Odina Desrochers

[Quebec Sheep Industry, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the sheep producers are on Parliament Hill.

They are demonstrating against the arrogant attitude of the Liberal government, which has only mediocre solutions to offer.

While the Minister of Agriculture claims to be concerned about the financial and emotional burden of producers, his government limits its support to a compensatory measure penalizing all the sheep producers who complied from the start with the orders from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Today, the producers are demonstrating outside the House of Commons to send a cry for help, to ask the government to save the Quebec sheep industry. The Minister of Agriculture is very clearly showing that he is completely out of touch with the dramatic situation experienced by our sheep producers.

The problem for Quebec sheep producers is not scrapie, but the slaughter ordered by the federal government, with no real basis to justify that decision.

[Fonds De Solidarité Des Travailleurs Du Québec, October 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the Fonds de solidarité des travailleurs du Québec is celebrating its 15th anniversary.

Born out of the economic crisis of the early eighties, this workers' fund has become, like Quebec's Caisse de dépôt et placement, and the General Investment Corporation of Quebec, one of the finest examples of Quebec's specificity, and one of the major venture capital corporations in Canada.

With assets of $2.5 billion, the Fonds de solidarité has helped create, protect or maintain over 56,000 jobs in Quebec. The fund is also a vast network of 16 regional funds and 85 local investment corporations dedicated to promoting employment and regional development.

At a time when some are talking about dismantling our collective development tools that were acquired after a great struggle, the Bloc Quebecois salutes the major achievements of the Fonds de solidarité and wishes it a long life.

[Canada Customs And Revenue Agency Act, October 1st, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I will do my best not to go over eight and a half minutes.

Allow me to backtrack a little, because my speech was interrupted for oral questions, and say it is my pleasure to rise in this House today to speak on Bill C-43, to establish the Canada customs and revenue agency.

I was telling the House that I oppose this bill, mainly on account of the actions and behaviour of this government. We have no intention of taking any chances by passing a bill whose sole purpose is to centralize the collection of taxes across the country, to downsize Revenue Canada and, above all, to establish an agency that will clash with the Quebec Ministry of Revenue.

This agency, which, in my opinion, is a real governmental tax collection monster, will have powers vested in it that will give it access to all sorts of information on our private lives. What will this agency do with this huge amount of personal information concentrated in its hands? I would rather not think about it.

The agency is a relative of Big Brother, the computer that could run and rule the world.

At any rate, this new bill is doomed to fail. The rationale for establishing the Canada customs and revenue agency is to have a single agency in charge of collecting all the money and to convince the provinces to get on board.

The minister had not even signed a single agreement when he introduced Bill C-43. That shows how ridiculous this whole idea is. Quebec and Ontario categorically refused to consider using the agency. The initial support from several western provinces has all but died down in the past few weeks, and even Prince Edward Island has expressed concerns about the establishment of this new agency. Who are the ones who will pay the way for this agency? The users, but at what cost?

Initially, the federal agency will attempt to demonstrate the savings its establishment will bring about, but before long it will be raising the charges to satisfy the greediness of the Liberals.

As far as the millennium bug is concerned, will all the changes which are being announced at this time and which Revenue Canada employees will have to face make it any easier for them to prepare for this transition in informatics, which is already demanding much energy? What stage has Revenue Canada reached in its preparations for the year 2000? No one knows.

I would now like to focus the House's attention on some of the clauses of Bill C-43, clauses 6 and 8 to be specific.

The agency is placed under the responsibility of the Minister of National Revenue, yet clause 8 stipulates:

8.(1) The Minister may authorize the Commissioner or any other person employed or engaged by the Agency—to exercise or perform on the Minister's behalf any power, duty or function of the Minister under any act of Parliament—

In other words, the agency could fall into the hands of a super-bureaucrat, possibly a good Liberal, who is neither elected nor accountable.

Now I would like to summarize the reasons why I am proposing that Bill C-43 be withdrawn: the centralizing obsession of the Liberal government; the danger this agency represents for the Quebec Department of Revenue; the anti-union attitude of the government in this bill as it affects Revenue employees; the intrusion on the privacy of our fellow citizens.

I need not remind the House of the performance of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in its current handling of the scrapie crisis with Quebec sheep, where there is such an administrative muddle that the minister and the agency cannot even figure out where they are at. Do you think we are going to give this government another chance to create an agency? No.

I am saying no to the Liberals' plans, I am saying no to this bill and I am calling for its immediate withdrawal, in accordance with the amendment moved this morning.

[Canada Customs And Revenue Agency Act, October 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin my speech now and finish it after Oral Question Period.

I am pleased to address Bill C-43, an act to establish the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. Let me say from the outset that I am opposed to the creation of this new federal agency, primarily because of the attitude and actions of this government.

We cannot take a chance and support a bill which only seeks to centralize the collection of taxes in Canada, reduce the number of jobs at the Department of National Revenue and, more importantly, create an agency that will, yet again, interfere with the Quebec department of revenue.

This bill shows that the Liberal government is finding it increasingly difficult to fulfil its responsibilities as administrator and manager of the state. The government is, once again, about to abdicate its responsibilities.

The new agency could make it possible for the minister to avoid fulfilling his duty, which is to protect taxpayers against any abuse of power. We are all familiar with the Liberals' habit of creating independent agencies and then avoid answering questions by using the excuse that we must respect the agency's independence and autonomy, and that the government does not want to interfere.

My riding of Lotbinière is among the Quebec ridings where sheep farmers are at odds with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which is following some obscure directives to systematically destroy sheep that may be infected with scrapie. That agency is directly accountable to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. For the past two weeks, the Bloc Quebecois has been asking the minister to take action and put a stop to this carnage which imperils the sheep industry in Quebec.

But the minister does not answer our questions. He too hides behind the agency to shirk his responsibilities. Meanwhile, the problem persists and our sheep farmers live in fear that an inspector or a veterinarian from the agency will call to inform them of the tragic news that some or all of their sheep will have to be destroyed.

This is an agency which definitely lacks transparency and which refuses to provide information to Quebec elected officials who are desperately trying to save an industry that was thriving before the carnage began, in January 1997, and that has now lost 11,000 sheep.

We have before our eyes an example which shows that the Liberal approach is not working. Yet, our questions are simple. How many sheep were identified as being infected with scrapie? Where are these infected animals? How does the agency diagnose the disease? What are the criteria used to determine whether or not the sheep must be destroyed? What is the agency's budget for research? What stage has the agency reached in its work? We have no idea. What is currently going on in Quebec is unacceptable.

Do you think that after going through this experience we will support Bill C-43? No, especially not with a Minister of Finance who does not even care about the real purpose of the employment insurance fund. I would rather not think about having an independent agency collecting our taxes.

The Minister of Finance ignores accounting principles. He ignores the repeated warnings of the auditor general, and he cannot even submit realistic estimates to the public.

There is a 60% difference between the forecasts and the actual figures. Do you know any business that would keep such an incompetent accountant? There is only the Prime Minister, the new dictator of the Canadian economy, who called on the police to use force against peaceful students who simply wanted to protest against an international situation.

This government is again trying to show its good will by proposing the creation of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. However, we see what is behind this legislation: an anti-labour manoeuvre. In other words, 20% of the employees of Revenue Canada will no longer be covered by the public service act. The new agency will therefore have full latitude in two years' time to raise and lower salaries and hire and fire employees.

In any case, the federal Liberals are increasingly revealing their lack of social conscience and their lack of compassion.

I return to the example of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, who remains insensitive to the suffering of lamb producers in Quebec. The Minister of Finance, whose behaviour is unspeakable, wants to legalize his misappropriation of funds from the employment insurance fund, which belongs to workers and to employers. In the private sector, this sort of misappropriation would mean a trip to court.

This government is prepared to do anything to satisfy its need to centralize. The Liberals consider simplification synonymous with duplication and harmonization to them means meddling. The problem is that Quebec can guess what lies behind this new agency. Ontario is on the lookout as well, and with this new threat of centralization, is even considering setting up its own agency.

We agree with the principle of a single collector, but in Quebec, it should be the Quebec department of revenue that collects all federal taxes, as it does the GST.

Let us have another look at the officials who would be affected by the creation of this agency. A while ago, the President of Treasury Board said the following about the agency: “Creation of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is an essential component of the government's commitment to modernize the federal public service”.

There is mention of 40,000 public servants, or 20% of the whole public service, who will from now on be at the mercy of the agency's board, made up of good little Liberals prepared to follow the Prime Minister's orders.

And what about the executives of this new agency? Who will they be? They will be better paid than the senior executives of the present Department of National Revenue. Who will foot the bill for this? The support staff, the record processing clerks, in short all the grassroots employees of the department.

In this connection, I would like to explain how the Revenue Canada employee union sees the Minister of Revenue's plan. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is a federal creation, inspired by top taxation people in Ottawa, who want to create a sort of monstrous octopus, the tentacles of which will reach not only as far as the provincial governments, but right up to the municipal and local ones.

Their intent is to administer everything, from provincial sales taxes to gasoline and alcohol taxes. Are we going to take that risk with a Liberal government, a voracious and centralist government that respects nothing? No. And whom is this agency going to be answerable to? What power will the elected representatives in this House have for getting any explanations about its administration, its results, and its mistakes as well?

As we know, in its present structure, Revenue Canada provides Parliament and the taxpaying public with the necessary accounting, via the Department of National Revenue. The government cannot sidestep embarrassing questions like the family trust scandal and the little perks the Minister of Finance is giving to his ships.

We fear that the new agency will be subject to a less stringent parliamentary scrutiny than the one currently imposed on the Department of Revenue. I can see it already. The minister will rise and answer a question about the agency as follows: “Mr. Speaker, we have asked for an inquiry into this independent agency and as soon as we have any information, we will communicate it to the House”. In other words, while the inquiry is going on, we will find a way to get our party out of this embarrassing situation.

Last week, opposition parties called for explanations of the Prime Minister's conduct in what is now known as the Peppergate affair. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the solicitor general all sought refuge behind the RCMP commission of inquiry. Imagine an embarrassing question about the operations of the agency. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of National Revenue have already got their script ready.

The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister give the impression of having spent the summer preparing a series of 30-second cassettes devoid of information. Something is not right.

It will not be long before the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and other ministers will be lip-synching to a soundtrack of 150 applauding MPs, all bowing before their great leader. One thing is certain: I hope these cassettes will not be sold to the public, because the distributor—

[The Late Paul Tardif, September 29th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to pay tribute to Paul Tardif, a former member of this House, who died in August at the age of 90.

He sat in this place from 1959 to 1968. Born in 1908, Mr. Tardif was a Quebecker born and bred, his father hailing from Kamouraska in the Lower St. Lawrence region.

Mr. Tardif always liked politics and worked hard to defend the public's interests. At the tender age of 29, he was elected a school board trustee, a position he held from 1937 to 1943. He also served as alderman for Ottawa's Victoria ward from 1942 to 1948, in addition to holding the position of controller in that city from 1949 to 1959.

It was during this period that Mr. Tardif frequently crossed swords with the well-known Charlotte Whitton, former mayor of Ottawa.

With his school board and municipal experience, he decided to go into federal politics. He entered the House of Commons on October 5, 1959, having won a by-election in Russell as a Liberal.

He was re-elected in the general elections of 1962, 1963 and 1965. He therefore served in the government of the Right Hon. Lester B. Pearson.

On June 22, 1967, he was appointed assistant deputy chairman of the House of Commons Committees of the Whole, having distinguished himself by his initiative, energy and integrity. In 1968, he left federal politics and was made a citizenship judge, a position he held until his retirement in 1978.

Throughout his political career, Mr. Tardif was known as someone who listened to what the public had to say and was very much in touch with the grassroots. He was deeply attached to his community.

On behalf of my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois, I would like to extend my deepest condolences to his friends and family.

[Scrapie, September 29th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, 11,000 sheep have been arbitrarily destroyed since January 1997. Who will put an end to this carnage, which imperils the entire sheep industry in Quebec?

No one in the Liberal government opposite can answer this question, as this government has put the management responsibility in the hands of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and this agency lacks transparency on this issue. Information is either diluted or non-available.

Officials of this federal agency—this commando created by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food—are traumatizing sheep farmers by harassing them on the phone, showing up unannounced to inspect their sheep barns, threatening punitive action or providing them with incomplete information.

Enough is enough. The federal government must act and stop putting forward measures that do nothing except show how incompetent and arrogant the minister is.

[Supply, June 1st, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I would like to tell the hon. member across the floor, first of all, that the money comes from the provinces. The money is collected from taxpayers living in all of the provinces of Canada. That is the money the government is trying to administer in the employment insurance fund.

You will see that, in Quebec, we are going to do things properly, because an agreement has been signed, not long ago, on manpower training. Judging by the way Minister Louise Harel and her colleagues in the National Assembly are preparing this program, I am sure that training will be far more appropriate and far more responsive to the needs of the community, because it will be in the hands of the Quebec government, and in the hands of the governments of the other provinces.

[Supply, June 1st, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I would like the hon. member across the floor to know that when Quebec is entirely on its own to administer the revenue and other taxes it collects from Quebeckers, particularly the employment insurance that will be repatriated to Quebec, we will certainly have a far more efficient and far more humane way of using that surplus. In Quebec, our attitude is far more social democratic than that of all the hon. members over there.

I see this as very positive, because in their present system they are penalizing workers by forcing them to go on welfare for no logical reason. If we ever administer the employment insurance fund, it will be done in a far more humane way.

We understand that some situations, or economic contexts, are difficult as far as employment is concerned. People may lose their jobs, but they then need training, they need help, and then, if they cannot manage to find work, they can be prepared for going on welfare. That is the humane way of doing things, and that is the way things will be done in a sovereign Quebec.

[Supply, June 1st, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

I am very pleased today to join with my colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois in decrying the unacceptable behaviour of the Liberal government.

Even if the Prime Minister likes to think of himself as a great international diplomat and a great democrat, since the beginning of the year he has been acting like a political dictator. All of the government decisions are centralized and made at the office of “the little guy from Shawinigan”, who is becoming more like a boy scout from Bay Street, in Toronto.

The Prime Minister is totally disconnected from the reality in Canada and in Quebec. We all know his position about the millennium scholarships fund. We know it is an unprecedented violation of an exclusive area of provincial jurisdiction.

We know about his position concerning the hepatitis C victims. I will never forget the shame I read on the face of several of my colleagues opposite when they had to vote against sick people. Why? Because the Prime Minister had ordered them to do so. They were forced to vote against their own conscience.

And what about his reforms to employment insurance? I say “his reforms”, because every decision is made by his own office. Last week, my colleagues, and in particular the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, with experts and former recipients, considered the negative impact of the employment insurance, which has become the poverty insurance.

Poverty insurance for our young people: one young worker in four is eligible for benefits, while, in 1990, three young workers in four who paid employment insurance premiums were eligible. That is possibly what the Liberals call the new youth employment strategy.

Poverty insurance for pregnant women: several of them are no longer eligible. Nice way to promote the family.

Poverty insurance for seasonal workers in areas such as construction, fishing, agriculture, truck crop harvesting and many others.

I have tried to find something positive in this reform. I have looked again and again, but I have not found anything yet.

The time has come to bring back on the right track the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, who are using the employment insurance fund surplus as they see fit without giving any consideration to the real needs of workers.

I am proud to add my voice to those of my colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois who are in touch with the people of Quebec and who are not afraid to stand up for the most disadvantaged in our society.

I am adding my voice to theirs in condemning the Liberal government for the disastrous effects of the unemployment insurance reform and for what Ontario Premier Mike Harris has called theft, speaking about the use of the employment insurance fund surplus that comes from contributions paid by employers and employees.

The Bloc Quebecois also condemns the federal Liberals, namely the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and those who hold the power in this increasingly centralizing government, for their inability to adapt the employment insurance program to the new realities of our society, particularly with regard to young people, women and independent workers.

I would like to talk about another problem stemming from this infamous reform, namely the fact that the Department of Human Resources Development has been fiddling with designated areas since the 1996 reform. The changes that were made penalize the majority of rural and semi-urban areas in Quebec.

Let us take, for example, my riding of Lotbinière. With this geographic gymnastics, we end up with two regional unemployment rates: one at 6% and the other at 11.4%.

In everyday life, this means that a worker who lives in Leclerville, in the Lotbinière RCM, where the unemployment rate is at 6%, has to work 700 hours to be eligible for 14 weeks of EI benefits, while another worker living a few kilometres away in Parisville, in the Bécancour RCM, an area where unemployment stands at 11.4%, has to work only 490 hours to get EI benefits for 22 weeks.

Try explaining that to the unemployed. It is sheer nonsense.

The Mouvement des sans-emploi de Lotbinière has made numerous representations to the human resources development department, but nobody in this department could tell us who made the decision on these territorial divisions, and nobody could tell us either who could correct those mistakes.

Even the minister is no longer answering the information requests of local citizens. What is he waiting for? He is probably busy handing out the EI fund surplus to the Minister of Finance. That is the Liberal priority.

Let me turn now to the people, very often young people, who work on the family farm. Revenue Canada and the human resources development department take the position that, because of kinship, these workers are very often excluded from the plan, even when these jobs have all the elements on a standard contract and the employer would have to hire other people anyway.

In other words, a father should say to his son that if he wants to make sure he is eligible for EI insurance, he should work for some other farmer. Nonsense. Most of the time, these young people will take over from their parents on the farm.

Moreover, these people whose jobs are deemed uninsurable by Revenue Canada are being deprived of benefits and must often reimburse benefits that they received in previous years. This approach is unfair and infringes on people's freedom.

In fact, this form of discrimination against those who employ relatives forces owners of farm businesses, where the bulk of the work is often seasonal, to hire workers from outside, instead of their own children.

I take this opportunity today to say to the human resources development minister that I am deeply disappointed with his department's decision to shut down the student labour office in Plessisville.

This office, which had been in place for several years, was meeting the needs of young people from the regional county municipality of L'Érable. The government has explained to us that, this year, in order to reach students, it is posting available jobs on at least five sites in the municipality. As if posters could talk.

But where will students have to go to be entitled to the same services that were offered last year in Plessisville? To Victoriaville, where everything has been centralized for the summer season. This is yet another nice way to get closer to the local people.

But we know why the regional directorate of the Department of Human Resources Development acted in this way. This department went through so many cuts that regional directorates are limited to offering minimal and essential services.

In his last report, the auditor general, when commenting on services offered by the Department of Human Resources Development, said that individualized services in this department would no longer be as efficient, given the significant cuts made in the last few years.

Also, what is the minister waiting for to respond to the urgent requests of the maple syrup producers who were hard hit by the ice storm in January? Where are the millions of dollars missing? This department is a shambles.

In conclusion, as it said in this morning's newspapers, this government's trademarks in the last year have been arrogance and especially a lack of compassion on the employment insurance issue.

[National Defence, April 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the problem in this department is not the lack of money. It is the way it is being spent.

Before requesting more money to keep his capricious generals happy, will the minister prove to us his ability to manage his department by putting an end to the horror stories the auditor general continues to report?