Réal Ménard

[Social Security Programs, October 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member for taking part in the debate. I think that what distinguishes us-and I say this up front-is that as a political party we are convinced that the best way to help the disadvantaged is not just to let market forces prevail. We admit that our society never had as many poor people as it does today. That is true for Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and many regions of the country.

The difference is that we think what makes the government ineffective in fighting poverty is the political structure. Take the very concrete example of a man without work who comes to our riding office. Right away we see that various options are available if he is on welfare; they are not the same if he is on unemployment. Why? Because two levels of government administer these programs.

Nevertheless, the need is the same; he needs training so that he can re-enter the work force. I am convinced that things would be much simpler if we had the government that is closer to the people, namely the provincial government, the Government of Quebec to take the example that I know; I think that the results would be much more satisfactory if funds could be concentrated in the hands of one single manager and if all the available options and programs were offered in one and the same structure.

Sometimes people try to make a distinction between the constitutional structure and the labour market, but that is wrong. We must admit that the two are closely connected. If I were convinced that the central government is the best one to put people to work, I would not be a sovereignist.

I am not a sovereignist because I love the sound of that word. I am a sovereignist because I think that we should have only one government. When someone-who knows, it might be the member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine-proves me wrong, I will be pleased to review my position, but for now I am not convinced.

[Social Security Programs, October 7th, 1994]

I am grateful for the kind of co-operation from my friend, the member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine.

However, there is a paradox because social programs are basically tools that now belong to the provinces. That is how it should be, with one exception: unemployment insurance is the only program where the federal government has any legitimacy at all to act. Let us remember the context. When the federal government announced the unemployment insurance plan, it was the first amendment to the 1867 constitution and it came in the wake of the Rowell-Sirois report. We know what things were like at that time: it was a time of trouble and war, which gave rise to heated discussions.

What a paradox! Imagine the 33 Fathers of Confederation-I apologize for the fact that there were no women-including Cartier, Langevin, Galt, Baldwin and others, coming back here to see the central government of a federation want to interfere in social programs, when neither those 33 Fathers nor their successors gave that government any authority to do that. That, in my opinion, is the problem with the Canadian federation.

The problem is that when you are in Ottawa, you think that there is a single labour market. However, this is not possible, it is not true and it would not be good in a continental country like Canada. The fact is that there are fewer and fewer continental countries with a federal regime like Canada. And that does not make me sorry.

The problem for any federal government, regardless of its good intentions-and I am prepared to admit that the minister does have good intentions-is that there are several labour markets. Canada is a continental country in which the job market in Rimouski and the Gaspe peninsula obviously does not reflect the same reality as in Calgary, for example. This is why social programs administered by Ottawa, because of their structure, are of course very inadequate.

Many economists-and I hope we have an opportunity to discuss this issue during the referendum debate-see a rather direct link between the growth of the Canadian debt since 1970 which, as the hon. member for Matapédia-Matane mentioned earlier, is around $540 billion, and the government's will to interfere in the social program sector through various schemes. What we are saying, and I think this is a reasonable suggestion which deserves to be looked at, is that the federal government has money.

The first part of the document, which includes an inventory of the federal initiatives as well as an overview of labour market patterns, is well done. However, things deteriorate in the second part. In the first part, we are told that federal contributions amount to $38 billion. How do you explain the fact that a government which has nothing to do with social programs would invest an almost unprecedented $38 billion?

I was looking at the study released by the OECD during the last summit attended by the Minister of Industry. With its $38-billion contribution, the Canadian government is among the top investors; yet, because this money is badly invested, because it is not allocated where users could be the primary beneficiaries, the official unemployment rate in our country is still at 10 or 12 per cent.

These are complex issues and we must be careful not to view them in an overly simplistic way. However, I am convinced that all of us, wherever we are, must work towards the implementation of a full employment policy. It is quite a paradox to see that the expression full employment is not used even once in this document.

The minister's objective is to look after the jobless. This is a noble goal but it is not enough. We would have expected this debate to start with a policy on job creation, because the idea is not to manage the unemployed but indeed to integrate those trying to enter the labour market.

When you look, as the hon. member for Mercier and other members of this House have, at the conditions under which a country, regardless of its political structures, can achieve full employment, you note a rather obvious correlation between the size of the communities or countries-the smaller the better-and the level of success achieved in that respect. This is understandable. To achieve full employment, you must first get the national partners to sit at an employment table so that, together, with their legitimacy, they can set economic objectives.

We will never be able to have a national table to discuss full employment in Canada because the Atlantic fishermen, the people of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec all have employment structures that differ radically one from the other. This is the first impediment, one that I consider to constitute a systemic barrier, therefore confirming to the federal government the fact that the greatest favour he can do the public as a public administration is to decentralize funding towards the authorities who are in the best position to achieve full employment, that is to say, in the first place, the provinces. Municipalities could even be made choice partners in this process. Why not? This government however yearns for visibility and it will soon, as soon as possible, have to face the Quebec electorate who will make a constitutional decision. I can understand the difficulty for a government like this one to readily accept to withdraw from this kind of visibility. However, that is the price to be paid if you want to put people back to work, in my humble opinion.

In addition to the debt and other barriers to full employment, there is something else that is very disturbing. It is the fact that from 1990 onward, and especially the jobs are created in the year 2000-we both expect to live that long, Mr. Speaker-that those jobs will require 16 years of schooling. Sixteen years means a CEGEP technical diploma, that is what it means. However, and the minister said so in his paper, more than 100,000 students drop out of our educational institutions every year.

The obvious challenge for those who want to put people to work is to make the connection between training, education and the jobs available. In Quebec, we say that education is a priority and vital to our identity, and that is of course the choice we made.

This is different from the 19th century, when the job market was linked to immigration and to means of transportation, which is understandable from a historical perspective as they had to build a very sparsely populated country where immigrants' contribution had a major impact on labour policies. No wonder we talk about employment and immigration centres. That is no longer the case. The three components of labour force access are education, which is a provincial jurisdiction, as well as-I think the minister was right to mention it in his paper, although it is outside his mandate-all family support services.

Things have changed since the typical family included a breadwinner working outside the home, a homemaker and children from a first marriage. This is no longer the Canadian reality.

In conclusion, that is why we believe that the minister must tackle social program reform. But he must be generous, sensible and compassionate enough to recognize that the best thing he can do is to decentralize this money and allow the provinces, especially Quebec which has considerable experience dealing with the issue of full employment-A national forum on employment was held in 1985, and I must say that one of the first things the Parizeau government did was to make plans for creating a ministry of state mandated to consult on employment. The best thing this government can do to put Canadians and Quebecers to work is to decentralize this money and recognize that it is not the government best able to put Canadians to work.

[Social Security Programs, October 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the floor. It is always a pleasure to speak when you occupy the Speaker's Chair.

I want to say right away that I am pleased to speak in a debate like this because I represent a riding in east-end Montreal which of course went through some very bad times in the last two recessions, in the 1980s and the 1990s.

On listening to my colleagues, I said to myself that I am not a supporter of the status quo. I want to say that at the outset of this debate so that I can perhaps discuss it later in answer to a question that our colleague might raise.

I think that the minister did something laudable in proposing social programs, but there is a paradox. The minister proposes-

[Social Program Reform, October 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the minister wishes to know where I was in February. I would like to tell him through you that, if he was to the left of the Liberal Party in the past, he is moving far to the right with this reform.

How can he claim that he wants to help disadvantaged children, when the main consequence of his reform would be to impoverish the parents? How can he claim that he wants to help disadvantaged children?

[Social Program Reform, October 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development.

Not only does the reform herald an unprecedented centralization effort, but one of its objectives is to reduce substantially the federal contribution to social assistance funding. This will leave the province no choice but to either increase their tax rates to compensate for the withdrawal of the federal government or cut back welfare benefits.

How does the minister want us to take seriously his government's stated objective to do more for children living in poverty, when Ottawa is cutting its transfer payments to the provinces for social assistance? How can it be taken seriously? How contradictory, Mr. Speaker!

[Aids, October 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, AIDS is now an unavoidable reality in Quebec and Canadian society. It is more than ten years since the first AIDS case was diagnosed in Montreal. The AIDS epidemic is far from abating

and it is now reaching population groups that so far were thought to be safe from it.

Unfortunately, no effective remedy to relieve the people affected exists yet. Only prevention can stop the virus from spreading. A public inquiry revealed that less than a third of high school students said that they used a condom the first time they had sex. These facts clearly show that governments must support community organizations which, better than anyone else, reach people where they live. In closing, I want to thank all the community organizations for the support that they give affected people.

[Defence Industry Conversion, October 4th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to see that the minister did not listen to my speech until the end. Will he recognize that, because of a lack of true conversion strategy, more than 10,000 jobs are in jeopardy in the Montreal region? What is he waiting for to take action, as his government promised to do in the red book? We need a real industry conversion strategy and this is what my speech was all about.

[Defence Industry Conversion, October 4th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry. Last August, Expro, located in Valleyfield, laid off about 150 employees. That company, which specializes in explosives, lost a big contract in the U.S., as military markets were collapsing all over the world.

What is the government doing to keep Expro from closing and save the 300 jobs at stake?

[Child Sex Offenders, September 30th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Brampton who presented this motion in the House for giving us this opportunity to discuss a very important topic, and as far as I am concerned, I felt that the motion as drafted was entirely acceptable and could have been referred to a committee for consideration.

The hon. member gave us an excellent and carefully crafted speech on the threat that child sex offenders represent to society. There are of course certain aspects I would like to discuss with the hon. member. I said this week, and it is my conviction, that there are various ways of expressing one's sexuality. When I say various ways, I do not include pedophilia, because I believe a sexual relationship should involve consenting partners, those partners being adults. Clearly, when pedophilia is involved, one partner is in a position of power and dominates the other, and there is also the exploitation aspect.

As Quebecers and Canadians we are right to be concerned about pedophiles being at large. We could, of course, talk about why some people in our society are pedophiles. A number of theories, including psychoanalytic assumptions, the frustration concept and the behaviourist approach are used to explain this phenomenon. The fact remains that as legislators we have a responsibility, as the hon. member for Brampton said, to take the corrective action that is necessary. That is why I am glad she has drawn the attention of the House to one of the aspects of this problem.

However, I thought that the hon. member, being on the government side, would have shown more support for the contents of Bill C-45. I may have misread the bill, however, and that is why I would like to discuss it with her, because I understood that Bill C-45-I know we have some people with us this afternoon who are familiar with the mechanics of the bill-I thought that Bill C-45 gave the National Parole Board the option of extending sentences.

I thought that Bill C-45, in two specific cases that I will refer to precisely, allowed for a criminal to be found to be dangerous and not eligible for a reduced sentence or parole. As I understood it, criminals convicted of sexual crimes are almost automatically determined to be dangerous and it is extremely difficult for them to obtain a reduced sentence or a conditional discharge.

The opposition parties support Bill C-45 on the whole, but, as my colleague, the member for Saint-Hubert explained, we do have some reservations about the mechanics of its application. I thought that Bill C-45 authorized the National Parole Board to refuse parole provided two conditions were met.

First, the convict would have committed a criminal act causing serious harm to the victim, and second, that harm would be related to a crime of a sexual nature. Naturally, I am not a lawyer, and with all due respect for lawyers I certainly do not think I am a lesser person for that, but I was under the impression that Bill C-45 was a proper answer to the motion. It would have been interesting to have the member for Brampton explain why Bill C-45 does not deal entirely with her motion.

Some of the people who talked to me about this motion, put by the member for Brampton, were concerned that it might turn a quasi-administrative body into a tribunal. I repeat that we support the basic principle of the motion. It is truly the duty of the Canadian society, and of all other societies, to protect children from possible contacts with pedophiles.

According to our present legal system, a judge may impose life-long sentences to offenders guilty of criminal acts. Judges already have that authority. Naturally, I believe we should exert pressures and stir public opinion on this issue so that the judges themselves impose sanctions like the one suggested by the member for Brampton.

Some people worry about the possibility that this authority could be assumed by a quasi-administrative body which was not a count. We all recognize that we must believe in rehabilitation. Otherwise, it would mean that some individuals are born bad.

I had the opportunity to air my views on the topic when we reviewed the Young Offenders Act. Personally, I do not believe that individuals are born bad, mean, devious, criminal or obsessed. I believe that they become that way due to a combination of factors, especially social, environmental and family factors.

The motion presented by the member for Brampton caused concern because historically, in our justice system, parole has been considered as the best road to rehabilitation. I understand the member for Brampton and I respect her point of view. I do not claim to have the answer. It may be that pedophiles, contrary to other criminals, cannot be rehabilitated, and I would have liked her to expand a bit on this point.

As legislators we must be aware that in our justice system parole has always been considered as the very best road to rehabilitation.

This is the reason why the Canadian Police Association, whose objectives are the same as the member for Brampton and most legislators, namely to make Canadian society more secure, would have felt more comfortable with some kind of life parole. This way, we would recognize that pedophilia is a threat to be taken seriously, that it has nothing to do with homosexuality, that it is not a way to express one's sexuality but an offence, a criminal act which should absolutely not be encouraged.

Of course, as legislators, we can try to understand what turns someone into a pedophile, but our first duty-and again I want to thank the hon. member for Brampton for drawing our attention to this issue-is to protect the public. Would it have not been possible, as suggested by the Canadian Police Association, where pedophiles are concerned, to combine jail sentences with more severe controls and what we called parole for life, which requires offenders to report to their parole officers, live in designated areas and refrain from any contact with children?

Anyway, I support the initiative of the hon. member for Brampton as well as her motion and I thank the Chair for letting me complete my speech.

[Points Of Order, September 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, always in the interest of our proceedings, like the Bloc Quebecois House leader said, what we tried to see and what we are still trying to figure out, is the leeway we have when we address the Chair to raise-