Ghislain Lebel

[Supply, May 18th, 1995]

Only the interests on the debt. So, there is not much coming back under various forms. But that is not a problem. When there is not enough to pay back, the government borrows some. That still works. But the next year, there is more money going towards the payment of interests on the debt, for instance. And the government travels around the world, especially in the G-7 bus, and it says: It is going well in Canada, everything is fine.

If it is going so well, why not respect its people? The natives in the James Bay area have received an education that is neither better nor worse than the one little Quebecers received in the same area. The teachers gave the same to both groups, who were often learning together in the same classroom.

Why would the federal government say today that it is not sure that they were taught exactly what it wanted them to learn? Why would the federal government say that it did not make a decision on the quality of teaching, the condition of buildings and school transportation and that it should have looked at all that before paying?

Considering how fast the federal government moves, little natives would be past university age and would still not have started school. The government is capable of ordering endless studies, and the more they cost, the more it orders them. What would our debt be if the Quebec government had not decided to act and had not stopped waiting so long for the federal government?

There was also the aboriginal Oka crisis in 1990. At that time, nothing was too good. Quebec was sending its provincial police officers and they were working overtime, seven days a week. They had to put out the fires. It was becoming urgent, especially since the federal government was quite involved in the situation there, because it was its fault if the natives were rising up about a territorial issue.

For almost 130 years, it had done nothing to understand them and to meet their needs. Again, when the time has come to pay the bill, it said that we should have submitted the menu served to policemen when they worked overtime-that maybe it would

have substituted an orange or a piece of carrot for the apple. The government is dodging and using delaying tactics, as the member for Saint-Léonard said, to flee through the back door.

In closing, I must say we have no lesson to learn from these people. They seem to have made it a point of honour not to respect their commitments. The few times they did were when their candidates were defeated and they promised them a safe riding the next time. These are about the only times when the Liberal Party really honoured its commitments.

[Supply, May 18th, 1995]

Yes. The Power jet set. In this case, they found $20 million just like that. So, it is not so difficult to find $20 million. But when ask for five, six, even seven years to resolve the problem in Quebec, to settle Quebec's legitimate claims, they politely refer us to their civil servants. Even a Jesuit-and God knows that Jesuits are supposed to know everything-would lose his way in this complex maze of negotiations.

I listened to the member for Saint-Léonard who praised this great country where civic rights and freedoms are recognized and respected. I will merely remind him of the 1970 War Measures Act, the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, the spying on political parties which was thought to have ceased in 1970, although it was recently discovered that members of the Reform Party are still being spied on, and the same probably goes for us as well.

These are the freedoms referred to by the member for Saint-Léonard. Some also spoke of transparency. I nearly choked. Transparency! As if the Pearson deal was transparent. A man named Nixon-we were not the ones who chose him-studied the famous Pearson deal. His conclusions were that there was something fishy. He recommended to the Prime Minister that an inquiry be conducted in this matter.

I remember the Minister of Transport answering my questions in this Chamber, saying: "Come on! Let us move forward. We do know that some individuals tried to take advantage of it". He could not deny it, the Nixon report said so, but he was saying: "Let us move forward, and quickly. Let us settle this whole matter. It will cost a maximum of $25 million".

We can see how high the stack of bills is now. It is estimated that claims of all kinds for breach of contract will total $450 million, and there are more to come. And yet, we demanded, we asked for a royal commission to get to the bottom of this. But no, it was urgent to proceed quickly and settle the whole thing, regardless of the cost. What openness! Examples of this kind of openness are legion. The heritage minister was not being very open while lunching in a room next to the one where the fate of the Canadian film industry was probably being decided.

Once again, he lacked openness. This is another example of openness. For the first time, a CRTC decision is being reviewed, at the request of the cabinet; by a strange coincidence, which, I know, has a hand in a lot of things, it involves close relatives of the Prime Minister, who stand to gain a lot. This is happening in

this great country which is so dear to the member for Saint-Léonard as are the underlying principles of federalism he described.

I could perhaps talk about the underlying principles of federalism. They are nothing to write home about. Such noble principles.

I remember reading, not too long ago, that when we joined this country in 1867, about 50 per cent of the population was French speaking in all four provinces and 50 per cent, English speaking. At the time, we paid 300,000 pounds sterling to buy the Northwest Territories, Rupert's Land, which today is Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta up to the Rockies. We bought that from the Hudson's Bay Company for 300,000 pounds sterling at the time. Do not ask me how much it would be today, probably as much as the national debt.

It remains that 50 per cent of the people who paid for that were Quebecers, and they gave it away, for nothing, to those who developed western Canada. Now they are telling us that we are crybabies, that we are constantly asking for things we have no right to. No matter what the hon. member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine might think, we paid for western Canada.

If he wants to make some gifts, he should pay for them with his own money, not with other people's money.

He said that people would give everything to live in this country of ours. Yet, after the Minister of Immigration announced he would be charging $900 to those who apply for immigrant status, there was an uproar. People do not want to pay even that much to come here. They think it is starting to be a bit pricey. When making speeches we sometimes say things which are far removed from reality. He almost said, at the end of his speech, that we were pretty lucky to be part of the G-7. For us, being part of the G-7 is as bad as being part of the Winnipeg Jets.

Ross Perot said, in the United States, that we were beggars on horse back, that we had no business being in the G-7, given our structure, our wealth, our economic activity; that the only reason we were there is because the Americans needed our vote to support them, to support their proposals. It is for that reason that they put pressure on to get us in the game. However, we are part of the G-7. When we compare ourselves to the other member countries, we always come out seventh. Ross Perot said that we are there because of their goodwill.

Some people lack the judgment to realize that it was, indeed, a matter of charity. They see that as an honour. He said, as if he were the one who created it, that Canada was beautiful. I like to think that Canada was created by the Creator, not by the Liberal Party of Canada.

I could say that Liberals made much more nasty things than good ones. They should not try to take credit for the great accomplishments of the Creator.

That being said, I think that Quebec's claims are justified, that Quebec must go ahead with them and that all of us, in this House, will always insit that what is Caesar's be rendered unto Caesar. The money coming from Canadian and Quebec taxpayers ends up in the federal treasury. Thirty seven cents out of every dollar go to service the debt.

[Supply, May 18th, 1995]

For the Winnipeg Power Jets.

[Supply, May 18th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to what my hon. colleague for Saint-Léonard, in eastern Montreal, had to say and I am always flabbergasted to hear him speak as if he built this country and almost as if he were the father of our vast and beautiful country.

Earlier, we realized that it is almost pointless for us to make the demands mentioned in the motion before the House. The partisan determination shown by our colleagues opposite indicated early on that our efforts would be useless, that their minds were made up and that, even if we argued all night, it would not do us any good.

Since I have nothing better to do then, I will try to disprove the nonsense uttered by the hon. member for Saint-Léonard. I want to give him a brief lesson in history. It would not hurt the hon. member for Edmonton Southwest to listen, since his knowledge of the history of Canada also seems kind of lacking.

Towards the end of the last century, while 2 million Quebecers, about to starve to death, were forced to leave their country to go to work in the New England cotton mills, the Canadian government sent for Eastern Europeans to settle in western Canada. It gave them land, work animals, horses, chickens, the right to cut timber to build their houses and a lot of other things, and 50 per cent of these expenses were paid for by the people of Canada, half of which then was paid by Quebec. That is what they called profitable federalism. It remained a profitable enterprise for a long time, but it had been even more profitable in 1840, when the Union Act was signed. At that time, Quebec formed the majority within that famous union.

Our ancestors, not very well educated individuals who had been pretty badly treated less than 100 years before by the invaders who had come to strip them of everything they had, used the old sock. They stashed away their savings, they did not get into debt. The villages were not in debt. Quebec was not in debt at the time. But Ontario, which was a hive of activity, had to borrow large amounts of money in order to build infrastructures for its towns. All the lines were blurred. The two debts were not kept separate, with the result that the people of Quebec had to pay over half the debt of Ontario, to the exclusive benefit of the latter. This is yet another example the so-called profitable federalism, as the Liberals see it.

I would say to the member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine that the Gaspé Peninsula, where I was born, lost most of its inhabitants at that time. The member must have, like me, one or perhaps many ancestors who were forced to leave for the United States because they could not make a living in this so-called great country. So I find it hard to listen to people who have been here for something like 20 years say that they helped build this country. I am willing, of course, to acknowledge their qualities, their contributions, but many of them profited a lot more from Canada than our ancestors did 250 and 300 years ago.

And it boils down to the fact that we have rights in this country and that we want them to be respected, that is all.

A lot has gone on here. A member of the Reform Party just told me that, after 18 months, he has discovered that we are alike. Frankly, I find that almost insulting. I resent it. Reform members are in favour of the death penalty, "Hang them quick and do not waste too much rope, and then next, please". That is the philosophy of the Reform Party. Fill up our prisons with whoever had the nerve to insult someone else. That is the right-wing policy of the Reform Party.

I even heard a Reform member say in this House: "My children are not educated, I forbid them to get an education. It is my belief and I adhere to it". But if Canada needs an ambassador, that member is frustrated that the government will not give the job to his son whom he refused to send to school. That is the Reform philosophy. It seems to be quite popular in that region because there are quite a few of them in this House. It is something that I heard here.

Anyway, Quebec is asking the federal government today for a certain sum of money for the natives in the James Bay area. It is time for the federal government to show off, as it has always done. When it came to paying $279 million to give a school board to a particular ethnic group in western Canada in order to show the greatness of Canada and of multiculturalism, it did not cut corners. It came up with the money. And when members of the same ethnic group in Toronto asked the government to give them the same thing it had given their friends in Vancouver, it obliged. It did not matter if the cost was $250 or $300 million, the government found the money. Quebecers did not complain in those days. On the contrary, 74 out of this gang of 75 chose to vote for those expenditures, in order to buy peace I guess.

One thing leading to another, we ended up with a $550 billion debt. I wonder if Canada will not follow in the footsteps of Dow Corning, the breast implant manufacturer, and file under our Bankruptcy Act pretty soon. We are asking to be paid for the services we have delivered to native people for which the federal government is legally responsible. We gave them the same education we gave young Quebecers who lived in the area. I suppose it was a good education.

Now the time has come to pay the bill but the federal government is shirking its responsibilities. It is a bit like the guy who goes to eat in a restaurant, pretends he is going to the washroom after he finishes his meal, exits through the back door and avoids the bill. That is what the government is doing right now, or it looks like it.

Why not face up to a situation that exists and that deserves to be dealt with, not because it concerns Quebec but because it is a matter of justice. There was an agreement. The Minister of Interdepartmental Affairs wants to refer this issue to committees and to government officials, all that for a total claim of $333 million. Yet, it took the government only 20 minutes to free up $20 million for the Winnipeg arena. Things did not drag on in this case.

[Supply, May 18th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, the minister just said that they gave $450 million towards the education of native people in Quebec. They have already used this argument three or four times on the government side. But if the bill comes to $600 million, it must be paid in full.

When I bought a car, and was told by the salesman that it came to $30,000, I did not stop paying at $20,000, saying that it would have to suffice, that it was too much. I had to pay the whole amount, and live up to my commitment.

Earlier, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs talked about the principles of fairness and good management; he really laid it on thick. But last year, around the same time, when we asked for a royal commission on the Pearson deal, for the sake of good management and good administration of public funds, we were told that it was not possible because time was of the essence. The whole matter had to be settled quickly for the economy to keep going, and the country to function.

One year later, what is the situation, Madam Speaker? We are not too sure. Bill C-22 is in limbo, floating around somewhere. What was supposed to cost $25 million, according to the transport minister himself, has now sky-rocketed to $450 million. Why is it that today, when Quebec and Quebecers are asking for what they are owed, all of a sudden the government invokes these same principles it refused to apply to the Pearson deal, even though a Liberal inquiry recommended legal action?

I would like someone to explain this to me. How could the minister change that much within a year to the point of being unrecognizable?

[Supply, May 18th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I would like to get back to some of the points raised by the minister who, a few months ago, was a keen advocate and defender of flexible federalism. Could it be that he is abandoning his lofty notions of flexible federalism to champion the cause of courtroom federalism? This is the conclusion one is inclined to draw from his speech.

The minister says that it has not been proven, beyond any doubt, or close to that, that the sums being claimed were indeed spent on young aboriginals according to the James Bay Convention. And yet, his government did not show the same scruples last year when the press reported that every year native people in Canada receive $1.2 billion without a census to establish their exact number.

And yet his government-I understand, I lay no blame-paid the money anyway although it meant that later on, it might have to make up the shortfall or withhold certain sums; it still took action. In the present case, I believe the minister is dead set against Quebec. He will not budge, no matter how legitimate the claims Quebec has against the federal government.

I just came back from a committee meeting. We learned that in Canada there are 298 public sea ports, and the present federal government is unable to say whether they are indeed public or private. For years now, it has been guesstimating. Sometimes, it assumes they are public and sometimes not.

Does the member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine know that, in his riding, there is a port in Chandler which is still being funded even though it is not known whether it is private or public? Ottawa keeps on acting as if it were public and belonged to the federal government. Funnily enough, scruples only happen when Mrs. Beaudoin makes claims on behalf of Quebec. I

find this intolerable on the part of a man who prides himself on being responsible.

The minister, if he was that honourable, could have agreed with Mrs. Beaudoin on a certain amount to pay. Even if we cannot come to terms on the final numbers, we know that not everything is free, including in James Bay. He could have acted in good faith and paid out an approximate amount, which he most likely owes, even though it would have meant he might have to make up the difference or withhold part of the money to be paid some time in the future under the same convention or program.

In conclusion, I am not surprised that the minister intends to vote against our proposal, but I will ask him to refrain from saying that he is doing it in all good faith.

[Committees Of The House, May 11th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 123, I have the pleasure and honour to table the third report of the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations.

Your committee recommends that a House order be issued to repeal certain provisions of the National Capital Commission Traffic and Property Regulations.

[National Marine Strategy, May 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Standing Committee on Transport submitted its report on the national marine strategy. Disregarding the principles of caution and prevention with respect to the environment, the committee questioned compulsory pilotage, particularly in the St. Lawrence and in the Seaway.

This proposal is contrary to the worldwide trend to expanding pilotage areas and raising safety standards. A catastrophe like that of the Exxon Valdez would be an environmental disaster for the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes.

The Liberal majority on the Standing Committee on Transport, with its concern for cost cuts and free competition, has completely set aside environmental concerns. We hope that the Minister of the Environment will use her influence with the Minister of Transport to ensure his decisions reflect the principle of sustainable development.

[Supply, April 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I understand very clearly and I will be quick. I would ask the member for Winnipeg South if the solution, which would not be entirely that of the Reform Party or, at the other extreme, the Liberal Party, if it could not be a joint one with respect to expenditure cuts, particularly in the area of defence, that might satisfy everyone?

[Supply, April 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech. His views are diametrically opposed to those of the Reform Party.

However, some of the issues raised by the Reform Party are not totally erroneous. I do not agree with the hon. member when he says that the Reform Party's views are irresponsible. I do think that, unfortunately, our debt ratio will force us to make some hard choices, as is already the case with the UI program, for example.

We learned today that the number of welfare recipients in Quebec climbed to 808,000, with a more or less corresponding decrease in the number of UI beneficiaries. It is pretty easy to figure out that those are UI exhaustees who have now joined the welfare rolls. If the Liberals continue to close their eyes, as they have a tendency to do, instead of tackling the issue of the national debt, we will have to make even harder choices in the future. We will have to cut our social programs, including medicare.

This Liberal government set aside a tidy sum for things such as the purchase, by the Department of National Defence, of four secondhand submarines, which will of course have to be upgraded with state-of-the-art detection systems, the very best enemy detection systems. Given what is happening with the frigates that have to be refitted, we can expect this government to once again spend billions of dollars. If the government stopped spending uselessly, it might be able to delay cutting into social programs.

But this is not what the government does. Consequently, I do not agree with the hon. member's comments on the Reform Party vision. I am not a Reform member either, but I do think that our debt ratio is dangerously high. This is the real threat for our society and, without going as far as the Reform Party, I do believe that the provinces, which are closer to the taxpayers, are in the best position to assess their needs, and should therefore be the only ones to decide which medical services to provide.

The other day, in Quebec, we had-