Pauline Picard

[Raw Milk Cheese, April 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, will the minister realize that there is no problem with raw milk cheese, that the current standards are very adequate, and that the real issue concerns his public servants who have nothing better to do than bug people to justify their employment?

[Raw Milk Cheese, April 18th, 1996]

Does the minister realize that, according to data from his own government, the consumption of raw milk cheese has not resulted in any case of poisoning in Canada, unlike several other food items, including cabbage in Nova Scotia? Will the minister also prohibit the sale of cabbage from Nova Scotia?

[Raw Milk Cheese, April 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health.

The Minister of Health and those who attended yesterday's raw milk cheese tasting organized by the Bloc Quebecois and several cheese producers were able to see that the various products currently on the market are simply excellent. In that regard, I am pleased to see that the Minister is the picture of health.

[Raw Milk Cheeses, April 16th, 1996]

Does the minister not recognize that his department officials are threatening a growing industry which creates many jobs in Canada, mainly in Quebec?

[Raw Milk Cheeses, April 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I invite you and the minister to come tomorrow to a raw milk cheese tasting right here in Parliament.

[Raw Milk Cheeses, April 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health.

With their draft regulation on banning raw milk cheese, federal officials are interfering against everybody's wishes and threatening the future of a flourishing industry.

How can the minister accept that an official can refuse to make available studies on raw milk that were carried out by the health department at public expense and thus belong to the public and not the public service?

[The Budget, April 15th, 1996]

That is blackmail.

[The Budget, April 15th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I will repeat what I said when responding to the speech from the Throne.

In this budget, taxpayers expected the government to take important measures to get its finances in order and create jobs. Given that 1.4 million people are out of work, the Minister of Finance could have shown a minimum of compassion by introducing job creation initiatives. This is what matters at this point in time.

I am not an expert in the fields of finance and economy, but I do know, like everyone else, that when people have jobs, they pay taxes and that helps the economy. Putting people to work might help reduce the deficit. However, as long as the government keeps trying to cut here and there, particularly at the expense of the poor and of the unemployed who truly need help to find work, it will not succeed in promoting economic recovery.

[The Budget, April 15th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate on the recent budget tabled by the Minister of Finance. We would have preferred to comment on a budget showing the government's determination to be more effective and to reduce its size and its non-productive interference. However, this is not the case.

We would have liked a budget showing that the government has a minimum of compassion and is sensitive to the plight of our 1.4 million fellow citizens who are jobless and who realize every day that the election promises of "jobs, jobs, jobs" were nothing but empty words. Unfortunately, there is no compassion for the unemployed in this budget.

We would have liked a budget showing that the government got the message that we, on this side of the House, have been conveying to it for two and a half years by reminding it of the urgent need to restore justice and tax fairness for overburdened average taxpayers, while companies avoid paying taxes on record profits. Again, this is unfortunately not the case.

We would have liked a budget showing that the federal government had finally decided to put its house in order, instead of resorting to the easier solution of leaving to others the responsibility of taking real measures by dumping its deficit onto the provinces. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The budget that we have to comment on is not of the courageous type. What the Minister of Finance has tabled is in fact a non-budget. It is a kind of economic statement on the country's financial situation, in which everything is explained by magic, that is as a percentage of the GDP, rather than by using actual figures. It is an economic statement which does not propose any real and effective measure to

face the problems that confront us and that can be summarized in very simple and concrete terms: 1.4 million unemployed and a debt of $600 billion.

Expressing reality in hard figures, rather than projecting it through the rose coloured filter of percentages of GDP, is harsher, as well as less savvy from the political point of view. Harsher, because behind these real figures are real human beings, people who each and every day face the hard reality, real problems, and people who are getting more and more worried.

It is very sad to realize that a sizeable number of our fellow citizens are no longer concerned by government administration, have lost their illusions, can no longer relate to all of the contradictions coming from this government, contradictions raining down on their heads every day about administration, taxation, social services, as well as constitutional matters.

Understandably so. This government had promised employment-remember the red book refrain of jobs, jobs, jobs-and held out great hopes, for young people in particular. But their imagination dried up after they came up with the red book slogan. There had been a government promise to do away with the GST. The Prime Minister said he was going to scrap it, and the Deputy Prime Minister said she would resign if that was not done. This government's imagination was hard pressed to find the most effective means of trying to say what had not been said, and of convincing people that they had not heard correctly.

What people were meant to hear was not that the GST would disappear. What they were meant to understand was that, in light of the present economic situation, and in order to keep the deficit at 3 per cent of the GDP, the GST would have to be harmonized by adding the provincial taxes to it. That is what the members of the government would now like people to have understood, although their main campaign slogan was something quite different.

Strangely enough, today the Minister of Finance is using the same expressions, when speaking on the GST, as the Conservatives used during the election campaign. Within two and a half years, then, our Liberal friends have, in addition to reneging on their promise, espoused the same position as the Conservatives, a position they had so emphatically decried. The government does the opposite of what it says; no wonder our fellow citizens have so little confidence in their political leaders.

Another one of this government's contradictions is its commitment to streamline the federal bureaucracy and make it more productive. They promised the people they would cut fat in order to preserve social programs. What the government is saying in this year's budget is that there is no more fat to be cut in the bureaucracy, when most of our fellow citizens feel that the federal government is living high off the hog.

In fact, as the finance minister's figures confirm, the real budget savings will amount to 0.0 per cent in 1996-97-which is nothing to write home about-and to around 0.2 per cent in 1997-98. We can only conclude that the government feels there is no more to be done in its own backyard and has given up on the greater challenge of reducing the size of the public service. It is, of course, easier to take over the UI fund, cut transfer payments to the provinces, and let others deal with the problems.

The government has brought down a budget with few real measures to stimulate the economy. Yet this budget clearly shows the government's inability to resolve three nation wide problems: the employment crisis, the debt crisis and the constitutional crisis.

This budget contains no concrete measures for the jobless. The government boasts about injecting another $60 million into the summer student employment program and investing $150 million in the technological innovation fund.

It forgot to mention that what it gives with one hand, it had taken away several times with the other. It cut post-secondary education by $150 million plus another $300 million in 1997-98. In the 1995-96 budget, it cut $32 million from research and development for the Canadian Space Agency, $65 million from the three granting councils, and $11 million from the National Research Council. Those are the facts.

The government fails to provide tax incentives to promote job creation, helps itself to the UI fund instead of lowering premiums, and cuts benefits to workers' venture capital corporations whose sole purpose is to create and maintain jobs by investing in small and medium size businesses. This budget does not stimulate employment, it stifles job creation.

This budget does not contain any new government debt or deficit reduction initiative. Instead of putting its own house in order, the government is shovelling its problems into the neighbours' backyards. The provinces end up having to bear the brunt of the federal deficit reduction effort. While the federal debt has grown by $133 billion since the Liberal took office, tax shelters remain and unnecessary spending continues, including outrageous military spending.

Finally, this budget increases federal government's interference in areas of jurisdiction that are not its own, which is where the very essence of the constitutional crisis in Canada rests. Instead of showing goodwill and withdrawing from areas of provincial jurisdiction, the government is devising new initiatives to interfere even further while continuing to spend and getting deeper and deeper into debt. Three new angles has been found to undermine the

provinces' autonomy, namely the health research fund, the Canada revenue commission and the Canadian securities commission.

This is how, after tabling three budgets, this government has lost any credibility it may have had. It had promised to eliminate the GST, to create jobs, and to steer clear of constitutional matters. It has reneged on its promise in every instance. The people of Quebec and Canada can no longer trust this government.

[Raw Milk Cheese, April 15th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, does the Minister of Health have nothing better to do than to regulate in an area where his officials are most unwelcome? Who is in charge, the minister or his officials?