procurement of goods and services, Quebec has a shortfall of $2.4 billion a year. This is productive and job creating spending. This $2.4 billion in spending on goods and services from businesses could help create 45,000 jobs in Quebec if it were properly and fairly distributed to Quebec. If the federal government had acted fairly, an extra 45,000 jobs could have been created in Quebec. That is a lot. The unemployment rate in Quebec with these 45,000 jobs would be 1.1% lower. That is significant.

These figures can and should be verified. It is true that, if we look at only part of the problem, we could indeed say that Quebec receives $1 billion more a year in equalization payments and employment insurance than its demographic weight would justify. We are not ashamed of that, especially since if the federal government had made these fixed capital investments, and if we had had our share of federal government procurement of goods and services in Quebec, we would have made up this billion dollars. We would not need the extra equalization payment, employment insurance benefits or social assistance. We would even have had an extra $1.4 billion to play with.

The federal government could keep the additional billion dollars it pays us over and above our demographic weight, if it returned to us the $2.4 billion it owes in job creation investments and in procurement of goods and services from Quebec businesses. In politics, two things in particular are important.

There are a number, in fact, but there are two in particular: honesty and moral integrity. Moral integrity, as in providing accurate figures, and intellectual honesty demand that you look at the picture as a whole, and not just say that Quebec receives equalization payments. Yes, Quebec receives equalization payments, as do Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Saskatchewan—

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, February 8th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is none too bright of those on the other side to start making such remarks when a very serious matter is being discussed. They are being totally demolished by the Reform and do not want to hear any arguments in favour of the equalization payment system. This seems illogical. Sometimes the Liberals exhibit no logic whatsoever, particularly the Liberals from Quebec.

As I was saying about Manitoba, if Manitoba had a population of 7.3 million instead of the 1,141,000 it does have, it would get seven times as much in total equalization payments as Quebec. One can fiddle about with figures like that, but the main point is that there must be a fundamental respect of an act or of a program.

This equalization program has been established on a per capita basis, for the people the members across the way are supposed to be serving. But instead of serving them, they are laughing and saying any old thing. I would be ashamed if I were in their shoes. It would not be a pretty picture if residents from the riding of Beauce saw their member of Parliament act like a clown in this House. They would go back to their riding and condemn such behaviour.

With respect to the reputation of members of the political profession, when we look at polls and see politicians ranking dead last in terms of credibility, it is because of attitudes like this.