Jocelyne Girard-Bujold

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it was in March 2000. We celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Mouvement Desjardins in March 2000.

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, September 18th, 2000]

Enough is enough. Quebecers are sick and tired of this heartless government.

I will listen carefully to the speech by my colleague from Hochelaga—Maisonneuve.

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve. I could not have said it any better.

It is true that the Mouvement Desjardins is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate it and to thank it for its involvement and for the help it has provided ordinary people over the years.

I think this Liberal finance minister is hurting ordinary people with this bill. I will listen carefully to the speech by my colleague from Hochelaga—Maisonneuve. In a few minutes, he will tell us that the government has not paid any attention to the impact that regulations and legislation on the restructuring of the banking system will have on ordinary people.

As my colleague was saying, this government is heartless, and we can see that every day. We have just come back to the House today and the government is already showing that it is heartless. We have asked for an emergency debate on the issue of organized crime. We were told that closure would be invoked with regard to Bill C-3, which deals with young offenders—

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-38, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act.

We are now at an extremely important stage in terms of the future of the Canadian banking system. On June 13, the finance minister entered the final stage of his reflection on this problem by introducing Bill C-38. I want to indicate at the outset that, like my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois, I will oppose this bill. I will take this opportunity to thank and to congratulate my colleague, the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, who was very effective in leading the debate on this issue.

The Bloc Quebecois will be proposing amendments to the bill at report stage in order to correct the inequity that exists in this bill with regard to large Quebec banks.

Why should we oppose this bill? Several aspects of the bill concern me, particularly the fact that, under this bill, the Minister of Finance will have the power to decide the future of Quebec banks. I find it unacceptable that this discretionary power is as strong as if not stronger than the act itself.

The Bloc Quebecois is concerned about the fact that a single shareholder could, with the approval of the Minister of Finance—and this is very serious—with the approval of one man, hold a 65% interest in the National Bank, the largest Quebec-based bank. There is no need for the Minister of Finance to allow this kind of excessive control to give the National Bank the flexibility it needs to continue to prosper.

How can a shareholder holding 65% of the shares of a bank give more flexibility than 65 shareholders holding 1% each? The answer is obvious. The risk could be enormous if this bill were to be adopted.

Members will no doubt remember the whole matter of the restructuring of the airline industry that received a lot of coverage last summer. Under the former act, which was amended by Bill C-26, a shareholder could not hold more than 10% of the shares of an airline company, and that is an important element to prevent excessive control by a single shareholder.

The Bloc Quebecois fought a good fight on that front, and at the end of an opposition day on the issue, three Liberal MPs supported our position. I hope that some of them will have enough courage and democratic conviction to oppose the provisions of Bill C-38.

One has to realize that there is no need, and I repeat no need, for the Minister of Finance to authorize this excessive control to ensure the flexibility of the National Bank. Let us be serious for a moment. We are not talking about 10%, as in the case of Canadian Airlines International, but about 65%. The legislation should be there to ensure that the banks cannot be controlled by a single shareholder, as could be the case under Bill C-38. This is a very serious matter.

We need legislative guarantees against any negative impact these new ownership rules might have on employment of professionals, consumer services and small businesses. More important is the fact that these negative impacts will hit Quebec the hardest. I wonder if this bill was not introduced to pick on Quebec.

Let me repeat this for a third time. We have to remember that the provisions allowing single shareholders to have 65% of the shares will mainly affect the National Bank, which is the largest bank in Quebec. The stakes are just too high to rely on only one man, the Minister of Finance, especially since there are no legislative guarantees in the bill. Bill C-38 does nothing more than list some elements to consider that are under the sole control of the minister.

I wonder what legislative power is all about if everything is under the minister's control. Can anyone tell me? If some workers lose their jobs, who will they turn to, given the harsh constraints of the employment insurance system? Only 40% of these workers will be eligible for EI benefits. And let us not forget that almost 100% of all bank employees are female. Under this legislation, it is once again women who stand to lose their jobs at a time when 77% of them are not eligible for EI benefits. It is bad, it is cruel, and it is tragic.

This is another reason why this bill should be revised.

What will happen to the others? I doubt the finance minister will show much compassion, given his neoLiberal policies.

Worse, Bill C-38 is full of phrases like “The minister may deem necessary” or “such and such a section of the act will cease to apply if the minister so decides”. Everything seems to depend on the minister's decisions. How could we trust the minister's decision, when he still has not decided or seen fit to tell whether or not he will be running in the next election, whether he will become the Prime Minister some day, or whether he will pay his taxes in Canada, like everybody else does?

With all those ifs, and a minister who keeps shifting positions, I really have to wonder.

Under this bill, which reminds me of Bill C-33, there will be no duplication with the provinces, “if the minister deems necessary”. How could I trust such empty promises?

We should not be fooled by the advantages of Bill C-38. In Quebec, small businesses will be affected the most by this bill. It is not obvious that the finance minister's bill will bring about more healthy competition on the national market. But competition is more important for our future economic development than the creation of big banks to compete on the world market. Nonetheless, the Minister of Finance has decided to make a law for big banks, even if that means sacrificing Quebec banks like the National Bank, which is the institution for small businesses in Quebec.

What is more, the term Liberal government bill is nearly always synonymous with interference in areas of provincial jurisdiction. We are used to that, because that approach has become this government's stock in trade. The finance minister's bill established the financial consumer agency, which is intended to protect the consumer. It is no secret that the Bloc Quebecois is a staunch defender of consumer rights.

I would remind hon. members that there are laws for that purpose already in place in Quebec. There is, for instance, the Consumer Protection Bureau Act, as well as the Consumer Protection Act, the Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information, the legislation on insurance, trust companies, savings, credit and securities unions and so forth.

Hon. members can see just how well protected the consumer is in Quebec. Why then, once again, does this government want to trample over provincial areas of jurisdiction? The provinces have, like Quebec, done their duty.

The creation of the agency as set out in Bill C-38 is therefore liable to create still more regulatory overlap with measures already put in place by Quebec, and naturally so, since this is a provincial power.

I will never tire of repeating that this government needs to listen to reason. If it wants to pass legislation, it ought to do so in its own areas of jurisdiction and leave areas of provincial jurisdiction alone.

I cannot help but be incensed with the Liberals' duplicity in this matter, because after the 1995 referendum they passed a totally senseless motion recognizing Quebec as a distinct society.

The problem is that Liberals ought to take this motion into account and curb their uncontrolled urges to encroach upon Quebec's areas of jurisdiction, if they were consistent. Now there is another risk of duplication, such as in the case of Bill C-33 about wildlife species at risk which I mentioned previously in my speech.

Before concluding, I would like to refer to another provision in this bill, about the low-fee retail deposit account which, according to the finance minister, should make financial services accessible for low income people.

What a nice vague provision. Nobody knows what that account really is, except perhaps for the minister. Nobody but the finance minister knows who will be able to take advantage of that account. Why? Because the minister will determine these matters by regulation. An order in council, what a nice form of democracy enhancing the value of the role of parliamentarians.

Pardon my irony, but I have a hard time believing the nice words of the finance minister, and these nice words hold no comfort for me at all with regard to enhanced consumer protection, especially with regard to branch closures and service reduction in bank branches.

What is Bill C-38? An advance notice, nothing more. How can the minister say that financial services will be more accessible? I would also have liked to talk about the community role of the banks, about community reinvestment at the local level, where they have to be accountable to the population. My colleague from Hochelaga—Maisonneuve has been lobbying for a community reinvestment scheme since 1995.

The bill may have positive aspects, but it also has black holes, like the springtime black hole that the Minister of Human Resources Development intends to maintain with the changes she has made to EI. Seasonal workers will now have more and more difficulty getting benefits.

I ask the government to listen to ordinary citizens. I think that the Liberal members drifted away from ordinary citizens and I ask them to come back to reality and to meet the real expectations of people, taxpayers and ordinary citizens. Bill C-38 is a vague legislative measure which is more wishful thinking than real political action.

[Petitions, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table in the House a petition signed by 259 people from Quebec, including from the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean area.

The petitioners are asking the Canadian government and parliament to take all necessary action so that the public and its representatives are consulted on the principle of importing plutonium, commonly known as MOX.

[Main Estimates, 2000-01, June 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, before asking a question to the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, I want to congratulate him for his speech.

I want to tell him that it is extremely important to have a person like him as the Bloc Quebecois critic on Human Resources Development Canada.

This evening, my colleague stressed a very serious point when he said that there was no transparency in that department.

It is a serious thing for my colleague to tell all the Canadians who are listening to us that this government, with money that belongs to them, was not transparent in the management of these programs. But it should have been very transparent.

These programs were created to help the communities that need them. My region benefited from the Canada jobs fund. I can say that, in my area, the public servants who administer this program ran a tight ship. It was said that this is money that belongs to everyone and that it ought to go to those who need it.

But what is happening right now? People are suspicious. They ask themselves if the things they hear are true. The government did not act properly in the past and people wonder if it will do so again in the future. If things were not right in the past, people wonder if they are going to be penalized with the guidelines. Will the government go too far in the other direction by implementing excessive controls?

This is unacceptable. My colleague accurately described the situation and I want to ask him what this government should do so that Canadian taxpayers can finally regain confidence in the government's management and transparency, which should be a given on the part of a government that claims to be there to help, to be full of compassion and to be receptive to the needs of the public.

[Main Estimates, 2000-01, June 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the overview given by our colleague from Calgary—Nose Hill.

It brought back to the fore, on this last day of this parliamentary session, everything that has happened in this government over the past months with regard to grants, and everything the opposition parties have denounced.

I was very happy that the member for Calgary—Nose Hill summarized all these events. This shows these programs are there for a purpose. However, I realized that no matter what their purpose is, this government has lost control. It made sure these programs, which were necessary, designed to help taxpayers, and were supposed to meet very specific criteria, had no established rules to begin with.

There was no audit and no treasury board standards. They were left to the whim of the individuals who made the decisions.

I am disappointed. I come from a riding where we need programs to help communities. It is important to help people who have good ideas, but who do not have the money to bring them to fruition and create jobs.

I would like to ask my colleague for Calgary—Nose Hill if, in her great wisdom—I saw how wise she was during all the debates we have had in this House—she could tell us how it should go in the future, even if this government loses the next election?

Which criteria should be put in place to ensure it will not happen again and these programs truly help communities in need?

[Main Estimates, 2000-01, June 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to understand what the minister is saying. Whenever I inquired about a project involving the Department of Human Resources Development, I was told time and time again that, in the past, they followed treasury board guidelines.

The minister just told me that they revised their guidelines for the future. Is this to say that, in the past, there were no guidelines or that the guidelines were not followed?

[Supply, June 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I apologized. I explained that I meant to say he misrepresented the truth. I apologized. I withdraw the word “lies”, but the member misrepresented the truth. That is what I meant to say.

[Supply, June 15th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I meant to say he misrepresented the truth. That is what I meant. He misrepresented the truth.